Lithograph by Francis Bedford.
Owen Jones, Moresque Ornament from the Alhambra No. 5: Mosaics, 1856. Lithograph by Francis Bedford. The New York Public Library Digital Collections. Public domain.
West’s poems offer a steady passage between our darker brackets. In “Flat Land”, he steps into Escher’s disciplined wonder, where pattern becomes paradox and the mind learns to doubt the floor beneath it. “Kissing Stones or Lost in the dark” brings us into Irish stonework and pilgrimage, rising from the dungeon-dark to the bright folklore of blessing. And “imminent exits” closes with a quiet seasonal turn — that late-summer knowledge that change is already at the roadside.
Flat Land
by Bill West
after M. C. Escher
He escaped ‘flat land’
cutting memories of
Spain and Italy into three-
dimensional images
wood cut prints of
domes erupting from hills
like cacti amongst
pillars of rock
In Spain his images
extravasated;
Alhambra’s tiled floors
and walls, wheels of
star-shaped tiles
walls bearing networks
of motifs extending
into infinity
Geometric symmetries
bulged impossibly
or toyed
with tessellation,
images snapped
like puzzle pieces
evolving metamorphic
transformations
He worked alone
in a room
at a table
no mathematician
he, imagined
impossible realities.
Kissing Stones or Lost in the dark
Forty years ago I returned to the Ireland
of my ancestors, and home to Aengus Og,
Irish god of poetry and love.
At Blarney Castle I climbed a winding stair
from deep dark dungeons where shadows
slid slick as oil with unremitting
siren song saying, “don’t go, stay here
with us in solitudinous darkness.”
After many twists and turns of the narrow stair I saw a patch
a triangle of light that pierced like a
lemon wedge upon a tongue and high above
I heard the flick and whir of sparrow wings
twisting and turning in a widening gyre
about the rainbow washed sky and
drifting clouds over the towering
heights of Blarney Castle battlements.
Eighty-five feet above the ground
I lay on my back and arched back
and down to kiss the Blarney Stone
legendary piece of the Stone of Scone
and perhaps Jacob’s pillow of rock from
Bethel upon which Jacob dreamed of a spiral stair
beneath God’s right hand, on which Angels of
the Lord did arise and descend
“by our efforts we strive to ascend.”
imminent exits
Late Summer soaks the dusty road
baked crust that powders
startled by a breeze
a growing sense of loss.
September sneaks in furtive
to glimmer the bark
crinkle the underside
of leaves and burnish
metal road signs
announcing imminent exits
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