[Philip Morre]

After this thread had seemed to be wilting a bit, I see that all of a sudden some big guns are coming out, so I wanted to get this in, while there's time. Bunting was almost buried and forgotten by the sixties but was miraculously disinterred by a small group of fans, led I think by Tom Pickard, (he was working the night shift on a local paper) upon which he came up with this, arguably (as they say) the greatest long poem in English of the century. Cyril Connolly among others picked up on it and its publication led to a brief autumn of fame for the poet. Here are a couple of fragments from part 2:

Poet appointed dare not decline
to walk among the bogus, nothing to authenticate
the mission imposed, despised
by toadies, confidence men, kept boys,
shopped and jailed, cleaned out by whores,
touching acquaintance for food and tobacco.
Secret, solitary, a spy, he gauges
lines of a Flemish horse
hauling beer, the angle, obtuse,
a slut’s blouse draws on her chest,
counts beat against beat, bus conductor
against engine against wheels against
the pedal, Tottenham Court Road, decodes
thunder, scans
porridge bubbling, pipes clanking, feels
Buddha’s basalt cheek
but cannot name the ratio of its curves
to the half-pint
left breast of a girl who bared it in Kleinfeldt’s.
He lies with one to another for another,
sick, self-maimed, self-hating,
obstinate, mating
beauty with squalor to beget lines still-born.

. . . . . . . . . . .


It tastes good, garlic and salt in it,
with the half-sweet white wine of Orvieto
on scanty grass under great trees
where the ramparts cuddle Lucca.

It sounds right, spoken on the ridge
between marine olives and hillside
blue figs, under the breeze fresh
with pollen of Apennine sage.

It feels soft, weed thick in the cave
and the smooth wet riddance of Antonietta's
bathing suit, mouth ajar for
submarine Amalfitan kisses.

It looks well on the page, but never
well enough. Something is lost
when wind, sun, sea upraid
justly an unconvinced deserter.