Dr Arthur Broomfield is a poet and Beckett scholar from County Laois, Ireland. His work has been published in Acumen, Agenda, Orbis, North and in the US, Ireland and India. He has been writing Surrealist poetry for the past two years, inspired by the English surrealist poet Hilda Sheehan and by the writings of Andre Breton.

The Meeting on the Turret Stairs 2

She who has touched him - 
 rid of chain mail and helmet,
 sword in repose - 
  he would, he planned,
 touch,
  
  here, beyond the curve in the stairs
 where her hair caresses the stars,
  
 he would tell her things in words
  forbidden to a knight 
 in armour,
 kiss her, as the poet
  would kiss the muse
 and name her Erato,
 here and hereafter. 

 Prayer

 Sometimes I need to say a prayer
 though I’m not the praying kind.
 I pray in whispers; my faith is in the air.
  
 I pray for all the rising stars
 and the rock of Dunamaise,
 I pray for the geranium
 in its sacred space,
 I pray for rose and primrose
 and St John’s wort, they call hypericum.
 for the Sun, when it’s going down,
 I pray for it and for the birds’ songs,
 may they always be around.
 I pray for morning’s first light,
 I pray for meadowsweet
 and pitch-black winter nights,
 for the cooing fat woodquest
 for wild orchids on the bog,
 for the goldfinch in his Sunday best,
 for the fox cubs and the shrew.
 I pray for all the badgers,
 in setts that they renew,
 the elder bush, its berries and its flowers,
 known to Druid and Shaman
 who recognise its powers.
 I pray for the swallows, majestic as they glide,
 that chirp and chatter, for weeks, while they decide,
 to honour us, whose faith is poor,
 with their nest, assembled over our front door.
 I pray for weeds that gather
 in hostile city streets,
 for the owls and bats,
 the starlings, mice and rats,
 in the system that they beat.
 For insects of all kinds, red ants
 And flying moths,
 the ones we’ll never see.
  
 I pray for honey and for pollen,
 floating on the breeze.
  
 I pray for bees. 

Meditating to Miles

 You turn your palms to Sirius,
 under your head a blithe pillow.
  Eyes closed. Drapes defy
  the inconvenient truth
 of a spring morning.
 Strains of ‘Round About Midnight’
 bidden by your breathing.
  
  You who know so little
 know it’s Miles on trumpet,
 John Coltrane before
 “A Love Supreme”
 on tenor sax.
 You listen to Red, it’s not the piano you hear
 and Paul Chambers, assuring you notions
 of time and space corrupt and corrode,
 the phoney tales of rhythm and rhyme
 pal with the devil’s holy plan.
  
 The phosphorus path
 beguiles, each step
 distils marshmallow seeds,
 jasmine scent fuels the trip.
  
 Shattered, the lived-in conditions
 imposed on experience -
 bread and death,
 birth and consecrated work,
 the rising moon,
 an Islamic mosaic on a fritillary
 the entangled photon -
 by filtered light signals,
 a raindrop from a neglected cloud.
  
 Poised, on a breeze-tossed thistledown,
 you see, beyond
 the setting September sun,
 you, on the edge
 of what we know,
 the star-pierced curtain,
 the cat of the sacred sign,
 through a defence of February fog.