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.

April

Painted April parades
lilies, that brandish the blood
of the quick, pink viburnum.
magnolias, sepals stained, in retreat,
too late to flee the crematorium.

The yellow daffodil, standing
tall above the March grass,
sees through the bare hedge,
withers in haste.

April, the paedophile who prowls
the school playground,
his season ticket
bags of bullseyes,
bulging his pockets.

The Count shuffles 
to the mouth of his cave,
sniffs the morning air,
his lips pucker toward 
the eastern sun,
the promised land.   

Still they Dream

The vigour of the squirrel,
on the eve of Saint Agnes,
sinews strained from Tesco bags,
crisps, tomatoes sun-dried,

the grind of the slow train, crammed,
full of the singalong tanned.

The poet who draws water
at Castletown weir.
The broker, who trades in futures.

After Francis Bacon

Portrait of John Edwards, 1988

Picture a rectangle 
raised in the ensign of Treblinka
set in a surround
of smouldering vegetation.
 
A man is balanced, cross-legged,
on a two-legged bamboo chair. 
He is the written question.
 
The answer - 
 from the clatter and jostles
 of the steam train,
its carriages crammed
with poets and harlots -
is belched out in hisses,
eerier smoke,
and lurches on.
No thing to be seen.
 
His body burns upwards,
from his melting
 to a pink puddle left foot,
to his charred ribcage
[the passe memory card],
that had jumped and danced
to the rhythms of who knows what,
the hands that painted his last hues  
on noon’s molten bones.
 
 
Is this the son of man
 in his click clock hour?
Even if his eye is closed
his Sphinx stare looks
beyond the hellish sun.
 
Does he sense the love flame,
 its colours,
 that nicks the soft tissue,
below his head stone ?