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Below is a selection of some of the poems that I've had published in recent years
Business Trip, Early Morning It’s just business. Geneva Airport, 6 a.m. The cleaners are being dragged Around the polished floors by heavy metallic brushes, Mechanically aimless as the passengers, Milling with blank drawn faces. The wastebin Next to me stands like a steel sentry, Riddled with precise regular holes, Rigid and functional as a Swiss watch. It is half full of garbage as my mind is half Empty. I watched Pay TV this morning until 3 After a fondue meal with clients and old friends. After dinner we bump into a delegate who tells us (twice) He has just eaten entrecote at Café de Paris with 22 Swedish Women. It’s a small world. He extols Uppsala’s energy efficiency, And we talk for a little about global warming, Whether temperatures will rise by 6 degrees or 2 And where the world will be in 2050. My heart is a dull thud. It’s just business. Under my freshly dry-cleaned suit My chest is wet and bleeding with a thousand cuts, Pebbles rattling through an iron hourglass, An acute sense of bland accomplished waste. I ache like a Corleone with this “business”, Darkness in me like a cut-off shadow, Searching. Still 6 a.m. Another hour till take-off, another hour Till I am in the clouds again, Looking down again on earth Like a bored God. This morning watched the Pay TV till 3 Then the electronic brushes Scrubbing the airport floor to a gleam.
© Peter Stewart
The ticking of a clock In a wood-panelled room. Pale sunlight thrown On the white ceiling Forms a moving stream. The silence is subtle And thin as the sunlight Flooding above. Now and again A thought forms, Finds shape In a voice, then Drops away. Rain drops in a puddle. Sit down, reflect. The ticking of the clock Is a kind of breathing, Punctuated by The metronome of silence. A prayer and then a cough That silence swells And then gives way to `more silence.
© Peter Stewart