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Under the Passionfruit

A length of spider’s web startles
In thin, shooting brilliance up and
Down its fine extent, appearing
And disappearing, catching colour
In the light, losing it, in a slight
Blown shifting to and from the sun.
We saw a whole field of these once –
Where was it? – as if overlaid –
Acres of it – with shimmering lace:
Beyond counting then, but none
As bright as this one strand of prism,
All the radiant spectrum flashing.
Around it now, the general revelation
Of the morning brings the twigs,
Fence palings, new balls of fruit,
Into the glow of ordinary existence,
And the earth turns another fraction,
And its exquisite creation vanishes.
A chance of sunlight and of sight –
No moment more than this – form
The lineaments of being, where
All that’s given is given to depart,
And we hold nothing of it, but try,
In the act of worship, the work of art.
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Harold Jones is a New Zealander, educated at Cambridge University, where he was awarded an Exhibition to read English. His poetry has been widely published in UK and NZ literary journals. He has been a prize-winner in national UK and NZ poetry competitions, and, as a lyricist, in the UK Songwriting Contest, the largest such event in the world. A selection of his work in AUP New Poets Four (Auckland University Press, 2011), drew the UK review, “this excellent poet, a kind of Ted Hughes crossed with Bukowski,” with a further selection, Curriculum Vitae (Xlibris, 2014), reviewed in NZ as “downright incredible.” His work has won the acclaim of pre-eminent critics and poets: among them, Al Alvarez, “I like the elegance and control, the drive to say something rather than just to cut a fashionable figure," and Ted Hughes, “I hear a real voice, a real movement of mind cutting through resistances.” In the US his poems appear in Merion West and VoegelinView.

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