Skip to main content

POEM FOR SNOWDEN #10: VAS DIAS





The Secret Stalker

Robert Vas Dias



say I'm very interested in you
say you're also interesting to the government
say the government becomes interested in me
            because I'm very interested in you
say you're not interested in the government
            being interested in you

say the government is stalking you
say we don't know the government is stalking you
say the government is stalking me
            because they're stalking you
            and because the government knows
            how interested I am in you

say the fact the government is stalking you is leaked
say I learn the government is also stalking me
say we're more interested in the government
            now the government is stalking us

say we ask the government to put a stop to this
say the government says they'll put a stop to this
            because although they're very interested in us
            they know how upsetting it may be for us

say the government continues stalking us even though
            they said they know it's upsetting us
say we ask the government again to put a stop to this

say the government puts a stop to us



                                                                        Copyright © 2013 Robert Vas Dias

 Robert Vas Dias, an Anglo-American born and now resident in London, has published ten collections in the UK and USA, the latest of which is London Cityscape Sijo (Perdika, 2012).  Still · Life and Other Poems of Art and Artifice appeared from Shearsman, 2010. His poetry and criticism have appeared in about 100 magazines, journals, and anthologies in both countries, including Ambit, Encounter, Envoi, Long Poem Magazine, Ninth Decade, Oasis, Poetry Review, Poetry Wales, Shearsman, Stand, Staple Magazine, Tears in the Fence, and The Warwick Review in the UK, and The Nation, The New Yorker, Partisan Review, and Poetry (Chicago) in the USA. A festschrift, Entailing Happiness, with contributions by 35 poets and writers, appeared in 2011.  He was founder-director of the Aspen Writers Workshop in Colorado and General Secretary of The Poetry Society in London. He is a core tutor with The Poetry School in London. Website: www.robertvasdias.com.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

CLIVE WILMER'S THOM GUNN SELECTED POEMS IS A MUST-READ

THAT HANDSOME MAN  A PERSONAL BRIEF REVIEW BY TODD SWIFT I could lie and claim Larkin, Yeats , or Dylan Thomas most excited me as a young poet, or even Pound or FT Prince - but the truth be told, it was Thom Gunn I first and most loved when I was young. Precisely, I fell in love with his first two collections, written under a formalist, Elizabethan ( Fulke Greville mainly), Yvor Winters triad of influences - uniquely fused with an interest in homerotica, pop culture ( Brando, Elvis , motorcycles). His best poem 'On The Move' is oddly presented here without the quote that began it usually - Man, you gotta go - which I loved. Gunn was - and remains - so thrilling, to me at least, because so odd. His elegance, poise, and intelligence is all about display, about surface - but the surface of a panther, who ripples with strength beneath the skin. With Gunn, you dressed to have sex. Or so I thought.  Because I was queer (I maintain the right to lay claim to that

IQ AND THE POETS - ARE YOU SMART?

When you open your mouth to speak, are you smart?  A funny question from a great song, but also, a good one, when it comes to poets, and poetry. We tend to have a very ambiguous view of intelligence in poetry, one that I'd say is dysfunctional.  Basically, it goes like this: once you are safely dead, it no longer matters how smart you were.  For instance, Auden was smarter than Yeats , but most would still say Yeats is the finer poet; Eliot is clearly highly intelligent, but how much of Larkin 's work required a high IQ?  Meanwhile, poets while alive tend to be celebrated if they are deemed intelligent: Anne Carson, Geoffrey Hill , and Jorie Graham , are all, clearly, very intelligent people, aside from their work as poets.  But who reads Marianne Moore now, or Robert Lowell , smart poets? Or, Pound ?  How smart could Pound be with his madcap views? Less intelligent poets are often more popular.  John Betjeman was not a very smart poet, per se.  What do I mean by smart?

"I have crossed oceans of time to find you..."

In terms of great films about, and of, love, we have Vertigo, In The Mood for Love , and Casablanca , Doctor Zhivago , An Officer and a Gentleman , at the apex; as well as odder, more troubling versions, such as Sophie's Choice and  Silence of the Lambs .  I think my favourite remains Bram Stoker's Dracula , with the great immortal line "I have crossed oceans of time to find you...".