Letters From Venice

A poet, playwright and theatre director, Campbell Kay is the recipient of an Arts Council Writer’s Grant and winner of the Winifred Riley Award For Poetry.

His poems have appeared in anthologies and literary magazines and have been published in the collections Graffiti In A Narrow Room, The Waste Remains and Devils’ Wine. A strong belief that poetry only comes alive when it is read aloud, has led Campbell Kay to perform his poetry at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe as well as giving readings in colleges, community centres, libraries, pubs, schools and universities; and, as a visiting poet, he has participated in creative writing sessions at a maximum security prison.

Selected poems from Letters From Venice

A Winter’s Tale

I
The sexton’s horny-handled spade
Digs divots from the waiting grave;
While watchful toads and ravens curse
Plumed horses, tethered to the hearse,
Whose muffled hooves on frozen ground
A melancholy tattoo sound.

Now some few mourners shuffle past,
Hats in hands, and eyes downcast,
To hear the parson’s voice insist
That we are ashes, earth and dust.

And grief they feel, and passion too,
More sharp than any parson knows.
For who can tell if nettles strewn
Will wither sooner than the rose;
Or whether rose and petals fell
A love to hide or to reveal.

II
In azure meadows harebells ring
Loud carillons to welcome Spring
And lenten lilies herald forth
The season’s plenitudinous growth.

A myriad mornings we will rise
From slumber and sweet reveries;
While wanton boys, still half asleep,
Yawn promises they will not keep.

But we, who have lost more than most,
Know better than to mourn the past.
Think then of all that we would gain
If we should dare to love again:

A love, new-bidden by the word,
A love not hidden from the world.

Love And Loss

I
Knowing you are far from here,
Love taunts me with an old desire.
Tonight the darkness and the stars,
As distant from me as you are,
Conspire to mock the love I’ve lost
And scorn my longing for the past.

II
Thoughts I dare not think, they speak,
While I ... stutter ... inarticulate.
The faltering silence of my voice
Conveys scant meaning; sense avoids.
Broken words dissolve in syllables
Making my poor pleas inaudible.

III
A beggar, not for coin but love,
No alms will ever be enough
To assuage the loneliness of loss;
Of knowing what cannot be; but was.
Love does not fade with he who goes
But with the one who waits and hopes.

Love In Time Of Strife

(St. Valentine’s Day 2017)

Loving boys from heights are hurled,
Their bodies shattered as their world;
And shrapnel, like confetti strewn,
Destroys the bride and her young groom;
While children bloodied, bowed, bereft,
Paint pictures of the lives they’ve left:
No parents now to praise their art,
Strafe bombing tears their kin apart.

Let us, on this sweet martyr’s day,
Incline our heads remembering they
Whose lives so cruelly have been lost
To conflicts present, yet and past.
Love is the best of us and love remains
No matter how the world may change.

Now

There is no yesterday, nor tomorrow,
Only today for ... joy ... or sorrow.
It was so ten thousand years ago
And will be in ten thousand more.
For now is the past and future too
And all the splendour of loving you
In the present is a gift of time;
If only you will now be mine.

Petrarch for Laura pined in vain.
In sestet, sonnet and quatrain,
He hymned his love but was denied
From first sight until Laura died.
Let us not vainly love but vow
To seize the potency of now.