The Arrival Of Thoughts: 2 English Poems Poem by Sheena Blackhall

Thoughts on the Douaumont Ossuary, VE day,2020
Tonight, on VE day, in Douaumont,
The lantern will shine out across the dead
The ossuary up-gathered from Verdun's
A gleaning, with no gravestone at each head

All culled by the meat grinder of that war
No sleeper stirs to answer the death bell
One general hoped to bleed French soldiers white
Slaughtered by 60 million German shells

‘They say it was a shocking sight
After the field was won;
For many thousand bodies here
Lay rotting in the sun;
But things like that, you know, must be
After a famous victory'…After the Battle of Blenheim, Robert Southey



Sculpture on the Edge
A giant tap, a silver faucet, airy, gushes water
In El Puerto de Santa Maria, southwest Spain
The work of the late French sculptor Philippe Thill
It seems to be disembodied, a tap with attitude

In the Antipodes, there's an upended statue called Landmark
Sixteen feet tall, the subject top's on the ground
Plinth stands in the air, not on earth
Turning art on its head
The Seven Noses of Soho,by artist Rick Buckley
Is it a critique of Big Brother society, the spawning of CCTV?

Eight metres high, the Traffic Light Tree
75 sets of lights by the French sculptor Pierre Vivant.
Stands by Billingsgate Market,
A quirky lego look- a-like

One of the Stubborn art group, Jaroslav Róna,
Created "Parable with Skull"
A branze beggar weighed down by a massive skull,
On aslab of aging wood, one of Kafka's characters—
The "beggar…with the death rattle in his throat…
Dying on the doorstep"
At the rear of the statue: the beggar's testicles
Are prominent, alarming modest tourists

Outside the Franz Kafka Museum,
David Černý's Peeing Statuesare moving
They raise and lower their penises
Swiveltheir hips realistically
Unnaturally performing a natural function

For those Ganesha worshippers,
Würsa 18000km from Earth, France
Isone of the world's wonders
Wursa, balancing on her trunk
Behold in awe