Tony Walton

Tony Walton Poems

Lost, these words, at what a cost: cast
like boats afloat on seas that seize
the moment of their brave conception.
No man can tell what wave will carry,
...

And finally I realised that all roads led to France:
The sunlit farm, the bloodstained combe, the whisper of the aspens' dance,
All pointed clearly down the road I did not take by chance.
...

Cry out in your weakness and your fear flows forth.
Follow the pain of it. You will gain of it.
You will gain in freedom from your loneliness.
...

These are my scars
Where I did myself harm.
I cover them up
But they're here on each arm.
...

They had the temerity to dance at a wedding.
They had the joy and love of dancing and of course
the natural desire to celebrate the wedding
of friends. It was temerity only in the
...

Laughing in Laugharne, and languishing too,
Anguishing over where inspiration had gone;
But time enough for a hand of cards at Browns
With Ivy and Ebie and Billy, his brother,
...

The sitting gambler sweeps the board. Be still;
And, by happy mimicry of this life,
We shall truly find ourselves within it;
For there is nothing in it means us ill.
...

The wood in the night was castle-black, and it kept
Its moonlit secrets well:
It housed the predator who crept
Through long-limbed ramparts while the world still slept;
...

He was like a fist, she said - and held
her fist beside her face to show us
what a fist was like: it was like her son.
Always so clenched with me, she said,
...

The rattlesnake cry of the keys drives you
without mercy from the kingdom of dreams.
It doesn't matter that you have chosen
better company, where you walk with her
...

He came home a hero, an Iraqi war vet - and yet
he never came back home at all, as he was, because
the things that he saw over there in the war shook to the core
his every belief in what it was for; and his grief
...

12.

Neda, you played a part
greater than the one you intended.
You wanted what was broken to be mended
by the peaceful protest you almost attended;
...

In Halima's coloured drawing
everything weeps. Why did they kill
my sister? A red rose weeps blood.
The clouds weep blood. The sun weeps blood.
...

Tony Walton Biography

Tony Walton lives in a rural corner of north-west Herefordshire, England, close to the border with Wales. A graduate of Trinity College, Cambridge, where he read English Literature, he has been writing poetry since 1998. All his poems posted on this site (with the exception of the latest 'The Last Dance') are from his fourth volume of poetry 'Particular Realities' which is, as yet, unpublished. Tony says: 'Please read my poems out loud.' 'Poems are rough notations for the music we are.' - Rumi 'Where is the love, beauty and truth we seek but in our mind.' - Shelley 'There is no poetry where there is no ethics.' - Fidel Castro)

The Best Poem Of Tony Walton

Seashells From The Seashore

Lost, these words, at what a cost: cast
like boats afloat on seas that seize
the moment of their brave conception.
No man can tell what wave will carry,
what rock may tarry their eventful reception,
least of all he who released them on
their free and lovely, dangerous voyage.

Some of them might sink without trace,
some might think. Some might turn their face
against them as they beach. Some might race
to take them up before they slide beyond reach.
Some might deride them. Each
stands a chance, as it takes its chance
on the dancing waters over shifting sands.
Each invites spiteful slights at the hands
of those who only amble there.

Some preamble writes the page,
of which he should beware, but it is just a stage
and scenes may shift. Lift up your heart
on wings of larksong flying, even though your part
is already dying. More sense is there,
than they can know, in trying,
and the sighing will be theirs to bear.
Look on his works, ye mighty, and despair.

Tony Walton Comments

Anderson Kelly 09 March 2013

Hi Tony, I really like your work. How was it that you came late to poetry? Or did you write from an early age? Anderson Kelly. Andersonkelly@yahoo.com

0 0 Reply

Tony Walton Popularity

Tony Walton Popularity

Close
Error Success