Michael Newman — two poems

Winter Colour

Blush-shy,
The flower rises
From the soil,
Then opens into white apparition,
Helleborous niger,
The Christmas Rose.

On such a grey and rain-rotten day,
I welcome this affirmation

Of unbridled joy:

Paradise where least expected

A Measure of Dusk
A delinquent moon slinks past Shetcombe Hill.
The dead-branch antlers of an oak
Defy the onset of dusk.
Clouds misappropriate the treasures of sunset.

I have seen daylight fade
A dozen dozen times
(This year alone)
And yet only now

See it in its mystery.
I taste the colours,
Breathe-in the perfumed voices
Of women.
A sprinkle of stars

Senses the senses.
No truth but in the senses.

fall sonnet

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
No thanks, in fact you don’t resemble
the sweating city under sun’s ray,
or swollen song of birds ensemble,

nor too the resting mist on wet cocoons,
or comfort from the silky beach sand
rolling from tightly curtained bedrooms
through my silent and awaiting hand.

I will admit I wonder whether we
pace the exhibits of a cold museum
or whether the already burning sea
must rest longer on healing alluvium –

So, I compare you to the day I remember.
In touch, inside the first rain of October.

Ren Chun Ho has published a collection of poetry, Shrines and Streetlights, with Ethos Books, and his work has been collected in the anthology A Luxury We Cannot Afford. He is a third-year politics and sociology student at the University of Cambridge, where he won the Brewer-Hall Poetry Prize 2017, and founded the Cambridge University Poetry and Prose Society.

Michael Newman — two poems

Archive