Boy with Orange by Lotte Kramer

A boy holding an orange in his hands
Has crossed the border in uncertainty.

He stands there, stares with marble eyes at scenes
Too desolate for him to comprehend.

New, in this globe he's clutching something safe.
A round assurance and a promised joy

No one shall take away. He cannot smile.
Behind him are the stones of babyhood.

Soon he will find a hand, perhaps, to hold,
Or a kind face, some comfort for a while.

A Strange Type of Beauty

Let's play a game.
Let's peel back the skin of the city
and rearrange its insides till
we have created a strange kind of beauty
we don't recognise. Let's move this city's landmarks
like chess pieces; take the London Eye and
roll it to the adges of the city,
drag the Tate into zone five,
have the Royal Opera House playing
in outskirt basement halls,
grab some chicken and chips via the London Coliseum.

Classrooms become their own theatres
so that young people can unfurl their
aches into creative roars. For the shy ones
the pen becomes a microphone
to their power and those words travel further
than the lulls of their stomachs. Instead
those notebooks soliloquies become a future
bouquet of verses blossoming into the mouths of thespians.

Art galleries are not echo chambers
of prestige. Instead their doors have become
a fleshy open smile, their tongues speaking in
a language of visual miscellany, Graffiti masterpieces
are hanging with Cézanne and Monet. There are
Dali moustaches on corridors twitching and beckoning
young people to find new works of art to get lost in.
Workshops are being run by Barka,
wide floors and windows for children to paint on

Young people are composing digital sonotas
in their rooms and we've taken their roofs off.
We've unplugged their headphones so that
those tsks tsks in their ears have now become a siren of noise
the sky has broken into an orchestra of patois symphonies
there's grime-fused electro sprinkled with classical undertones,
rap lyrics chasing bhangra, bouncing off of buildings,
the sky a new constellation of sounds
pulsating like shooting stars across the city.

Let's play this game,
let's play it everywhere.
Till we do not know where the
highs and lows of this city
begin and end,
till the backbone of London is a
helix of hybrid noises, words, neon colours and shapes
for young people to skip and dance across.
So that wherever they go
their footprints will leave traces
of the city they played in.
So that wherever they go
they are left reeking
with this strange kind of beauty

and they will not live less
they will not live less
they will not live less.

By Selina Nwulu
Young Poet Laureate for London 2015/2016

A Strange Kind of Beauty was commissioned by cultural education charity A New Direction, as a response to the challenges young Londoners face in contributing to the creative life in the city.
Watch an animation of the poem at www.anewdirection.org.uk/a-strange-kind-of-beauty

RSA Journal Issue I 2016

Short Talk on Hedonism

Beauty makes me hopeless. I don't care why anymore I just want to get away.
When I look at Paris I long to wrap my legs around it.
When I watch you dancing there is a heartless immensity like a sailor in a dead calm sea.
Desires as round as peaches bloom in me all night, I no longer gather what falls.

Anne Carson

La Rose et le Réséda

Celui qui croyait au ciel
Celui qui n'y croyait pas
Tous deux adoraient la belle
Prisonnière des soldats
Lequel montait à l'échelle
Et lequel guettait en bas
Celui qui croyait au ciel
Celui qui n'y croyait pas
Qu'importe comment s'appelle
Cette clarté sur leur pas
Que l'un fût de la chapelle
Et l'autre s'y dérobât
Celui qui croyait au ciel
Celui qui n'y croyait pas
Tous les deux étaient fidèles
Des lèvres du coeur des bras
Et tous les deux disaient qu'elle
Vive et qui vivra verra
Celui qui croyait au ciel
Celui qui n'y croyait pas
Quand les blés sont sous la grêle
Fou qui fait le délicat
Fou qui songe à ses querelles
Au coeur du commun combat
Celui qui croyait au ciel
Celui qui n'y croyait pas
Du haut de la citadelle
La sentinelle tira
Par deux fois et l'un chancelle
L'autre tombe qui mourra
Celui qui croyait au ciel
Celui qui n'y croyait pas
Ils sont en prison Lequel
A le plus triste grabat
Lequel plus que l'autre gèle
Lequel préfère les rats
Celui qui croyait au ciel
Celui qui n'y croyait pas
Un rebelle est un rebelle
Nos sanglots font un seul glas
Et quand vient l'aube cruelle
Passent de vie à trepas
Celui qui croyait au ciel
Celui qui n'y croyait pas
Répétant le nom de celle
Qu'aucun des deux ne trompa
Et leur sang rouge ruisselle
Même couleur même éclat
Celui qui croyait au ciel
Celui qui n'y croyait pas
Il coule il coule et se mêle
A la terre qu'il aima
Pour qu'à la saison nouvelle
Murisse un raisin muscat
Celui qui croyait au ciel
Celui qui n'y croyait pas
L'un court et l'autre a des ailes
De Bretagne ou du Jura
Et framboise ou mirabelle
Le grillon rechantera
Dites flûte ou violoncelle
Le double amour qui brûla
L'alouette et l'hirondelle
La rose et le réséda

Louis Aragon
Extrait de La Diane française 
Seghers, 1944