A LETTERED SOUL, BOOK 2- MUSINGS ON ART AND CULTURE

CINEMA AND VERSE- A TRIP THROUGH TWO CENTURIES

Always ready with verses to imbue his bibliography with greater purpose, here's this cinephile tracing a journey through two centuries of cinema.

He's fortunate to have watched each of these titles through the current years, some of them adding to his love for the visual medium of storytelling most recently.

Here they are, in chronological order.

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MOBY DICK(1956)

These harpoons
bloody
the most elusive
pearl of the sea.

Where is your mind,
Ishmael?
I can't blame you
for all this frothing madness
around you
has made you wander
on the ship
that has moved towards
the lip of the docks
and burns with the
heat-strokes.

All reason is dead.

THE DEFIANT ONES(1958)

Free men
have put our skin-colours
on the line,
chained and fenced us in
around these
antebellum counties.

We run.

We have no colony to seek home.

For these few days,
we'll be taken by
the rain,
the gorge,
the ridge
and the hedgerows.

Then
if luck permits,
we'll breathe
across the river.

BOMBAY TALKIE(1970)

HEAT AND DUST (1983)

We look through
satin curtains
and gilded rails.

But we fail ourselves
when at the golden ripening
of the sea
and the dry hills
barely hanging
over these thirsty plains
across our clandestine windows,
we break
a dozen other
dreams
and
still see each other
the very next day.

The two of us lived.
But hardly caught
our breaths.
All of it
like dirt particles
on the doormat.

HOOSIERS(1986)

When
the body wilted,
languished
with the weeds
and nights and days
promised
pock marks
spread across the cerulean sky,
a
Spirit
appeared.

The vast field
of hearts
runs through this town.

It triumphs
with the travails.