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View of Village With Clock Tower | David Wiley | Scene4 Magazine | June 2019 | www.scene4.com

View of Village with Clock Tower

Painting

The Art of David Wiley

 Poetry

Art and Poetry Selection:
Lissa Tyler Renaud

Rimbaud's House

 

Covered with a thousand circus nights of words,

borne upon vapors of sound and vision,

arisen from endless rings of rhapsody and wonder,

I came to Harrar alone, thirsty and seeking.


In the Raj Hotel I waited for something,

perhaps a signal to start my quest.

An old Frenchman, grizzled by Africa,

offered to show me the sights of the city.

I said yes, and we went into the streets.


It was a maze of scarred and crumbled walls,

deep and narrow trenches across the hills,

like tortuous relics of a medieval World War I.


Rimbaud, are these the remnants of your heart?

Are these the last configurations of your mind?


He led me through the markets, past the mosques,

over the sites of a little-known history,

before the eyes of ancient colorful inhabitants

living by the nexus gates of caravans

from desert seas and far off mystic cities.


He took me to the tombs of unknown saints,

across the nameless graves of exotic voyagers,

into the tessellated shadows and light.


Rimbaud, is this your celestial miasma?

Is this your sacred confusion?


We walked outside the walls

on footpaths worn by countless naked feet,

known well to hyenas in the moonlit night.

We gazed across the rolling savannah

and beyond to the Danakil plains.


We gazed at the green phantasmagoric peaks

and the sun setting ferociously across the land.


He raised his arms to the earth and sky,

gestured vaguely to the town, and said,
"This is where the poet Rimbaud lived.".

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Scene4 Magazine - David Wiley | www.scene4.com

David Wiley, painter-poet: graduate of U. Kansas; studied at Mexico City College and with artist Ignacio Belen in Barcelona. Widely traveled, he exhibits throughout California and abroad. Wiley has published two volumes of poetry: Designs for a Utopian Zoo (1992) and The Face of Creation (1996). Since 2005, Wiley has received large mural commissions in Arizona, Mexico and California. Wiley is a longtime contributor to Scene4: paintings, poems, meditations on art, creative non-fiction. To inquire about his paintings, click here.
For more of his paintings, poetry and writings, check the
Archives.

©2019 David Wiley
©2019 Publication Scene4 Magazine

 

 

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June 2019

Volume 20 Issue 1

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