The Present Imperfect
An improvisation on Yves Bonnefoy’s ‘L’imperfection est la cime’
A need to stop and stop and stop,
salvation only, cheap at any price.
Spoil the bare face rising from marble,
hammer any shape, any beauty.
We’d love a perfect thing, a wide-opened door,
but deny it as soon as we saw it, cut it dead.
The present imperfect is now our summit.
Mark Robinson’s New & Selected Poems, How I Learned to Sing was published by Smokestack in 2014. His poem The Infinite Town is carved onto a large plinth on Stockton-on-Tees High Street. He is currently engaged in creating 55 musical pieces of 55 seconds length whilst he is 55, via the alter ego Longarmstapler: https://soundcloud.com/longarmstapler.
