Stephen Goldrick: ‘To Stourhead Gardens’ and ‘I Love My Turkish Barber’

To Stourhead Gardens
(designed by Henry Hoare II and Capability Brown and where Alexander Pope liked to write)

Empire-rich, enlightened man played merry
hell with nature where the fish ponds lay,
delighted devils with his plans to bury
God’s slow hand in artificial clay;
built Tempe vale, soft palaces to Pan,
Elysian stream to trap small deity
of sward and grot, a pantheon to man
engrossed, indulged, in glib precocity.

The Maker stirred and Satan crowed with glee,
pricked on his minions, stoked the glutted fires,
for souls in hubris forfeit sanctity
when Babel to the heavenly aspires;
Now mighty walks the Maker with his angels,
sweet goddess Nature swathed in green before,
and in their wake lurks Satan full of danger
to snatch up Capability and Hoare.

Nor Nemesis nor Midas proud, soon humble,
did God espouse in dudgeon just and rile;
the banker and the architect did tremble
but God looked down, breathed deep, began to smile:
“Man’s conquered nature, Earth vacates her throne,
the atoms jarred, redrawn, chaos allays;
your artfulness rude complements my own,
where heartful voices lapse in silent praise.

Not here, for this is song, ah no, not here;
light dance the muse, a bridge of joy defines
a poet’s glebe across a painted mere,
where Pope and spring are bathed in ordered time.
You played as God, but I with pleasure sighed;
Let Eden’s whim be folly justified!”

Stephen Goldrick

I Love My Turkish Barber

I love my Turkish barber, my deft slice of history—
he miklagards my thinning hair with expert dignity,
he arabesques my tonsure with mosaic artistry
and istanbuls receding lines to gentle symmetry.

He shaves my neck, he plucks my nose, my brows he snickers-snee
with echoes of Byzantium as follicles float free;
Constantinople beckons from my balding topiary:
I love my Turkish barber (and I think he’s fond of me).

Finale sweetly beckons as he flames a piece of string
to singe my ears of errant tufts and make my ear drums ring;
I am extinguished, soothed with balm, now fall away the years,
he smiles with calm appraisal as he switches on his shears.

Saladin-like, he’d have my neck—I’d never feel the knife,
I’d give myself to him, beat tabour, sound the musky fife;
I leave him with catharsis and I leave behind all strife:
I love my Turkish barber and my head is his for life.

Stephen Goldrick