It is not feminine: this crouching cat – beast
kneading a vacant temple between its claws –
Napoleon and the rest
Can fire their guns in its face.
In the vicinity
Of the pyramidical pyramids,
where the lanner
Nested,
and boys can easily scale,
For a few piastres, and old cove's tombstone,
It will stay,
it will gaze
At the rising, rising sun, until the sun
Forgets to rise, and Time ruins
, and it, too Crumbles – the implacable image
Of male power that smoothly worships itself.
///
John Heath-Stubbs was born in 1918 and educated at Queens College, Oxford. A critic, anthologist and translator as well as a poet, he has received the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry and the prestigious St Augustine Cross. Carcanet published seven previous collections by Heath-Stubbs, as well as a Collected and Selected Poems and a collection of his literary essays. In 1988 he was awarded the OBE. His poetry was published by Carcanet for almost thirty years. He died in London on 25th December 2006.
