The Human Factor: Greene’s existential world of espionage

Dan Wild

“A crumb could contain a microdot.” (129) The first Graham Greene book I read, Our Man in Havana (1958), followed the adventures of a vacuum cleaner salesman after being recruited by British Intelligence (and his increasingly outlandish ways of meeting their expectations). The Human Factor is decidedly less light-hearted, but no less a solid read. …

Sonnet 3 — After WS

Dan Wild

Scatter my ashes in your vale of kings,Or by a pond secure from frosty wind;Or lake, perhaps, where yesterday’s tidingsBring repose and solace I might yet findFrom the harsh sun that burnt me brown as duskIn autumn. Winter is yet to come, I fear,When sheilas dress refined and smell of muskWhile silent Indian gurus are …

Percy the Pianist: Canto 1, stanzas 51-69

Dan Wild

Previous.. Invocatio:    To its own substance; woven tracery ran Of light firm texture, ribbed and branching, o’er    The solid rind, like a leaf’s veined fan— Of which Love scooped this boat—and with soft motion Piloted it round the circumfluous Ocean.       –Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Witch of Atlas, XXXIII, 308 51The bath continued… The river Lethe …

Percy the Pianist: Canto 1, stanzas 42-50

Dan Wild

Previous… 42[This stanza has intentionally been left blank] 43He slunk into the bath after high tea,Bringing a wafer wiv ‘im. Today he’d sayGoodbye to innocence, as minstrelsyBeckoned – he hoped he’d be able to stayThe course of his dream, but what could allayThe fear? Failure was no longer an optionTo be contemplated at break of …

Percy the Pianist: Canto 1, stanzas 31-41

Dan Wild

Previous.. 31Half a day before the gathering stormRose Percy, not Percival of Wagner’sDour overture, based on the French wormOf Tours – these were really snaky nagas,Like an open pack of Lady gagasBought from a small Chinese tobacconistThat sells everything except hate. No ragasWould be played today, nor would F. LizstBe taken out of the stool …

Percy the Pianist: Canto I, stanzas 21-30

Dan Wild

Stanzas 1-20 21Next eve the band Toucani reconvened,A final chance to demonstrate the planTo put on stage was sound. Absent a fiendOr devilish surprise, the piano manPercy was full prepared, the billy canOf his musical ideas ready to overflow.He was not going to AfghanistanTo liberate or command, althoughHis nerves seemed to say that this was …

Digression after Bruce Acotyledon’s Seminar – Intellectual verse

Dan Wild

The dear reader will forgive me, first if I address him as “dear”, when his acquaintance I probably have not made nor ever will. Secondly, for assuming that my reader is a ‘he’. The fact is, women do not read my work, and if they did, they would be too embarrassed to admit it and …

Percy the Pianist: A Byronic Poem

Dan Wild

Take heed: nothing below is spoken seriously:No lasting harm has come from poetryExcept to the self-proclaimed poet’s dignity. 1Meet young Percy: our aspiring pianistWhose name has been sufficiently amended:He’s in his prime when all life’s finestPleasures should arrive and wounds intended,Dismissed or put aside. Confidence Should permeate his every move and showA man of influence. …

The Temptation of Merlin: A Pre-Raphaelite composition

Dan Wild

Legend has it that one of Merlin’s protégés was Nimue, or Viviane, Lady of Lake. Merlin and Viviane were instrumental in King Arthur’s ascent to the throne and the formation of Camelot, gathering place of the Knights of the Roundtable. It was the Lady of Lake who bestowed the sword Excalibur on King Arthur. Without …

The origins of John Polidori and The Vampyre: Byron’s greatest work

Dan Wild

I really started becoming fascinated with the Shelley-Byron circle during my English honours year at the University of Sydney. My mother read me the poems of Shelley as a teenager and I had already encountered William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge at school. The first wave of English literary romantics were interesting enough. Wordsworth with …