Prélude à l'Après-Midi d'un Faune, by Mark Wilson

Castle Rising: Satyr & Hamadryad, by Amanda Colville (UK) 2023

Prélude à l'Après-Midi d'un Faune

(in loving memory of Amanda)


1.
Bequeath me your acorn-amulet
amid vibrant branches at altitude.

Galvanised in your viridian, gossamer-
thin Demeter-gown, trailing like
absinthe down your thighs. Paradise
is not artificial. At Castle Rising,
West Norfolk, where your mysterious

Oak presides, contemplation is your
phantasmagoric premonition
tinctured in gold-leaf & silverpoint.

Byzantine leaves snagging in your
maenad hair; teach me to divide
Gaia’s breviary as it continues to
pulse in your indefatigable palm.

Fingering its carapace
as if assaying a crystal;
a bursting phallus of light,
oracular pulse as we entwine.

Let me offer another libation
before your comet implodes
into a shade of ash.

2.
Ace of Cups, be my offertorium,
my aerated liturgy.

Reddest wine which burbles
in its cylindrical verve:
voluminous, zest-filled outpouring.

Is this a poco paradiso? Intermittent?
Turtle doves illuming our solar fellowship?
Ent-wise: these limbs as lianas intertwine;
so learn your place in the gold-green world,

&, Ace of Cups, be our levitation,
be our fleshed-out cornucopia

before your comet detonates, dear,
into that shade of ash.

Mark Wilson

Mark Wilson has published five poetry collections: Quartet For the End of Time (Editions du Zaporogue, 2011), Passio (Editions du Zaporogue, 2013), The Angel of History (LeakyBoot Press, 2013), Illuminations (Leaky Boot Press, 2016) & Paolo & Francesca in a Colder Climate (Black Herald Press, 2025). He is the author of a verse-drama, One Eucalyptus Seed, about the arrest and incarceration of Ezra Pound after World War Two, as well as a tragi-comedy, Arden. His poems and articles have appeared in: The Black Herald, The Shop, Tears in the Fence, 3:AM Magazine, Anvil Tongue, International Times, The Fiend, Syncopation, Epignosis Quarterly, Mande, Dodging the Rain, The Ekphrastic Review, Enheduanna, Rasputin and Le Zaporogue.