Poetry about architecture

The Elements

Modeled after brick and stone,
the cinderblocks and dolomites
that long have kept our ancient homes
half hidden from the crush of night,

a simple notion binds itself to form
in varied shapes of molded polymers
that—scattered out like remnants of a ruin—
tease the mind with possibilities.

Quarried from the realm of thought,
hewn from enigmatic veins,
abundant with the priceless ore
of nascent creativity,

each hollow cube is made to interlock
with all the many others of its kind,
magic puzzle pieces crafted such
that they will build whatever comes to mind.


Of Invention

Imagination rises up
to form a towered ring of walls,
ramparts crowned with parapets
that guard a nest of dens and halls.

Or simple village structures manifest
from deep within the wells of memory,
little homes around a market place,
a chapel standing quaintly in the midst.

Bridges arch above the spread
of nonexistent waterways;
modern superstructures scrape
against conceptions of the sky.

Even ships from other worlds emerge
to travel all throughout the universe,
forever redesigned in the docks
of varied moon or planetary bases.


At Play

Individual colors snap
together in a bold array,
absorbed into a growing sense
of cognizance and clarity.

Nimble fingers probe and rearrange
impressionist expressions of the mind,
each sculpture an accomplished masterpiece
comprised of cubist rectangles and squares.

Walls and rooftops recombine
as various disasters strike;
rigs develop stronger frames,
evolving after every wreck.

Experimental joists and joints explore
the art of bearing loads and distribution,
each new creation more elaborate,
expanding with the will to learn and grow.

Beyond Decoration

Educated in a monastery, poet, author and journalist P J Kavanagh’s early thoughts of becoming a monk were thwarted because he 'liked girls too much'. The Catholic influence though remains (he once appeared in Father Ted).

Kavangh said in an interview: ‘I want to express, without frightening the horses, that there is something about. It would be treason to deny it. Not something religious, that is a slippery word. Or spiritual. There is joy or hope. I think it's joy.’

The death of Kavanagh’s first wife, Sally, forms the backdrop to this poem’s description of finding grief mysteriously contained – and yet not removed. It is a wonderful, funny, poignant, but also hopeful piece about being met by this ‘something’.

Beyond Decoration

Stalled, in the middle of a rented room,
The couple who own it quarrelling in the yard
Outside, about which shade of Snowcem
They should use. (From the bed I'd heard
Her say she liked me in my dressing-gown
And heard her husband's grunt of irritation.
Some ladies like sad men who are alone.)
But I am stalled, and sad is not the word.
Go out I cannot, nor can I stay in,
Becalmed mid carpet, breathless, on the road
To nowhere and the road has petered out.
This was twenty years ago, and bad as that.
I must have moved at last, for I knelt down,
Which I had not done before, nor thought I should.
It would not be exact to say I prayed;
What for? The one I wanted there was dead.
All I could do was kneel and so I did.
At once I entered dark so vast and warm
I wondered it could fit inside the room
When I looked round. The road I had to walk down
Was still there. From that moment it was mean
Beyond my strength to doubt what I had seen:
A heat at the heart of dark, so plainly shown,
A bowl, of two cupped hands, in which a pain
That filled a room could be engulfed and drown
And yet, for the truth is in the bowl, remain.
Today I thought it time to write this down,
Beyond decoration, humble, in plain rhyme,
As clear as I could, and as truthful, which I have done.

(From Collected Poems, Carcanet Press 2001, and reproduced from here)