This poem is taken from Stand 211, 14(3) September - November 2016.

Bogusia Wardein Three Poems
Monochrome

I don’t usually write political poems and this is not a political poem. Some of you have heard bits of it, which I dictated to my mother at five, but you didn’t hear the rest of the poem. This verse was prompted by a trip to a circus on a foggy June afternoon. The reason I wrote it was the long necks of the
giraffes and the long faces of the spectators. This is sort of scientific elegy for an epic. I would like to thank everyone who has inspired me to write this poem, first of all my mom, everyone on the crew who were so great and everyone in my village who is watching me now. Whoever I’ve forgotten, I love you very much.

This poem was pencilled with the help of twenty-seven bones, thirty-five muscles and ten-thousand cells in the tips of my fingers. Sweating, I simply moved my right hand across the paper holding a Castell and Castell pencil ornamented with seventeen ladybirds. The idea that emerged through the poem was that not every poem is a poem. I believe I improved on the blank page. Its thirtieth draft was typed on a superbright Sumsum X150 PC. The text of this poem was set in the typeface Brid Handwriting, designed by Bridget Ward in 1992. 12-point size font was used as it works best on the standard size paper.

The poem is centred on the page out of respect to its content. The text is in black letters on a snow white background. This is a well-thought-out relationship between letters and the backdrop. According to the golden rule of Gloria Nobel it is a perfectly balanced combination of 25 % of black and 75 % of white. The text stands out, the snow is still visible. The temperature while writing the first draft was 17 degrees Celsius, humidity 81 %, the usual aroma of rotten plums tickling my nose. The form of this poem was based on the secret geometry of Rome, and the volta, or turn, is in the twelfth verse.
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