Daisy Chain Reaction
(For Tom Phillips RA, after reading his summary treatise on ornament) Patterns of word, like ornament Plundering nature's primal signs, Assert the mind's emblazonment, Stripes and hatchings, dots and lines.
Heraldic quarterings, as rare As Tyrian purple, Iznik red, Mirror no language to compare With grid and trellis that are read.
Scan tented hangings, Lenin's tomb, Feathers, or beetle's carapace, Mosaic pixels, weaver's loom, The Hubble telescope in space; Order the fractal's visual spell. Repeat the fish-scale imbrication, Let Shaker carpentry excel Old Zimbabwe's crenellation; Echo, accumulate, unfold Your eye's mnemonic treasury, Pie-crust to pot rim, dung to gold, Ochre to lapis lazuli: No camouflage of tiger-skin, Art of acanthus or bamboo, Rivals poetic discipline, As Dante showed he always knew, And your vocabulary's full Of atoms which, when they combine In verse, convert to molecule The word's buckminsterfullerene.
John Weston
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