Innumerable Sightings of Edwards

before contact with Egypt
she had no idea she was a surrealist

Adrift in an era of fading tradition and increasing lawlessness
watching as a chance heckle or slip of the tongue inflates into a full-blown nonsense fantasy

she posed women poised against the sky with their children,
women planted like trees in the mother earth,
raggle-taggle families of tinkers and wanderers

she had had nightmares about their conflicts for many years

All of these are just objects now, dead, encased
as ancient as the decaying sand faces of the rulers

Over the years, innumerable sightings of Edwards
have proved to be thoroughly and tastefully unfounded

before working in a mental hospital, he photographed incoming patients
Nothing could be further from his grim, grey 1933 mural
transposed to a world of strong light, intense color and heat

at home in Lincolnshire and he played a slow, mournful tune

things looked bleak, the old man's changes gave her no hope
basking in the tide of international goodwill, she can’t say why

a hangover from their days in religious meeting house
other women and other women's children behaved in cruel ways

The outcome of this process presented a clear choice
amalgamated with its similarly struggling rival, the Playhouse
a literary policy was put in place with mysticism and its connection with the very soil

the only one who can lay undoubted claim to the life and times of the composer

or interpreted to shore it up