When I’ve written this,
once again, I’ll be emptied
and, once again, I’ll go rooting
through the old boxes in the attic,
the same old stuff.
Then I’ll say what I’ve already said
with different words,
and I will imagine for a while
that it is new,
and I will be pleased.
And so it may go,
till I am able to blow the words,
dry specks, off the page
and conclude finally
that I have said all I have to say.
Memories, dried flowers
in pages of time;
I wallow
knee-deep in their coloured depths,
a Monet’s garden, expecting
somehow, their aesthetic appeal
will give me some wisdom;
they will not
they are of their time,
visions incarcerated in old pages.
I will call it ‘A War-torn Landscape’:
an empty room: black, cavernous;
occasional thuds, voices, cries, remote like
the piping of sea birds faint in ocean thunder.
Centre of the room a mother weeping, her
bomb-blasted tears streaming down her face,
the grille of her teeth set into a vent of anguish,
her figure slack as peel from a knife.
I will tell you that she has been told of her son’s death
and that you must console her.
And now I must tell you that you will find no words,
and, anyway, she will not see you.
It’s late, the sky’s my screen. Laurence Olivier is fleeing
through a forest, dark fronds clutching, clawing at him;
a gothic tale, full of the drama of black and white.
The forest is vast and he must run blindly through it,
somewhere behind is the story I haven’t seen, and
somewhere ahead is a boundary with a land no one knows.
I am at my window, the land I know is quenched;
above, across the inexplicable expanse of the Heavens, is adventure;
I watch it, take it to my bed, and know tomorrow colour will return.
Happy New Year.
Life is a flash,
and loving is its perfect state.
I never looked for sparkle in people,
never quite expected it,
but age has a separate lens,
polished by time,
tempered by experience;
through that,
I see
that you are my bright light.
It's not quite Christmas but the contentment would be a wish.
Being.
A sparkling Summer’s afternoon,
not doing, but being.
A solar panel,
bang centre of the back garden,
converting energy to contentment,
while activity is reduced
to fingertips running along the suede
of newly mown grass
and time is suspended,
dissipated into the blue yonder.
On a windy day, I, cloud,
trees and grass are one and
heaven, earth and water;
blue of sky trimmed with
cloud white and drizzle grey,
sway of branches, swell of
waves and dresses, flight
of hats and litter down street,
astray, voices from mouths,
birds careering into beyond
and leaves’ mouths lisping
off tune in the brightly breeze
lifting, hues patched and
colours drifting; eyes’ lights
and hearts billowing upward.
How wonderful the European stars must look
strung along the wire strands of border fences
or those butterflies, the endless coils of razor wire.
One might, upon seeing them, be reminded of staves
of music: Beethoven, Mozart, Brahms
or lines of text: Shakespeare, Dante, Cervantes,
or how civilisation was aghast seeing those photographs:
the skeletal faces of the innocent behind Auschwitz fences;
the horror that such could happen in our own time.
A Hand in Water
for my father
Trailing a hand from a boat:
that morning sluicing through my fingers
was my most perfect with you.
More than fifty years on,
the memory is in my fingers
as I watch a Hollywood hand trawl water.
Fishing for sunlight on a lake is a carefree pursuit,
not so fishing for your smile in memories;
but that flow through my fingers
is the feeling of complete happiness,
though the smile I’ve given you
may well be my own production.
When I brush my hair,
it sweeps over your head.
When I button up my coat,
you snuggle inside.
When I exert myself,
you mop your brow.
When I settle myself on the couch,
you tuck your legs up.
When I close my eyes,
you daydream.
When you go,
I will be no more.
Leaves: music
and colour;
in sunlight
they are.
On a warm
afternoon
icicles of air
play them;
turn white
those green flashes;
so eyes hear
the world.
I keep myself up to date,
not with what you do
but how you are;
I read the squalls
coming in over the ocean.
Like newspaper print,
they drizzle upward,
and, truth to tell, they hanker
after tragedy;
I find them totally compelling.
So, yes, down to the last comma
(they don’t do stops)
and I know that you know this,
I know how it is with you;
no tragedies, but squalls: how apt, yes.
The wind in the wires
is making choirs
of conversations
that would have passed
unheard.
The child standing
on the tarred road hums
what the wind strums
and beats a stick
on the ground.
The sound he hears
is the music of the spheres
from somewhere above
but a rustling in the hedge
turns his head
and there’s a mystery
in the darkness of leaves.
This is a re-edited version of a poem I posted some time back. When asked why I wrote/posted this poem, I was a bit stumped. I am not a vegetarian. I used to see this years ago in my childhood; it was ugly, but we took it as normal life. It's not a scene many are likely to see now. So the answer: I think it tugs at a deeply buried conviction that animals have greater awareness and understanding than we have ever given them credit for; and the only logical upshot to that is that our brutal treatment of them needs to end.
To The Slaughter House
White-filled socket, eye twisted; its contorted,
steaming body straining away from that room.
At the end of a rope taut to the straightness of cane,
haunches working, legs thrashing, sliding in shit;
and men flat out, dragging, pushing the heifer
towards the slaughter-house doorway.
Roaring, terrified as humans are; that same recognition,
same fight, same blood gut muscle response, same horror;
and men, angular to their brutal task: dragging, pushing, hauling.
At the end of the rope, its head straining upward; the tongue,
extended from its mouth, tasting the stench of death,
and the horror of its flagging resistance.
