Surgical operation
My tumbrel bed has rolled along the ward
towards the surgeon or the guillotine
to sever or to save the spinal chord;
and hours and hours of dark have slipped between.
Morning comes slowly to a troubled bed;
the hunters of the night find covert lairs
where life tormenters, strippers of the dead,
their pale eyes watching, weigh you unawares.
My cowardice lies bare with not a leaf
to pluck and wear to hide me from the pain
that searches my possession like a thief
that robbed me once and comes to rob again.
My gamin guardian angel saunters in
with snotty nose, bare knees and impish grin.
David Holgate's studio
With windows open,
Sculptor, hammer and chisel
sound out shapes in stone.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Line drawing © Doff Ransome 2009
What is art? With what intention
does its maker make invention?
Is it old or is it recent,
overmagnified, indecent,
just a thing of passing fashion?
Truth is art’s eternal passion;
nature is its primal source;
love of life its driving force.
Mutually assured destruction
or notes on a reptilian taboo.
If rattlesnakes bite you or me
It’s very likely RIP.
This comes as a surprise… but if
he bites himself he’s soon a stiff.
If he should go and bite a mate
if suffers too the selfsame fate.
And yet for mates the snakes do fight
but only wrestle, never bite.
They are content to go for you
but biting peers is quite taboo;
a rule that snakes should never flout
for lines that do it soon die out.
Thus evolution with perception
protects a snake at preconception.
Credit crunch
If you hanker to reward
yourself with what you can’t afford
a total banker is at hand
to help you to the promised land.
Now amidst the milk and honey
bankers have run out of money
robbing Peter to pay Paul
by Mr. Brown should save us all.
That’s all right then.
Endangered tiger of Bengal
stalks this Bengali man
who was endangered not at all
until this rhyme began
but now he is in peril too
so what’s the best thing we can do?
If he eats Bengali man
the tiger’s threatened still;
so shoot the tiger if we can
endangerment then nil;
if this be right it can’t be wrong
until another comes along.
Northumbrian rock carving
Four thousand years ago men polished flint
for tools and made most comely torques of gold.
They took to carving rocks, I don’t know why
but they found lonely ones to deck with rings
for never were there folk more skilled with stone.
Torque after torque they cut; expanding out;
enclosing rings they had incised before;
with labour and intent they carved these things.
The first torque was the symbol of a man, perhaps,
then came the tribe and then their ancestors,
the lower gods came next and higher, highest
the spirit that had all within its scope.
For metaphysics, fancy or some need
they left us with these stones we cannot read.
See http://ads.ahds.ac.uk/era/
Big Smash
The starry road Apollo’s horses chafe,
with nostrils gaping wide and staring eyes,
this wide road of the heavens is not safe
for we who rush unguided through the skies.
All great roads run with blood; they have their stains,
unseen by travellers and known to few,
where wayside blasts and smashes leave remains
in shards and cinders, galaxies askew.
In southern skies, beyond the Milky Way,
two constellated galaxies collide,
an overwhelming firework display
of suns exploding, scattered far and wide.
How many are we, we who watch and learn
while unrecited worlds and cities burn.
A Russian in a ski lift, Val d’Isere, January 2009
The Russian women now: big hands, strong backs,
thick arms to rivet steel or pull up beet;
sheepskin without; within attired in sacks
and wraps of hessian about their feet.
The Hammer and the Sickle surely brought
an end to any of a finer sort.
The Russ are peasants now or so they said
but here is one who rivets us instead.
Her soulful gaze is on a distant place;
her kit is costly though it’s not in vogue
for splendour clearly suits the Russian face
and drab is ever dull, though à la mode.
Her oligarch precedes her, scowls and goes;
a princess of the steppe steps on our snows.
Old man's prayer
I'm sinning still at eighty-eight,
I'm closer yet to heaven
for I have moved my house of late
to number eighty-seven.
Let me be pure and chaste and clean
but after next weekend with Jean.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)