Line drawing © Doff Ransome 2009



© roy ballard 2012
Line drawing

I called my muse to book;
she would not stay
but stamped a pretty foot
and went away.

O mistress mine you sing
then disappear
and all my envy bring
to some new ear.

You leave an empty vault,
a desert dry,
an ocean sick with salt,
a bare goodbye.

My passion is to be
at journey’s end
where lovers love to see
their absence mend.

This pleasure cannot start
without this pain:
that we must be apart
to meet again.


In memorium, Peter Woodrow
The good shepherd

Thorns and nettles guard the fruit
along the paths he kept;
he said that they were ‘Fleet of root’
but thorns and nettles crept
into his fields to spread and sprout
when Peter Woodrow’s light went out.

‘A man who wanted’ said the priest
‘to live for evermore’
No, no my friend, not in the least!
He simply meant to draw
from endless time without an end
sufficient days to make and mend.

A minute from that miser’s heap
to patch a ragged coat,
to fix a fence for fattened sheep,
to clean a ditch and moat
where water birds and minutes scoot
and everything is fleet of root.