Bon appetit
Is yours a table set for one?
Your feast cannot have long to run.
A selfish hunger must be small.
Bon appetit to lovers all!

Love is a banquet made for two
so let us quaff each other’s wine;
I’m greedy for your heady brew;
you sparkle like champagne for mine.

There is no vintage to excel
the potent waters of your well
and since you taste it you must know
how sweet the blossom that I grow.

Bluebell wood

Between the oaks and through the briars

and underneath the sycamores

the bluebells run like spirit fires

inflaming on the leafy floors;

besetting lovers hotly yearning,

lying where the fire is burning.

Burning!

Burning, burning all aflame

with a fire they cannot tame. 

Tall nettles grow near Bluebell Wood

and rafters rot beside a wall

where other lovers came and stood

their names and faces past recall;

besetting lovers hotly yearning,

leaves and mould to nettles turning.

Turning!

Turning, turning fallen petals,

unremembered, turn to nettles. 

It’s time that damps the lovers’ flame,

impatient time that cannot stay

to learn a solitary name

but lets all passing pass away.

Blinkered time! But love is ranging

ever further, ever changing.

Changing!

Changing, changing as we lie,

changing into love gone by.

         
Bear
Those misbegotten dogs, O how they howl,
ears up and tense,
at darker darkness on the midnight’s edge,
at blacker shadows, at a deeper growl,
beside the forest fence
where Bruin, ragged as a winter hedge,
came through the palings with a casual crash
and now is ripping up the litter bins
for peelings, mouldered cheese and kitchen trash;
for bones, rich-smelling rinds and open tins.
Beyond the barking dogs I know he’s there.
They turn to me encouraged, push too close,
fly back, droop-tailed, so leaving me to dare
the infamous, the mighty and morose,
ill-natured, riled and hungry forest bear;
but he has slipped away, the burly lout,
the bins all wrecked and all the waste thrown out.

 

Common mullein, first fiery foot of rocketry,

leaps to the sky in fits of yellow sparks,

its fireworks failing in the fir-damp air.

Slowly, like a wraith, the dog's breath slips

through the rain-drenched trees

all hung with ghosts, long, grey and thin,

last year’s dead needles, jealous of the green,

the soft, new buds and summer's smell of pine,

the cornflowers to come and the cuckoo pint,

and all the summer things that come to pass.

Drains
Let's sing the muted music of the drains,
drains closely hidden in the wormy earth.
Only a whispered gurgling betrays
their laden surges in their secret ways
that carry off some dinner's last remains
to Thames or Channel or the Forth of Firth.

And yet consider how in fair-faced brick
some bricky, not so fair of face himself,
beneath ground level built a vaulted arch,
eternal mortar trowelled with a flick,
in caverns fit for leprechaun or elf
sunk from the sun and from the winds of March.

They much surpass the craftsman in their worth
think villa folk who're not too used to thinking
but if his brickwork, laid with casual care,
should leak along its length or round its girth,
like some crushed snake, to leave their boudoirs stinking:
if he forsakes them then?  O what despair!

© Roy Ballard 2013

Chagrin d'amour

Why do seconds hang and stay

when my love is far away

and yet the hours scurry past

when she’s in my arms at last?

If only I could lock the door

through which the happy seconds pour,

find the lock and fit the key

to keep them in eternally.

It is because we love that they

rush off and leave us sad this way,

left without delight, chagrined

like swallows in the winter wind.

If our love were scant and spare

her absence would be light to bear

for though I would not have it so

the more I love the worse this woe.

December

Foul weather, darkness and the winter flu!

We should be blighted by this triple curse

but those of us who live December through

recall it fondly; January’s worse.

When darkness rules, December lights the lights.

Lights to remind us that there was a night

when from the very highest of the heights

came down to us a mighty Prince of Light,

in form a child but from the sovereign throne.

Whatever was more wonderful than this:

that he who strides the universe alone

should come to sanctify us with a kiss.

So hang your tinsel and your holly too;

they celebrate this miracle in you.

©Roy Ernest Ballard 2013

Sapphic stanza

Winter rondeau

Him 

O let us go! For summer seems

already come and golden beams

warm leafless banks although they're bare;

wild honey seems to scent the air

and ghostly mayflies haunt the streams.

Her

I catch your words and eye which gleams

and tells me that it ill beseems

and yet the sunny banks are fair.

O let us go!

Him

We have surpassed the wanton themes

that jealous muses bring to dreams

with ravishments beyond compare.

Her

But now I am in disrepair

and O how cold the weather seems.

O let us go!

November
November, summer’s cooling ember,

is a death: you cannot blow

into its heart and make it glow.

November days, in summer’s ashes,

dressed in gold and russet splashes,

strip their clothes, show every member

naked in the blinding, low,

unwarming sun or else they blow

with rougher winds than we remember;

leaves and flowers, down they go;

the dark is here; there will be snow.

The spring will come; I know, I know.

and yet there is no switch to throw

to make November burn and so

we coldly go into December.

Sapphic Stanza

A summer’s day I asked you in your garden,

on the sunken lawn bordered by roses,

if we could come together as before;

that summer never fades.

©Roy Ernest Ballard 2013

 

©Roy Ernest Ballard 2013

Full many a flower is born to blush unseen

and waste its sweetness on the desert air…’

                                                               Thomas Gray

The flowers’ reply

We waste our sweetness on the desert air,

as flowers did before your race was born,

to advertise a vital message there:

to tell our friends we have a feast to share,

to coax them in to help us, to suborn,

we waste our sweetness on the desert air.

What fools are men, who strip the forest bare,

and then suppose that we are flowers forlorn

to advertise a vital message there 

in some location for which they don’t care

then write in verses with a kind of scorn

we ‘waste our sweetness on the desert air’. 

Our colours and our scented shapes are fair

no matter what the places we adorn

to advertise a vital message there. 

We do not brag about the wealth we share

with every creature that the air has borne;

we waste our sweetness on the desert air

to advertise a vital message there.

 

© roy ballard 2013

Relic

Your garden now is empty, barren ground,

not desolate of flowers but of you.

A ring I gave you was there lost and found

among the leaves that fitful breezes blew.

Today I wish that twist of gold still there,

a buried treasure in the soil you tilled

when scents of roses floated on the air;

where you watched stars when busy days were stilled.

It does not rot; far better had it stayed,

a little crock of gold by fortune spared

for that small acre where the gift was made,

a lasting relic of a pleasure shared.

Yes, there are things, delighting us when found,

that would be better left beneath the ground.

Good night! Good night! I cannot say

I want the end of this good day

for it was hallowed when we kissed

but days must pass or else be missed.

© roy ballard 2013

 

 

Into your song I gradually dissolve;

you whisper in the dusk, the twilight dies.

Through you I see eternities revolve

for love allows me vision through your eyes

and you through mine for we are both in thrall

to that sweet essence that now unifies

my willing soul with yours, commanding all.
 By Muraski Shikibu (974-1031) daughter of Fujiwara no Tametoki 

My thoughts, like drops of morning dew,

my dreams, unsteady butterflies,

are scattered when I think of you:

my love, my fate, my lucky prize.

Wild as I am, I cherish, clasp

my butterfly but still it flies

or perishes within my grasp.
Muraski Shikibu (974-1031) daughter of Fujiwara no Tametoki .

The sound of footsteps leaving is a blade

between my shoulders piercing through and through.

I tremble as I hear your footfalls fade

while wishing every happiness for you.

Towards a barren shore I make my start

where I shall dwell in desolation made

by one to whom I rashly give my heart.

 Muraski Shikibu (974-1031) daughter of Fujiwara no Tametoki .

 

  

© roy ballard 2013

 

 

© roy ballard 2013

The skies are grey;

your scent is on my pillow

though you are far away.

                      

                        Tangles

We are such tangles, such a skein of knots,

our threads and schemes thrown in chaotic state

by Fortune’s spite, bad luck in drawing lots

or by the double dealing hand of Fate.

How can we find the ends of all these ropes

and matted loops that should be separate?

Good order is the object of my hopes,

the tangles coiled up and securely set.

How can I find you amid so much choice

of convoluted cords and trapping lines

without direction or reliant voice?

At every move another snare entwines.

Yet you, my love, who are myself on wings,

cure every catch however close it clings.

 

                         Where we walk 

How black the winter seemed despite the snow

but when you stood beside me, took my hands,

a journey ended that had far to go

though we were travelling to foreign lands.

I dwell where you are; there I make my place,

beside bright mountains or the shifting sea,

in foreign palaces or commonplace;

if you are there then it is home to me.

What is a home? It’s not of bricks and mortar

but moves upon the earth like wind and water;

it’s where we walk in kind tranquillity;

it’s where you give your hand and heart to me.

A cloud hangs on our mountains, once so clear,
yet they still shine for me when you are near.