© roy ballard 2013

 Non sum qualis. . .

I went to bring you things

of abalone, jade,

of iridescent wings

that loving hands have made

and garments coloured like the sky

the summer morning brings.

As sudden as the star

that lights the sky anew,

whose burst however far

is terrible to view,

there came to me the simple words

that tore my soul from you.


The ghosts of Glamis

I went to Glamis; I’d time to share

with friends at arms commanding there.

The towers are high; the bridge is wide;

the trees nearby march side by side.

They let me pass; the sword I wore,

though made of glass, was honoured more

in Highland tracts, in lands of flood

and cataracts, than noble blood.

Where roses grew a clansman stood;

I never knew nor understood

how he came there with step so light,

from empty air to broad daylight.

This gallowglass gave me a grin

and then the pass that let me in.

They say the ghost is not the one

who stirs you most but common-run.

Within its holy place I sat

but found no face to wonder at

so left for air till, frail but braw,

an aged pair outside I saw.

Some small requests the old man made

such as on guests might have been laid.

Upon the spot I took his list

and like a Scot I held my tryst.

I held my tryst like any Scot;

soon met again they knew me not;

their fleeting memories a store

that was not loading any more.

The last-post blew with notes that bled

for these poor ghosts, alive or dead,

who could not understand at all

a world that moved past their recall.

---

 Gallowglass. A Gaelic foot soldier

 Braw. Well dressed

Held my tryst. Kept my word

Enough's enough
For me the robin has an English ring
the blackbird too, he has an English edge
to his sweet voice though he is wont to fling

his curses at you if you touch his hedge.

Take no offence when I of England sing

for never shall you hear the lion’s roar;

my England is a very altered thing

and what I sing of can be found no more.

There’s no perfection in a flawless rose:

it’s all the better for a beauty spot

but one’s enough, as everybody knows;

too many blemishes of worms or rot

or greedy caterpillars bred from flies

turn beauty haggish to our injured eyes.

All the World's a Piece 

In “The Garden of Evening Mists”

by Tan Twang Eng I read:

“When the work is done, it is time to leave,

That is the way of the Tao…”

I put the book down

and did something else

then continued to read:

“It is incorrect to think of pairs in isolation;

the BCS state is not simply

a number of individual states…”

Seamless it seemed

for just a moment,

but I had carelessly picked up

Stephen Blundell’s

“A Very Short Introduction to Superconductivity”

instead of “The Garden of Evening Mists”

and for a moment this conjunction showed

all the world a piece.




The Third Battle of Ypres, Passchendaele  

The Royal West Kents went in by night

across the duckboard track;

they were unconscious of their plight
until the dawn attack.
Shell craters touched and overlapped

as far as eye could see;
where many tanks and guns lay trapped,
drowned in a slimy sea;

with rotting corpses, blackened bones
of many thousand men
who died so their respective thrones
could rule the world again.
The Royal West Kents pressed on ahead
to lie in khaki heaps, new-dead.

 (As remembered by Lance Corporal Vic Cole, 1897-1995)

Nothing travels faster than money.

A tale from the second world war.

In fallen Crete did Captain Hildyard die,

or so they said, although he was not dead

but, living as a fugitive, he tendered

a cheque to hire a boat, at worst a raft,

to flee somewhere that had not yet surrendered.

His bank in England then received the draft

some weeks before he set off in this boat

when no one knew that he was still alive

to spend this money and to get afloat.

The bosses at the bank then phoned his mum

to ask about the signature, the date

with figures adding to a tidy sum;

doubtful they were when, from a seat of war,

capricious fortune, gambling with fate,

sent them this cheque to be referred to drawer.

The draft was honoured I am glad to say

though Hildyard’s mother fainted quite away

and Captain Hildyard crossed the wine-dark sea

to join his regiment of yeomanry.

                

                        Wodwo

Such things are shy and hard to see but sometimes,

like a nymph caught washing her hair,

he forgets to look over his shoulder

and fails to see you, frozen, standing there.

In shaded summer beneath weighty boughs,

he sees you standing and returns your stare,

across his carpet of dog’s mercury,

or else star-scattered wood anemones

or  yellow celendines or bright bluebells,

or ramsons with their untamed garlic smells.

The vision fades into the summer green,

the autumn russet, winter’s bony trees . . .

You strain your eyes to fix what you have seen

for eyes can trick with anything they please.

There’s only shadows and a twisted bough.

It’s nothing. Yet the wood feels empty now.

Something I cannot name

There is a big orchestra and a chorus.

We hear a gentle tap on the side drum

then castanets and the sound of a fife.

Ensuite the piccolo comes in.

The strings now constitute a swelling tide,

blazed with a splendid trumpet.

Voila! The organ bellows out and drowns it all.

Boom! The cannon is fired.

Dust falls from the ceiling

and the chorus begin a paean of praise to Aphrodite.

The side drum and castanets are heard again,

fading gradually  into silence

broken by a slight snore and

the sound of skylarks singing.

Hope makes cowards of us all 

Your love oppressed him: it was worth too much.

Base metal he was made for, not for gold

which makes him twice a traitor to himself:

for dread of spoiling what he loves to touch

and fear of losing what he longs to hold.

When you were smiling at him, understand

that as your summer dress blew in the wind

hope fled away in cowardly despair

though wishes hung and every hope was pinned

on walking with you always, hand in hand.

Alone, he finds himself in winter’s way.

In frosty fields he stamps his freezing feet

and feels the price faint-hearted lovers pay

when longed-for lips are close but fail to meet

on some delightful, summer-skirted day. 

The Art of Poetry

 ‘Of writing well, be sure, the secret lies

in wisdom, therefore study to be wise’[1]

but what is wisdom how can it be got?

It is not learning; cleverness it’s not;

nor ready wit nor probity nor wealth

nor gained for sure by cunning nor by stealth;

the words of children oftentimes have strength

while many grown-up authors rave at length.

So, writer, may your works be widely read

but only if you’ve weighed what you have said.

Does good verse come from nature or from art;

so should I search the heavens or my heart?

The human heart! Oh what a yearning there!

What consolation, passion and despair!

There is no art to search the heavens through

to find an equal of the heart in you

but we are nature and the poet sings

the joy of being one of nature’s things;

it is most natural then that both should be,

both art and nature, part of poetry.

If you should ask the aim of writing rules:

they guide the wise and are imposed on fools.

When mighty music flows it has its ways

of breaching barriers of bygone days

but through the channels of those well worn schemes

there comes the vision of the new regimes.

It is a duty writers cannot shirk:

to make the language sing, to make it work,

to pass on learning and to cause delight;

‘fail by a whisker and you fail outright’.

---

[1] The Art of Poetry, Horace, translator John Conington

Lakenham Bridge,  Norwich

Lakenham bridges pass over the streams

of the Yare and the Tas where a fisherboy dreams

of their deep, lazy flow. It’s a fair drop below.

The bricks are hard blue for the railway runs through;

they were laid fair and square in a permanent mortar.

There is hope in the air and a float on the water.

On the old Silk Road

Old man

The bells are sounding out the camel’s tread;

I hear the mules stamp and the iron shoe

ring on the wheels. The eighteen hills ahead

await the caravan; the stars wait too.

The Gate of Demons is unbarred again;

the road is open to the camel train.

Young man

Old Camel-Puller, turn away your face,

the evening star no longer beckons you;

a diesel engine sets a better pace.

Your final stage is done. The sky turns blue;

the pink, Celestial Alps announce the dawn;

you and your midnight stages are outworn.

Old man

Without a guide the Gobi is a grave,

the Lob is an illusion. Take a guide,

young sir, upon the road and let him save

and keep you when the stony ways divide.

Don’t follow melon skins across the sands.

Beware of voices in the empty lands.

Dust devils dog the day; they twist and turn,

they twirl in empty coats of sand and stones

but traveller be warned: these devils burn

to cloak their nakedness in flesh and bones;

they haunt the blackest stages of the night

with shadows, lures and with uncanny light.

Among the silent dunes a voice sings out,

you hear it calling urgently, a shout,

a cry for help, a snatch of demon song;

ignore it, whip the caravan along;

to seek it is to leave your bones out there

with those who followed voices in the air.

Young man

Your eyes are on a lost, outmoded way.

Old man, forget the desert’s evil hours,

the thirsty road, the caravanserai;

the Eighteen Hills are now beyond your powers.

The time has come for you to be abed

when constellations swing above your head. 

'The iron shoe' the brake of a waggon wheel.
‘Camel-Puller’ old colloquialism for a Gobi carter.

‘The evening star no longer beckons you’ desert stages were travelled by night.

‘Celestial Mountains’ a range of mountains in the Gobi.

‘Gate of Demons’ a gate of the Great Wall of China.

‘Lob’ a mysterious desert of bad reputation lying to the North of Tibet.

‘Follow melon skins’ it was said that a trail of melon skins led to the oasis of Turfan.

‘The Eighteen Hills’ was a stage on the Silk Road.

Copyright Roy Ballard 2014
© Roy Ballard 2013