Roy Ernest Ballard 2009: April 2016

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A Day Remembered

Where lady ferns and snakes unfold
and buttercups in glossy gilt
outshine the gorseflower's yellow gold
my spunky youth was freely spilt
and there our lusty lungs were filled
with philtres from the lake distilled,
that day;
when came that way and nothing loath,
a boy and girl, two virgins both.

Sang all that day the loud cuckoo,
the nosy neighbour's chief of spies,
but all the world was wooing too
and had no time for prying eyes;
for all had better things to do
than listen to the fool cuckoo.
My oath,
they did come both, both girl and boy
and nothing loath nor were they coy.

Though love is ever prone to stray,
not bothering to tell us why,
we cannot love like yesterday
and cannot gain from love passed by.
Yet love's no fly with painted wings,
a prey to any bird that sings,
nor toy,
nor wanton joy but boy! Oh! Boy!
We came that day and were not coy.

The lovely, long-remembered day
dies with a poppy-coloured sun
‘We'll not forget' the lovers say
‘and never, never will be done'
but time untwists the lovers' knot
and beckons to a loamy spot
them both
nor are they loath for time has run
and time must end what love's begun.

A Dream Of Heaven

In heaven building workers play the lute;
it's mostly Dowland otherwise they're mute.
Likewise loudspeakers! London's razed and burned
like all big cities and the earth returned
to grateful ploughland. Now the swan and coot
float over quondam Islington and Peckham.
Great dozers cleared the suburbs to the root.
Chained to the cliffs where eagles come to peck'em
are global-warming preachers and campaigners.
Wear if you like your ancient jeans and trainers.

Bright tracks of rail line former motorways;
there's hissing steam. Prize flower tubs and sprays
deck every station, climbing roses reaching
above your dreams of railways pre-Beeching.
All things you like to do are good, they earn
a salary. You could arrange to climb
Mount Everest the first and only time
with Mallory or if you choose to go
to Ascot or the Chelsea Flower Show
the weather is whatever you decide.

Although in heaven no-one ever died,
fear not stagnation for, by little changes,
you get to tread the length of heaven's ranges.
So gently do the wheels of heaven revolve
that barely do you know that you evolve
Like lilies of the field you end your story
exceeding Solomon in all his glory.
Your story ends when more cannot be told
for there are things beyond what words can hold.

A Letter From My Father

'Egyptian Expeditionary Force'
dated 30 May 1919
in father's curly writing and green ink
'Lo they are quiet once again I think,
most of them realise that they knock their heads
against a wall of stone'. Whose heads were these?
What walls of stone? Whatever ailed your pen
to say so little of so much and then
so much of such a little 'It would be
not long before Will Summers is quite well;
young Fred should soon be home and Edie writes'.
But eight months since the Turkish Empire fell;
its army fled you for safe Syria;
they murdered as they went. Along the way
they found not safety but a bloody death
beneath the hooves of Auda Abu Tayi.
Still round the camp fire tales of Auda ring
of Will and Fred and Edie who can sing?

A Letter To The Times

Cuckolds, cuckolds all, rejoice!
For I have stilled the mocking voice
of that usurper of the nest,
that burglar with the black-barred chest,
that paedophile upon the wing:
the earliest cuckoo of the spring.
The cuckoo called; I know you hate him;
I caught and killed and cooked and ate him.

A Life Is Very Like A Holiday

Straight from a winged womb, passport controlled,
sent down a tunnel which no one gainsays
we come into a world both new and old
where things are said and done in unknown ways.
The language that we hear is honky-tonk;
the words we speak break every sort of rule.
The traders drink cassis and blanc de blanc
as we set off for loaves in morning's cool
where those magnificents in fire machines,
the pompiers, at lunchtime take their ease
in scented shadows beneath evergreens,
on canvas beds, consuming loaves and cheese
while gorgeous girls pluck figs and give you one
and all is over soon as it's begun.

A Picture Of Copacabana Hotel,1939

Flamingo-leggèd parasols incline
and warm waves ripple in, urbane and calm.
A happy few, the chic of '39,
with tables laid for two beneath a palm
sip cocktails on the throng-less, thong-less strand.
Behind them, darkly moulded mountains rise
but here upon this very verge of land
with shock-heads feathering the azure skies
slim, naked palms go swaying down the beach,
their purple shadows sensuously cast
like silken garments cooling out of reach
for love deferred, forever; all is past.
We cannot touch nor make the slightest sign
upon the sands of 1939.

A Street View

Like a lover, lost, forlorn,
I google up 'Street View'
to find the town where I was born
which might be made anew
or still have those same, happy paths
my childish knowing knew.

On a screen I see the place,
how time is sharp of tooth,
where I stepped out with early grace
and flexible with youth,
unburdened with the memory
of what my country used to be.

Memory retains the best:
the woody hill, the stream,
things for a tiny time possessed
that now seem like a dream
and brief as motes that flash and go
upon a sunny beam.

A childish day is like a year;
my years are like a day.
What's gone before is all too clear
for time tears veils away
and ancient have become the things
that I hold dear today.

A Topological Triolet For A Friend About To ‘walk Round Everest'.

To walk round anything on earth
walk any circuit on the ground.
Just skip around some old tree's girth
to walk round anywhere on earth:
the Alps, Mount Everest or Perth…
It follows since the earth is round:
to walk round anything on earth
walk any circuit on the ground.

After Exercise 'iron Maiden'

Our APC's come lumbering off the hills
where deer go through the air like arrows
and foxes, furtive, insolent and rash
come out to saunter by the iron tracks
that grind relentlessly and gash and groove
raw trenches for the airborne willow herb,
dropping to score each twinned and bleeding slash
in strokes of crimson; marking out attacks
and feints where armour charged and churned again
in lines of flowers on the silent Plain.

Worthy for battle but not good for roads,
once off the Plain we have to stop and wait.
I try to get the Mess Fund added up
where cherry blossom overhangs a gate
and girls have come to see the uniforms,
as ever, but… Sweet Helen at the well!
Here's something special in the way of girls.
'Five minutes' sighs a corporal.
'At least an hour' says Sarge and grins at me;
he wants to know how long.
Five minutes or a fateful score of years
hell-bent with fatal Helen. Stop your ears.
Here is a muse. There's weight in what she brings.
She brings with her a fist of Grecian spears.
Beware! You'll choose the burden that she sings
and be forever deaf to every song.
So live in quiet places, dull and long
or be embattled, trampled as you die
your name blazed out in trumpets where you lie.

Alan Baxter's Funeral

I'm over-dressed, the only one in black
except the undertakers. How absurd!
Black as a crow. Black tie, black suit, black mac,
black shoes and socks although the shirt is white.
I see that black is never blacker quite
than when it's painted on a paler bird,
a penguin say. If I could have a word
with Alan in the gleaming, flowered hearse
he'd surely tell that he'd have preferred
(just for a laugh and not to be perverse)
the company of penguins when interred
in place of mourners and the District Nurse.

Complacent in its new, red brick and oak
the chapel gets through eighty dead a week.
I wonder at the soaring, solid tower…
of course, a chimney! 'You go up in smoke'
I hear him say (this was his sort of joke) .
The priest's a stranger, he has half an hour
'Change and decay in all around I see'
and now I have a tear upon my cheek.
The priest has called him 'Her' instead of 'He'.

Our lives are beads upon a rosary
and death unstrings us all, bead after bead.
Pews of relations sing 'Abide with me'
without conviction, frowning as they read.
A little blonde girl cries into her hat;
no costly monument can equal that.
He gained no glories and he won no prize,
his only worth is measured by her eyes.
So farewell Alan. Well done and three cheers;
what higher honour than a maiden's tears?

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.

Ancient Armoury

My father's father and my own grew old
possessing this great house and these home lands
but now the legacy is ours to hold;
their weapons worn by war await our hands.
Their arms and armour, piled up to the roof,
await the day we put them to the test
though we it is who have to give them proof.
Where white plumes wave from every helmet crest,
on floor and wall our story can be read
for it is written in these battle hoards:
the shields that turned the spear and arrowhead,
belts, tunics, corselets, greaves and good, bronze swords…
Yet all of this is worthless without men
who have the will to wield the like again.

Angel

The sun itself would seem to burn less bright
if we lacked words to praise it: 'Queen of Light'
effulgence, glorious Mistress of the Day'
these cannot flatter Ruth; they'll not convey
a pittance of her grace. I shall despair
to milk all languages of words and fail at last
to fit them to the truth for she surpassed
my power of tongue to tell. I can but say
that once upon a meadow-sweetened day
she walked, as lightly as her flowing hair
flaunted its golden filaments new spun
of precious metal in the summer sun,
towards the Vicarage where in a frieze
of owl-enchanted pines and sombre oak
beyond the clover fields and tumbling bees,
among cascading roses and sweet peas,
was held a party for the County Folk.

Her party hat she carried and a wand,
a budding shoot with one exotic bloom
of preternatural beauty, on a frond
new-flown from some far isle where great waves boom
and crush the coral reef to tingling sands.
The fairest flowers flourish on these strands
where on a favoured eve, the sea at peace,
bold Aphrodite tiptoes from the moon's
long, quavering light upon the wide lagoon's
night-blackened face to savour such delight
and fragrances and sigh such sweet alarms
as an immortal finds in mortal arms.

But now, upon a racing half a mile,
young James and Lucy canter on a chase,
arriving breathless at the very place
where Ruth, the sun behind her, climbs a stile.
The ponies start, the children stare amazed
at fire-ringed Ruth; as if a sacred bell
had sounded and a magic halo blazed
upon the goddess stepping from the wave.
Upon the hush she smiles to break the spell,
says sorry for her undesigned surprise
but every word she utters seems to wring
enchantment from the empty air, to bring
fresh adoration to their rounded eyes,
expectant wonder without trace of guile.
Suppressing laughter though she can but smile
she gives the stem she carries to the girl
and magically the costly buds unfurl.

They hurry home 'An angel spoke to us'
'Hush, children! Why, whatever is the fuss?
They're not unusual in the month of May
upon the Common. Baby is asleep'
'But Mum, she gave her magic wand away'
They show the flowers. There are certain deeps
where banded snakes and coral fishes swim
in colours wonderful indeed but dim
compared with one of these. I do not care
to count the colours that the flowers wear,
perfection has no maps; creating them
has justified Creation. So! Amen!

A few years pass; the trio meet again
at Lucy's wedding. Telling how and when
they met before Ruth horrifies the bride;
the story is indignantly denied
'It was an angel. How could it be you?
She walked out of the sun' James thought so too.

April

The daffodils all wear the paper ruff,
the six-fold yoke of April, cruel lord.
They show the colours of their noble lines
on herald trumpets coloured orange, red
or sulphur yellow or the palest peach,
exclusive ensigns of ancestral dye.
Only the well adorned
are fit to dandy in his dire court,
to bend and bow before the shifting winds
of chancy April;
who brings hail despite the sun;
breaks necks despite beauty;
and of a sudden often lays them low.

Ashley's Book Of Knots

To hitch your waggon to a star,
to sling aloft a jug or jar,
to hoist a cow high as a kite,
cast nooses, throw knots-in-the-bight,
work sinnets, beckets and garottes
you look in Ashley's book of knots.

Want to make a four-leg lashing
which will never send you crashing?
Ashley's pages point the way.
So frap your turns, make fast, belay,
go marry up the ropes and cords
that butt your poles and scaffold boards.

Romancing might not be your lot
but here is your true lover's knot,
your cuckold's neck, your running clinch,
your lantern cords tied inch-by-inch.
Stoppers, lanyards, bends and hitchings,
seizings, toggles, splices, stitchings
all heads and frogs that God allots
you'll find in Ashley's book of knots.

August

The chaffinch and his cheerful song
are gone, are gone, are gone, are gone.
A million times and once again
he sang as plain, as plain, as plain
that he had come and only he,
the master of the holly tree
and all the garden hereabout,
to sing the spring and summer out.
High on the holly tree deployed
he sang so we could not avoid
his long, congenial refrain,
repeated time and time again
until the summer's wilting hours
had passed like disregarded flowers.

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.

A bear visit in Brasov, Romania.

Big Bang

Some power, dominion or some prince of light
fired up a furnace, fierce beyond all measure,
with melts unknown and cast into the night
upon the void, a valiant new treasure.
It burst out with fantastic gluons, quarks
and spinning leptons in a swelling choir
of undiscovered things that flew in sparks
upon a rising thunderhead of fire.
Time stretched its legs and space uncurled
its knots and tangles; unsnarled twisted skeins;
set free its strings to weave another world,
to mass its stars in gravitating chains.
Most strange of all: upon a minor shelf
a piece of this is conscious of itself.

Black

Blacks beyond black there are and more beyond,
blacks blacker than a lake of bitumen,
wide firmaments of tar and pitch, despond,
asphalt infinities that swallow men.
Infinity is like the widow's cruse:
however much is given there is more,
however much is lost there's more to lose
with never any draining of the store.
Upon the deep, nigrescent, sly, untold
and viscous lake where even angels sink,
a slick of colours and a glint of gold,
a tint of purple, rainbows black as ink,
a shining, superficial, luring trick
puts bait upon the trap to which I stick.

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.

Nettles grow near Bluebell Wood
and rafters rot beside a wall
where other lovers came and stood
their names and faces past recall;
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.

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.

Breaker's Yard

This is a charnel house for paid-off ships,
skid shovels, dozers, bowsers, mobile cranes
and this trench digger on whose iron lips
the closing gulp of chalk still shows its stains.
Like that cadaver on the morgue's cold bench
whose toes and finger nails were painted red,
her usual makeup, with a final wrench,
appealing vainly to us now she's dead.
Here is a dredger armed with massive screws,
rain-water flooded, swamped with reeds and sedge;
an odd inversion that decay should choose
to grow in it the fen it used to dredge.
The dragonfly has come. An oily bloom
floats with the lily in the engine room.

But Is It Art?

The poem is the picture. Reader, what is your opinion; can a mathematical equation be art?
Mathematicians often declare there is poetry in their equations.
With the expenditure of much ink and paper I recently derived the complete solution of a problem in chemical kinetics: the reaction rate equation for three irreversible, consecutive reactions. Thus if compound A gives compound B which gives compound C which gives compound D at rates dA/dt=aA, dB/dt=bB and so on, the concentrations of the reactants after time t are given by the equation in the picture.
Poetry? How?
Mathematicians point to the symmetry; see how a, b and c chase one another round the equation, the repetitive leading diagonal, the lovely gathering of zero's. Brevity too; there are four simultaneous equations implied in one.
Inacessible? No more than a Japanese haiku if you do not speak Japanese.
I am curious as to your response.

By Mount Ybba Moghrair

Inflaming at the end of night,
a sudden blaze of hostile light,
the sun comes darting on the tents,
the savage spires, the wild ascents
and barren lands where Moghrair stands.

No morning call of bird nor dove
foretells the flight of stars above;
the distant mountains fade and quiver,
they ripple on a molten river
and morning comes with beating drums.

A dry wind hurries down the waste;
it chokes the breath, it shrivels taste,
the earth is cracked, the body spent;
a fiery light pours through the tent
and all thoughts yearn the night's return.

Can dusk be far? The air turns cool.
The cold moon rises from a pool
of airy deeps with purple trails
of starry gowns and lacey veils
then like a bride comes eventide.`

The herder, weary of the sun,
gives thanks to God the day is done.
He goes to find the common fire,
a cup, a song, the heart's desire,
refreshing rest and talk of rain.
Dawn brings the deadly rays again.

Cave Painter

Thirty thousand years ago
my grandfather and yours
our great, great, great….
great raised to the thousand'th power grandad
painted a cave with lions' heads;
painted with the sure touch
of his grand, grand, grand,
grand raised to the thousand'th power grandson,
Michael Angelo,
and his wife said something
which made him fling down his brush
and go cut firewood.

Chagrin D'amour

Why do seconds hang and stay
when my love is far away
yet every hour will scurry fast
when she's in my arms at last?
If only I could lock the door
through which the precious seconds pour,
find the lock and fit the key
to keep them in eternally.
Is it despite of 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
the absence would be light to bear.
I would not have it so but yet
the more I love the worse they get.

Cleopatra

I once knew Cleopatra;
I let her sail away
upon her ship from Actium
to live another day.

Witch eyes and wishful longing,
the purple sails and plain,
that carried us to Actium
can't carry us again.

I once knew Cleopatra;
there's poison in the truth:
I let her go at Actium
to find a serpent's tooth.

Corpus Sanctum, St. Elmo's Fire.

Toiling in a tempest full of voices,
his good ship foundering in stormy steeps,
the troubled sailor suddenly rejoices
when holy fire from the masthead leaps.
New hopes of safety hang upon the sign,
by god or saint struck in the friendless dark.
The black ship shines from truck to waterline;
she dazzles with an incandescent arc.
Great waves from every side break up the spell
and fling her angrily upon her back.
She's beam-ends on and fills with every swell.
She's going under, drowning like a sack.
Alas for signs! So much for holy fires
and all the brilliant promises of liars.

Crash

Massif L'Estérel, rounding a hairpin,
I came across an old wreck by the road,
close by a tree, a sports car painted red.
Allured by speed along the mountain road
its fearless driver failed to make the bend;
smashed sideways on the tree it broke in two.
One gaily coloured half lies upside down
the rest gapes upright... and the cuckoo calls.

Dark

So there is a party going on,
somewhere. She opened a door
and the light streamed out.
She was a good mother once,
or twice. Her smile said
'What, still in the dark? '
The light lit in my head,
light-house like. The door shut.
The new dark is very dark.
I cannot find the door.

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.

Should these 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, from a 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 for you.

Deer Hunt

In the distance dogs are baying.
Silver-masted birches, swaying,
wrap a double-beaded curtain
round a fawn that sniffs, uncertain,
scenting air like tainted water,
hidden by the silver daughter
of the woods, her tresses tossing.
Now the leading dogs are crossing
closer country, forest-gladed.
In the sunlight, filtered, shaded,
dapple-bright, the fawn is losing
shape and shadow; blurred, confusing,
random patterns dance, perplexing
where the dogs are vainly vexing.
Nosing, questing, canines whetted
sun-bedazzled, silhouetted,
on their trail of scent declining
hungry hunters, baulked, are whining,
baffled by the prey they're after,
mystified by whispered laughter
from the ever-restless shelter.
Now they're running, helter-skelter,
on a fresher track they're laying.
In the distance dogs are baying.

Delphic Oracle

Transported, allocated, hoovered-up,
scanned by machines, jet-sucked like carpet fleas
from Gatwick to a dusty strip of Greece,
we stand like packages among our bags
and baggages in fabled Attica,
beset by motor traffic, fumes and noise.

And so to Delphi in a motor coach.
No tramping feet of ours shall touch this road;
we are no bearers of long-shadowed spears,
leading the oxen here in clouds of dust,
with arms and armour flashing in the sun
to warn Apollo's priest of our approach.

Gone is the gold of Sardis, vainly poured
by foolish Croesus, ton by precious ton,
the lion, ingots, girdles of the Queen,
the basins, mixers, necklaces and all
the bowls and sprinklers, all refined in gold.

The gold is gone but now the dollars flash.
I move away, the guide will urge us on
to where he gets commission from the sales.
So from the dusky gypsies selling charms
and slickly lifting purses in the crowd
I move away towards a mystery…

towards a woman in a gypsy dress
‘Counting the grains of sand on ocean's floor
I heard your voiceless plea' this woman says
‘To know the destiny of man, so hear.
Your fate is to be made by your own hands:
you shall be superseded by machines'
and then the Pythoness, if it were she,
is gone and leaves me speechless, wonderstruck.

Do I Remember The Bluebells?

Yes, I remember bluebells; in the month of May.
Leaves overhead, unbudding, were still thin.
The lane was mired in puddles on soft clay,
reflecting sky and swallows, cumulous,
clouds white as choir boys and us.
A timid sun lit up the haze of blue
beneath the sycamores. A covert wood,
hemmed in by ditches long, so long, ago,
was all the cover we were bedded in.
It was the season that brooks no delay:
when every flower is pressing into bud
and life is urgent to mix blood with blood.
So like a doting dog came love, full tilt,
and sent us sprawling on this bluebell quilt.

Drains

Let's sing the muted music of the drains,
drains closely hidden in the wormy earth.
Only a whispered gurgling betrays
the 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,
its Roman segments trowelled with a flick,
a cavern 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 but when the ground is shrinking
and when the drains he laid with toil and care
now leak along their length or round their girth,
like some crushed snake, to leave their boudoirs stinking;
if he forsakes them then? O what despair!

Epitaph In A Norfolk Churchyard

'Died aged eighteen, too fondly cherished to ever be forgotten'

Sad destiny, but eighteen years to live
and laid beneath a split infinitive.

Exile

How black the winter seems despite the snow
but when you stood beside me, took my hand,
the journey ended that has far to go
for we are going to a far off land.
I dwell where you are, there I make my place,
beside a mountain or the shifting sea,
a foreign palace or the commonplace,
if you are there my home it comes to be.
My home is not made up of mortar, brick and tile,
it's where we walk in kind tranquillity;
it's where you give me hand and heart and smile.
Clouds hang upon our mountains once so clear
but skies are bright whenever you are near.

Ex-Wife

At the Plough Inn
after the funeral
she gave him a certain look:
questing, tender, sorrowful, intense
and somewhat apprehensive.
It lasted long seconds
or perhaps a lifetime.

Faces In A Crowd

From face to face my glances fly,
among a thousand, all unique,
yet every one the same.
Mere wooden faces passing by
on lonely dolls that cannot speak
and gnomes without a name.

Your face alone delights my eye
and promises the cure I seek
for aches I cannot tame.
I wait in fever; wonder why
this helpless yearning leaves me weak
and you, you are to blame.

At last you come. My mouth is dry;
I tremble; I can hardly speak;
you clasp me like a flame.
I'll burn forever. As I die
I shall remember, cheek-to-cheek
how you were mine to claim.

Fathers' Graves

Within the lych-gate, where man-eating yews
rise up and brood upon the church roof leads,
where gravestones slant, where noisome, night bats choose,
umbrella furled, to hang their alien heads;
my fathers' monument this cannot be.
I'll find another and more sacred place
to sing and dance and shout the pedigree
of those lamented dead whom I embrace.
Not like the echoes in the empty porch
nor squeaking swallows on a dismal day
nor falling embers from a dying torch
on splendid stallions they went away;
hoofbeats to music turned to happy airs
behind them winter and our present cares.

Father's Printing Shop

A sniff of printed paper!
The mind slips far away
without a stop to father's shop
and prints of yesterday.

The leaden letters standing
in pigeonholed array
are made to fly by hand and eye
and set within the tray.

The Heidleberg is going;
Pa inks it as he treads;
remembrance swells the inky smells
and colours that he spreads.

He daubs the disc of steel
a quick besmearing stripe;
across the wheel the rollers squeal
and squeeze upon the type.

I hear the big press going,
a cacophonous sound,
with slaps and welts of leather belts
that drive the wheels around.

The virgin sheets are printed,
no longer pure and dumb
but bearing signs and bold designs
evocative become.

There's men and boys with barrows
and vans by night and day
but where they go I do not know
to bear the print away.

I can't say things are better
I can't say things are bad
but I sit tight, print as I write
which would astonish Dad.

Field Of Dreams

As evening lets its fragrant shadows slip
beneath the cedar where we laugh and sip
the ghost of a player comes out from the corn
and asks in a low voice
'Is this heaven? '
I was there once, in the evening sun, among the pine cones,
picnicking on champagne and friendship.
Seven balloons passed.
One was all green diamonds;
another shot with rainbows, bubble blown;
one precious amber, glowing in the sun;
a cardinal came next in crimson silk;
a dark one, witchlike;
then one in navy-grey, no colour at all
and one in every kind of blue:
Cambridge-, navy-, prussian-, rhodamine-,
ultramarine-, xylenol-, xylidyl-,
deep sea-, south sea-, shallow sea, wine-dark sea-,
Oxford-blue and rook-black-ultra-blue...
to name but a few.
You could not tell where one blue stopped and another started.
They all laughed, these balloons, as they passed
and we all laughed back.
The owls and the sheep laughed too
and even the silver satellite
who had gone up far too high
and was no longer in this world.
A thousand heavens of the evening passed
unmarked, like strangers, all unknown.
They left unrecognised, alas, moved on,
wrapped in a moment each and quickly gone.

Fighting Reflections

When something vital in our cooker flunked
we sadly laid it by the bin outside;
it looked too bright and new to be defunct
but there it lay in polished, fallen pride.
It was the season when the blackbird's airs
are music to the grateful human ear
but more like challenges, defiant stares
and rude affronts to rival birds appear.
A blackbird, on the cooker's glassy face,
then saw a rival that he could not rout
nor cease to fight and that at such a pace
that fury wore his little body out.
Against himself though trying as he might
what bird or man has ever won the fight?

Fill Every Beaker

Like racing horses come the stormy rains,
with lightning in their hooves and howling breath;
with snow and hailstones whipping us like chains
to bring unsheltered men to freezing death.
Defy the storm; light up the lamps and fire.
What are we waiting for? Bring out the wine.
The last dull glimmers of the day retire.
Now is the time to venerate the vine,
the only remedy the dark earth knows
for all the thoughts by which the mind is vexed.
Fill every beaker till it overflows,
let every one be jostled by the next.
Oblivion is how the world began
and wine's a thing that understands a man.

Finish

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.

First Mourning

Souvent dans la nuit
en entendant la pluie
je vous verrai ici.
Often in the night
listening to the rain
I shall see you here.
It is night. It rains
and I cannot recall the whole of this song
which I wrote on steamed glass
that first morning of your death
on a cold school window.

The coda is complete. The music ends.
The final chord is fingered, let it fall;
in quieter and stiller depths to sound,
to deep remoteness, down, to faint recall.
Ears strain to hold it. Have I got it still?
No! Time is silence and time has its will.

Food.

I can't remember food
for I can never say
what bill of fare we did include
at lunch the other day
although I think I understand
a salad tossed and oiled,
a steak adroitly frying-panned
and eggs correctly boiled.
Cordon bleu can be so trying.
Is it really worth the troubles,
this infernal flambé frying,
stoves and kettles, steam and bubbles?
I'll remember you, your mood
and what you wear but not the food.

Fuji Cherry

A dowdy, dwarfish shrub most of the year,
slow-growing lichen leprous on each bough,
it flaunts a thousand buds when April's here
and joyfully proclaims ‘Come, see me now'.
Before the ranks of summer march this way
with colours flying, silk on painted silk,
it holds the eyes so tight they cannot stray
with petal petticoats as pale as milk.
Excess of beauty surely shortens life;
it has its private purposes and ends;
it's ever dangerous to bring to wife;
it causes jealousy between its friends;
the sooner gone the brighter burns its flame
but when it dies our envy turns to shame.

Hope Makes Cowards Of Us All

Your love deterred 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.

So now he finds himself in winter's way.

In frosty fields he stamps his craven 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.

Hoverfly (Eristalis Pertinax)

A micro ounce!

On air with see-through wings

I sit or bounce.

Wings whiz! Flight ace!

I want to be and then I'm in

another place.

Blink! Zip! I'm gone.

Bare is the space

I hung upon.

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.

Lakenham Bridge

It's a fair drop below and the water is slow
where Lakenham bridges pass over the streams
of the Yare and the Tas; where a fisherboy dreams
of the great fish that go in the deep, lazy flow.
The bricks are hard blue for the railway runs through
so they lie fair and square in a permanent mortar.
There is hope in the air and a float on the water.

Last Love

One gave to you the touch of children's hands,
another brought you laughter and a song

but now my footprints on the sea-washed sands
mark out with yours the stretch you walk along.
What measures time? A globe of glass well spun,
with extra skill made narrow at the waist
through which the grains of time untimely run
to carry off all things with too much haste.
No! Time's true measure is the human heart
that longs to beat against a loving one
for time is only lovers kept apart,
as winter is the lack of summer sun.
The next tide scours our footprints from the beach
of time and tide; love lies beyond its reach.

Lend Me The Love You Cannot Give

O lover mine, if Venus can't complain

that her high altar which she set in you

I ever did neglect nor take in vain,

why have you have cast me out and said adieu?

See what a thing is made of love so whipped

and left alone to live or die on air:

as fleshless as the bones left in the crypt,

as tattered as the relic shrouds they wear.

Love cannot take its sustenance from showers

nor live on berries where the birds have stripped,

nor like the swift snatch flies from airy towers

nor fly at all with wings so cruelly clipped.

The love you cannot give me you could lend

for love is not a heavy coin to spend.

Life, Cricket And Everything

On a wicket life is played

with the bat your father made.

You know cricket, bats get frayed.

So new handle, then new blade,

next new handle, next new blade...

same old bat granddad begat.

How cricket scores with metaphors!

I'm a bat? Well fancy that!

Perusing more this cricket lore

with faith unshaken: life I see

should not be taken personally.

Lost Princess

A desert prince set on a hill
a pleasure palace for his bride.
The scents of araby hang still
on ruined walls, on every side.

With oils of violet and rose
he had them knead the pliant clay.
Laid here were bricks with tuberose
and there with lillium they lay.

The window sockets gape in air
with essences of long ago.
With orange flower and lavender
and narcissus the four winds blow.

A moment lingering they steal
a trace of scent but leave it there,
these vagrant winds, remembering
that she preferred the desert air.

They stay a moment and restart
their endless journeys round the earth;
they whisper of a prince's art
that failed to hold a woman's heart.

Lotus

A clear stream falls from hills to feed a lake.
It leaves its boulders and its polished stones
and runs to reedy depths, green, brown, opaque
to lie on mud, decaying plants and bones
where sucking lampreys lurk and bony fish
stare up towards their silhouetted prey.
As coins fall in a fountain with a wish
seeds freshly drop when dead heads shake and sway,
down to that damp of black and hairy roots
where genesis demands to have its way.
A sacred message from this pit of love
the lotus sends upon its pale, green shoots;
its warm and lovely buds unfold above
and with a blush their consummation make
which like a lover's dream comes in a lake

Love Song

You little, bright-eyed wanton,
who lately left me smiling,
of love you have convinced me
with every kind beguiling
but so convince me every day
for love is wont to slip away
with swifts and swallows flying,
to leave a lover all aheap
and everybody crying.

I see the garden where you are
and feel perpetual pining
to search the heavens in your eyes
and count the stars there shining.
At night I see a desert place
with stars above its sandy face
with you and me reclining
though not a star is half as bright
as you and me entwining.

Lovers' Flower

What's the lover's favourite flower?
Wild gorse is as good as any,
golden blossoms, ten-a-penny
every month and every hour.
What's the reason? Love's in season
when the gorse comes into flower:
every month and every hour.

Love's Long Absence

Though winter is a gaoler it will bring,
to all its prisoners, relief assured
for winter dies and leaves another spring
but your love's absence is an age of ice
and memory a meagre squirrel's hoard,
misplaced or mouldered, carried off by mice,
too insubstantial fare for times so hard.
The mountain bird that's feathered winter white
that haunts the snows and icy ridge unmarred
finds joy and comfort on his windy height
and bobs with pleasure among rocks and drifts.
I, like a bear can only fall asleep
in some dark cave until the ice-age lifts
to dream of summer days and your sweet gifts.

Lute Song

Now my lady lays her down
in a silk and satin gown,
in a robe of thread so fine
it enfolds her heart with mine.
Though this might be songful art
I'd rather we were not apart.

There are enough within her eyes
of stars to light the empty skies.
Surely one or two I see
that my lady wished for me
but the Milky Way entire
could not end my lone desire.

I would lull her with delight
were I there with her tonight
sending back to sleep the lark
when he comes to end the dark.
Soon he'll sing this glad refrain
'Now your love is back again'

M104 The 'sombrero Hat' Galaxy

There is a jeweller older than the night,
with precious stones his velvet tray is spread;
his satin sack holds diamonds of delight,
the emerald and the ruby, green and red
and other gems with strange, outlandish name,
like here: M104 Sombrero Hat.
Sing sacred choirs! Sing out magnificat!
Sing silent symmetry of stars aflame!
Some smith has wrought within his fiery forge
this crucible to cast a wondrous thing.
We see the sparks fly in the blackened gorge
but cannot hear the mighty hammers ring
nor do we know the aim of these designs
we only see how the creation shines.

Midnight Mass

Soft airs there were among the Devon hills,
soft redstone and the softest ring of bells.
The pagan robin bosun-piped his trills
from ancient rafters where the deathwatch dwells,
his finger-feathers fluttering on the beams
above the candled crib and carolled choir.
Ah! Those who sang sing only now in dreams
though never could a living dream aspire
to such a benediction in the night.
Beloved tunes and voices fade away
while robin carols in the candlelight,
lamenting for his lost midsummer day
and we for joys we barely recognise,
soon snatched away from unaccustomed eyes.

Mind Poise

I came across a bridge among the trees;
beyond belief it stretched across the seas.
As slender as a web in quick ascent,
it soon ascended to the firmament.
I mounted step by step and on the way
the earth beneath it vanished quite away,
diminished to a purple spot in space
and then to nothing, gone without a trace.
The bridge itself dissolved and in the void,
with every solid thing strayed or destroyed,
I stood in emptiness without a rung,
all foothold gone, where vast oblivion hung.
Annihilated all, save only me,
a new, bewildering reality.

Missing The Bird

'Did you sleep well? ' my good Norse host enquired.
Sleeping, sleeping, dreamless, uninspired,
unconsciously I passed the splendid night.
Auroras wove above with elvish light,
warping and wefting, dipping dye on dye.
with flying fingers and a painter's eye…
Ah! How I would have watched however tired.

Beneath my roof he slept. The night was mild,
quite melted by the thrush's notes which flowed
quicksilver through the window. Wistful, wild,
the music filled the pillowed ear and strode
beyond the pales of poetry. Unheard!
Deep in the dark of dreamland fast interred
my honoured guest forever missed the bird.

Mother

The rose that scents the summer day
and flaunts her colour to the bees
knows nothing and has naught to say;
her only talent is to please.
With fickle blooms and ready claws
she wanders where the rough wind blows;
her children left with hips and haws
abandoned in the wild hedgerows.
She leaves themn there without a sigh,
in swollen, orange bulbs they lie
but like their mother, by and by,
they grow to flatter every eye.

Mrs. Winter's Jump

Over the stile, the sticks and the stumps
goes Mrs. Winter over the jumps;
clearing all the ditches, flooded or dry,
shot from a longbow and feathered to fly.
Follow the hound that follows the deer;
jump every fence and swallow your fear,
up on a horse that is bred from the blood
with a clatter, scatter, spatter of mud!
Over the fence at desperate pace!
Fie to the fox! It's Winter I chase.
I'll catch her yet if I get a good start
but she's up, away, away with my heart.

Multiple Sclerosis

She comes in slowly, hanging on the air.
'MS' I'm told 'She's only thirty-one'.
They park her gently till her name is called.
She's pushing on the stick. Can she get up?
Uncertainly she rises; dials whirl;
the altimeter spins; horizons fall;
the ground revolves; the airspeed clock goes mad.
Her head is high. By God, she's bound to stall
but up she gets and makes toward the desk.
I watch. She's leaving; careful with her things,
she mounts a tricycle and slowly checks
the brakes, trim, undercarriage, radiator, guns,
or so it seems to me. Then chocks away!
Beyond the tarmac enemies await
but out she rolls; intrepidly she flies
to join The Few who dare the dangerous skies.

Mutually Assured Destruction Or Notes On A Reptilian Taboo

If rattlesnakes bite you or me
it's very likely R.I.P.
This comes as a surprise... but if
he bites himself a snake's soon stiff
moreover should he bite a mate
it suffers too that certain fate.
And yet for mates the snakes do fight
but only wrestle, never bite.
They'll gladly have a go at you
but biting peers is quite taboo,
a rule that snakes should never flout
for lines that do so soon die out.
Thus evolution by selection
protects a snake at preconception.

My Lady Butterfly

Are you a dark moth from a silk cocoon,
the flower wanderer of the midnight sky
who drinks from honeydew beneath the moon?
Not so, you are my Lady Butterfly.
When we were straying from our proper course,
swept all awry by wanton blasts of air
you fluttered on your wings of subtle force
to find your flower and alighted there.
Whatever bloom you choose, whatever field,
your presence makes its beauty twice as much;
whatever plant with budding petals sealed
is glad to open to your gentle touch.
Ah! Lucky me that you have come to sip
my nectar and to take it from my lip.

Newlyn Moor

The bracken and the mountain ash
cleave to an open shaft;
a dropped stone makes a distant splash
as if a miner laughed
to find somebody come to see
and listen by the wild ash tree.

The wind sounds out the high-strung wire
across the tin mine moor.
Tremayne, Trevelyan, Tregire
have left for richer ore.
Their names are cut on lonely stones
to mark their foreign, Cornish bones.

The miners' digging days are done;
down are the walls they built.
There's no more metal to be won
beneath the spoil they spilt
but where they spat their apple seeds
green apples grow among the weeds.

Nocturne

Do you remember, white, white maid
how pretty was the couch we laid?
Oh! Call it heather, call it ling,
bare on the naked heath we'd cling,
close to the very noon of night,
the summer moon in roundest light
atop the trees while we, beneath,
in shadows black upon the heath,
like silver trout in some dark pool
each took the other one to school.
The summer moon, her face all red
from watching us, lit up our bed;
a friend who never hid her face
nor gave away our hiding place.

North Norfolk Coast

The birds fly in and we are all bewitched
by fleeting feathers, dazzling or dull;
by bluethroat, bunting, bustard we are twitched,
by grosbeak, golden goose and glaucous gull.

‘County folk' (but Kensington and Chelsea) :
four-wheel drive, binoculars and Barbours;
common, shoreline, Blakeney to Selsey;
congregate weekends at coast and harbours.

Rare visitors among the local flock:
a breeding pair of Japanese. The hen
is inconspicuous but on the cock
a camera which cost him many yen.

Among a kilted claque of Highland Scots
a leathered Tyrolean has been seen,
a curl-toed Grecian (white rump and red spots) ,
sarong clad waders and a Pearly Queen.

Such birds of passage thrill us all to bits:
the Mussulman, the baggy-trousered Turk,
black-feathered orthodox (or bearded) tits,
the pied gum-chewer (lesser Yank or quirk) .

Instinctive urges that they must obey
impel them to our bare, sand-blasted strands,
the varied vagabonds from far away,
the twitching anoraks from Metro-lands.

Nothing Amiss

Anemones are bitter to the tongue,
like flattery, though to the eye they're sweet,
a brisk confetti that the winds have flung
to grow at random all about our feet.
Much grander plants can please with looks or scents
but fail to charm us if we touch or chew;
for that which satisfies us in one sense
can seem deficient from another view.
In you I find all qualities accord
or if there be deficiencies unguessed,
harmonious notes have need of some discord
to give embellishment to all the rest.
Yet we have hours when nothing is amiss;
time cannot flow to higher points than this.

Nothing Travels Faster Than Money.

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.

November

November, summer's cooling ember,
is a death; you cannot blow
into its heart and make it glow.
November woods, 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 go and so
we coldly pass into December.

O Mistress Mine

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.

Where lovers meet, she knows,
is journey's end
and that is where she goes
to meet a friend.

Her pleasure cannot start
without my pain
for we must be apart
to meet again.

Old Lady

This is the time of Michaelmas blue daisies,
of frosts not far ahead and a late sun,
of a small, grey lady pausing, slowly walking,
who loves the long, blue daisies,
the late sun and the frosts not far ahead.
So she comes singing past the church and talking.
She's scattering her verses, one by one.
Like dust they dance the long, reflected trail
that glances off each casement in the sun.
They join with frankincense and galingale,
the smoke of silver censers, swayed and spun,
with sweet flag, cinnamon and lemongrass.
Too old, these casements, to be worth the mending,
they yet flash sunlight to a distant pass
where one who watches reads what they are sending
and learns her songs which never have an ending.

Old Men Are Never What They Seem To Be

I watched an old man finishing a chair
new-made of beech from some wind-fallen tree
with dowels and tenons all set fair and square;
no nail, no screw, entirely metal free.
You might have thought pure timber was his trade.
Beneath the seat he stamped his name, the date
and sat to sample what his hands had made.
I fell to wondering upon its fate
when frail of worm or rot, bound up with wire,
it failed to hold against some fat man's weight
and found its destiny upon the fire,
among the morning ashes in the grate.
Old men are never what they seem to be
and what's to come lies in their history.

On A Long Ski Draglift

The sun burns bright; the snow glares back

from slopes that dazzle as we pass

then change to unexpected black,

to shadows seen through darkened glass.

All night the moon was on the frost;

stars danced upon the shining snow;

in careless merriment they lost

their jewellery, flung to and fro.

Now gem-strewn, glinting, diamond-laced,

turned shadow still in sun's full blaze,

the black snow flashes, crystal-faced,

and scintillates with coloured rays.

The crushed snow creaks; skis cut and hiss

but we are silent, lost in this.

On Queen Elizabeth's Diamond Jubilee

When our lives were long of lease
and our prospects were alarming
she was with us, war and peace.
When the whole world was rearming,
when the bombs began to fall,
when there seemed no hope at all
she was there without a fuss,
in a uniform like us.

Shepherds never built a fold
that could guarantee their sheep;
every hurdle can be holed.
Round the realm assassins creep,
bringing terror and defection,
vexing to a sovereign's sleep.
With a long and wide affection,
sixty years and fifty nations,
she deserves our celebrations.

Bring on flowers, banners, bunting,
marching soldiers, big ships hooting,
parties, galas, airplane-stunting,
bonfires, fireworks, gun-saluting,
flags aloft on poles and gables,
bands of brass with fifers fluting,
pies and jellies, trestle tables,
oxen roasters, sausage fryers,
revelry, celestial choirs
and everything that she desires.

On 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 sweep on to make 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.

On Stanford Training Area,

Stand-to at dawn! Our well dug-in platoon
watch down their sights. The sky is turning green,
like coral sands beneath a calm lagoon
through sunny, waveless waters dimly seen,
the deeps of emerald, the pools of jade;
cold, dawnlight pools in which the morning steeps
its muddy cloths in every dyeing shade.
Along the forest ride the morning creeps
and catches on some madcap enterprise
a heavy-footed hare who halts and squints
and sniffs at us in comical surprise.
Beside a pit, long dug for sharp-edged flints
by other warriors, withered now to bones,
we lie in company with roots and stones.

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.

Pentecost

Sad for something that you held
a moment once and lost,
in all the world unparalleled,
a fleeting pentecost,
a revelation briefly gained,
too like a dream to be retained?

I share with you that history,
that joy without a cause,
the unexpected mystery
that boundless love is yours;
an insight from another earth
esteeming us beyond our worth.

Then, like a song we might have sung
but cannot find again,
words lost upon the tip of tongue,
like colours made by rain,
it's gone; though we may clutch and claw,
to traces, hints, to bliss no more.

Pheasant Shoot At West Harling

Upon the painted meadows contented cattle graze.
The distant, towered churches brood on half a million days.
Black Carr is dank and sedgy but Micklemoor is high
so here the ancients settled and here their bones still lie.
The beaters whack the branches; the sportive springer runs;
they drive the tribe of pheasants to the boding line of guns.

Wrapped in the reeds by Roman Wood, the stag stands in alarm;
his ears pick up a warning, his nose the scent of harm.
The duck seeks hidden ditches, the fox makes for his lair;
the pigeon flies across the sun and dodges like a hare.
The pheasant sounds his brassy bell, he whirrs his wings to fly
and every ear seeks out his voice and every gun the sky.

Across the heath and forest, six thousand years ago,
their fathers' dress was formal when hunting they would go.
In buckskin boots and sable, with feathers in their caps,
in moleskins and morocco they were well apparelled chaps.
Now pheasants do require it, when coming to be killed,
that turn-out should be proper, be it corded, tweed or twilled;
the greasy mark of tractors, a trace of ferret stool
and hints of dogs and ditches bother nobody at all.

Plato And Aristotle.

‘I was told by Socrates'
said Plato once to Aristotle
‘Something called the axolotl
dwells beyond uncharted seas'
'Disbelieve it, my dear Plato
surely you've been at the bottle
down at the Old Daub and Wattle
where they sing of the potato
and the mythical tomato
soaring over the castrato
who can hit the highest C's'.

'Rub me down with spikenard'
said Plato since it scanned so well.
'Rub me down and rub me hard;
you're a thinker, I can tell'
With a sniffle and a snottle
Aristotle knocked the dottle
from the briar pipe he vented,
Smoking hadn't been invented
but the future is portented
by such mighty minds as these
who philosophise with ease.

Public House

I know a place that's hung with hops and rose,
where honey bees and dusty blackbirds doze
before a doorway where clematis falls;
where sundry spears and rugs hang on the walls
of smoky-yellow lime and horsehair mix,
age-toughened oak and bits of Roman bricks.
A single flower at table, nothing rare,
but otherwise the board is plain and bare.
There's harrowing and harvest corner talk
by dusty men of tractors, soil and chalk.

The kitchen master knows his herbs and sauces,
the meat and fishes proper to all courses,
the custards, creams and the exotic spices,
the currants, damsons and fresh apple slices;
and he can steam a pudding in a tub
and marry marmalade to syllabub.
The summer fireplace is a flowery blaze
until the autumn and the gloomy days
when weary winter beats an icy path
across the threshold to the cheerful hearth.

In World War Two some people had the face
to come in aeroplanes and bomb the place.
In 50,406 and 793
it lodged some fierce invaders from the sea
who did not know, for they were foreign then,
that in a while they would be Englishmen
whose greatest pleasure is to enter pubs
and dine on marmalade and syllabubs.
You too, dear reader, might be glad to know
how you could get there. I'll not tell you. So!

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.

Rolling Stone

A round stone rolled, I reached and picked it up,
a polished piece of flint, of water's milling;
a slinger's stone to hurl with thong and cup,
whirling till it whizzes, wildly willing
to fly bee-buzzing on its devil's way.
So old a stone laughs transience to scorn.
Oh ancient one, I carried you away
to where my patio is cracked and worn
and there I meant to drop you on the grass
but clumsily I dropped you on the stones
and shattered you to flinty shards of glass
for time had burdened you with brittle bones.
But time can polish every piece anew
and what's a meagre million years to you?

Route March

'Left, right, left, right! ' the sergeant booms
along the lazy river's edge
where lassies come to pick the blooms.

Through meadowsweet and grassy plumes
we march and through the muddy sedge.
'Left, right, left, right! ' the sergeant booms.

'You soldier boys are thin as brooms'
the lovely, lissom girls allege
where lassies come to pick the blooms.

'Show us the casements of your rooms;
we'll climb in by the window ledge'
'Left, right, left, right! ' the sergeant booms.

The roses woven on the looms
of summer fade upon the hedge
where lassies come to pick the blooms.

'In double time! ' The pace foredooms
our chance of making further pledge
'Left, right, left, right! ' the sergeant booms
where lassies come to pick the blooms.

Sappho Accuses Aphrodite

It gladdened eyes; its blossom fed the bee;
the sweetest apple ripened in the sun
upon the tip, the topmost of the tree,
and hung there still when harvesting was done.
Forgotten? No, but not a man aspired,
until the goddess came to shake her free,
to touch the apple that was most admired.
I'm sorry, Mother dear, but don't blame me.
Blame Aphrodite; she has sent a youth,
as slender as the stripling apple tree,
to shake me with desire. You know the truth:
with love she traps us women, wantonly;
against this creature there is no defence;
we must surrender until love relents.

Sappho And Cleis

I have a daughter golden as the flowers
and beautiful as budding boughs in May.
I would not part with her for all the towers
of Lydia nor what in gold they weigh.
My mother told me that when I was born
the girls had purple bands to bind their hair.
I've lately seen such coloured headbands worn
and I would get one but I know not where.
The fiery poppy and the cornflower blue,
forget-me-nots and herbs the shepherds find,
O daughter mine, are all I have for you
to plat and weave upon your head and bind…
but little Cleis, here in Sappho's rhyme
you hair is handsome to the end of time.

Sappho Appeals To Aphrodite

Immortal Aphrodite, I'm alone.
Come shield me from the anguish and despair
that overwhelm your Sappho, overthrown.
I sense swift wings that bring you through the air
and those old questions in your gracious smile:
you'll ask me what has gone awry again
and who it is that you must reconcile.
My mad heart flutters in my breast till then.
‘Someone has spurned you, Sappho? Tell me who,
for she shall love you though against her will
and if she flees then she shall soon chase you
and what you heart desires I shall fulfil.'
Come Aphrodite, come to me, descend,
and be my ally, counsellor and friend.

Sappho At The Mirror

Before her mirror, in the morning light,
she finds some greyness in her silken hair
where all until this dawn was glossy bright;
she weeps to see the marks of passage there.
Soft Dawn, the midwife to the darkened earth,
delivers the new day when shadows fade
but never learns what this new thing is worth
for she is gone before it's fully made.
Now Sappho sees that Dawn, who brings the sun,
goes with the shadows when they make their flight,
fades in the very glory she's begun,
dies and dissolves in her created light;
she sees that death is evil, that the gods agree
and for themselves choose immortality.

Sappho Sings To Anactoria

Some like to see the horseguards wheel and dash
across a wide plain, bright with tossing plumes,
when colours fly, when arms and armour flash.
But some prefer a cloud of cherry blooms
when happy April, bridesmaid of the sun,
adorns herself to show that spring's begun.
While others say a fleet of sail at sea
surpasses any other scenery.
Although I love the troopers, cherries too,
my favourite, Anactoria, is you.
Your laughter thrills me, sweet as any flute;
I catch a glimpse of you and I am mute;
I sweat and tremble and I catch my breath;
your flame burns in me; I am close to death.

Sappho Sleeps Alone

The moon sets; the stars fade; the midnight owl has flown;
the hours creep and she's afraid for Sappho sleeps alone.
She fears there is some shallow maid, some wretched girl unknown,
some artful charmer who has made poor Sappho's love her own;
so Sappho languishes, betrayed, forlorn and left to moan.
In all the world I love you best and yet we sleep apart;
come tell me I am dispossessed and let me make a start
upon a solitary quest for I long to depart,
to leave the dark earth unredressed and stay my aching heart.
At last you come! Look in my face; I'm burning with desire.
Your eyes are bright and full of grace but Sappho is on fire.
Unfurl your loveliness, unlace, and let your love be strong
and lingering as we embrace and night be twice as long.

Sauna Thoughts

Grown smooth, significant of shape and old
wind-blasted granite slowly turns to sand
in polar valleys where the air, so cold
that even glaciers cannot lay a hand,
preserves the ancient corpses lying there;
ten thousand years in every frozen stare.
Here, hot enough to broil an egg for tea,
the sauna timer drops a slow, thin stream
of silver sand from some long-vanished beach
where silent swimmers, diving from the gleam
of razor teeth and from the horny reach
of tyrant lizards fled and fled again,
surviving all; shape-shifting into men.
Time and again extinction passed them by
and now there's us. I sweat and wonder why.

Sea Palling

Today the sea is like a silver cat.
She flips her tail along the yellow strand
her rasping tongue has licked until it's flat.
You see the claw marks rippled on the sand
where she has stretched herself towards the dune.
The cat is languid but she cannot rest;
she purrs a sea-cat's song, a gentle tune
but on a winter's night,
when surging tides and storming waves contest
in black and baneful fight to drown the moon
she leaps for fear with madness in her breast;
claws at the dunes until they cannot stand;
the sea-wall slipping, she slinks overland,
foam showing white where she has hissed and spat,
her teeth and tides a-ripping. Tiger cat!

Sexual Favours For Apples

I have done sexual favours for apples;
now buds are pregnant, swelling on the boughs.
In May the heavy-coated bumble grapples
the frilly-knickered apple which allows
her and the honey bee to gain its favours
but May was chill and so they lost their chance
to fill their honey bags with apple flavours
for fear of rainstorms and the hailstones' dance
which blew the blossom all to smithereens.
Worcester Pearmain, Cox's Orange Pippin,
May is the month these apples swap their genes;
when honey bees and bumbles come to dip in
the little, luscious lips they love to lick
but if you get the softest sable tip in
a water-colour brush will do the trick.

Ships Pass In The Night

I want to sing of love but sorrow comes
then songs of sorrow turn to love again.
We are at sea on passages apart,
night-passing once, bathed in a mutual thrill
of the swell and the wash and the ships' lights,
the thud of hearts and the beating of engines.
Our wave-washed meeting over and erased
you became a dot on the horizon;
the morning's vast, erratic ocean emptied.
Far out from land there flies a lonely dove,
does that mean harbour, confluence and love?

Smoke Gets In Your Eyes

We listened in a small hotel
to ‘Smoke gets in your eyes'.
The sksylark never sang so well
by white cliffs and blue skies
and where the river meets the sea
we came together, you and me.

Beyond the river and the sea
the mighty ocean rolls
but there is an infinity
that spreads beyond the poles,
that time can never spoil nor spend:
a stream of love without an end.

The sea has moods and motions
the old seafarer knows;
as he can read the oceans
I read the ebbs and flows,
the thoughts and feelings, every trace,
that move upon your darling face.

Soldiers On Parade

Some preferred the piping men
and some preferred the drums.
There's one who wears a tiger skin.
Magnificent he comes.
With tum-te-tum and tum-te-tum
I skipped along beside the drum.

I preferred the whirling sticks,
the polished leather gear,
the tiger skin, the braided coat,
the splendid volunteer
whose beating drum aroused our cheers
and tum-te-tum for mother's fears.

War came to the piping men
and to the drums came war
which flayed them like a tiger skin
with bloody tooth and claw;
with tum-te-tum and tum-te-tum
they marched away to kingdom-come.

Song For Soldiers

You want a medal? Get along!
OK! So you must have a gong.
But if you think your life is dear
then never, never volunteer.
I hope that's clear.

You volunteered? Now in the dust
with everything cocked up or bust,
with no-one to defend your rear
you'll get the blame, you infanteer,
when death is here.

Justice? Blind! Her sword is just
to keep secure the upper crust.
If for trial you now appear
as like as not she'll volunteer
to disappear.

Those who peddle for a fee
your supposed infamy,
did they ever serve? No fear!
Where the winds of battle veer,
they're nowhere near.

Spring

The air announces it: the coming Spring.
Bring me my canvases. Break out a chest
of paints and brushes. See how I can fling
as many colours on the board as Spring.
But Spring is brazen, flaunting cherry, peach,
in shapes and colours far beyond my reach.
It struts its yellow ranks, its greens and whites,
brave little colours borne through bitter nights,
parading now for Spring who woke and dressed
in orpiments and limes and lemon greens
the oak, the ash, the lime itself, the beech,
late ragged beggars standing forth like queens.
I cannot copy this. I own defeat
and lay my brushes down before the feet
of lovely Spring.

Bring my guitar then. I have heard the Spring,
calling with cooing doves the coming sun,
singing for summer, clapping on the wing,
impatient with the winter barely done,
commanding choruses of dawn aloud
with all the birds of heaven in a crowd.
I'll tune my strings. I'll serenade the lark.
I'll sound the songs I have in memory.
Dawn with the blackbirds, eve with thrushes; dark
for nightingales to come and sing with me.
But every Spring surprises every ear
with better songs than any heard last year
and memory falls short. Spring, you must choose
to praise yourself or find another muse.

Stealing Roses

A stolen cutting never fails to thrive.
One snicks it off, a thumbnail is enough;
you slip it in the pocket or the cuff
and leave before the management arrive.
I have some more outrageous tales to tell
for I have known some thieves of love as well.
This sort of robbery is more enchanting
than any floral pilfering and planting.
Flagrant skullduggery beneath the moon!
With blackguard flairing and black underwearing
the highwayman of passion, black dragoon,
stands and delivers in his nakedness
and steals your beauty underneath the noses
of those who own it as I steal their roses.

Study The Classics.

Among the Greek sepulchral epigrams
I suffered as a schoolboy I recall
one Parmis, youthful fisherman of clams
and any fish that can be hooked and hauled,
flashing and twisting, from the purple sea.
It was a tale reported in The Times,
an echo of those sad and ancient rhymes,
the other day that has reminded me.
Parmis, Callignotus's son, had caught
a little fish and while his right hand sought
for balance put it in his mouth and Oh!
It straightway wriggled down his throat and so
he rolled in agony beside his lines,
his narrow gullet blocked by fins and spines
and slimy fish. His hooks, his rods, his boat
availed him nothing, could not clear his throat
and Parmis died. So did the fish I think.
Three thousand years have passed as in a blink
and by an English stream an angler stands
who, having caught a fish, is short of hands
and dies the self-same death. It goes to show
that classics is a subject all should know.

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 leave hidden lairs;
the dark 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
who robbed me once and comes to rob again.
My gamin guardian angel saunters in
with snotty nose, bare knees and impish grin.

Sutton Hoo

Wayland the Wanderer wrought in native gold
great shoulder clasps and buckles for the Earl
with filigrees and panels set with bold
embellishments, with interlacing swirl
of chequered garnet, lapis lazuli
blue millefiori, amethyst and glass.
It was a dazzlement of wizardry
that nothing in the wide world could surpass
and yet the Earl found no love for these things.
He knew that iron is the stuff of kings.

So Wayland sought the sky-flung bolts of Mars.
He trawled a lodestone through the muddy streams
and gleaned the dust of those fierce shooting stars
shot from a battle line across our dreams.
He forged the star dust, left it to anneal,
reheated, quenched it, shattered it to bits,
rewelded, folded, beat it into steel
and formed it to the fatal shape that fits
the swordsman's hand. He coated it with clay
and quenched it, heated to the cherry tint,
whetstoned and made it mirror every ray
with horsetail, pumice and the dust of flint.
He richly furnished it, that famous blade,
of steel celestial that Wayland made.

The Earl found many foes to take its measure
and wordless was the tribute that they gave;
the old man honoured it beyond all treasure
and took it with him to an honoured grave.
Now Earl and Wayland, all, are turned to dust
except the gold, still bright and good as new.
The sword that served him lies beside him, rust.
The gold is anyone's; the steel stayed true.

Tangles

We are such tangles, such a skein of knots,

our schemes and paths put 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 jumbles coiled up and securely set.

How can I find you amid so much choice

of convoluted cords and trapping lines

without direction or a guiding voice?

At every move another snare entwines.

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

tease every twist however close it clings.

Temptation On The River

Myself and Eve are dressed for summer,
under willows by the river;
softly on the satin pillows of the water gently slipping;
idle blades in Isis dipping;
traffic like a distant drummer…
Look! Here comes a swimming snake!
On the water, barely in it, serpent eyes of Eden glinting,
green enamelled, surface dinting,
there he lies for just a minute;
on the shiny wetness resting,
head on paddle, fork tongue testing;
spirit of the poison chalice, innocent of any malice.
Round his noble neck is rolled the ancient torque in leaf of gold,
freshly fashioned by a master
delicate as alabaster,
emerald scales and, thin as whips, turquoise inlaid on his lips.
Tempting lips?
Not so, it errs to think that his could tempt like hers.
Now he swims away in haste.
Farewell, we've other fruit to taste.

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

The Aspen Tree

I cannot like the aspen grove,
the grey-green leaves, the trunks of mauve,
the peacock branches held a span
too high, to quiver like a fan,
untidy leaves, absurdly round,
their long thin stalks far off the ground
and summer evenings are too rare
when, in the sun's last crimson glare,
the aspens, rising over brush,
in isolation seem to blush
from tops to roots, to tremble, gleam,
and in the ebb of sunlight seem
to glow with gold or purple light
as lamp-lit amber glows at night.
Or on a clear and windy day
its leaves, intent to blow away,
like noisy, flapping streamers try
to rush into the distant sky
like paper bunting tearing free;
I cannot like the aspen tree.

The Chrysalis Sets Free The Butterfly

It's time to let the magic from your tongue;
fire rockets to the stars across the night;
time for unspoken verses to be sung;
it's time for hidden things to catch the light.
In heat unbearable clear gems arise;
they crystallise in rock, in earth and slime;
they struggle out and open flashing eyes
which opened once will last as long as time.
The chrysalis sets free the butterfly.
Excalibur is loosed in Arthur's hand.
The sword-sweep of the Seventh Samurai
cuts down the final brigand of the band.
The best honed steel prevails when swords are played
and so it is when poetry is made.

The Church, Heydon, Norfolk

The bats that soil this church
are cherished more than it is
for the old religion
has no value now nor power.

Like all the worthless waste
of long-abandoned cities,
religion is a smidgen
that did not last the hour.

They snatched away their living
from catechising pretties,
the bat and feral pigeon
in chancel and the tower.

The Dog Griswold, Bon Vivant, R.I.P.

He had a star that led him on
towards these sausages he ate.
He took his chance and he was gone

to custody for liaison
with this delightful steak he met.
He had a star that led him on.

The cooks all trembled and turned wan
on sight of this pernicious pet.
He took his chance and he was gone

with cordon bleu filets mignon
his most horrific misdeed yet.
He had a star that led him on.

It showed him where to fall upon
these trays of viandes en brouchette;
he took his chance and he was gone.

They had him collared before long
with haute cuisine uneaten yet.
He had a star that led him on;
he took his chance and he was gone.

The End Of The Affair

Those late reflections in your eyes,
those lilies of the moon, those green
dye-wetted silks, those emeralds tell
the truth too clear, too plainly and too well.
Hang in the wind and spill your colours out
you alien banners of unpleasant truth:
there is no love to hold you close to me.
Let oceans burn away and heaven's flame
consume the earth: the thing remains the same

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.

What sprites were these with power no more

to mind a face they lately saw?

How could they dwell on earth at all

with new acquaintance past recall?

The last-post blew with notes that bled

for these poor ghosts, alive or dead.

The Last Veteran

Of Great War warriors the last has died

and it is said that where he rests his head

all pomp and circumstance should be applied.

With high-faluting, royal-saluting pride

we should at the last accommodate the past.

They all are gone. Old Simm and Powell and Jones

who had the luck to live through fire and muck,

shot, shell and hell and make at last old bones

and talk about the war in undertones.

We did not understand, we shielded folk,

Powell, Jones and Simm recalling times so grim,

so intimate the language that they spoke

of legions vanished, swept away like smoke,

how they were left to bear until the last

a sad, survivor's guilt which never passed.

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)

The Tree

When one great forest threw its cloak
across the land from sea to sea
the god who wields the thunder-stroke
was worshipped in a grove of oak
which held a sacred tree.
The acolyte with bloody hands
took up the sacrificial knife
and carved this sign in runic bands
‘You touch me not or lose your life'.

Now twisted under sun and moon,
too crooked for the saw and mill,
stars shining through its boughs at noon,
the sacred tree is living still
and bearing yet the ancient rune.
On lichened rock it still stands so,
with holly and with mistletoe,
with berries red as blood and white,
the tokens of the acolyte.

Thetford Forest

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.
They're 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.

Throwing Crockery

My daughter has just thrown a plate
at her mate.
So! The old custom survives
among wives.
Her maternal grandad, now late,
hurled a plate
at her gran
and my dad, also dead,
ducked his head
for his life just as much
from his wife
as the hun (of '41) .
In a stew
I once threw, being studious
and moody-ous:
Acta Crystallographica,1987, part 2
at my wife
who is perfect but never gives up
and annoyed with me once became
so untame
as to hit me with tea
in a cup.
When all's said:
marriage is made in bed.
It's unstable
at table.

Undiscovered Things

Where lie the undiscovered things?
Beneath the grass with buried kings
too deep for common ploughs to till
or lying shallow, who can tell?
Put down your book; come help me seek
the silent places where they're laid;
a lucky or industrious spade
could strike the stone that seals the well;
a bird with music in its beak
could sing the song that breaks the spell.
If you are holy lend me grace
to see the things you look upon,
to leave them untouched in their place
and having seen them to be gone.

Vale Of Swardeston

I walked along the vale of Swardeston
in mid-July; a biplane crossed the sky,
a rambling relic of another age
as tardy as the bees that bumbled by.

A single bell struck twelve; it sounded near,
with happy, childish, voices, far yet clear.
Along the river mingled mint and sage
and boggy-scented mould perfumed the air.

My questing dog swept through the meadowsweet
but passed discreetly by the royal bowers
of willow herb, a wonder among flowers,
resplendent queen of pink, fantastic towers.

Now winter comes to flood the rutted track
and summer leaves are huddled in the bud;
The wonder is that wonder can come back
but willow herb is waiting in the mud.

War Song

Cast aside the fractious fife;
pipes of war unkindly whistle;
calling every dog to strife,
throats to growling, fur to bristle.
Quiet on your pipes of tin!
Quiet now! For very little
brings the grim Old Reaper in.
He will dry your piping spittle.
Those who love the piper's blast
soon are done with martial ardour;
should they save their necks at last
bare and empty is their larder.
Happy, prosperous and more
they who never go to war.

What Is Art?

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.

Winter

King Winter stripped the boughs of Spring's green leaf,
uncluttered every twig and left it clean.
Now naked skies are etched in sharp relief
with secret writing hitherto unseen,
a cipher coded in complexity
that's written in a multitude of lines,
in twisted tangles of perplexity,
in skeins of old man's beard and snaking vines.
The summer's blossom and the leafy dead
lie tattered on the field where they were felled
or thinly hang where untold numbers spread.
In livery of white, by frost compelled;
they wear the uniform of winter, king,
who is the start and end of everything.

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!

Wintry Thoughts In Spring

The moment winter goes away
upon a long-awaited day
when every petal, leaf and tree
sings out ‘I'm living, look at me! '
in melancholy I'm immersed.
The blossoms fall, the best go first;
in recollection to remain
like nothing but a fading stain.

So starves the hermit in his cave
because the world is but a grave
and any beauty he can find
is some illusion of the mind.
Alas we tread our cloths of gold
in moments which we cannot hold;
we altogether cannot keep
the paradise at which we peep.

I think and therefore I should be
cognizant of the things I see
but truth I never could divine
beyond this strange conceit of mine
on every sentiment embossed:
this precious moment must be lost
and gone can never come again
so every pleasure turns to pain.

Within A Faded Attic Of The Mind

Within a faded attic of the mind
I stood and found it dusty with despair,
with dry, dead leaves on flowers left behind,
with bleaching furniture and half-drawn blinds…
and then I thought saw you standing there
within this faded attic of the mind.

I saw you there but words I could not find;
too many words had flown and left me bare,
like dry, dead leaves on flowers left behind.
You called my name and whispered something kind;
your cherished voice sang in the arid air
within a faded attic of the mind.

Within this place I found myself confined
to be a thing a wilted stem could bear,
a dry, dead leaf on flowers left behind,
a fruitless bud that never did unwind
for vanished seasons left it hanging there,
within a faded attic of the mind.

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.

Words

To counterfeit reality with words
what limp, insipid and unbellied things
are languages. What twitterings of birds!
What desiccated, snaky scribblings!
Beyond the power of languages to tell
the soaring eagle lives in heaven's eye;
he needs no words to ride the wind so well
or tell him how it feels to rule the sky.
If it is real, the world in which we live,
then we must feel its chill upon the cheek;
the living presence that the cold winds give
cannot be found in any words we speak.
We have to feel the snow upon its wings
to know the message that the cold wind brings.

You

What is made of all the scars
and residues of blown-up stars
set in a world of dust made new,
condensed upon a spot of blue?
You, you are!

The moon has minted silver bars;
its midnight rainbows end in jars
and crocks of gold; this might be true
but you are.

The mountains know not the chamois;
the sky is ignorant; the stars
lit up for worlds they never knew;
they grew no wiser as they grew
but you are.

http://www.PoemHunter.com 4/5/2016 2:27:17 PM

Roy Ernest Ballard 2009

Tuesday, April 12, 2016

My Star Watcher

Tuesday, April 5, 2016

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