Spectacular art 

H

is spectacles left at the Tate

lay by a wall, artfully flung,

which started up a new debate.

What truth did they communicate?

We listened to their praises sung

which helped us to appreciate

this art of very recent date

by which significance is wrung

from simple things like bricks, a plate

that open hell’s or heaven’s gate

until all brazen bells are rung

in tones of transcendental weight.

We heard some prattle and some prate

as back and forth opinion swung

but all agreed the art was great

until a man came in to state

his spectacles had come unstrung:

his spectacles left at the Tate

which started up a new debate.

Wishing for skylarks

A sudden smile and lightening of the heart

were mine before I glimpsed her waiting there,

at that beloved corner. There I go

to linger yet though she can never come.

She sleeps with skylarks and one nightingale

who sings to her to gain the loud applause

of little birds whom she once fondly fed

who perch, side-by-side, in bosky shadows

until the pale dawn comes and skylarks sing.

Once she slept guarded by a little dog

who thought he was a lion. So did I

but neither of us guarded well enough.

Sestina

A billion billion stars or so

are dancing on the Milky Way

and grand they are but I must go,

because that’s not enough for me;

I want to find the brimming well

and burning centre of the show.

You seek the source of all the show?

Too far away it is and so

you shall be dead, my friend, and well

before you’ve travelled half the way.

So swallow truth and be like me:

let angels dance and let them go.

I’d like to know where angels go

or where they come from. Tell me, show;

it’s information new to me.

Perhaps some old book told you so

or did you learn another way

and are you sure you learned it well?

A thousand angels dance as well

as horses on a merry-go

upon a pin. That is the way

that I was taught. You cannot show

this wrong or even partly so;

it has been good enough for me.

But that seems craziness to me

and any of my friends as well.

Are you the sort of so-and-so

who knows he’s wrong but won’t let go

because he’s commandeered the show

and will not stop once underway.

All right! I shall not lie, no way!

A god confided this in me:

the boss who really ran the show

has blown it up, himself as well;

ineptly let a Big Bang go

ten billion years ago, or so.

God blew away his world as well.

For you and me there's time to go

so we’re the centres of the show.

Classifying Galaxies

The galaxy is simply smooth and round
with nothing odd? I choose that: nothing odd.
There's nothing odd except that I am here
on this old chair upon familiar ground
assessing images of faraway 
and long ago that no one's ever seen 
until today, 
on screen.

No one but me has ever judged it round; 
not shaped like a cigar nor in-between; 
assessed it neither merging nor disturbed.
As dull as any galaxy I've seen; 
it has no lens nor ring nor spiral arm
and nothing like a dust lane or an arc.
Without a charm, 
quite stark.

Good- looking galaxies are much like girls
with trailing tresses tossing out to space
and brilliant bulges clothed in starry whirls: 
a hundred thousand million stars in place.
Yes, they had girls; who many times evolved, 
became extinct and started up again. 
They had enlightenments, renaissances…
Men loved and died until love died with men, 
again and again
and again and again…

Poet, soldier, miner, builder, farmer and lover view the same scene.

There is no better spot on earth for this:                 

to tend our love with tempting sounds and rhyme;

to leave this place untouched would be remiss.

A soldier I. When bullets crack and hiss

I’ll dig a bunker here in double time;

there is no better spot on earth for this.

I am a miner. Life is far from bliss;

I render up the metal, slag and slime;

to leave this place untouched would be remiss.

         

I like to build; my tall creations kiss

the topmost clouds; here they shall higher climb;

there is no better spot on earth for this. 

I’d spread the scene with horse manure and piss;

then sow with liquid chemicals and lime;

to leave this place untouched would be remiss.

I was a lover once, I reminisce,

we lay together here in summertime;

there is no better spot on earth for this 

to leave this place untouched would be remiss.

              

On wastes of wishful thought

Your memory, the flower that I tend,
my insubstantial relic of desire,
grows pale despite the time of mind I spend
to bring alive a remnant of your fire.
A second’s thought, a minute or an hour,
an age of recall: you are absent still.
Too much of this has made my mind run sour
and no philosophy can cure my ill
for I am lost in wastes of wishful thought.
Without a prayer to mend a withered rose
the heavy weight of learning comes to naught;
the world is wearier than I supposed.
Of glorious Creation who can boast
it brings us love? It kills what we love most.

                            

                  Graphiti


The mistress of the mini-masterpiece

was fixed upon her project of renewal,

her garden of Japan, her plot of peace,

her little gem set in a royal jewel.

We saw her tending plants that day at Kew.

‘We should remember this’, I think I said.

So there among my foxgloves and bamboo

I drew her in acrylics on the shed.

Now she is just a memory of you

she gardens on when all the flowers are dead.

I see her toiling there the winter through.

It’s not a fertile spot but some flowers grow.

She talks to them perhaps. Would it were so.

                        I miss that room

I miss that room where favourite poems hung,

the sweetest bed, the best of furniture…

The last song of the skylark has been sung

and shadows show where things familiar were.

Foolish it is to think that any art

of paint or words can fill the empty space

that once possessed us, heart and loving heart,

returning us a moment to that place.

Eternities of emptiness are worse

than empty where they once held you

with all the happy memories I nurse

now underwritten with  a last adieu.

‘Don’t die before me’, once I heard you say.

I have been faithful to you then, in that hard way.