Bucha, March 2022

 

24 February 2022

Father, Father tell me why
these fires of crimson cross the sky,
revealing horsemen all aglow
with weapons at the saddlebow.

The flames are pyres of Pestilence,
the worm that rides by night and day,
that hurdles thorny hedge and fence,
to fall on unsuspecting prey.

Look! Stamping on the burning earth,
you see the rough-shod steed of War,
whose rider was a god at birth
now changed to something all abhor.

There, equally to be reviled,
rides one to wither grain and grass
called Famine, War’s unsightly child,
with eyes as pitiless as glass.

With fury’s fever gone at last
comes Death to rake the smoking embers;
to tamp them down into the past
until nobody quite remembers.

        Painting Father

A grainy photo, shot in sandy hills:

I catch a glimpse of Dad in World War One,

unwounded yet, untouched by peacetime ills.

He smokes a fag, his tunic is undone;

expressing discontent, perhaps disease.

It’s otherwise a well turned-out parade:

the London Rifles smartly stand at ease,

the Lewis gun on legs correctly laid.

For poetry and paint to flow in tune 

it’s better to be lucky than inspired;

as I portray him on his dusty dune

my Lady Fortune’s graces are required

but suddenly he’s here. I feel his breath.

A moment only, he returns to death.

On watching a video made by Isao Hashimoto

Cassandra knows she’s listened to no more

but still I hear her crying in the wind,

in fear of fierce white horses far offshore.

Her eyes are wild, her ragged hair unpinned.

She shouts a warning of calamity and war.

She sees the incarnation of her fears

on ocean’s edge, where sea and sky are twinned,

where keen eyes catch the flash of shields and spears.

She hears the grind of keels upon the sand;

the savage rush and tumult of the Greeks;

the missile rain of rock and firebrand;

the storming of the city; dying shrieks.

Cassandra’s warning is a waste of breath

but contemplate this catalogue of death

www./youtube/WANQrqg-W