© roy ballard 2012


Let's brighten England
Scots wha hae
purloined from me
an hour a day of light;  I say
let them be free
to go their way,
the clock set right
and Summer Time recovered be.

Epitaph for a lover
Bony fingers intertwine,
lonely fingers: all are mine.
In this grave my bare skull lies
seeing you with wanting eyes;
smelling all the scents you wore
though I wear a nose no more;
sighing, though I have no lungs
for another touch of tongues.
Bones recall the wanton time,
lying on you in their prime
with the coming waves, deep-sea,
washing over you and me,
finally to crash on shore,
now unmoving evermore

© roy ballard 2012


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




Hope makes cowards of us all
Your love oppressed him: it is worth too much;
base metal he was made for, not for gold
which makes him twice a traitor to himself:
for fear of spoiling what he loves to touch
and dread 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 the stag stands in a wintry way;
in frosty fields he stamps a craven hoof
and waits upon your call in silent air
but he will venture close and offer proof
that hope returns when love has come to stay.



Pygmalion moments
Upon a time when things could not be worse,
like 1940 when we stood alone
our souls are lifted by a cheerful curse:
so Churchill to the errant microphone
when looking wryly at his spattered hat
'The bloody seagulls are dive-bombing us'
and every weary Tommy laughed at that
despite Dunkirk when Hitler missed the bus.

The misdirected hammer hits your thumb
and for a millisecond silence reigns;
how unalleviating to be dumb.
You dance upon the spot to ease your pain
which common imprecations don't dispel;
you utter words unfit to shove down drains
while sending grinning bystanders to hell.

Sad are the moments when one must be mute,
when there is simply no profanity,
no turn of phrase, no idiom to suit
and we must cling to our urbanity.
Once, post coitus, lying on the bed
she said to me 'You're great, I love you Fred
which with a sudden pang dissolved my joy
and left me speechless for my name is Roy.

© roy ballard 2012

            Aging ski-bum

T

ime shapes the mountains, did you know

that rivers fresh with melted snow

are washing everything away:

the great rocks to the plain below,

to running sand beneath your feet

that slides and flows between your toes

where surf or soil and rivers meet.

Age steepens mountains, this I know;

the hillside and the high plateau

where I was free to sport and play

are now forbid for if I go

I find that I cannot repeat

the slides and flows beneath my toes

that in my memory are sweet.

©

The Queen’s diamond jubilee

War and peace, war and peace,

she stayed with us through war and peace.

As a princess, young and charming,

when our lives were long of lease,

when the whole world was rearming

when the bombs began to fall,

when there seemed no hope at all

she was with there without a fuss,

wearing khaki just 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.

Sixty years with fifty nations!

She deserves the 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.

©

Fuji Cherry

A dowdy, dwarfish shrub most of the year,
slow-growing lichen leprous on each bough,
breaks out a thousand buds when April’s here
and shamelessly proclaims ‘Come, see me now’.
Before the ranks of summer march this way
with flags and colours, banners, painted silk,
the eye is held so tight it cannot stray
by petal petticoats as pale as milk.
Her thousand flowers are a just excuse
to throw a party for admiring guests,
discerning friends who travel where they choose
to linger by the loveliest and best.
Excess of beauty surely shortens life;
it has its private purposes and ends;
it is the cause of jealousy and strife;
it brings out rivalry between its friends;
but this is true: the brighter burns the flame
the sooner gone; great beauty is the same
and when it dies our envy turns to shame.



Springer spaniels

‘You have to save them from themselves’ he said
and truly so
for into every hedge and ditch they go
but then he said and it was just as true
‘You need someone to save yourself from you'.

© roy ballard 2012
Triple spiral

By River Boyne they laid a tomb of rocks,
rocks great and small, all overlain with earth,
with one straight passage leading to its heart
where strikes the weakest sunlight of the year.
Rays of the solstice sun and only they
can fall upon the symbol waiting there:
an endless triple-spiral cut in stone.
Carved by a hand remote in time and tongue,
its years are thousands yet we read it still
and in its clarity it seems to speak
of trinity and endless union.
Writer in stone, we mayflies of the stream
salute you.


Street View

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

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 random 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.

© roy ballard 2012

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.




Daffodils

They all wear the paper ruff,
the six-fold yoke of April, cruel lord.
They flaunt the colours of their noble lines
on herald trumpets coloured orange, red
or sulphur yellow or the palest peach,
exclusive ensigns of ancestral dye.
For only those well-born
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.