© roy ballard 2012
To the Blackdown Hills in February
Three hundred miles we drove all day
along the busy motorway
until the hills began to steep
and green-eyed snowdrops, full of sleep,
came out from winter beds to stare,
to smile and tell us we were there.
But we were only exiles three
who could not keep their company;
at home we were but could not stay
for we were of the motorway
where hangs the hawk on threads of steel
and life hangs on the steering wheel.
When first we came to make our way
upon the busy motorway
we turned our backs upon the hills
of February daffodils
that flourish there with simple art ;
we had, alas, to grow apart.
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Friday, August 13, 2010
© roy ballard 2012
Death
With the slow approach of thunder
distant drums alarm the sky
long before it splits asunder;
death comes seldom on the sly.
Or from unexpected summer,
from the heaven’s bluest vault,
gulled by the neglectful drummer,
we are felled by lightning bolt.
Only words and dreams can linger,
scurrying from mind to mind,
scornful of the moving finger,
noncompliant, unconfined,
from all death and time exempt;
dreams can never be undreamt.
'Only a poet can take and hold a country' Jim Bailie, RAF fighter pilot.
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 blaze,
with the swell and the wash and the ships’ lights,
the thud of hearts and the beating of engines.
Our wave-washed meeting time-torn and erased
we become dim dots on far horizons,
the morning’s vast, erratic ocean emptied.
Far out from land there flies a joyful dove,
presaging harbour, confluence and love?
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
and all the holly tree seemed bare
despite the berries growing there.
Death
With the slow approach of thunder
distant drums alarm the sky
long before it splits asunder;
death comes seldom on the sly.
Or from unexpected summer,
from the heaven’s bluest vault,
gulled by the neglectful drummer,
we are felled by lightning bolt.
Only words and dreams can linger,
scurrying from mind to mind,
scornful of the moving finger,
noncompliant, unconfined,
from all death and time exempt;
dreams can never be undreamt.
'Only a poet can take and hold a country' Jim Bailie, RAF fighter pilot.
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 blaze,
with the swell and the wash and the ships’ lights,
the thud of hearts and the beating of engines.
Our wave-washed meeting time-torn and erased
we become dim dots on far horizons,
the morning’s vast, erratic ocean emptied.
Far out from land there flies a joyful dove,
presaging harbour, confluence and love?
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
and all the holly tree seemed bare
despite the berries growing there.
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
© roy ballard 2012
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.
Grid ref 212023 Landranger Sheet 134
SS Obersturmführer Schmidt raised his pistol,
noticed the child’s hands,
little fingers, knitted sleeves
then discovered he could not fire.
Where do you wander now OS Schmidt,
blessed with the pang of pity
that once made you a man?
Heydon Church, Norfolk
The Bats that soil this church
are cherished more than it is
for the old religion
has no value nor power.
Eternal, empty wastes
of deserts bury cities;
the emptiness of space
has wasted faith away.
Archbishops should resign,
the Pope and all his pretties;
their God already has
and Olympus has been vacant for ages.
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.
Grid ref 212023 Landranger Sheet 134
SS Obersturmführer Schmidt raised his pistol,
noticed the child’s hands,
little fingers, knitted sleeves
then discovered he could not fire.
Where do you wander now OS Schmidt,
blessed with the pang of pity
that once made you a man?
Heydon Church, Norfolk
The Bats that soil this church
are cherished more than it is
for the old religion
has no value nor power.
Eternal, empty wastes
of deserts bury cities;
the emptiness of space
has wasted faith away.
Archbishops should resign,
the Pope and all his pretties;
their God already has
and Olympus has been vacant for ages.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Line drawing © Doff Ransome 2009
© roy ballard 2012
Line drawing
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.
My passion is to be
at journey’s end
where lovers love to see
their absence mend.
This pleasure cannot start
without this pain:
that we must be apart
to meet again.
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.
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,
an evenescent rainbow, oil on ink,
a shining, superficial, luring trick
puts bait upon the trap where we shall stick.
Oblivion
I came across a bridge above the trees;
it spanned a city and it crossed the seas.
As slender as a web, in quick ascent,
its length 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 upon a rung
of vanished ladders where oblivion hung;
and all to be became a not-to-be
and nothing was, not even memory.
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,
an evenescent rainbow, oil on ink,
a shining, superficial, luring trick
puts bait upon the trap where we shall stick.
Oblivion
I came across a bridge above the trees;
it spanned a city and it crossed the seas.
As slender as a web, in quick ascent,
its length 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 upon a rung
of vanished ladders where oblivion hung;
and all to be became a not-to-be
and nothing was, not even memory.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
© Roy Ernest Ballard 2009
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 find covert lairs
where life 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
that robbed me once and comes to rob again.
My gamin guardian angel saunters in
with snotty nose, bare knees and impish grin.
David Holgate's studio
With windows open,
Sculptor, hammer and chisel
sound out shapes in stone.
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 find covert lairs
where life 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
that robbed me once and comes to rob again.
My gamin guardian angel saunters in
with snotty nose, bare knees and impish grin.
David Holgate's studio
With windows open,
Sculptor, hammer and chisel
sound out shapes in stone.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Line drawing © Doff Ransome 2009
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.
Mutually assured destruction
or notes on a reptilian taboo.
If rattlesnakes bite you or me
It’s very likely RIP.
This comes as a surprise… but if
he bites himself he’s soon a stiff.
If he should go and bite a mate
if suffers too the selfsame fate.
And yet for mates the snakes do fight
but only wrestle, never bite.
They are content to go for you
but biting peers is quite taboo;
a rule that snakes should never flout
for lines that do it soon die out.
Thus evolution with perception
protects a snake at preconception.
Credit crunch
If you hanker to reward
yourself with what you can’t afford
a total banker is at hand
to help you to the promised land.
Now amidst the milk and honey
bankers have run out of money
robbing Peter to pay Paul
by Mr. Brown should save us all.
That’s all right then.
Endangered tiger of Bengal
stalks this Bengali man
who was endangered not at all
until this rhyme began
but now he is in peril too
so what’s the best thing we can do?
If he eats Bengali man
the tiger’s threatened still;
so shoot the tiger if we can
endangerment then nil;
if this be right it can’t be wrong
until another comes along.
Northumbrian rock carving
Four thousand years ago men polished flint
for tools and made most comely torques of gold.
They took to carving rocks, I don’t know why
but they found lonely ones to deck with rings
for never were there folk more skilled with stone.
Torque after torque they cut; expanding out;
enclosing rings they had incised before;
with labour and intent they carved these things.
The first torque was the symbol of a man, perhaps,
then came the tribe and then their ancestors,
the lower gods came next and higher, highest
the spirit that had all within its scope.
For metaphysics, fancy or some need
they left us with these stones we cannot read.
See http://ads.ahds.ac.uk/era/
Big Smash
The starry road Apollo’s horses chafe,
with nostrils gaping wide and staring eyes,
this wide road of the heavens is not safe
for we who rush unguided through the skies.
All great roads run with blood; they have their stains,
unseen by travellers and known to few,
where wayside blasts and smashes leave remains
in shards and cinders, galaxies askew.
In southern skies, beyond the Milky Way,
two constellated galaxies collide,
an overwhelming firework display
of suns exploding, scattered far and wide.
How many are we, we who watch and learn
while unrecited worlds and cities burn.
A Russian in a ski lift, Val d’Isere, January 2009
The Russian women now: big hands, strong backs,
thick arms to rivet steel or pull up beet;
sheepskin without; within attired in sacks
and wraps of hessian about their feet.
The Hammer and the Sickle surely brought
an end to any of a finer sort.
The Russ are peasants now or so they said
but here is one who rivets us instead.
Her soulful gaze is on a distant place;
her kit is costly though it’s not in vogue
for splendour clearly suits the Russian face
and drab is ever dull, though à la mode.
Her oligarch precedes her, scowls and goes;
a princess of the steppe steps on our snows.
Old man's prayer
I'm sinning still at eighty-eight,
I'm closer yet to heaven
for I have moved my house of late
to number eighty-seven.
Let me be pure and chaste and clean
but after next weekend with Jean.
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