Europe Blues

I stride to my desk in the mornings

To study absicht and donnée,
But soon I take pause to consider
Herr Professeur has little to say.
        Oh the gruff good sense of Old England.

Come evening I twirl my spaghetti
Or dabble a thin Tuscan wine,
But really I find it’s all rat food
Not hearty and struck from the chine.
        Oh the ale and roast beef of Old England.

On Sundays I turn to my Maker
To acknowledge good fortune received,
But appalled at thought of the priest-hagged
I give thanks for what Cranmer achieved.
        Oh the matins and psalms of Old England.

And sometimes I struggle with paroles
Or drang which a dichter has sung,
But they clog my exasperate vision
Like chaff which madmen have flung.
        Oh the part-songs and tales of Old England.

Thank God for these green rocky islands,
For the wolds and the homesteads and lanes,
Though now swarming with Europe’s children
Like a locust army of Cains.
        Oh the fair fields and towns of Old England.

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Note: "Herr Professeur" is deliberate.

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© January 2016

David Varney

"David Varney" - I changed his name - was indeed annoying! But his end, a lonely wanderer of the streets, was sad. The poem makes obvious reference to Gerard Manley Hopkins's "Felix Randal" and, perhaps less obviously but important to me, Yeats's "Paudeen." One of those little poetic felicities occurred in the writing when I found that the rhyme sound of lines 9 and 11 in the first stanza was repeated in the same lines in the second stanza.

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David Varney, the shop help, ah is he dead?
Tiresome, he’d dog your side with gibbous eyes
And purchase patter – words, but nothing said,
Squabbling the while with staff like boys at shies.
Put out by management he limped the streets
With heavy coat and hat and plastic bags;
Years passed, a pulled-down shade with scowls and bleats
He dredged recycling bins, collecting rags.
Last seen on Christmas Eve, a bitter nought
Among the glee, I heard by New Year’s Day
He’d died; who knows if he sweet ransom sought
Before that sea change from his heavy clay?

How do the unendearing find their peace,
The crank, the spiteful or the blank as snow?
That’s you, that’s me. At death, each growth, each crease
Of soul is polished like a glacier’s flow.
Cold light, a curlew’s cry are metaphors
For the Sun’s burning which expels all trash,
So that the billionth person, once in sores,
Is purified in an eternal flash.
That sear of light, made simple as a thought,
Becomes an offering to That which gives,
And David Varney, who in life was fraught,
Beyond all being, now in Being lives.

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© January 2016