He is often thought of now as the epitome of a bad failed poet but he was no such thing. I was greatly delighted years ago to discover his ballads and lyrics which are the work of a very skilled writer. Perhaps his later epics are more of an acquired taste.
-------------------
So, John Davidson, it’s you and I,
Failing, disabused and ill,
Grey, in tatters like the April sky,
Rarely joyful, always chill.
Mounts Bay rackets with a full spring tide
Leaping in the spray-wet air,
Beached, the grey-blanched stones are soaked then dried,
Fissured by their salt-sharp wear.
Life and love in ballast drove me west,
Here to wallow like a wreck,
Rather, money’s pinch and critics’ jest
Forced you to this wind-struck beck:
Wayward tracks like ropes of circumstance
Bundling travellers to their knees;
Cowed at meaning’s threshold, chance on chance,
Each was robbed of all self-ease;
Worse for you, possessing self in power,
Who like Nietzsche, tensed in thought,
Bloomed in corners like a thistle flower
Starved of that acclaim you sought.
Matter, sole in being, tricked out man,
Death, you thought, was thus release;
I, in quanta, mind, a theophan,
Reason found, and not caprice.
Soul-sore, evening dark, you quit the “Star,”
Whisky-vigoured for the prom,
Full tide set the thrashing waves to war,
Screaming, they became your tomb.
Months were shriven; your body found horizoned,
Sunk was given rest; that mesh
Strung of bones and cloth, gone melt and wizened,
Mocked your creed with stinking flesh.
I, like you, in solitary end
Longed to quiz the brute-faced waves;
Carnal trust, though bodies age and bend,
Paused me, whilst the world behaves.
But at last, past death’s breath-frantic sweat,
Being’s time-shed Present will
Knowledge proffer and its bliss abet,
Stifling sorrow’s broil to nil.
====================
© June 2016
-------------------
So, John Davidson, it’s you and I,
Failing, disabused and ill,
Grey, in tatters like the April sky,
Rarely joyful, always chill.
Mounts Bay rackets with a full spring tide
Leaping in the spray-wet air,
Beached, the grey-blanched stones are soaked then dried,
Fissured by their salt-sharp wear.
Life and love in ballast drove me west,
Here to wallow like a wreck,
Rather, money’s pinch and critics’ jest
Forced you to this wind-struck beck:
Wayward tracks like ropes of circumstance
Bundling travellers to their knees;
Cowed at meaning’s threshold, chance on chance,
Each was robbed of all self-ease;
Worse for you, possessing self in power,
Who like Nietzsche, tensed in thought,
Bloomed in corners like a thistle flower
Starved of that acclaim you sought.
Matter, sole in being, tricked out man,
Death, you thought, was thus release;
I, in quanta, mind, a theophan,
Reason found, and not caprice.
Soul-sore, evening dark, you quit the “Star,”
Whisky-vigoured for the prom,
Full tide set the thrashing waves to war,
Screaming, they became your tomb.
Months were shriven; your body found horizoned,
Sunk was given rest; that mesh
Strung of bones and cloth, gone melt and wizened,
Mocked your creed with stinking flesh.
I, like you, in solitary end
Longed to quiz the brute-faced waves;
Carnal trust, though bodies age and bend,
Paused me, whilst the world behaves.
But at last, past death’s breath-frantic sweat,
Being’s time-shed Present will
Knowledge proffer and its bliss abet,
Stifling sorrow’s broil to nil.
====================
© June 2016
