Underneath the Weeping Willow

Underneath the weeping willow
   Lover weep no more,
Only death and tax are certain,
   Love is either/or.

Yesterday’s hot shout of joy,
   Lips to lips engaged,
Will tomorrow shrink to scorn,
   Words become unpaged.

Heart-struck loss but burns the stubble,
   Lifestyle gurus hint,
Fallow land fresh shoots will throw,
   Sun on furrows glint.

Facebook page and LinkedIn profile,
   Speed dates and the like,
Soon make lovers, (or for poets,
   A workshop's "open mic").

Sexting, smutty mobile chats –
   Modern love is crass –
Capture hearts as yesteryear
   Flowers for the lass.

None are modest, none might blush,
   Words entwist like snakes,
Mirrored images we are,
   Then the mirror breaks.

Underneath the weeping willow
   Lover weep no more,
Deep as oceans, pure as air,
   Love is neither/nor.

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© September 2016

For those who prefer more contemporary images I can offer, for the penultimate stanza, the following:

None are modest, none might blush,
   Texted words are snakes,
Flat screen, one-shot stars we are,
   Then the flat screen breaks.

"There is Nothing More Louche..."

Kant and Sophocles speak for themselves. Bernard Häring was a moral theologian who advocated a personalist approach to moral situations which inevitably tended towards subjectivism and relativism (not to my taste, thank you); John Rawles' famous book 'A Theory of Justice' contained his equally famous thought experiment of the 'Veil of Ignorance.'

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There is nothing more louche than the passing of years
   – Ho! for the blood tests, the grudged faecal smears,
Then it’s drooping of flesh and thin rheumy leers,

The hospital beds, care home chairs, and then biers.

All that work-place role play and promotion in tiers
   – Ho! for the politics, the sales meeting jeers;
The marriages, maintenance and children’s hot fears
Collapsing in hatred and screeched primal sneers.

Might Kant in his wig chart a way through these meres?
   – Ho! for imperatives and love for one’s peers;
Or Häring or Rawles with two cautious cheers
Anaesthetize tragedy with a fondling of ears?

Oh, age-spare Sophocles like a mist which clears
   – Ho! for those cold-eyed ones, truth-shaken seers,
Saw grimly that men with their loves and their spears
Are flung from their feet and swept over time’s weirs.

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© August 2016