Then and Now

The final stanza makes an obvious nod to Tennyson's mighty poem, 'Ulysses' - " 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world,/ Push off, and sitting well in order smite/ The sounding furrows..."

   Other poems about Penzance - the granite jewel of the west! - are 'A Penzance Ballad' posted on 2 March 2015 (link here), 'A Wild Penzance Night' posted on 11 June 2018 (link here), and 'John Davidson and I' posted on 23 September 2021 (link here).

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   Long years ago on Sunday afternoons
   I’d see an old-time fellow taking air,
      Limping the chill and granite streets
   Of old Penzance, a small and short-legged dog
Wrapped in a body blanket shuffling at his heels;
      His loves and any workplace feats
Now past, his look said life was cold, his days repeats.

   Young and in health, I barely spared him thought;
   Stiffly he walked a course from Penare Terrace,
      Down Barwis Hill to Caldwells Road,
   And then, who knows? Years later now, enraged
To find myself an old-time fellow taking air,
      I walk with pains from Caldwells Road,
Up Barwis Hill to Penare Terrace, pant and slowed,

   (Claiming no dog) on Sunday afternoons,
   Saddened my life is cold, my days repeats.
      These January days there’s few
   To stroll and all seem blatant in their youth –
Loose-dressed, hot-skinned, fluent of step and frank in knowing
      Their tide’s in flood; a glance or two
They spare then, mind-blanked, pass to what they have to do.

   Thereby they prove the truth: those things you did
   To others will be done to you. So be it.
      That man must long be in his grave,
   Perhaps the crowded ground on Madron Road
(Its pets yard burying his dog if death called first);
      How long then shall I spurn his wave,
Being past all loves and works, the shortlived joys they gave?

   From Penare Terrace, blocked between the houses,
   Downhill, the distant sea is grey; it’s waiting
      The west wind’s arbitrary slap;
   But I, Ulysses of the drab, will seek
No final jaunt, my boat’s oars chasing the full moon;
      For me mere housework, then a nap,
And last, coffined at Madron Road, the earth my cap.

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© February 2020

"I Feel it Deeply..."

Other very short poems of a similar sort are 'A Siren Calling in the Night,' written in December 1980 and posted here on 12 December 2012; 'July Days,' written July 1980, posted here on 14 July 2012, and 'Who Can Interpret a Broken Branch,' written in March 1980 and posted here on 6 February 2013.

   Turning 74 later this year, and beginning to feel the aches and woes of age, I marvel at the likes of Thomas Hardy who made it to 88, and even more remarkably Thomas Hobbes who made it to 91 back in the seventeenth century: both of them without any serious aid from medical science. I'm not aware I've written anything on Hardy but here's a link to 'Thomas Hobbes' written in June 1980 and posted on 9 August 2012.

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I feel it deeply and it hurts to say
That the hard-nosed Bible must have its way:
   At seventy we pass a border,
   And after that all’s out of order.

Cling on to eighty if your body can,
Pretending you’re whole as when you first began:
   But then the Gate Man crooks a finger,
   And none may any longer linger.

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© January 2020