A Separation

My love, each year the marigolds decline,
Lapsing in splendour to a spent, brown show;
And winter, swilled in the mouth like mouldy wine,
Grows busy with its ice-bound status quo.

Yet heedless of the sopping, choking soil

Come Spring the heavy-shouldered seedlings stir –
Jazz up the garden like jam on the boil,
Singing in orange like a mad, punk choir.

My dear, my dear, should you go, should you go,

What will be left me but the blackbird’s scream;
The marigolds smashed down by one cruel blow,
And dusk like anarchy along the lawns
Where some chill figure wanders with a dream
In the long, lasting, wasting day and mourns?

====================

© August 1983

All For A Place

I an old man stare into the fire –
It is laughing at itself with phoenix-flames.
When I was young I stirred things up,
Sizzling the waters into a gusty
Plume of steam, strong and mindful in the strong-willed air;
            All for a place under the willow tree.

In the heart of fire is heart of light,

Unknowable, like the hot flash of water
On a summer’s day. The air would nuzzle me
And conspire with my thoughts, a sleepy accomplice;
I held my life in the cup of my hand;
            All for a place under the willow tree.

A log slips and cinders crawl like souls...

My love (that was the great prize)
Has gone. I cannot remember when. A fire
Is within me, it burns my paltry hand.
Outside, the wind is full of back-talk, it sneers;
            All for a place under the willow tree.

The fire has fallen. I take a stick

And stir the ashes of analysis. A lonely man
In a cottage of stone, I sit with a milky
Cup of tea. This knowledge has shrunk the muscle
Of my heart. Could I fall on my knees and blow in the grate?
            All for a place under the willow tree.

 ====================

© September 1978

Emmaus

(The Moon and the Sun)

The moon rose like silver in the sky,

The Plough swung slowly with the slowness of time,
The garden burned with St. Elmo’s fire
And the apple trees rustled in the night wind.
He is like the fruit. He is like the moon.

            The moon sank before dawn.

            In that chill annihilation
            My mind crumbled to pieces,
            Almost would not bother,
            Returned to the friable, dew-damp soil.

The sun rose like a lion in the sky,

And all day long considered the world.
The garden pool glimmered with gold,
Its imperious glitter tore the flesh from my heart.
He is like the light. He is like the sun.

====================

© October 1979

The Explorers

Tell me now the scud is flying,
Now the trees are bent in pain,
Is there any point in dying?
Is there meaning in the rain?

We who stumble on the mountain,

Climbing through a darkened wood,
Search to find the hidden fountain
Singing gaily of the good.

In the trees on either side

Laughing creatures glibly call:
“Nothing, nothing,” something cried,
“Nothing, never, not at all.”

Distant on a troubled plain

Many people go their way;
“Nothing,” comes the voice again,
“Leave us,” other people say.

On the snowline stop and pause,

Think of what we leave behind:
Feather beds and human laws,
Braggarts talking to the blind.

Turn your face to where the sky

Leaps out of the snow and rock;
Abstract concepts rushing by
Denounce the hands upon the clock.

Somewhere after many miles,

Where the fountain washes sand,
Hides the valley of the smiles,
Simple as a waving hand.

Search on fellow to the end,

Quests like this are never done;
Freezing hail must be our friend,
Hope, the hidden, paltry sun.

====================

© July 1980

On the Death-Mask of Samuel Johnson

Silent in the toils of death
Sweet pugnacious Johnson lies,
No disturbance of a breath
Mars the thinking in his eyes.
Hard at work and hard at thought
Somewhere he makes headway with
Problems how a soul should live –
Once the teacher, now the taught.

Through the window in the street

Sooty sparrows feed and fight,
Citizens on business meet
To gull each other day and night.
Johnson and his commonsense,
Treating with the tragic muse,
Goes unnoticed by the queues
Wailing for their rightful pence.

Forms decay and mobs go out

Roaring that the streets are theirs,
Protest stumbles into rout,
Looters grab their fairer shares.
Ugly prophets, lithe of voice,
Put their callous point of view:
“Beat your neighbour – when you do
Make it plain you had no choice.”

Yet for all this public noise

Nothing is so altered that
Miseries give way to joys:
Every beggar has his hat,
Every child a bite of food,
But before a cheer can rise
Someone finds with angry cries
A violation of the good.

Johnson, Savage and the rest,

Walking London streets at night,
Talked till dawn about the best,
Argued Tory points of right;
Wary of what pundits bring
They agreed to drink a toast
When they might afford the cost,
“Gentlemen, God bless the King!”

From this death-mask learn who can

What it is to cleave to sense,
What it is to trust in man
Always in the present tense.
Underneath the soul there lies,
Sudden as a gloomy pit,
Chaos where no lamps are lit
And Deviation ever cries.

There the lost are self-condemned,

Driven on their violent way,
On a journey without end
From the simple light of day;
They who with their Judas’ pence
Rattling in their cartridge case
Jeered at Reason to its face
And scorned to kick the stone of Sense.

Teach me, Johnson, that I might,

Standing in the market square,
Shun the false alarms of night
And the gibes of people there;
Go bareheaded to the truth
Whilst the storms of daily news
Harden into misplaced views,
Unafraid to ask for proof.

====================

© June 1981

"Outside, a Blunt Wind Shatters..."

I was puzzled by this sonnet until analysis revealed what I had forgotten - it is written in syllabics.

-----------

Outside, a blunt wind shatters the September
Garden. Generals in a forest clearing
Shake hands on a truce, agree to dismember
A province. Bribed and fed, their troops start cheering.

Pulling the curtains on such loud-mouthed weather

A Head of Department must once have settled
To his work, sampling speeches bound in leather,
The province rich, the borders firm, roads metalled.

The world decays. What purpose now the marbled

Halls, booming with the counter-claims of lawyers?
Men are slaughtered; mercenaries in garbled
Lingo chatter at the killing like voyeurs.

And what is left of joy but lovers vainly

Flesh to flesh, hot in their love-clasp, ungainly?

====================

© September 1983

"Descartes at Dinner Darkly Said"

Descartes at dinner darkly said,
“The pain that rattles in my head
Has turned the ages out of bed.
   I think, therefore I am.”

And Berkeley in his study thought,

“God does not sleep and was not taught,
Without His Being all is nought.
   He thinks, therefore we are.”

But Russell raised a sudden hand

And said, “You do not understand,
A person is as driven sand.
   There are, I fear, just thoughts.”

Spinoza smiled a secret smile

And scanned the heavens mile by mile;
The starlight walked upon the Nile
   And lit the ancient courts.

------

Addenda

Descartes ignored the social round

And kept his ear upon the ground
To listen for the slightest sound
   And what it might unfold.

God sat on high and put a hand

Upon the tiny pineal gland;
He did not really understand
   But did as He was told.

The ancient systems fell away

And Galen had no more to say,
Poor Paracelsus left the fray
   And could not be consoled.

Now from my window all I see

Is mechanicians nervously
Rush to and fro like men set free:
   They shiver in the cold.

------

When Berkeley voyaged to the West

He doubted that Descartes knew best,
Instead he thought the world was blessed –
   The object of God’s thought.

The stones which threatened to depart,

And all the sticks which lay apart,
Now braced themselves for a new start –
   A vehicle for the ‘ought’.

Indeed, each time he closed his eyes

He did so trusting that the skies
Would not become a pack of lies
   And set the world at nought.

George Berkeley on his deathbed lay

And used his final strength to pray
That soon the night might yield to day
   And show the God he sought.

------

Lord Russell settled down to tea

To mix again agreeably
His sex-life and philosophy –
   The thesis and the bun.

The atoms that composed this lord

Grew restless and extremely bored
If by the time his tea was poured
   The talk had not begun.

He pointed out that none can say

Just why it is that night and day
Should alternate in such a way
   One by one by one.

But Russell on the North Wales coast

Inclined to pocket every boast
And understand what man needs most
   Beneath the setting sun.

------

Spinoza ground his lenses for

The pittance due to all the poor,
And loved God truly all the more
   No matter what might chance.

He honed his self-taught intellect

On metaphysics’ dialect
And made a Dutchman’s analect
   To answer that of France.

He thought this massive, starry frame –

A process which remains the same –
Worthy to be addressed by name,
   The apple of his glance.

And in the interstellar deep,

Where quarks are quick and do not keep,
The light years and the quasars leap
   In self-expressive dance.

====================

© February 1980