Spes Unica

By way of comparison here is a link to 'Three Searching Sonnets' written in January 1983 and posted here on 2 April 2012.

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Lines 1, 5 and 9 are taken from Psalm 83 (Douay-Rheims)
 
How lovely are thy tabernacles, O Lord of hosts!
Endraped and candled, glanced by incense mist,
In pin-drop dark, That which made peaks and coasts,
Cupped, bulks with power of its Three-love tryst.

My soul longeth and fainteth for the courts of the Lord:

On flags, limb-twisted men with breaths which hissed,
Kneeling paid homage to that niche, its hoard;
Something-in-nothing leant and each one kissed.

My heart and my flesh have rejoiced in the living God,

Sipped the eternal in each moment’s plash
Fountained from that pyx of well-head food;
Pain is indecent, as is death’s sore gash,
But springs the sluices of the Lord’s rich Blood
In which at last we sink and, thankful, wash.

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© August 2015
 

The Shadow

His shadow on the frosty ground
Was stark-etched by the autumn sun
And stepped before him, morning-browned,
With old man movements, lamely done;
   With shock he saw that shadow’s lines
   Crosshatch a body much reduced.

Slope-shouldered, thin and dragging-stepped,

Lacking the bulk which once it had,
Bent-legged and stiff the shadow crept
The tarmac with a crablike pad;
   Heartstruck, he scanned those bitter signs
   Of big-stride swagger now traduced.

What purpose then had life and love,

That courtship like a sweet-toned flute,
The skelter games of tease and shove,
And mid-life prize of flesh-thick fruit;
   (Life-lazing, gorged, in shade of vines,
   He dozed in heat like one seduced)?

But now the swift cloud, blue-glazed sky,

The green-piled sea and field-rich land,
Had spewed him forth; his shadow’s cry
Was look to self, time’s leaking sand,
   And fling off living, seek out shrines
   Where truth is found, by death induced.
 

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© August 2015
 
 

The Herring Gull

   I watched a herring gull,
      A juvenile,
   Dig in the shingle pile
      At tide’s lull;
      It found a snail
   And vainly prised at it,
   That flesh in the shell’s pail
Unshifted by each shake or hit.
      Dancing-shrill,
   That gull on flung-out wings
   Rose in the salt air’s slings,
   The snail clutched in its bill,
   Then hurled it on the stones –
      I heard the “clack”;
Four times it soared in the wind’s groans
      To make attack.
      The shell split
   At last; seizing the meat,
      With a wing’s beat
   The gull veered to a spit,
   Green-weeded, running-wet,
   To gulp its prize, unmobbed
By other gulls. The wind’s fret
   Flurried, and the tide bobbed.
      That brown-flecked gull,
   Lean-young and screech of breath,
   Had parried hunger’s pull:
Daily he starves or metes out death.

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© July 2015

Each Day

Each day is a waiting for death and a dying,

A rising, a pratfall, a tantrum, a sighing,
   In moments the stretched empty hours have passed by,
And night has descended with foul words and crying.

Oh where is that youth with his life chances nighing,

In rich clothes and posings to catch the girls’ eyeing;
   The footings and glancings all sped on the fly
Till lovers were honeymooned, laughing and thighing.

Midlife was a quagmire of cold-shouldered lying,

The children resentful and sneeringly prying,
   Redundant, remortgaged, the weight of the sky
Crushed love, hope and kindness until I stopped trying.

So, old-aged and solus, my sands are fast drying

In Chastened-by-Sea where the salt mist is hieing,
   And death with sunk life at my carcass will vie
That day when my wait is cut short with a dying.

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© July 2015

 

At the Lake in July

This poem is really a metrical exercise. It is in tetrameters and in each stanza the first line is iambic, the second dactylic, the third anapaestic and the fourth trochaic.

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   The goose-strut crow with panting beak

      Parts the fawn grass in a scavenging search;
Broiling heats of July are at afternoon’s peak;
      Moorhen grub in bankside birch.

   Those crows are dancing in a clique,

      Hounding two Canada geese and their chick;
The stout chick, grey-green fluffed, with a crop-heavy squeak
      Seeks its dam’s protecting kick.

   The dragonflies like lightning streak

      Petrol-sheen blue on the lake’s dusty face;
A lame vole drags a leg through a mud-clotted creek,
      Magpies haggle, giving chase.

   The Mallard ducks by jowl and cheek

      Doze in the feather-scorched glaze of the sun;
A white-foreheaded coot on slap feet tries to sneak
      Lakewards past dogs on the run.

   Egyptian geese rich-stained like teak

      Prowl by the water on pirate-red legs;
With patched eyes and a swagger they feed as they seek,
      Prodding the lake’s heat-spoiled dregs.

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© July 2015
 

Comes A Day

Mid-sixties, on a day, my hips grew stiff,
Cleaning house locked them in a grating ache,
To be was to groan whether I stood, sat or knelt;
No matter, comes a day my bones, dry of pith,
Will stretch in the grave as the months and years flake,
Painless though eaten by mould like felt.

Already my skin had given notice of wear

With red cracking rashes and refusal to heal,
My flesh become puffy as if struck by a belt;
No matter, comes a day my skull, plucked of hair,
Will grin in the grave and my rashed skin peel
From my corpse gone twisted and hard like a welt.

And my acid-hot stomach and dust-sore eyes

Had nuisanced my days with griping and stab,
I felt like tumbleweed scorched on the veldt;
No matter, comes a day beyond gasps and cries
When I’ll house in the grave under a weed-thick slab
And my intestines and eyes will melt.

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© June 2015

Forfending Every Fable...

Forfending every fable, every fad,
Reposing on right doctrine, rightly read,
Glimpsing Godly glamour which makes men glad,
Marvellous it is that merry on mind’s milk,
Hauled heavenward by heartwork and by head,
Sainted, we see truth, superfine as silk.

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© June 2015