Nativity

The days before Christmas
Were listless and damp;
For us foragers
Outside the camp

The woods were wet,
The trappings few;
Half-hearted hunters,
We each one knew

That in camp the king
Spent his days in plots,
The soldiery squabbled,
The women burned pots;

And pointless abandon
Like mist on the downs
Fuddled men’s minds
To next-day frowns.

The priests ignored
In their leaking tent
Prepared for a birth
Unsure what it meant.

In the distance the sea
Rocked the boats it bore:
An army was planting
Black flags on the shore.

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© December 2015

Intellectuals

Intellectual? Take your club
And that your principles cohere
Beat all about you, grown and child,
Until your brave new world appear.
        Make no bones.

Perhaps your donnée’s so profond
That even French penseurs are glazed,
No matter, praxis remakes fact
And whole societies are razed.
        Make no bones.

And not a stone is left unturned:
That one percent minorities –
Men in ballgowns! – should glide on top
All must attend reformatories.
        Make no bones.

But there’s a caravanserai
Lumbering through the city square
With black-print book and desert cries
Will throttle all the thinkers there.
        Make no bones.

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© December 2015

Magnolia Tree: November

The common rhyme in line 5 of each stanza binds the stanzas together, I hope.

   I wrote a previous poem about this magnificent magnolia tree in April 2015, posted here on 2 September 2019. Here's a link.

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   In mild November’s balmy air,
   The morning sun an orange flare,
I saw that tree and shrub had dropped their leaves
And bare and bony starkly stood resigned
   Waiting for winter’s rattling blast,
Except a squat magnolia tree, reclined
Against a fence, which like a field in sheaves
   Was stooked with buds as if harvest done
   And not the great fast scarce begun.

   Those buds, a finger-joint in length,
   And bulky in their dog’s-tooth strength,
Like sandstone votives thick upon a shrine,
Olive-yellowed and statements of intent,
   Crouched braced for what the snows might cast,
For set so soon, three months of frost and vent
Would smother them before, a breaching mine,
   Vesuvius-like they’d incandesce
   And spring and lust in flowers confess.

   But what of us in thin-boned age
   Who heart and rasping lungs assuage,
With time, loose-endedly, to mark this tree,
Will we escape the granite months’ compress,
   Come spring to glow like meadows grassed,
Or like the balding tree’s last brittle tress
Of leaves, will we in wizened agony
   Fall to the roots to rot in wet
   That these great buds bright blooms beget?

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© December 2015

"Oh Dear, Oh Dear"

A child in woe outside a shop,

Where was safety, where was love,

At home with her mother’s offhand flop

Or here with her father’s guiding shove?

   The pavement seemed to shake; she cried,

   “Oh dear, oh dear.”

Her mother in spasmodic throes

Found time for her, but preferred to sleep;

Her father, following his nose,

Did much, but thought himself too deep.

   The pavement seemed to sink; she cried,

   “Oh dear, oh dear.”

Children need little, a bite to eat,

Some rags of clothes, a toy or two;

But those who sit in the mercy seat

Should act as if they think it true.

   The pavement seemed to shiver; she cried,

   “Oh dear, oh dear.”

Children are tough and soon grow to the full,

But do they forgive, will they forget?

There’s one who was tugged as unballed wool;

Her parents now crones, will she void their debt?

   The pavement seemed to shatter; she cried,

   “Oh dear, oh dear.”

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© December 2015

Three Girls

Mária is pronounced with the accent on the first syllable. This sequence began as just the single poem "A Sea Shell." The actual sequence of "relationships," should anyone try and work out the chronology, is "Friendship," "The Smash Up" and "A Sea Shell." Not a glorious life achievement admittedly.

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1. A Sea Shell: Mária

Plucked thoughtfully from her hoard of shells

This glowing whelk shell, cream and whorled,

A gift from little Mária,

Displayed by me on shelves

Though years have tolled,

Insists that now she’s grown,

Forgetful of her one-time gesture,

She’s gone to make her life her own.

So end such friendships, time takes all;

Lovers depart and take their young;

That sea shell had a rock-struck flaw:

Old Adam’s taint, that quail

Of lust, more fun

Than love but cold as rain;

Her mother fled, I never saw

Sweet eight-years Mária again.

She picked her shells on Penzance beach,

Lightly dodging the grey-mood waves,

But oh her child’s-truth plaint, “I won’t

Be seeing you so that’s

My gift;” such troves

Of pathos, harsh like salt;

And now, these twelve years gone, that hurt

Still stings, that memory, that fault.

All Passes

All passes, nothing can stay,

Time floods each stone in the way.

Live for decades, live a day,

All passes, nothing can stay.

Childhood illness, teenage fray,

Time floods each stone in the way.

Women and fame, making hay,

All passes, nothing can stay.

Great achievements, mind’s full sway,

Time floods each stone in the way.

Limping body, hair gone grey,

All passes, nothing can stay.

Rain-drenched grave, and none to pray,

Time floods each stone in the way.

Galaxies fail, space is clay,

All passes nothing can stay,

Time floods each stone in the way.

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© November 2015

A Pint of Bitter

Barman, draw a pint of ale:
The engine flings a stir of foam
Like milk into the herdsman’s pail,
Yeast-scented, rich as fruitful loam;
The beer, malt-brown or porter-black,
Creeps up the glass and undersits
That busy head, all white and smack,
Frothing with strength like a man in wits.
As more is pumped, it shoves the head
Inch by inch to the glass’s top;
Its first-froth done, its body shed,
That cream thins out to suds and sop.
The beer keeps flowing, pull on pull,
The skim laps at the glass’s lip;
Forced over once the glass is full,
It tumbles in a weeping drip.
Helpless, those shattered shreds let go
The glass they once were lively in,
And fall to slops like melting snow,
Dishonoured in the spillage tin.
Only stray strings of froth now drift
That brown-hued pint of bitter beer;
Expelled by growth, its fate was swift:
He who has ears to hear should hear.

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© November 2015