An object lesson. When writing this I was aware of the risk that it might end up too close to W.B. Yeats for comfort, but despite my best efforts that is what happened. As poets sometimes report, the writing took control and the poet followed behind. The final stanza is very Yeatsian although it says what I wanted to say. To try and introduce my own voice a little more, at revision time I wrote an alternative final two lines, given below, although to my mind they do not say as much as my original ending. Readers can choose at will!
----------------
And from the blue a Christmas card
From one unheard of these few years:
A
niece long settled with her own backyard,
A
spouse and child and all that makes for joy;
I sent a gift that those young ears
Might
perk at talk of unexpected treats,
That
busy hands might play with rapt employ
Or busy teeth devour some sweets!
What thin-hairs uncle does not pause
To offer pert advice to those
Who
daily cope? And yet there’s truth in saws:
Hence,
scorn those couples who in swoon parade
A single chick whose doge-like nose
Crumples
in squall should it due homage
lack;
Such a one will spoil nor be afraid
Years hence to
shun its parents with its back.
Households should be agog with young
Jostling at the parental knee
That
blood might bind and nuance of the tongue
Teach
fortitude and love which none can shake;
And Albion too: that it be free,
Surplus
of the young like gulls in the nest
Must
be, that spreading white-plumed wings they rake
The cliffs and
sea, in ardour dressed.
Already, passage birds in hordes
Have settled coasts, the plains and urbs,
Their
parti-coloured garbs and chattered gauds
Creating
cantons where native writ is shunned.
Their umma
of aggressive verbs,
Their
brute simplicity and gross élan,
Will cow the shires; outbred and dunned
All
will tug forelock to the musselman.
So, laud those ancient ways and means
Which island-wide cohered a state:
Cathedral
bells which catechized rough thegns,
Parley
of men and monarch, binding shires,
Later, the factories in spate,
That
liberty and common law hold sway;
Career-entwined
or sib at household fires
Be blessed, for what you wish you may.
Disdain, though, gender politics
Which, glib,
would cauterize your womb;
For
Sapphism is sterile, like dust in attics,
Whilst
between the sexes there’s a rich cohesion –
She with her grit and mother’s bloom,
He
the provider, beating bounds at night,
Children the fruit: balk with unreason
And
all’s a garden blanched with lust and spite.
Like well-fed seedlings, soon your child
A bright-haired, fresh-face girl must grow.
Harsh
winds will knock her; sheikhs by hajj
beguiled
Will
thrust hijabs that a pious fate be
hers.
Give thanks that Albion’s blood shall flow
Through
her; time-ripened, fitly-wed, may she
Bear
sons who soil and history rehearse
And saints, warriors or statesmen be.
====================
©
February 2015
Alternative ending:
Bear sons who soil and memory rehearse
That they our history may be.
