Poetry and plagues; A Ring a Ring o' Roses ...

The Bus Driver (or the virus bred)

The bus driver drives the bus

round and around his route.

He stops at every stop,

even at request stops,

where he stops without request,

opens the doors, closes the doors,

moves on,

round and around his route;

eight hours a day,

each day, every day

round and around his route.

And no one gets on

and no one gets off.

At lunchtime

he takes a break,

he takes a breather,

carefully unwraps

the foil-wrapped sandwich

his wife has prepared and wrapped

with care: the thin sausage slices

between thin slices

of homemade bread -

ah, the simple pleasures;

and he stares out the front window

of his empty bus,

at the empty streets,

chewing slowly,

chewing it over.

He likes his job:

The routine,

the familiarity of the route,

of the people he sees - they chew the fat,

pass the time of day;

and each day just that bit different,

but reassuringly the same.

And there’s the pension:

Something to look forward to.

At the end of his shift,

he parks up at the terminal,

and he gets off and he goes home,

walking down the empty streets,

past the closed school,

the deserted square,

the shuttered houses,

the blinkered offices,

the idle factories,

the unopened shops,

the forsaken restaurant,

the unpeopled bus stops,

the locked church

(though every day is a Sunday now)

enjoying the unseasonable sun,

the unexpected peace and quiet,

unexamined and knowing nothing,

just being, unessential,

he breathes the air,

just thinking of his dinner –

it’s come to that.

At home,

he kisses his wife,

kisses his kids.

They eat a frugal supper;

he passes the salt,

passes the bread ...

they share a glass of wine.

He says his prayers.

He says goodnight.

He dreams:

There is no air in his bus,

not even enough to scream;

and he is no longer the bus driver,

he’s only a passenger,

the lone passenger,

looking out of the back window

as the bus moves forwards,

and everyone is waving

as he goes round and around the route,

up the hill and down the hill,

to and fro, back and forth,

and everyone is waving

as he goes around, comes around

endlessly 

A comment?

Looking backwards, a poem, a rant

Rant

Hindsight is a curse, heaping its miserable

I-told-you-so crumbs onto the empty platter:

The dry leftovers of an apocryphal life –

An inedible and an immoveable feast,

Beyond the cutlery of invective and prayer.

And what we now know?  The leg irons

Of a slaver’s ship that rub raw at the present;

The back-breaking day after day taking us nowhere

But to the future, with its inevitable failure -

A foresight so cheap it beggars belief.

And what god is this to listen to

Such puling disaffection? Cloth-eared

And cloth-capped, relentlessly pushing his bike

Up the hill so we can freewheel it back

Down into the valley of shadows, jeering.

What a broken toy it is to toy with us so:

The not knowing, then knowing; and how

You have to pass it on, this hand-me down

Life, this second-hand go!  It’s all torn 

And holed! 

                    Yet, it will smother your beauty.

Forgive me,

                      forgive me,

                                           forgive me.    

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A poem on Loss and Grief

Grief

His palette holds mostly black now,

With shades of grey

On the periphery;

The taste of dust in his mouth.

He sits quietly before a canvas

Bereft of colour,

It’s whiteness sour.

His eyes are marked with ash.

His memory silently denies him;

Belief peters out.

The candle gutters;

She was his blue red yellow flame.

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For other poetry blogs click here

Here, here, a music inspired poem

Here

It’s just past midnight

And the dogs are barking,

Tethered and caged.

I stop writing to listen.

One sets off a chain,

An antiphonal chorus,

The same doggy message

Of desire and disappointment

Reaching across Europe,

Skipping the chill waves

To fetch up on the frigid

Shores of England, then

Disappearing inland.

I can hear a train.

It churns the dark sky,

Roiling the turbid clouds,

Like soup simmering

And then boiling over;

Its rhythm clamouring,

The noise thick in the air

Like a smell - cloying,

Greasy with hope,

Mechanical yet animal

In flavour.

I stop writing to listen,

My pen hovering …

It’s passing through,

People travelling

To ticketed destinations,

To faraway places.

On the radio,

The Szymanowski Quartet

Is building up momentum too,

In Elena Kats-Cherin’s For Rosa.

I close my eyes and swoon,

Carried along,

Swept downstream

By lullaby and dream,

Crossing borders, continents,

And cultures … until

The final soft braking of a violin

Brings us to a halt … a full stop

Here.

I first heard this piece on the BBC World Service, played by the Szymanowski Quartet.  However, I couldn't find their rendition on the internet, nor, when I contacted their website, could they provide me with a link.  You'll notice the title has changed, but it's essentially the same song, a lovely piece.


Click to listen


Click to read

You can comment here

There, there Dvořák's New World Symphony, a poem

Epiphany

On the radio, where music has been unspooling uselessly,

I recognize the pan of Dvořák’s camera across the galaxy,

Its slow zoom onto something small – it could be me.

Pushing aside the insidious connection with the Hovis advertisement

(brown bread – dead), I soar; largo: a slow, broad, dignified treatment.

There’s an elsewhere here too: Bieszczady, a prickling sentiment.

Under a night’s vast sky, the crouched, looming mass of trees

huddled; shuffling together around the lake, brought to their knees,

They whispered dark prayers, a confessional sifting of leaves.

I am old technology and my tape player whirred and stuttered

The New World Symphony, from the Proms; a candle guttered

With the breeze rising up from the shore, a promise uttered

In an inflated currency.  The wooden cabin creaked like a ship

And I gripped the handrail of the veranda, leaning against the tip

Of sky and sea, of stars and planets, feeling suddenly adrift

High above the lake, with its glittering slick of moonlight;

The music sublime.  Then there are those moments, those slight

Pauses: the meaning is in the waiting: a sudden grasp, then the slide …

I picked up my bottle and followed a path to the lake side,

Stumbling through the trees and over roots - the pauses held

Inside.  I sat on a rock close to the water’s edge, still thrilled

By the light of Armstrong’s moon, its near reflection broken into timid

Splinters, trembling just beneath the surface, the water brimming

At my feet, somniloquent and restive.  I heard the doleful lowing

Of a distant cow, the closer engine hum of a frogs’ chorus revving

In the autumnal air (though still August), the gulp of a fish surfacing.

I listened to the dark radio of the lake with its glowing

Points of stations broadcasting tinny music and frail human voices,

Snatches of songs, laughter, across its caliginous breadth, noises

Keeping loneliness at bay; still I held on tightly to the pauses:

Wide open spaces big enough to begin a whole world, a whole new world,

Yet small enough to live in, to be a part of.  In the beginning was the word …       

If I could hear it … but the pauses lengthened, became silence, emptiness, a void.

Suddenly filled with it - weightlessness: a transparency holding light.  “Here I am!”

Nothing but the echo of my voice travelling towards me, away, across space and time,

The trees lifting their heads, wringing their hands at the soft urging of the water’s solipsism.

It was a conundrum, an anagram.  In answer, a dog barked backwards across the lake.

A dog in the manger!  A dog’s dinner!  I hurled my empty bottle into the black

Water and clambered back up the hill to open another: I had a thirst to slake.

So a memory is fashioned to furnish a life, to adorn its dark corners: a threadbare

Sentimentality that makes it feel lived in, like home.  And to know now that it’s not where

Or when or if or how; and there’s no what or why to release a breath held – a pause –

In a life’s prayer:  No elsewhere, but here.

Click on the link to listen to the second movement of New World Symphony:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHyN3izk38c

Silence ... pauses ... comment?

downhill. Manuel De Falla and a poem

Jota (from Manuel de Falla’s Suite populaire espagnole)

A

dance

perhaps

a dream

so as the

music builds

begins to reel

I lift my feet from

the pedals and freewheel

down winding roads down

steepening hills through verdant

English country lanes hedge and field

farm and village my vision blurred with

speed eyes tearing yellows and greens smeared

the scenery tumbling the ripped flags rags of colour

flapping happiness escaping like bubbles streaming

from my smile-stretched mouth a flood of unbearable

joy racing though my blood bitter-sweet as a memory apocryphal

the road levels the music slows drifts fades stops silence for a moment coasting the earth

turning under my feet the clouds gliding over my head and I am still drawn forward by this

unrelenting backward movement this undertow and I cannot turn back there’s no second ride I

brake                                                                                                                                   awake.  



Click on link to listen to Jota
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26JWcuIBB5M


Thank you for reading.I would very much welcome some comments.

NB The visual effect of this poem is better seen on a computer rather than a phone.

Science and poetry, the importance of being Ernest

Stamp collecting or the importance of being Ernest

A flock of pigeons, homing pigeons, in a blue sky,

Dance across my vision - like the shoals of floaters,

The smudges, that flicker and swim on my corneas,

Locked to the movement of my eyes – swish and sigh.

In the midst of the city, released from a jerry-built loft,

Amongst the urban sprawl, a sign switched on and off

That turns black to white, pepper to salt, they climb.

Catching the sun, they shimmer and shine – sublime.

Their flight seems coded, as rigid as semaphore;

Its significance invisibly sewn into the atmosphere.

They cut sharp angles with sudden turns; they loop

And swoop, shifting shapes, like a kaleidoscope. 

The formation stretches and contracts and each bird

Keeps its place; each one a cog in the machine,

A ghost; a haunting presence on the astral plane.

They careen overhead, a soft susurration heard

As urgent as any scientist’s prayer, or laugh.

They swarm; they glide; they build the very air -

At once here there everywhere nowhere;

Now out of sight.  What position? What path?

A quantum leap brings them back into orbit,

Pulls them back to a central point from which

A new arrangement of moves begins, each

One an infinitesimal big bang, an atom split,

A universe expanding … and for this moment,

A singular moment, I am the nucleus – potent,

Omniscient … but here comes the crunch;

The birds go to roost and what is left is a hunch

That the meaning is not in the message but

In the very idea that there is a message, that

The cat’s out of the bag but locked in a box.

So were still stuck with faith – it’s all just a hoax.

Click here for Ernest Rutherford

Click here to read about Schrodinger's cat