Sundial: a birthday poem

Sundial

Life is waiting;

It’s looking forward,

Staring into the sun,

A kind of hopeful blindness

Leading you on

Until,

At some point,

When the sun has somehow

Moved about the sky,

You find yourself looking away,

Looking backwards

Towards the better prospect,

Or looking down at that inkblot,

That personalized Rorshach test,

Your slope-shouldered gnomon

Has cast at your feet, knowing
That if you block the light
You will see the shadow,

Wondering when pareidolia

Slipped into apophenia.

And you’re waiting still,
For an eternal everywhere,
For an eternal nowhere, 

Beginning to understand 
What only too soon will come

Like a gathering cloud
To eclipse your sun.

Borrowed Light

Borrowed light

It’ll be dark soon and time to go.

Could you pass the dice,

I’d like another throw?

Oh, I understand.  Club rules:

Just the once, never twice.

Yes, you’ve got to be kind to be cruel.

Well, a present, long in the unwrapping

And the children like animals,

Not knowing then warping,

Bending with the truth of it;

The knowledge of an unsteady sentinel

Watching over an illness that is implicit,

With happiness a symptom that reckons a cost:

All too brief a candle,

All too much found then lost,

But a gift all the same;

One we bestow, simply, as a mantle

For the igniting and sheltering of our flame;

As if the heat carried a living debt,

Paid tomorrow so to honour us;

For what shines is a currency yet.

The moon has risen, the darkness at its back -

Its mountains shadows, its deserts dust,

With somewhere on its conquered land a flag.

And the moon, oh why is it so cold, so bright?

Such a false god robed in borrowed light.

Year of the Rat: a New Year poem for 2020

2020

This New Year’s Eve

brings an acuity of vision,

sharp as a bat’s echo:

the birth of a decade that

might likely see me crowned dead;

the simplicity of staring ahead

into the future,

with its simple lines,

its constructed disambiguation,

its sudden benign presence,

watching the past metastasized.

Is that the clarity I dread?

Some unstained happiness

shaken out and hung on the line,

a flailing dance in the breeze

of unhindered revision -

the words to a song

that spoke of sap

rising in a tree,

that speaks with the rasp

of leaves uncurling,

of the crisp dry leaves underfoot,

the unfurling of the hand

from around the throat?

And yet,

a last intake of breath

for a leave-taking

that no longer speaks

in wheezy Chinese whispers

but with the bitter-sweet tang

of longing and laughter,

a carousel, a carousal, a recital
of drunken midnight-death happiness

from the drunk and disorderly bards

wrestling with the squared circle,
for all joys want eternity;

not without a bang,

this New Year's song was sung. 

Listen to Zhou Long here

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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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

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