Day: August 21, 2016

The fruit

Ah,did you throw away the  ripened fruit
Because inside it hid a hardened stone?
As anything not total does not suit
Love’s ambivalence seems to you a crime

Don’t throw away my love when I  offend
For I am human too and lose my sense
As tension makes it difficult to bend
And sometimes even love is too intense.

Rather , see how much love there still may be
And balance that against my human faults
Instead ,one mark ,one sin  one thought unfree
Weighs more than years of love ,binds me in guilt.

As panic  will grow less when we just wait
In such a way , real love can contain hate

 DURHAM  OWL 

 Short-eared Durham owl

meditating over the dale’s edge,
shadows the fields and folds
in elegant diurnal flight.
On windside, careful sight,
may swoop to prey, and away.

Your yellow broad-eyed look,
at once both sharp and distant,
holds me.
oh, silence,
oh, wind on green,
oh, earth,
sky.
immense your held vision,
sphere without centre,
pied geometer of flight,
sketch your descent and ascent.
Trees bunched by dry stone wall
call heart home

The heart of God

The universe may be the heart of God
And this  natural world  is  where he left his soul
Where good and evil fight and love is bred

 
By our perceptions we are slowly led
To  see   through light and so become more whole
The universe may be the heart of God

And yet some say he rules us with his rod
When  others in his love he does enfold
While good and evil fight and love is bred

Sometimes  alas  we feel that  God has fled
And shrink  our hearts   as   we feel  deathly cold
The universe may be the heart of God

He shows himself in signs and what he said
As in the sky his  sonorous thunder rolls
Yet good and evil fight and love is bred

To the mountain, were not the prophets led?
Till in their minds the  words  made up a thread
The universe may be the heart of God
Where good and evil fight and love is bred

Apple wood

I have a piece of  apple wood
I have my whittling knife.
I want to make a gift for you,
The best gift of your life.
Apple wood is sweet and sound
The tree grew here by me.
I chose the best part I could find
For the virtue of the tree.

 

 

Apple wood is a rare gift
We must make something whole,
For if you touch my apple wood
You can feel its soul.

 

The sweetness of the fruit of love
Is there within the wood.
So all who touch the apple here
Will be moved to good.

 

What knowledge did the tree conceal
That Eden was destroyed?
Was this a good metaphor?
Should it have been employed?

 

Sweet apples fall at random now
As autumn time has come.
And many Newton’s, all unknown,
Shall learn from every one.

Mary tidies up

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Mary was in her bedroom which once had been a study.There were books every where all randomly arranged
Shall I toss away “Functional Analysis “by Riesz-Nagy?I can’t remember it but it’s a classic text.She looked at  her other books  and found three rhyming dictionaries…. and Strunk’s guide to style.
Is American style the same as English ? she asked herself.I’d better read that.
When she opened her desk drawers hoping to find a ring she had lost she was thunderstruck by how dirty the  white bases were.She sat there on her folding chair musing on this and wondering about Purity and Danger by Mary Douglas.
A  whole jar of nail scissors and pens stood ,previously unnoticed, by the window.So that’s where they went,Mary  thought.Things seem to appear and disappear disconcertingly at random.Perhaps she had never achieved what is called object constancy by Freudians  which must not be confused with objecting to constancy.That is something quite different. that  some men like to do
Mary had some clear polythene bags by her and Emile watched as he hid inside the open wardrobe under Mary’s dresses and cardigans.She found some shoes under her desk so put then into a green bag; the socks she collected in a white one and the pens and art stuff went into a box.
What chaos there was in the room with face cream and books on the bed and  boxes of tissues and cotton wool balls strewn about.
Emile came out of the wardrobe stretching and yawning as only  tom cats cam
Shall I ring 999 , you look tired, he said mellifluously.
Oh,how  kind, she  responded politely in her   delightful way
Soon Dave the transvestite paramedic appeared wearing a maxidress from Marks and Spencers’
Does that need ironing,~Mary asked him
No, it drip dries really well, he answered  gracefully
I wonder if I should buy one,she muttered cautiously
If you go to your GP you might find you can get one on prescription
Do you think so? I’ve never heard of that before,she responded
Well, you could say it will cure your depression and grief from losing your dear old man
He will say that no double blind experiments have been done to prove dresses help women to feel better. when bereaved she told Dave cautiously
How about a double bind operation,Dave asked scientifically
What do you mean? Mary said philosophically
We tie ourselves together with string and then kiss and  hug and see how it goes… one never knows when old
Well I don’t see why we  need string.Someone might think we are a parcel and post us to China or even North Korea.
How about Israel?
Why do you  think we’d end up there?
They have some  great museums.And we could Wail at the Wall.
I could do with a good Wail,Mary replied as tears ran down her pink and cream  cheeks.But I am unsure if one wails there out of grief or is it something more? Like sorrow about the Temple being destroyed.Why do they not get over it?
Well it’s rather like England and the Tudors… all those films and books as if Henry 8 th deserved such  fame for ever
I’d prefer the Temple to him, said Mary fastidiously.That was a place of worship and beauty
I’d love to see the Temple.If only we could go back in time,Dave informed her.But the main point is Mary I love you so I must leave your bedroom before I die of repressed  desire  and lack of your tender touch
I am sorry Dave,I never knew you felt that way about me,Mary told him .Perhaps we should go to the kitchen and make some nice hot tea.And I just bought some biscuits from Marks and Spencers which are much better than any others I’ve had
So they sat at the pine table drinking Ceylon tea and eating custard creams as they watched the sun through the Acer next  door.Why the neighbours had a laptop hanging from a tree nobody knew.Was it to  make themselves seem superior?Was it going to be connected to the electricity so it would be  like a Xmas decoration?Time will tell.Or it ,ay fall off and kill some slugs and snails… isn’t life interesting

The eyes are the windows of the soul


The first example is that another person whom we get to know can be a window to a different world.For this to function we have to realise that we are all different and we are all of Even within one culture big differences are there between one person and another.
And in London where I live we have people from hundreds of other countries and we British ourselves are multicultural.Some people find this frightening and our ancestors probably only met people from their own village.
But looked at another way,seeing how a friend from another culture views his/her world is enlightening even if only to give a new perspective on our own culture which we may be unaware of.We may see life from a new perspective.These metaphors from Art are very useful.The artist must see as well as  possible and in different ways.So in that sense Art is important not just for pleasure but for living a reasonable life
We may in a metaphorical sense look through this friend’s eyes and see a new world.
Or we may scoff and say how silly and that our culture and our own self are the only ones  of value.
Or we may wander on,not really  looking  so not seeing and so miss many chances of enlightenment
And enlightenment is the best that a new window can offer us.How full of metaphors our languages are.How poetic.