So much depends on mood and time of day

We interpret or mis-shape what we perceive.

The sun may shine to show a better way

Or absent that,a transient cloud deceive.

 

No lowing herds wind down our oil fumed  roads.

Tranquillity at dusk has disappeared.

With artificial light the daytime mode’s

 Prolonged and reverie’s  most feared.

 

To   truly live,we must be incarnate. 

God himself has paid the price alone.

For time misspent we do not get rebate.

As,like the leaves in wind,away we’re blown.

 

To live  aright perception must be clear;

Including in its breadth all that we fear.



When our spirit dwells in our body we are incarnate.Some of us don't 
feel we are fully incarnate.The negative view of the body in does not help.

The uncanny is a space which I avoid
I do not wish to meet with spirits  vile.
Though with some men ,it’s true that I have toyed.
I  dropped them all and sane was I the while.

Yet when I met your eyes so dark  and strange
A force more strong than my own pulled me in.
A   premonition that my life would surely change,
Before I knew your double,your dark twin.

In dreams and  in my nightmares he will come
To capture me and take me  to his land.
I do not know what choice to make of man
Nor how to count infinity by hand

The double is an augury of death
Yet in this space uncanny is a path

No woman ever can be what he dreams

Nor can she give him comfort on the road.

Yet every night he plots and thinks and schemes.

And rarely does he ever go abroad.

No food he eats will satisfy his tongue.

The best wine is as naught to mother’s milk.

He grumbles and will not admit to wrong.

I‘ve known more men than him of this same ilk.

No bed can be the right one for his sleep.

No sheets and pillows suit his wary skin.

He often has made gentle maidens weep

Crying out they’re fat or boney thin.’

Beware the man who never can adapt

For in own lone wishes he is trapped

My  new-found hope may be a mere mirage;
Illusion of no help in my despair.
Yet imagination   stirs up needed courage
And helps the mind and heart in their repair.

I’ll dwell not in the mind’s relentless thoughts;
I’ll use my eyes and ears and skin
Then i that trap, I  never shall  be caught.
I’ll see  and hear to moderate this din.

In wider focus all will take their place
I’ll focus less on  this  wound I bear late
And see  both good and bad in every space.
So not dismiss the world and all its states.

Changing  vision show   us  truer measures.
Perception valued brings to us much treasure.

When of the world of doctors,I am sick.
When diagnosis is not any aid
When from the choices given, I cannot pick
Although I feel my deepest debts were paid.

When death and loss and grief fill up my heart
And behind an icy wall I am entrapped
Where should my work of holy healing start
Where is the hidden place where loss is mapped?
As on the earth I walk amongst the trees
And on the grass I lay my sleeping head
I make my friends from stinging wasps and bees
Who comfort me on this my own deathbed.
Yet do not sun and moon still shine as bright?
Do not men and women tender lie.
Does not this small glowworm give me light?
Do not courting tom cats saunter by?
With wider vision spreading from my eyes
I see more clearly where my comfort lie

Stems of  long nasturtiums  catch my foot;

For from the red brick path I let it slip.

And spiders  fill the long neglected hut.

I peer though windows and regain my grip.

The yellow flowers are eaten with the leaves.

Mixed with oil and lemon they taste good.

Yet  a maternal gardener in me grieves

For I have watched them since they were in bud.

The truth that I evade again explodes

That little buds and flowers  will  have to  die.

And even as these flowers  grow more bold

They’re still a crop, and so with grief I cry.

Yet life is process and goes on and on….

Even when particular loves are gone

Ariel, the spirit freed by man,

From  Tempest  to the work of Sylvia Plath

Made famous as a horse on which she ran

In such bitter, suicidal wrath.

Or was this  a rebirth that never came

The risk she took,  a gamble,  careless,wry.

For death of body is no children’s game

And from a  husband  brings a hellish sigh.

Was this a test to see if we survive;

As madmen  may stick knives into their hearts

To see the blood is real and so derive

A knowledge that they live and are a part?

The test we make to see if we’re not dead

May kill us and so end  the work of God.

When tasks and labour wear us into shreds
And burning sun does shrivel up the skin
Shall we like lovers leap into our beds
And see how rapidly we can now sin?

When vests and Y fronts decorate the halls
when trousers seem to multiply at speed
With thermal undies ready for a ball
And bras converse with panties as they breed.

Then shall I throw the whole lot in the trash.
As sorting and disposing invokes wrath.
We’ll wear nothing but watercolour wash
Until in winter we all sneeze and cough,

No handkerchief shall I boil e’er again
To signify my fresh revolt from men.

How like a prison   is my cubicle;

A prison,a trap, a cell,a place of fear.

For humans,this  is truth indubitable;

We need to roam ,to see,to smell,to hear.

Yet in the bureaucrat realm , we must observe,

The rules laid down by  generations gone.

And from their ancient code we cannot swerve.

Even if by rules we are undone.

Did Euclid discover how grave was a bath?

Did Moses fear  to see the burning bush?

Did Einstein follow someone’s else’s path?

Did Socrates  give voice to utter trash?

Imprisoned spirits are to revolution called.

Lest by lioness they should be mauled.

I love this.I wanted to have it at the funeral but my sister said it was too sombre.But I feel better when I listen to it.You can get all of these sonnets set to music by Benjamin Britten.They are called the Holy Sonnets.I believe he wrote them after his wife died.