Category: sonnet

In honour of Paul Tillich

Paul Tillich gave our spirit proper place.

He showed us courage as a  space to dwell.

He wrote for us and left us with   his  grace

With hope he might  well speak and he might tell.

So many people ignored Fascist speech

And lived with mind cut off from  their own soul

With pen in hand he wrote his soul to reach

And touch us as we strive towards the whole.

Expelled from his own country, he wrote on

Continuing during  tortuous war long years

He lived, he loved ,he wrote, he died and then

His books continue to dispatch our fears.

For many men have lived and have destroyed.
 Tillich showed  us how to face the  void

 

My first attempt: wind and eye

An ancient one roomed building was  once home
Lit and warmed by fire,heat upward flowed
The smoke escaped  through one small  hole or “eye”
The winter wind  would fight to get inside.

Like a human eye, it was a breach
The bones of head and face allow this reach
We must see out and not live all within
Wolves, those metaphors. might  bite our skin

Enclosed spaces need  selected gaps
Few would enjoy choking in a trap.
We need a way to breath, to see, to touch
Sophisticated means, this eye  to watch

Sitting round the fire we hear  Wind howl
Through the eye, we see the moon,our jewel

 

Entertainment,sadism, power

On a hilltop not so far from Rhyl
Mother took us to the Zoo as Mothers will
The wind was strong and cold, the air was harsh
Although it was in August, not in March

Vultures  in enclosures   chained by leg
Like convicts in a prison   full of dread
When they vainly  tried to  get away
I felt their faith and hope dismayed

Who had chosen birds like these to show?
Even God himself would never know
Entertainment,sadism, power
Making people pay  and  children cower

When we got back  to the station I was sick
What cruel minds  played such a trick?

We’re burnt by love and loss

You smiled at me and then you disappeared
Flying skyward with no hint of fear
Stunned and left behind,I wept  with shock
Deprived by death of one last lingering look

No kiss, no word of love,no last embrace
No  colour and no pinkness in your face
I saw you fly as fast as hawks at prey
I held you in my heart ,I felt dismay

How could you leave me when I need you so
Could you not remain till I too must go?
Death is sad,mysterious,unknown
Once lovers   all complete and now alone

Silently at last we take the pain
We’re burnt by love and loss, that dual frame

In the dark

No goods nor gold can cross the Styx
The boat is small, by water crushed
The boatman’s ready with his hand
He has no use for such dry land

The woman wrapped in winter clothes
Hindered by the mist that rose
She weeps, she leaves her home and man
The dark mind  showed her where to come

Her  husband  stood beside her bones
In his loss, he softly groaned
He wept and wept and did not eat
His world  entranced by ice and sleet

Nothing’s quite as sad a sight
As old men crying  in the dark

Shielded

The clouds hang out together like bored girls
Until they form a shield with  greasy curls
The radio mumbles on about  the old
As if we are  unable to be bold

Do we not have courage as we age
When we have laid our dear ones in their grave?
We edge our way downstairs to make the tea
Sit in bed,imagine we’re at sea

Children play their games and so may we
The bed a boat,the sky as wide as eyes
Where is the navigator, do we drift?
Eclipsed our passage  through  the soft  soft mist

If life’s a Play then we may take our part
To hypnotise  the audience and their hearts

His  eyes were  silent,still, and very black

The day his mother died he’d cut his arms 
With bits of pointed glass like frosty nails
The blood  had stained his shirt, yet made him calm
He did not like to  make a scene or wail.

The day his mother died he sat alone
Wondering what  to eat or who to call
Above him was hot sky, a blue, blue dome
Below the earth where very soon she’d fall

The day his mother died he hugged his cat
She alone gave comfort without blame
His  eyes were  silent,still and very black
What hope, what help, where is the nameless Name?

The day his mother died he went to sleep
To dream and wander in the deepness deep

We  do not want to hear their their poignant calls

Everything is whirling round my mind,
The lack of government ,  the words unkind
That the poor are  short of food and  clothes
We deny it, everybody knows

Sudden gusts of wind  mock  these old trees
Does the  lure of nature  disappear
When  the butterflies have gone away
Yet the stinging wasps are here to stay?

Once tortured  now abandoned refugees
Can’t make phone calls,  have no mental ease
We make our own defences into walls
We  do not want to hear their their poignant calls

Oh,Lord God take the beam from out my eye
I want to know the  worst before I die

 

S

 

 

The fire of orange leaves me with a glow

The sun sinks but it burns like a great fire;
All the sky’s aflame with fierce intent;
Who thinks of death as weakness, is a liar
Before the end our glory must be spent.

The graphics of the branches look Chinese
As blackened brush is drawn across red silk
Infinite yet countable my days
Running like a river without silt

Thus I am not transcendent in myself
But joined to all that lives I feel I am.
In conjunction we will find our health
Ambivalence contains both lion and lamb.

The fire of orange leaves me with a glow
As into night I with all creatures go

Every time I see yor face I smile

Every time I see yor face I smile
It’s just a dream,I am not reconciled
When I waken up  the tears run by
Remembering or forgetting  where you are

Now you have come back to pick up me
We have  an  newer house down by the sea
Shall we take our books and music there?
I gave away your clothes but you’re not bare

I’ve found it freezing cold  outside your gaze
Without  those conversations every day
Can’t  you stay here for a few more years?
In the dream I  never seem to cry

We seem to be  the actors in this Play
You are calm and dignified, oh stay

Carnation, orchid, daffodil and rose

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How softly sweetly,gently flowers pose
Carnation,orchid ,daffodil and rose.
Their complex petals form a  living shield
Yet bees with much striped force shall make them yield

Appearances,both natural and contrived,
Mixed with the wiles of human nature thrive.

As, knowing not, we pluck the apple rare
And bite its flesh,with teeth we have to bare

.We too deceive the innocent who pass
Not seeing watchers hid behind the glass.
The windows break,the deep earth quakes;
Seized is the maiden ,  he her virtue takes.

Beneath the surface, force and fierceness thrive.
What fearsome, burning God enjoys our lives?

Copyright © Katherine

The Catherine wheel, the longing, the desire

Oh, my brother, I have said goodbye
Once my little playmate, you must die
Your voice is very weak as there you rest
I wish that life were not a  cruel test

I told you  of the see saw and the swings
I will not argue, this is what life brings
Remembered  fireworks and the  blazing fire
The Catherine wheel, the longing, the desire

How can a boy so strong soon turn to dust?
Where has gone the liveliness, the lust?
Weak but uncomplaining you lie there
On my face I feel a film of tears

You’ll never die, you’ll live on in my mind
I forgive your acts,  for you were  blind

On stinging nettles

On stinging nettles butterflies lay eggs
Not on blankets or upholstered beds
The over careful gardener lays waste
To Nature’s order  and to Nature’s grace

Holly leaves are sharper than a fist
But in those fierce conditions birds  make nests
The sharp edged leaves the stinging pains have use
To make some creature safe from our abuse

We grumble at the rain and wild west wind
As if we’re being punished for  some sin
Better be a wild flower or a weed
Trodden underfoot  by human needs

The little weeds have their resilience
They do not ruminate, they are not tense
To be a humble plant is perhaps the best
They at least will have eternal rest

The  beautiful, the plain have got their place
All   life in the end will be effaced

For love  seeks not to prey

Soft corns,blisters,hard corns and toe nails
Ankle socks and stockings, tights and  boots
Cover up the wounds with dressings white
Put  your feet up, rest  by  doing nought

Skin so thin it frightens me  to think
All I am  finds boundary just here
Yet our heart and soul can  contain  more
Spreading like a shawl on loved ones dear

We cast our love like fishers cast their  rods
Not too sure  of what will take the bait
A   simile  so poor I blush bright pink
For love  seeks not to prey but rather waits

Across the entire world the hate runs wild
 Bleach your brain , don’t poison  with  your smile

Touching them and keeping them at peace

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The photo is by Mike Flemming 2020
Thank you,Mike

 

We can cast our body like a cloak
Around the loved one when they cannot speak
Hold them like an infant  when at  rest
Sleeping softly on a mother’s breast

Touching them and keeping them at peace
Until they  can accept death and its release
They seem to concentrate  on unknown tasks
Till their minds are happy and they pass

They come first but afterwards   we  fall
Into  an abyss where  we just crawl
Seeing shapes and visions, feeling sore
Aching for the one we  see no more

A paradox , we  give  and nothing  gain
The suffering of the heart, the searing pains

Grace may come as small as  grains of sand

Material wealth can come in many ways
Inheritance, good luck, good work and pay
But with  the spirit, will power cannot win
Only those who’re humble,admit sin

Pain and grief , companions  of our life
Married to the losses as a wife
Grace may come as small as  grains of sand
Or like the wren that hovers near our hands

In imagination  breathe  as then
Slow, protective, patient and human
See in your mind’s eye the perfect wood
The trees  sing out as sun  warms sap, their blood

We can  research the wealth in figures, charts
Envy  not  the rich who have no heart

 

 

Trust the Unknown,trust the inner flow

The sky at dusk, my camisole , love’s grace
Blending blue and mauve in  skilled embrace
God the painter ,God the X unknown
Send  us light to see where our  our love goes

Drop by drop the spirit ebbs away
Now the sky is dark in stark blue-grey
In the mind the dreams  rehearse and scheme
Take away the terror and the screams

Hold us in your Hand as we let go
Trust the Unknown,trust the inner flow
Who but you can show us  what we need
As we crawl to bed  in   fraught unease?

Now the air is black I see a star
I feel the void  yet love dwells even there

Boris Johnson raised  up from the dead

The Tower of Babel fell down in the night
The people spoke but noone could reply
We  cried out but noone listened then
Nor did we salvage much  from wrecked Big Ben

Boris Johnson raised  up from the dead
His pleasures once , pre- flu,  lay in the bed
He spread his seed about  so it’s no boast
To  bear his child nor feed him Sunday roast

He will lead the country out of sin
His  brilliant way:  to  stop  us logging in
No more one click books  or   toys for sex
No more screws and curtain rails to fix.

Ah now enjoy the peace  of empty space
Yet we  grieve for lack of an embrace

They could not wear bikinis on hot sands

In the Jewish ghettos and Death Camps
Did Jews complain they  had no holidays?
They could not wear bikinis on  hot sands
Nor did they ask for somewhere they could pray

We can’t go to Spain  nor Singapore
We must stay  near home,oh  such dismay
I ache so for the poor in tower  blocks
Where violence and harsh words  erupt each day

We can get our food if we have friends
We can read  or write or even pray
Why  complain, the poor  bear heavier loads
Will we be sympathetic on such dreadful days

Our sadly narrow views  don’t serve us well
When other people  in  confinement dwell

The words tell what we did

The symbols, signs, the words are not the world
Yet scholars confuse laymen with their terms
“How to love your children” is advice
Hiding in the  syntax  is no life

I knew Latin grammar and her forms
I dwelled inside ellipses,I was torn
I could not live two lives so I chose  rules
Then I  found success like many fools

Grammar and   its logic   cracked my mind
I stole the key,I  left the door behind
I found the prizes on my shelf arrayed
The golden prayer book  shredded  and decayed

The simple may  be better  fit to live
Those words were darts, yet love can’t but forgive

 

 

Wreaths of smoke

Daddy where were you  when I was sad
I bought you Woodbines in the corner shop
I carried your boiled egg with salt on plate
You lay in bed   adorned with wreaths of smoke

Uncle Herbert  died when I was five
Not  many   of Dad’s brothers left alive
But Bert was old and all his children grown
He lay inert, the coffin dark, the stone

I saw yours and Grandad’s too, false oak
The  Cemetery   filled  with  men and broken     jokes
So baffled  by affection we  would seek
And for her mother’s  grave, we  often looked

We  too will be broken, wordless earth
Worms will do their work. the lungs, the breath

Never write a letter full of spite

The consumer age is passing   with the dead
I tried to shop  again but Sainsburys have said
You can’t shop twice a week or twice a day
We will have to learn once more to play

Learn another language,read good books
Help another,  teach them how to cook
Go outside and  breathe the   purer air
Write a poem and then write one with flair

Walk around the street when it is clear
Drink from cans  filled up with   freezing beer
Take a photo of a tree you   like
Never write a letter full of spite

Surely we can gradually adapt
If we survive the madness and the traps

Shame is bitter, wrecks our feeling heart

I see  down in  the  valley of the Lea
Tower blocks  and numerous tiny homes
Here the Vikings came, oh, savagery
The valley is so ugly it alarms

As I look at  my books, it’s unfair
I feel sad for children who have none 
Our average reading age  grows lower  every year
I   feel angry at our leaders nothing  done

During Lockdown where shall  children play?
Those who have no gardens  shut indoors
The  end point of  such suffering is dismay
Humiliation grows   right in a  heart’s deep core

Shame is bitter, wrecks our feeling heart
A home for Satan made with   thoughtless art

We learn to see in part

 

The sun has gone and jaundiced is the sky
The silence  of the empty roads is good
For from my garden birds are  flying high
In this  precious green   we grew a wood

No holiday in Venice or Dubai
Lockdown  keeps us in   what do we sigh
 I want to  see  the   village of old Cley
The still small voice  shall speak before we die

No more  shall  rich  possesions make us high
Nor shall buying cream and caviare
We are judged by God’s incisive  eye
Stand up,  live,  despite that  all’s awry

The Sacred World  behind our little one
We learn to see in part though we are dumb

Black humour

Make my heart into a cottage pie.
Already it is minced and lies estranged
My   enemies insult me with their lies
And my last will and testament is made.

An onion and a carrot chopped up fine,
Saute  with these my heart till  all are gold
With herbs and spices I will taste divine
A mashed potato will a rooftop mould.

Do not forget my blood to use as sauce
Though now it’s cold, with garlic  make it boil.
For what is gravy but the blood of lamb?
With  sliced  onion  fried in olive oil.

O foes and devils eat me and you’ll be
Transformed into  to myself,your enemy

T

Where our attention lies

I had a fissure  on my worn old thumb
The pain  was so severe my eyes both ran
I felt self pity, why is life so  cruel?
All day I  had grieved  like some old fool

Then I saw some  lights flash in my eye
Soon the sight  had  gone, I  quite blind
My eye,  its lids, its lashes full of blood
I had to  lie  face down upon my bed

Three months  passed then I had vision twice
The eyes  confused,  my mind seemed full of spite
Their experimental surgery  may help
Another person  back to normal health

The eye  stitched up, I thought about my thumb
Without perspective   we are quite undone

 

 

 

 

Keep on swimming

Constant rumination kills the soul
I never  think  and so I am more whole
I  write the sentence  down, just like I  speak
I find my native tongue lets symbols leak

My mind is  like a small holed metal sieve
I hope I shall be kind and will forgive
What remains is worthy of a place
As for my mistakes, I   beg your  grace

Some minds are  deep,clear streams their thoughts  like fish
Other minds are  tortured ,spin and crash
Keep on swimming like the drowning frog
He turned the milk to butter as he trod

Do not linger long on cruel thoughts
Scruples come from Satan, he’s worth naught

From the dust

Power and love, two ways that we connect
One is often hateful, one respects
The Other is a person , I and Thou
Two words, two worlds , which  love could well endow

Power has many guises, most deceive
Talking  big  but wanting to receive
Men of power who long for even  more
The Jaguar, the palace, the gold door

A select   few  took risks to save the cursed
The Jewish baby, Amsterdam, the fist
The parents on a train,  like cattle crammed
Death  was not the end their  love had planned

Hurtling into darkness, when all’s lost
A still small voice shall  whisper  from the dust
 

Who are we?

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To fulminate against the hands of fate
To vent our anger on  beloved friends
Will not repair our ills and our mistakes
But may bring friendships to  a bitter end.

For who are we to know what is the best?
Who are we to choose when loved ones die?
And  do not think this is a needed test.
As if on us God wastes his time to spy.

Once  we were a joining of two cells
The lively sperm, a salmon riding high.
The egg awaiting without  need for bells
Is fertilised and grows that which  shall die.

Astonishing that we should live at all.
Unsurprising, that a loved one falls.

 

No gowns for NHS staff

If you are ill the nurses have no gowns
The doctors  neither, nor a dressing gown
Don’t let them borrow yours ,all’s upside  down
We can’t have naked people in the town

The government  will   rue this nudity
When Boris Johnson flies into a tree
We’ll see his valorous organ on TV
Whatever can the matter really be?

Why can’t the textile trade make us  nighties
On the NHS most stuff is free
The towel laid across your aching knee
My BT Hub is dying can’t they see?

Oh, I feel shame I live in Sodom here
Gomarrah can’t be far behind,don’t leer

Ain’t no police

The geese no longer fly past at sundown
They’re eaten by the “immigrants”  folks say
Who also kill and murder every day
The English are so perfect  in my town

That man is not an alien though he’s brown
He was born in Bradford  near the mills
His parents worked there till it made them ill
And now he is a graduate with a gown

My ancestors came to fight and to invade
They killed the  men and made the women wives
What chance that some  few English might survive
Are they now on benefits or aid?

The nesting swans have killed or maimed the geese
In their natural world ain’t no police