Iris Murdoch wrote a novel

Living in her rural hovel.

I found the incest very queer.

So I drank a jug of beef.

I want to buy some mobile groans

You can hire my parrot.

Can he groan?

If you do.

Why don’t you teach him?

I taught him to laugh.

Can he giggle?

Why don’t you just do it all yourself?

It’s taking money from the poor.

They can groan alright.

But can they laugh,?

In a hollow manner.

Do you want a refugee?

I think I have a manger.

He might be grown up now

Well let’s not crucify him

I say,who is he Is,? Can he feed the 5000?

The five thousand what?

Ukrainians.

God isn’t here to do what we ought to do.

So why is he here?

We don’t know .is there always a reason?

Maybe not one we can understand.

And so say all of us.

Groan

My garden was a dandelion filled crack.

Or the little cobbles at the back

Grass and coltsfoot struggled for their life

As round the corner came a crowd of mice

Muce

E

There was a holy place made with the screens
Where lay the old man, trembling into dream.
His face was pale, his nose felt like white ice
An offering on the block for sacrifice.

The sacred place was marked by song and prayer
Made quietly so no-one else would hear.
He held my hand and whispered, please don’t go.
I held him in my heart, as his went slow.

A cocoon made in noisy A and E
A strange place for the Lady God to be.
Deep silence underneath the usual noise,
Pierced only by my child-like singing voice.

I saw his soul, my tears made stiff curtains
Hidden so, I felt the weight of pain.
I felt my heart crack, struck by loss and grief
Death had been there like a silent thief.

His pale face on the pillow seemed to smile
The kindness of strange angels did beguile

https://youtu.be/sOMg0eIrxK4

When you got a mortgage

Fancy little house

Furniture from Ercol

Dancing with your spouse

Don’t think love lasts for ever

Like life is all secure

Any moment baby

They’re knocking at your door.

First there are the Nazis

Then the Soviet gore

Don’t look for your house, love

Nothing is secure

Love is for the angels

What is living for?

Goodbye,Mrs Perebyinis.

Goodbye your children

Crossing a broken stone bridge

Shelled by Russian soldiers

See your suitcase and dog

harness on the ground.

I hear your dog barking

I hear the planes circle

The moon shines indifferently

As it does on the man who ordered the attack

God is a moon

Who is the sun?

Where nobody knows

What’s going on

Who by fire?

Who by water?

It’s all said and done

Our tomcat has eaten a bird

He is hungry so this is the third

Mother is skint

We live in a tent.

She screams all night long so I’ve heard

Dr Kumar is famed for his humour.

He goes mad when the season is lunar.

He jogs every night

The full moon is in sight

If you have a piano he will tune her.

The dead leaves of the autumn sink down low.

The buds of cherry sing of long ago

Jack was pecked at by a

cunning bird.

It was a big blue budgie,I have heard

He kept her well fed

She slept on his head

So much for the cat and her fur

Anne once had a poor sense of humour

Until she wed a young doctor Kumar

He showed her cartoons

Bought her perfume

After that all Is heard were their murmurs

There was a young lady in Barnet

Whose garden was covered in tarmac

When I asked her why

She started to cry

I never intended to harm it

Near the tree a little bird came by

A sparrow with a mirror in its eye

How I miss the postcards you once sent

Loved your writing and the image lent

Now the writing pen runs out of ink

i hope the artist’s brush can help us think.

Typing takes the personal away

Our letters can no longer life convey

I imagined I saw flowers like flakes of snow

On my dead viburnum hanging low

It’s sweet pinkness gave me great delight.

It’s absence is a wound to this small heart.

My tears were running where they never walked.

My voice was singing long before I talked

My heart was broken yet it was no plate.

I met my husband long before our date

I confessed my sins while in the womb.

I shall do the same when in the tomb