Aldeburgh

I saw  the sun rise over the North Sea
Accentuating coloured fishing boats.
The beauty of the dawn gave hope to me
A restful pleasure made my soft eyes dote.
The peace of this small town has caught my heart.
Scenes from ancient times  come close again
The gulls swoop down and  sketch their flying charts
Remote as ever from the realm of man.
The shingle beach, the  Church  where Britten lies
The in and out of tides  of salty sea;
An exact match of houses, hill and skies;
The amber shop, the chip shop, the oak tree.
In my mind I walk in love again;
Though of the two, a single one remains

Late spring

Black against light sky
Bright flowers blown ; bare branches now
Reach  beseechingly.

Reluctant sun hangs
Sending thin light  and pinkness
To clouds sleek as  cats

Now paling, blue grey,
I see mauve dying into dark
Night sky edges in

The  blackness awaits;
Dreams dangle  like stringed balloons
A new born gurgles

How full the holly!
Forsythia large and darker,
Birds shelter  wisely

Brexit hangs above

Neither hot nor cold the day came by
I admired  bright  jasmine at its  peak
Grey  the air  and darker still the sky

As warm as spring but not the time to lie
Brexit hangs above , yet who can speak?
Neither hot nor cold the day passed by

Polititicians, paranoid  or fey,
Noone trusts them , will we even look?
Grey  the air  and darker still the sky

No great man  or woman waits nearby
If Hitler came again, we´d sell his book
Neither hot nor cold,  a life passed by

At this moment there  may be tense spies
Hoping to write Putin´s alibi
Grey  the air  and darker still the sky

Is there any sense in babies’cries?
We must believe or all infants will die
Neither hot nor cold the day went by
Grey  the air  and darker  the  night sky

 

Even electric kettles sometimes lie.

I am a kettle made of stainless steel
I am a saint,  for tea  is brewed to heal
And , unlike kettles on an old  coal fire,
I am not dirty nor do I perspire.

My mirrored sides reflect you as you cook.
Look at me and read me like a book
I’m  full of love and hotter than a man
Oh, dear lady, love me while you can.

 

 Superior mother,  yet inhuman  I;
Even electric kettles sometimes lie.
I shall never punish you, my dear
For perfect love like mine shall wield no fear.

All I ask is that you polish me.
For  in between your handsI  yearn to be.

The gift of speech

BeautyIt is too often forgotten that the gift of speech, so centrally employed, has been elaborated as much for the purpose of concealing thought by dissimulation and lying as for the purpose of elucidating and communicating thought.

Wilfred Bion

Mary ,sweat and the nail brush

Cat family.jpg

Mary went upstairs to the bathroom to wash her dirty hands after she had been repotting two spider plants. When she looked  at the pale blue sink, she could see a bar of soap but she could not see the nail brush.
Mary felt   cross because Stan did not like nail brushes and he would hide the nail brush in different places so that Mary could not find it
In fact they now had 13 nail  brushes but despite that, Stan had  managed to hide all of them.. Stan himself did not care if his nails were clean or dirty, although Mary  cared a great deal .He could not seem to understand the connection between using a brush and having clean nails
Of course there are other ways of getting clean nails; for example handwashing your underwear in detergent or shampoo would also get the  nails clean at the same time. however Stan did not wash clothes by hand very frequently. In fact the whole subject of washing and cleaning seems alien to his mind
He said to Mary one day, “my jumpers smell funny”
That is why we have a washing machine, she told him kindly
All clothes get dirty either from sweat and bodily fluids or from dropping tomato sauce onto one’s lap while dining.
She could have said “if your jumpers smell funny, why don’t you laugh ?”  but she was no longer a school girl unfortunately.
We may not like being school girls,  but when we look back we realise that playing with balls and mercury in the physics lab was  better than cleaning the kitchen floor or even one’s nails. If you are a school girl you’ll probably have someone at home who will make your dinner for you and maybe wash your blouse  while you concentrate on writing an essay on the uses of the past irrational tense in Hamlet ,that great play by William Shakespeare.
Mary looked round the bathroom, where is the nail brush she cried to Emile her cat
Why, Mother, it’s on the window sill next to your deodorant
My deodorant ; how do you know that’s what it is, can you read?
Not yet   purred Emile  but I saw you putting it underneath your arms I mean in your armpit mother
I don’t think that you should come into the bathroom when I am getting  washed, Mary told Emile in a kindly tone of voice. Why I never even knew you would have heard of deodorant
Actually I have also heard of antiperspirants, Emile  told heer graciously but I would not like to use an antiperspirant because the sweat or the odour from our bodies is what attracts other cats to us for mating ;well actually, it’s using a female smells lovely and then the male cat is attracted by this beautiful scent and with a bit of luck they might mate and a produce a family of kittens
So see what you are missing ,mother
I don’t want to smell beautiful and then have 6  kittens to look after.
No you would have human babies to look after
But would I have to have 6  said Mary I don’t think my body is big enough to carry 6 innocent  babies.
Well you seem we cats are superior because we can have 6 or even 8 kittens  at once and we can soon build up a large colony of cats in any neighbourhood and it’s all down to  sweat, really
That is fascinating  muttered Mary as she took the nail brush and put it under the hot tap before getting the soap and applying it to her fingernails
Do cats have nail brushes? the cat asked her
What, you don’t have nails!
Could we have claw brushes?
I suggest that when Stan comes home you ask him to give you a bath and put some fairy snow into the bath and then your talons or claws will be cleaned as you soak without you exerting any effort
I want to make an effort,  cried the cat ,I want to look very good tonight
Why asked Mary ,it will be dark when you go out so the female cats will not be able to see your claws
I’s a bit like you cleaning your teeth before you go out in the evening I know it’s not just for hygiene it’s in case you want to kiss somebody and you don’t want them to taste your Weetabix from your teeth
Good heavens, are you into French kissing, Emile?
I’ve never heard of it ,he said. I didn’t know there more than one way of  kissing. You see cats don’t kiss very much so we don’t know a lot about it
You should consider yourself lucky said Mary as there are very unpleasant men who will offer me a lift home in their car after a meeting and then before I can get out they plump their large and ugly lips on my lips   and seem to think I will enjoy it
Yes it must be very difficult so then especially as you can’t scratch them because they will probably call the police
I doubt it now ,muttered Mary they will be afraid of being accused of sexual harassment
My goodness that’s another thing that cats don’t have, we don’t have much choice really  our Feelings come over us and if there’s a willing lady cat nearby then we will enjoy ourselves no wonder there are so many cats in Knittingham  how many of them are you the father of?
I have no idea
Just think that if I walk down the street and see 6 cats they could all be your children Mary told him
And on the other hand, they could be the children of any  tom cat within 5 miles
Yes you are right said Mary it’s a pity that you can’t write and keep a diary so that you would know roughly how many female cats you may have impregnated in the last 6 months
Why, is that what you put in your diary, the cat asked her with a naughty expression in his eyes
You know perfectly well what I put in my diary

went to the dentist with a broken tooth

went to the chemist to buy a nail brush

Went in  coffee shop and had a cup of tea

struggle to the bus stop and onto the bus

crossed on the zebra crossing

came home and  burst into tears

Yes I do understand this,mewed Emile,lt is very difficult for you now with all the pain you suffer but you are very brave and you don’t complain a lot but when Stan comes home I shall tell him and ask him to buy you a beautiful silk scarf and a necklace from the Royal Academy gift shop like he used to do in Times Gone By.He must have forgotten lately

So he must , murmured Mary

What a very  lovely man Stanley is.

Yes but we haven’t seen him for a while ;has he gone on holiday?

Well that’s one way of describing at st. Mary . We never know whether he might be on his way home or  if there’s someone else  who has a prior claim on him

It puzzles all of us!

Bacon either smoked or  just plain green

I’d better buy more pasta and chick peas
Basmatti rice,dried milk and Cheddar  cheese
Brexit’s going to empty many  shelves
In the supermarket, cometh  bleedin’ hell

Weetabix and antihistamines
Bacon either smoked or  just plain green
Mini aspririns, lemon juice and oil
Heat  it up but it  won’t need to boil

Can one  still  get  powdered eggs  these days?
Stockpiling’s not offered on  Ebay
What about some frozen mince and bread?
If you kill a pig, don’t throw away its head

Then we need to think about  dried tea
Not to mention coffee and honey
Cocoa, semolina, long life cream
Sponge cake mixes, are they what they seem?

Jam and marmalade  last for  many years
Unlike love and my unending tears
Should we emigrate to Palestine?
Jesus was a Jew who loved his wine.

Buy a lot of biscuits, fill the tins
Keep a lot of loaves in their bread bins
Don’t forget to freeze some butter too
Without it what would any person do?

The sun will shine regardless

Soon the bulbs will burst out into flower
Whether I am living  or am dead
The sun will shine before and after showers

Life may be a minute or an hour
Remember what the  prophets ancient said
Still  the bulbs will burst out into flower

The cruel Assad in Syria has his power
No doubt he delights himself in bed
The sun will shine and then will come the showers

Donald Trump’s  bright face does not allure
Destroying truth so even Satan’s mad
Regardless bulbs will burst out into flower

Bibi builds his walls, says that’s the cure
Yet hang gliders from hills  might  hit his shed
The sun can shine   precisely as rain pours

Walls and wars with guns and gas ahead
Bombs will  break the boredom of the dead
Soon the bulbs will burst out into flower
The sun will shine  regardlesss , it’s not ours.

 

Toby RIP

He lived to see his little boy start school
Even to beget another child
But child unborn, he’s snatched by  relapse cruel

 

The  lows and highs , the  treatment by new tools
Drive even saints  to  desperate states of mind
Yet he lived to see his little boy start school

Do we think our losses make us fools?
That we should keep ourselves in temper mild
When child unborn, he’s snatched by  relapse cruel?

In our minds emotions can fight duels
Till we ‘re caught between  our love and bile
How did his little boy  get on at school?

Give his widow  strength to   bear their child~
Her life is  hard   and her complexion pale
Her child unborn, her man lost,  panic rules.

We women cover up with long dark veils
To hide the hardships of our life’s travails
Toby’s   little boy has  started school
Another child is coming ,  love is cruel

 

 

Re Trump’s Wall

IMG_20190111_223122From Counterpunch:

Hannah Arendt, an émigré from Nazi Germany.
“The result of a consistent and total substitution of lies for factual truth,” Arendt wrote in her classic volume The Origins of Totalitarianism, “is not that the lie will now be accepted as truth and truth be defamed as a lie, but that the sense by which we take our bearings in the real world—and the category of truth versus falsehood is among the mental means to this end—is being destroyed.”

The spinning wheel

Once she was alive and seemed quite real
She  lived on earth as we do every day
But accidental death came from the spinning wheels

The secrets of that marriage long revealed
Men  write stories when they ought to pray
Once she was alive and seemed quite real

Vital virgin, starving,on the heel
She bore children, smiling as they played
But savage death came from too rapid wheels

Nibbling only  at her Royal meals
We  began to feel a grey dismay
Once she was alive and seemed quite real

As the layers of  her story peel
We only hope that someone, somewhere prayed
When  chased  and smashed up , death was  but a deal

Lord save teenage girls from  market place
Where they are captured  without love  or grace
Once she was alive and she was real
Till silent death came from the  spinning wheel

 

With open eye

When we die we cannot fantasise
The body seems tranlucent  like a flower
We must confront the truth, we cannot lie

In strange times we daydream  and surmise
We float with butterflies through coloured hours
When we die,  what use is fantasy?

In the end our will is poor ally
We’re owned by forces other and their power
Oh, can I take the truth as stiff I lie?

Like red leaves from  the maple trees we fly
Undone by autumn wind and sudden showers
When we die we  need no fantasy

The good  imagined is not   in our minds
We babble like the infant in her tower
We choose the truth,  the  dead must  never lie

The choices once so strident  miss the hourera
The still small voice   oh hear  like Jeremiah
,We must admit the truth with open eye
God is not  quite dead nor elegaic

Hic. Hoc,Heck

She lectured him heretically but it was electric  to a  maniac .Mind you the gods of the classical world were pretty  plastic  by iron  age standards g so who is static?
Being egocentric is usually inborn.Sometimes it’s comic and other it’s futuristic.Anyway.,my romantic mind is  magic,hypnotic and acidic
Try to be less  static, dramatic and pessimistic.Not to mention erratic,boracic ,antic and spastic.

Floating flames

Cleveland Hills  on  the edge of cliffs we lay
In heather deep where bees   flew fast as flames
And the  wild, wild flowers and the butterflies at play
In  Cleveland Hills  on the edge of  cliffs we lay
If I could go back  would you come to stay
Where the scents’s  so  rich it pulls  love down again
Cleveland Hills  on the edge of  cliffs we lay
In heather deep,  in love we burn like flames

Why does the New Year start at the darkest  time of all?

Why does the New Year start at the darkest  time of all?
When the stars are gleaming  more than the sun can  shine all day
And the heart lashed to the lost and loved  resents death’s wall
Why does the New Year start at the darkest  time of all
When the speedy Tees from High Force  frozen  falls
When I see in dreams   your  face as the  white flowers  down I lay.
Why does the New Year start at the darkest  time of all?
When the stars are gleaming  more than the sun can  shine these days

 

Geoffrey Hill

closeup photo of brown brick wall
Photo by ShonEjai on Pexels.com

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/geoffrey-hill

Extract:

“Known as one of the greatest poets of his generation writing in English, and one of the most important poets of the 20th century, Geoffrey Hill lived a life dedicated to poetry and scholarship, morality and faith. He was born in 1932 in Worcestershire, England to a working-class family. He attended Oxford University, where his work was first published by the U.S. poet Donald Hall. These poems later collected in For the Unfallen: Poems 1952-1958 marked an astonishing debut. In dense poems of gnarled syntax and astonishing rhetorical power, Hill planted the seeds of style and concern that he cultivated over his long career. Hill’s work is noted for its seriousness, its high moral tone, extreme allusiveness and dedication to history, theology, and philosophy. In early collections such as King Log (1968) and Mercian Hymns (1971), Hill sought “to convey extreme emotions by opposing the restraint of established form to the violence of his insight or judgment,” according to New York Review of Books critic Irvin Ehrenpreis. “He deals with violent public events… Appalled by the moral discontinuities of human behavior, he is also shaken by his own response to them, which mingles revulsion with fascination.””

Parties: A Hymn of Hate Dorothy Parker, 1893 – 1967

I hate Parties;
They bring out the worst in me.

There is the Novelty Affair,
Given by the woman
Who is awfully clever at that sort of thing.
Everybody must come in fancy dress;
They are always eleven Old-Fashioned Girls,
And fourteen Hawaiian gentlemen
Wearing the native costume
Of last season’s tennis clothes, with a wreath around the neck.

The hostess introduces a series of clean, home games:
Each participant is given a fair chance
To guess the number of seeds in a cucumber,
Or thread a needle against time,
Or see how many names of wild flowers he knows.
Ice cream in trick formations,
And punch like Volstead used to make
Buoy up the players after the mental strain.
You have to tell the hostess that it’s a riot,
And she says she’ll just die if you don’t come to her next party—
If only a guarantee went with that!

Then there is the Bridge Festival.
The winner is awarded an arts-and-crafts hearth-brush,
And all the rest get garlands of hothouse raspberries.
You cut for partners
And draw the man who wrote the game.
He won’t let bygones be bygones;
After each hand
He starts getting personal about your motives in leading clubs,
And one word frequently leads to another.

At the next table
You have one of those partners
Who says it is nothing but a game, after all.
He trumps your ace
And tries to laugh it off.
And yet they shoot men like Elwell.

There is the Day in the Country;
It seems more like a week.
All the contestants are wedged into automobiles,
And you are allotted the space between two ladies
Who close in on you.
The party gets a nice early start,
Because everybody wants to make a long day of it—
They get their wish.
Everyone contributes a basket of lunch;
Each person has it all figured out
That no one else will think of bringing hard-boiled eggs.

There is intensive picking of dogwood,
And no one is quite sure what poison ivy is like;
They find out the next day.
Things start off with a rush.
Everybody joins in the old songs,
And points out cloud effects,
And puts in a good word for the colour of the grass.

But after the first fifty miles,
Nature doesn’t go over so big,
And singing belongs to the lost arts.
There is a slight spurt on the homestretch,
And everyone exclaims over how beautiful the lights of the city look—
I’ll say they do.

And there is the informal little Dinner Party;
The lowest form of taking nourishment.
The man on your left draws diagrams with a fork,
Illustrating the way he is going to have a new sun-parlour built on;
And the one on your right
Explains how soon business conditions will better, and why.

When the more material part of the evening is over,
You have your choice of listening to the Harry Lauder records,
Or having the hostess hem you in
And show you the snapshots of the baby they took last summer.

Just before you break away,
You mutter something to the host and hostess
About sometime soon you must have them over—
Over your dead body.

I hate Parties;
They bring out the worst in me.

The  grieving long ,through woodland wild, to roam

The  walls collapsing inwards as I ran
Making chaos of the once loved home
I feared to look  or write with my dear pen

By two created, now remains just one
And as I sat I heard my own voice moan
My  walls collapsing inwards, I was done

Yet now the  fighting and the sorting won
I’m feeling joyful as I labour on
I feared to look,  or write with my dear pen

From all  the suffering ,mourning , the mayhem
The  grieving long through woodland wild to roam
Not to see  that Jericho has come

Who shall grieve the least, the lion, the lamb?
Is there competition in our groans?
The   walls are   cracking    like  old window panes

Human hearts feel like cold wet limestone
When we weep they soften like old bones
I felt the walls collapsing inwards  killing men
I dared to look ,I saw my  love  was gone

Tender rain

Sitting in the silence of my room
February, cold and icy damp
Staring at the wall,I saw my doom

I saw a tunnel black as Satan’s broom
To which my train was heading with no lamp
Sitting in the silence of my room

Filled with dark despair and avid gloom
Nobody could help me, cat nor tramp
Staring at the wall,I saw my doom

A  golden garment  made  this dead soul bloom
No words spoken, everything was felt
Sitting in the silence of my room

The cloud of gold made manifest love’s flames
Dissolved my stoney heart,destroyed my guilt
Nothing  now shall  ever be the same

Behind, beneath,whichever way we tilt
The  golden being hides in all we’ve built
Sitting in the silence of my room
Tears fell down like showers of tender rain

 

Even in dreams

Garrya_elliptica-2019I

I say,Father.I’d like a blessing
So would I!
But I have sinned.
What a surprise!
I stole a loaf from a shop in town because I had no money.
You might make your own bread in future.Have you got an oven?
No, we live in a caravan.
That must be hard
Well,we are used to it but people won’t give us work like sharpening knives and they must need it after all the crimes we read of.
You could join a religious order and get free food and clothing
Say, that’s a good idea.I’ll ask my wife.
Oh, you can’t bring a wife
Well, what shall I do with her?
Get divorced
But I am a Catholic!
Well lose your faith,get divorced and  then become a  Catholic again and apply to the Jesuits.
Why them?
They enjoy that kind of reasoning.Tormenting other’s minds and their own
Well,I don’t.I want to confess to unfaithfulness
What, in a caravan?
Yes, it was a dream.But the Bible says we are responsible even for thoughts
I’d take that with a pinch of salt.We all dream  of others who share our sexual desires
You can’t prove we all do
No, but it seems  quite likely
God made us like this to procreate.Even in dreams
Well for your penance buy your wife some flowers or steal some!
I say,Father,That is naughty.
Even God has a sense of humour though it’s getting weaker.
Oh,dear.

 

Winter clouds  float in vague shades of grey

The clouds  float in  the vaguer shades of grey
Stroking like the silk shawls women wore
Mauve and lilac ,blue  and white today

In summer,whispy white clouds wander by
Leaving no long shadows on the doors
Winter clouds  sail in vague shades of grey

The sky is most exquisite  when light plays
Making patterns on the wooden floors
Mauve and lilac ,blush pink in delay

Eternal as the sea in Dover Bay
Without that marvelled ocean and its roar
Winter clouds  float vaguely in dark grey

The sky conveys no message but a prayer
That humans should   retaliate  no more
Mauve and lilac ,yellow as  sun strayed

 

Who would act so well as Satan’s whores?
Who so harshly, inhumanely, swore?
The clouds  float by in   vaguer shades of grey
Mauve and lilac, sad  as words may  say

With guns and bricks and mortar and barbed wire?

Invest in bricks and mortar and barbed wire
Fences, wood or metal and good tools
Walls and fences  keep us from the mire

Splitting off the people we can’t fire
Will banishing the Other make us fools?
Invest in bricks and mortar and barbed wire

Is he crazy;  is he a mere liar
What he knows we do not learn at school
Walls and fences  keep us  from the mire

Will   he burn when he is on his pyre?
Is he mortal,can  he ever rule
With guns and bricks and mortar and barbed wire?

Is he someone children might admire?
Or his he like a thread from a dropped spool?
Walls and fences speak like  did Town Criers

Well, in the old days some folk lived on gruel
Burned their fences,suffered drug withdrawal
Invest in bricks and mortar and barbed wire
Walls and fences   hide our bleak despair

 

I desire to talk

Father Smith sat in  the  little room
With a wooden window we assume
For folk confessed sins hidden from his eye
Or at least  they have a chance to try

As I confessed I ate my sister’s rusks
Should he know I’m starved of human trust?
As I confessed  I knew desire for men
Why should I repeat that  phrase again?

Yet is mere desire itself a sin  for me
As I have little chance that it shall be?
I’d need a mountaineer with caring hands
And  a hundred  heavy rubber bands

In my imaginative fantasy
I desire to talk  while sipping   tea

As  Wittgenstein plays  havoc with his memes?

At the bus stop I meet many folk
One man told me  Donald Trump is great
Global warming is a myth–on -coke
Brexit is indeed a super -state

All that in five minutes at the stop
Why tell me,  a cynic at the core?
His open mouth let fly, it was a flop
I am not  convinced,  trapped in bus doors

Do I signal arguing ‘s my sport?
Does it give him joy to convert dames?
Does he think that Trump  needs my retorts
As  Wittgenstein plays  havoc with his  memes?

I like men  but not  their little minds
Let them smile and  wish will be defined

Tears well up and wet my eyes.

In the land that dreams dwell in
where love and hate and life begin;
where swiftly the deep rivers flow
from those lost lands of long ago.

I wander through wild poppy fields
Underfoot the dark earth yields…
. I see the flowering fruit trees start
Their blossoms gather round my heart…

I hear the sparrows sing with joy
And bees their busy wings employ.
In those lost lands I saw your face
And now I long for your embrace.

Are you real,am I deceived
From this earth we all must leave.
Earth to earth and ash to ash
Glory,pride and boasting pass.

You have left me, dearest one
Soon I too will be called on.
Nothing lasts but truth is real
Keep your heart and your ideals..

Earth to earth, we rest in clay
We must give all self away
Softly on this earth I  roam
Seeking for my love’s new  home

For until the very end
Love and kindnss may descend.
Even one glance of an eye
Can love convey when all’s awry.


Soft as wings of butterflies
Tears well up and wet my eyes.
My heart has melted into yours
All shall grow and die like flowers