David Brazier
VERSE 2008
Copyright David Brazier 2008 Amida Trust 12 Coventry Road Narborough Leicestershire LE19 2GR UK dharmavidya@amidatrust.com 0116.2867476 Words, photography, design - David Brazier
INTRODUCTION I have put together here a collection of some of my recent verse all of which is experimental occasional writing. I cannot claim to have found a consistent ‘voice’ or style, nor to have an aesthetic theory of what I am doing in this work, but, nonetheless, the doing of it has a function of moving me on. During this time I have read quite a bit of modern poetry and much of it has not inspired me. At the same time, while the classical works are inspiring one cannot imitate them for the language has changed too much. At the same time, I do find that my own natural language is slightly oldfashioned for today’s world and in poetry that now seems to be a handicap rather than an advantage. These, therefore, are not great works of art, but markers along a personal journey of exploration into the possibilities of language. All I can say is that I am not the same as I was a year ago before these verses and others were written and that the writing has played a part in the transformation. Whether it has also manifested in a form that can be of interest, impact, delight or even passing fancy to others, at this stage, I must leave the reader to be his or her own judge.
Empty Colour An English morning. The Art Room window looks out onto untainted grey. One dove passes filling the emptiness with transient meaning. The featureless sky mingles with my quivering migraine icicles amidst the pull of returning sleep. I shall make my bed among the dead and slumber within your right hand. If my soul is to be consumed, may it be. May it be as it has been, here by an angel, there by a fox. Will you have me? It is as it is, now. The bird has settled high in the lime tree. Old wood is richer for its knots. Roaring into their depths one smells the rat-holes of eternity, not dark and flat, not hidden and mute , but in Fauvist exclamation bursting from the salons of autumn. So many faces, torsos already lost, return my gaze, but, one and all, they only utter, “Purity is grey.”
I Did Not Know Him I do not know him but one day perhaps I might meet him.
Chances are slim, though it’s clutching at scraps I might meet him.
I keep things in trim, follow maps, I do not know him.
It’s been grim due to mishaps I do not know him.
If we’re not dim, if Fate taps I might meet him
On the world’s rim, if we mind the gaps, I might meet him.
I’d chance a whim though, as hesitation saps I do not know him.
I do not know him but, keep it under wraps, I might meet him.
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Cold A star - far off only one - cold womb pocket - lily of heaven A star - far off I watch it - cold something is born - a flower A man - not so far only one - cold standing alone - time arrested A man - not so far lost in thought - cold bone upon old bone - night walker A stone - under foot one blunt edge - cold came from a stream bed - lost A stone - under foot hint of fossil - cold came from an ancient sea - refound Water - all around feigning silver - cold fount of life - mist rising Water - all around slipping away - cold self-effacing - first of hermits Space - nowhere everywhere - cold window and door - swinging open Space - nowhere calling - cold pocket empty - tomb lily
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The Hermit Wu is making tea upon a fire in an earth oven in the corner of his cell by slow moves that never seem to tire collecting cup, saucer, tray, and spoon choosing and mixing tea, and finally, as if summoning a friend ringing a little bell “Nobody comes to share my tea for I live here quite alone and but for loneliness for company I’d long have turned to stone. “From my small dwelling you can’t see far; secluded, none sees me and I see none, except, look up and see a star, or, in day, receive the grace of sun. “But twilight’s best, sun gone, no star alight, colour fades away and in the shades of grey I sit mystery pulled round me as a blanket warm and tight, sadness intangibly hangs here over Heaven’s pit. “At this grey hour all’s undeclared and hidden like faded passion or a river bed run dry; there’s no doing to do, nothing bidden and that is when my heart is free to cry. “So you, invisible friend, can drink with me and sit and watch the passing empty hour and we can ride surf on the celestial sea and drink a drought that’s neither sweet not sour.” And when he’d done with drink he sat there still as tiny stars disturbed his opaque trance one who had long abandoned will to ride upon the elemental dance. What others fear he has for bosom friend and is content to sit there til the end.
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Evening From my chair at the window the middle distant yet imposing Cypress shape stands densely keen, sharply chiselled, darker than graphite. The sky behind is still discernibly blue with three brush strokes of paler rag torn cloud. Nearer objects, the fir in our garden, the neighbour’s house, are already almost completely black, simple masses adding bulk, but the annex roof still has a regular patterning of ashen flecks delineating tile. This is surely the primal condition of things: imperceptibly fading before the gaze that steadily loses its grasp; irresistible melting to invisibility yet, before departure most stark, more acute than in full light. Now the dark is completing its saturation. Only two elements remain having devoured all further detail as though it never were, black mass below and over it a darkening, now more opaque than slate that yet still, even now, retains the faintest hint of blue. Time to shut the curtains and end my observation of the darkening hour. Even as I think it the two begriming zones are shedding their distinction and, as the amorphic finality consumes all, I too am merged into obscurity in which the tiredness of my mind cannot be set apart from the muddied turmoil of a day full as the garden with its’ now invisible plants.
Love Love does not fly heavenward Heaven comes to us. It impales itself upon my bones and yours and stands to be stoned to death by trade yet re-arises with an open hand for Love never renounces life even when cut down by a sword, even slain. Love rises only as high as beings stand for Love sees the world and is not blind, - the only one for it sees futurely. Love sustains.
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Lovers live prayer and ecstasy in this hard paradise in making where all shall be well. A Lover loves the sea, which he is not. A Lover loves the land, which she is not. Lovers love the sky, which they are not. Lovers love each the other, whom they are not and Lovers love those who know little of Love for Love loves beyond itself and rejoices. Love never annihilates this world but sups upon it dining in exquisite pain, seeing it and seeing it gone again, - is, will be and was holding each specifically in a gentle hand and dying momently from awe upon what is to be.
Heritage Sitting in a corner of the cathedral - where better? I read the revelations that came to Julian and ponder what it is to be English. Here lie deposited the remains of...� Here flower the sacred strains of... Here we remain. And if I plunge into that still deep pool past my reflection, fish and weed, what costly stones lie sunken there? Will my body burst if this heart untightens mid venerable reverberations, be drowned in drips of holy blood? “Seek, suffer and trust.� It should be enough to simply pause here or go about business: amidst such cascade of light. I sit.
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I Took My Fill I took my fill of life and many were the guises by which I sampled from its hook and thwarted its assizes. There’s always last a price to pay said bosses, friends and scholars, but I always got away with less than pounds or dollars. The cost is not in property, but the being of the owner. So stow your soul, live prettily, and you’ll not need disown her. Then when you’re weighed the dust falls by like water in a basket they cannot trap a laugh or sigh within a metal casket. Just pay and give them all you are and there’ll be twice tomorrow for when you’re guided by a star you never need to borrow. Pick fragrant blooms that don’t resist for each I’ll give you seven for all the flowers you have kissed are blooming now in heaven.
Open Secret The slender thread of life is easily broken but this memento of my love will long betoken the things of which we've never really spoken and the things we've left to sleep unwoken and though it may be we will never wake them still in my heart I know they're not forsaken for til that thread is snapped and our love taken our love will be a secret that is open.
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Histories in Limestone In limestone country by Littam on the scarp edge striped snails live out lives of consequence in prolific numbers. Humans hurtle past in tin vehicles unaware of shelled histories playing out amidst the sheep shorn grass. In Eyam Village Church below one hears other histories of heroic isolation in the days of plague. In the church apse, demarcated for silent contemplation, a couple chatter about trivia of great importance. Pondering on all, I share God’s sense of humour - upon divinity, my only claim and wonder if laughter gives similar release within little shells of lime.
To Be a Leaf To be a leaf and fall carelessly and drift down a stream until caught in a backwater thick with other leaves slowly becoming waterlogged and sinking. To be a leaf and not a thinker wondering about the leaf and its pain or lack of pain and its death or mine slowly becoming waterlogged and sinking. To be a leaf leaf leaf leaf leaf leaf sinking.
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I am Beirut I am Beirut I am Phnom Penh, Groznyy and Kigali, I speak a thousand languages and my names are more than the names of God for my children have spread across the world to bathe in the smoke of Nagasaki and dance to the trumpets that since Jerico and before have crowed, since Gengis rode west and Alexander east, and long before. I am Beirut the pivot of the world, where continents collide and the dust never settles for the thought of me, a dark shadow. hangs unspoken in every chancellery to quicken the dead, suck pallor from the great, and makes heavy the footfalls of hope, for I will not be silenced. I am Beirut. In me can you not see reflected your faces rendered gaunt, harried from the sun into the deep recesses of your hate? It will out. How long will you ride in its chariot of fire? How long repent? Look upon me and learn before it is too late. You who think me far away, you too shall know my names. I am Beirut.
Lies Pretending to be Lies Who says we should be centred in this eccentric world? Who says we should be found like a pebble among pearls? Solace sentimentally slides from lies pretending to be lies
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We Think we Remember but the wind gently blows, ever so gently, and the wing of the butterfly has still not yet moved nor has the gate opened of itself nor by our hand
just as we open the same old gate each time we cross the field. There is a gentle breeze blowing, ever so gentle, lighter than the wing of a butterfly.
which is also a brightly coloured wing suspended by the identical force by which we cross the field in the lightest possible way
We think we remember, but just now a butterfly is suspended in the middle of the field we are crossing, having passed the same old gate, and we remember,
just as we always remembered.
Lao Tzu The old boy with the non-local accent who came and went nobody knew quite where from on an enormous ox that ate indiscriminately from the roadside yet never strayed away from the wishes of the unpresuming lad whose age no one could figure or even reckon at was he a boy at all more like a force of nature that had already seen it all and drawn conclusions in a distinct way that was yet no particular way but only when you reflected upon it a kind of universal way somehow beyond the words and phrases in which it was uttered or rather hinted at that were not quite poetry yet not quite not either or yes even conclusion is not quite right as there was something unending unfinal ineffable that just made you go on listening as though he knew the seasons of things beyond reason reviving the ordinary from its desiccated familiarity and reuse that had rendered the divine into a kind of refuse or everyday junk in the midst
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of which he could readily discern the lost pearl or underground stream and source by which the chaff could be hydrated into living manna for what most folk do and say was clearly to him not the essence of the matter but nonetheless not detached from it either for it was in the ordinary that he discerned the fissure that led all the way through for it is only through the cracks that the light can come in in its own way so that from beyond all the blocks and the cloy that weigh upon the already down hearted like a snow blanket of white convention effacing all true discernment a true treasure in no way treasonable just lying there all the time in the midst of the cliche world could suddenly shine again fully radiant in the grace with which he took a cup of tea from your hand and happily savoured it joyous yet not even needing to smile at the mere hint of a subtly spreading aroma.
The Sage and the Night Ox The sage is red faced, but his cloak is as blue as a sky of ocean cloud breakers rising sheer white horses prancing as high as his ox can snort. He’s travelled all day on a tide of sand past scattered bones smoothed stones and twisted birches that survive to be something midst dunes that rage neither bribed nor bought. So where is he going on that low headed beast ’long ravines and deeps through the mists of his mind? What will he find and retrieve, exalt on return on the undertow of thought? Or will he be myriad aeons gone away past measureless miles and faceless smiles with stallions and mares and the old night ox fellows and familiars for refrain and retort? The sage now is white as a mage in a storm as the whirling dust devil sings by his side “Be my bride, be my bride, for I’m quite over-wrought!” “Oh, I am already betrothed to the wind” he sings as he skips casting dust to the skies. “Spin, spin as you will there’s shadows to be fought” The company moves on midst the breath of the ox that hovers behind as the phantoms depart, they rise over mountains, plunge deep in the ground, white horses, white horses, dance, dance, for his sport.
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Print on the Wall Four Abyssinian women, extraordinarily tall, sway in a whirling ascending dance. Nothing Grecian, save the aesthetic truth of it, though those nobly lifted chins will never fall. The long skirts of cotton swirl, a cascade of shimmer sweeping away the ineffable rhythm. Unseen the drums, the skilful legs, the never setting sun, even the ground beneath. The honour of these maidens will forever be sublime and we may leave them there, a break of colour on the pastel wall and go our way beyond such captured intervals into the fullness of completing time where the ascetic romance of the pristine moment gives way to the nourishing succulence of life’s ironic consummations.
Why Was it bad blood, common to us all? Remorse? Fear? Fruit of unending sin? Who has no aberration to atone, no atrocity to cast a shadow in the heart? And did he let that shadow out ... and is it now abroad?
The Oak His two way surge taps the stores of sky and ground, silence concealing sinuous passion, the power of his writhing reach into the oceans above and below modestly belied by the imperceptible slowness of advance as he strains, a pulsing sceptre, riveting heaven to earth.
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The Dispute Did their women weep? Did they attend? A prison, a trial, a funeral, a grave. A man now unreachable as he ever was. The men We never read their novels for they never came, the many unconsummated hours of two would be authors barren on the keyboards, silent as the adjacent flats from which were removed a felon and a corpse one summer afternoon. Sensitivity impelled conception attracted lovers made them leave impeded delivery. A trivial dispute two quicksilver souls suddenly lethally consequential brought them respective solitudes long sought. Yes, they attended. Yes, they wept, but, no, they never understood.
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Gun Crime There’s a lot of talk on the chattering vine of guns and knives and youth violent crime. “Youth,” they say, “The youth of today,” like a pestilence you don’t want to stay or commodity of plastic tat to put away so that is that but the blood on streets is hot and real from an arm or a throat that can’t appeal; did you hear a scream, a gasp or groan that said, “in here no hope is sown” but only frustration at road blocked roads where those who have nothing know they’re owed so a cut or a stab or a shot in the night is more than just a private fight but a cry to the court of history on account of a stolen right to be free. All those kids though they’re going down just had bad luck in choice of town a choice that was not theirs to make but they’re the ones the tops forsake to use as a scapegoat sacrifice for shame at behaviour that “isn’t nice,” but’s not so different from making war across the seas for the sake of oil and sending in more polished thugs to keep the flow from coming unplugged of liquid gold that keeps some wealthy. The poor still lack the means to be healthy so they fight among themselves til bodies lie there dead and still for the real enemy’s out of reach of mind or arm - it’s hide and seek.
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Starting to Think About Death Turning sixty I started to think of death, not think about it, simply of it, in the same way as, when younger, one thought of sex without deliberation, just finding the thought in one’s mind, an interloper about whom one felt dubious, sometimes wondering how he got in, where he came from, how long he intended to stay. This made me reflect how the act of sex was like dying, dying sex, both nothing that was anything to do with me, but, which, nonetheless, implicated me, like a crime performed in a dream for which one will be hanged in real life. Not that sex and death are crimes, but that they are dreams, interlopers, or, perhaps, I the interloper who has chanced upon their winding road along which their branded cows are making their own way home for milking.
Canibals They killed the men and cooked them invited the women to the feast their women, the one’s whom the dead had loved, they tried to humiliate them like that. You may as well kill us too the women said, their wound beyond bearing . That’s the way of war these days that’s how it goes in the hidden lands where the human animal prowls and wonders how far he can go, with a wound beyond bearing.
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The Last Dish The devil's in his kitchen, making broth for angels in the dining hall, who think it comes from God. The back door's swinging open to admit a new recruit they set him work quick chopping til his arms are falling off. We're here. We’re not to slack, you know. I hate that holy lute. They've been playing hymns all morning. They can't bear to hear us scoff, but there's no conversion in us, we who slave behind the shop, while they sit around and gossip as though time will never stop with their condescending manners and their supping on the cream as though all that to them matters is fulfilment of their dream, but their time in heaven lessens with the ticking and the chimes then one day they'll be in here for a bit of working time. Here in the devil's kitchen where our fallen angels slave one learns the real meaning of a life beyond the grave for there's nothing worse than heaven out there in the restaurant where they depend on us lot for their roasting and their fries but they never know reality - that burns in devil eyes. So down here in the galley you can skivvy all day through and you know the score and know the lash and know the very truth, but the swooners at the tables who are downing double luxe rest blindly on their laurels till they drown in golden cups while the devil’s in his kitchen making broth.
Night Train It's cooler at night, shunting through the cane, what with the heat of the engine making you sweat, with the sun still in sight you'd be wet through, streaming in the steam, or midday rain, so, here we are in the cool dry night cutting along on the train.
I'm sitting here thinking chugging through the cane pulling a couple of ton down the track enjoying the cool clout of the sea at least this work will keep me from drinking money in the sack not the swill life's getting better for me, driver of the night train.
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En Suite When I stray into your garden as a trespass on your glebe let us dance one final ritual, say “Hosanna” - then we leave. Zeus wrecked, tsunami tossed, armies lost in desert sands, the cost of each long holy breath too much with much too many dead.. Creation’s such a wasteful game, stupendous mathematicals, aphids can’t be held to blame, nor terns that half the world have crossed, or elephant or wildebeest and what of us, self-crowned distortion, crying, “Bread!” - mired in extortion, scheming never to be least nor slighted, diners wandered from the feast they whose sin is not original, they who since they were amphibian dined on starlight dew. What was it Hercules once said? If he could not complete his tasks his fingers would dissolve in frost and we who live upon his back would ants be down a darkened drain. Hera’s mood is bad today all on account of that old man whose rood is stiff, who spurns her tiff, who sings a song so long, so glad, so out of keeping with the gray and troubled mien of ages; yes, her mood is very bad - her spouse unfaithful, her secret out what’s left to gossip on about? The apartment has a splendid view. Confined here he sees mermaids on the rocks below among the crashing waves. A must of age hangs about him, though the walls are newly painted and a red carpet arrives next week. We talk of Swedenborg, of growing smaller, of passion for books of which he has mountains all now disjoined by decorators, a circumstance that pains him nor blanks his smile. I have seen many eyes, but what behind them? What says corner, lash and glint? Beyond cornea, iris and nerve, what fellow is skipping, what child uncurbed? Before the beginning no spirit, no word, no deep. God finger pricked was timeless sleep before the rousing thought of sinning,
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charming kiss that made him wake, spring up - for our sake? cast doubt upon our bliss. How proud when anthems sound and we with garland wreaths are crowned or cloaks cast down cascade around ungrounded feet and we Olympian arise unknowing pall in Zeus’ eyes, headache of his crowded day of nymphs and battles midst jealousy of clowns. For in the inner chamber thirty ladies of the imperial court are hanged with silken rope one afternoon. In priceless skirts they tread the air then cease and limply dangle in the breeze. A violet is blooming in the shelter of a rock on a cold Afghani plain. She scratches the earth for scraps of food beneath the overhanging sky; beneath the infinity of blue, the unforgiving air whence eyeless bombs fall down, atchoo.... atchoo.... we all fall down, they all fell down, the mother, father, bridal pair, the guests and revellers now not there, like snails caught in bonfire blaze, their shells are left for connoisseurs to string upon a line of thread, hang sweet mementoes to the dead never to be reconciled - just vaporised she scratches in the sand sweet violet there in tattered rags and tousled hair. Love is not a twisted snare, the body not a skylark cage. The aim is not to cut and tear its fabric, flee and disengage for here there lies a holy task, a game of angel tag whose sacred is not far away. This world is not a mirror glass. High cumulus mount in mauve-tinged greys of bulbous volume, tenebrous tensions of electric power; preparing a pouring down, a loosness falling, crashing, heavy splashing, even cowering crows a-wetting, blackening the weary roads, gathering in sheets and runnels into ditches, pools and tunnels, through the arteries of earth,
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spumes that bow the splattered blossoms, clattering once limp leaves recoiled, veins now dark mosaic polished, puddles full and spilling over; FILL rills, FILL ponds, FILL sodden meadows, unbound streams are somersaulting whorled and whishing over paving, into cascades with a whirret, all the while the darkening tumult feeds the rivers’ tumefaction. How understand, how touch the cut off will, the warped, rejected, lost of soul, missing part that makes one whole? Is it a skill? How paint the point of pain, mend mesh of hurt, loss, grief shame, malodorous pit that all distain? Must one be of spectral kind? Is not the secret to be found in the foulness of one’s mind putrid flesh but five days dead and yet still living? There is no rape or villainy, pillage, contempt, defamy, psychotic rage, depravity, loathing, folly, cruelty not already known, you see. Celebrated, magnified, explored, loved, loathed, sometimes defied, these are my friends, mates to my soul, Hell’s coals I carry in my bowel. When they lay me out at end beyond the passing final hour you will see a face contorted in every sin that has a name and many more besides so intimate, familiar, runnels of the rain cascading down. He who lifted the corner of his fine carpet and fainted in shock at the loathsome life crawling there, how is he to be? Say, say, for it is me. Wander in the ancient forest, not suspecting, not attending, there beneath the growl of matting in the lower vegetation marks of Shem, of Ham, of Japheth, marks of feet in ancient times, go along the path there traced out faintly midst the fallen leaves go along the lost in ages as a skilful scout a trail, come upon an olden city, on a royal dwelling place, parks and groves, plush gay pavilions
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now decayed, but still invoking listen listen voice of hammer listen to the voice of stone, stir elixir, tend that mentor, to its verity obtest. When I stray into your garden as a trespass on your glebe let us dance one final ritual, say “Hosanna� - now we leave.
Boards Eighteen boards make our bathroom floor, each tongue licking into the groove of the next, no gap, tightly fitting, snug. I visualise the workman hammering them down onto beams below. Like lines of text or music score; each bears a swirling language without sound, written in sap. Knots and curls harmonise revealed by the slicing precision of the mill, telling history of once in a wood where wind, sun, hail and rain reared up pines to give the hill a cap. Now they lie side by side, smooth and trim absorbing drips, sometimes swathed in artificial mist, supporting those who pass to and fro. Busy morning. Time to go.
Before before - a long time when it started - you now - the pear blossoms after - nights without repose if - a smile is forever soon - a hope is for never tomorrow, then - blossoms are falling yesterday - in my lap now - rest your empty head as - rest and dream
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recently - I slept in your arms for - I never woke because - the unblessed are hanging still before - we spawned so many later - they knocked again again - they knocked again - in celestial panoply all armed once - no, more we sinned ever - ever more we drank never - did we eat the mirabelles again - I need not say only - it was for love
Dreams of Evening I dreamt I was an old style poem, unsure if the dream I dreamt was familiar, sensing its affinity to dreams already dreamt, then I awoke into this dream whose seeming continuity compels. I went to heaven where I shall have time to read dictionaries. My twenty volume set shall be bound with red covers embossed with gold type on front and spine, solid to the hands but not so heavy as to tire the elbows. Inside will be the etymology of all the tongues of Earth showing their family relations to one another, the living and the dead. In the morning I shall read the twenty volumes as a liturgy and in the afternoon I shall write verse and greet my neighbours. Those ancients scanned their lovers from afar, could pen stanzas as unalloyed rods of light, charm and delight, enthuse as from the gods.
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Alberto, you old fool, to happily lie your bones in the grass and take it for reality not knowing how you differs! He has his own propensity to seek the holy in the hardness of stones rather than the ringing clatter of offices and phones where souls shrivel by management decree beneath the hushed weight of corporate history. Do you hear the sound of smothered groans? Alberto Caeiro, though simple, was a cynic, but not cold, beautiful and charming, inviting the mimic, he crosses the pages seducing the innocent, no Philistine - a fine observer of nature’s filigree whose design inclined to go aground on shoals of irony. We moderns inhabit the cheap stalls, brash as we are, hungry for detailed close-ups, so our star has little opportunity for art. We hear the cues for dropped lines and get less flattering views. Therefore our verse, written from just below the bar, has a keener, acerbic quality by far. I no longer remember my other dream though still I dream I dreamt it Summer day comparisons may still hold if, versifier, you are antique or bold, but contemporary poets are less fair, and do so tar their ladies as would astonish earlier men. Today’s keyboard is much sharper than their pen. So reminiscing I feel bereft, pass the days in reverie, pining for the time when I knew my dream, now dreaming of the time when, memory sinking in the West, eternally I shall dream again. Can I have word with you, dear? I want to tell you that all the papers are in the box in the bottom of the wardrobe.
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I sha’n't live forever and I am old and when I go I want everything to be right for you. You will be there, won't you, ...when I go? I hope you're not going soon. (I, counting on so much, tenderness burning the wet corner of my eye) Well, you know, sometimes one has a feeling.
Mule Pedigree A mule of equine ancestry must know he has another part the chevaline and haughty look conceals a docile donkey heart and no one would be divident without dubitancy or pause nor see the parts asunder rent nor only catch the whiff of horse for donkey is not just an ass but also India's kiang deriving from the highest caste of onager from Turkestan.
A Pair of Pots His life was potter's earth upon her wheel and she the glaze upon his earthenware and they were fired together in the kiln of love that burnt away all trace of care for he was turned from dust of Kao-lin Shan, she the finer ore that turned him coy, so they, a precious porcelain from clay, were hearts translucent vitrified in joy.
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Notes I played a single note. It could not live alone It played upon a blue green hill where goat leaf vines were sown. It found six playmates on the hill amidst the tinkling bells a pastoral sound, a symphony, as coloured as the Book of Kells. It danced and jingled down a brook and gathered wild wild seeds; it sang the song of a sweet girl's look as she threaded acorn beads. The notes went on and played themselves and lay me on the loam to find a bride among the elves and a leaf to float me home.
Something Will Happen Something will happen. The fuse is burning, firefly crackling along the ground over the dune, round the haystack. I sit and watch decades decay and reshuffle the pack. Something will happen if it doesn't rain or if a passing llama does not tread upon the flame. Oh little light how you do sparkle so in your microscopic vertigo. Is that the light we think to go by, navigate galaxies, extricate intimacies, cook the dinner, fell logs, feed dogs? What are we racing after? Something will happen.
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Life Journey Did she live before she died? Did she die before she cried? Did she grow before she lied? Did she love before she sighed? She believed before she hoped. She received before she coped. She gave all before she moped. She deceived and then eloped. She grew up beyond ideals; found she was the one who steals, found the gift that then reveals the secret that one then conceals. Unto the end and everlasting lived a story free of fasting like a fisherman who's casting for a longing soul that's gasping. Did she use up every talent? Did she feel her heart relent? Did she abandon what she leant? Did she relish what she spent? She found to build is to destroy. She found that life is not a toy. She found the anchor of her bouy. She found one thing that does not cloy.
Dead Line She went to bed with a deadline tossed and turned til the report was written arrived veneered at the office turned and tossed as she heard cancellation bought a sandwich at the kiosk burned and glossed went to the board room brought a power pointer with her glossed and burned presented graphics though it made no difference to them tacked and tired with indifferent memos spent an empty after midday tired of tacking between shipwrecks went to bed line gone dead.
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She is a House that’s Empty Now She is a house that’s empty now curtains frayed and bedspread torn, though I still fear her furrowed brow, tremble and here lie forlorn. She is a house that’s full of woe windows broken, doors unhinged , the reason why I do not know, but only that my heart was singed. She is a garden buried deep beneath an overgrowth of thorn yet now I meet her in my sleep and once again begin to mourn. She is a road that’s long and cold, pitted now its yellow brick, whereon my step grows slowly old, my heart unfathomably sick. She is a cliff that’s sharp and tall and here I stand upon the edge, but I shall not cast off and fall just pass a year upon this ledge.
For Richard Come, come, arrive, it won't be long, we're not too old, we need not strive when we have song. When we have verses made from silver tripping from a brim full pitcher over-flowing gems cascading will you be my harvester? Will you catch those falling tresses tumbling down from angel dresses freeing beauty from the witch's curse of jealousy and loss? You shall be my friend eternal we shall fly across horizons through a sky all made of moss beyond the knowledge of the living into lands of gold.
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This Year There’ll Be Mares This winter there'll be mares in our sunset field where we so often stand to watch the star retire beneath the burning stillness of the eve now hooves will tread the new cut grass the whole day through and Bernadette will come to water them and her good man to cut the hay Beneath the trees brown flanks will browse and roll and stretch and romp and doze long through the cold time of the year while we are cutting wood to burn staid they'll be growing strong and Bernadette will shake my hand and foals will come in spring Passing deer will mix with them peeping from the timid woods and we shall peep at them in turn our fear all mixed with ire that they should have to fear free then we'll sit and smile and talk with cold hands aching at the fire. For winter's hard here in these parts in the middle lands of France upon our little hill of rock amidst the land of oak where we have built our small retreat each year advancing step by step in friendship with the local folk ‘til this year there'll be mares.
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