Dydd Dewi Sant Hapus

Dydd Dewi Sant Hapus!

Happy St. David’s Day

Spring in Wales.

Spring in Wales

               Spring in Wales comes very quickly.  Sometimes, if you blink twice, it has gone again. But usually, you take a step outside the door one morning and suddenly there are daffodils everywhere. And they all come so early, crowding together like party-goers, tossing their heads in the bright yellow sunshine, and the whole world green and yellow, like the round yellow eye of this first blackbird, whistling on the garage roof or on a branch of the apple tree which is suddenly covered with a warm green fuzz of threatening leaf …

               … all so early, I say, and the countryside yellow with daffodils by March the First, St. David’s Day, our Dewi Sant, and especially in the Castle Grounds and Blackweir gardens, where the daffs grow wild and cluster beneath the trees, like huge, enthusiastic, rugby crowds, clapping and waving at every passing moment, and all the leaves on all the trees are just starting to sprout and there’s a pale, watery sun, but the wind is still fresh with the daffodils all tossing their heads in sprightly dance …

               … and you can walk the dog in Blackweir Gardens without a winter coat and without your wellington boots, though it’s as well to wear thick socks and good, stout shoes, just in case there are still puddles and the autumn leaves that fell last year may still be wet and soggy and slippery after their winter out in the rain and snow and the Feeder Brook which used to feed the Old Castle Moat, drained now, and no longer a stock pond for trout and carp,  is running strongly and quite fast, all the way down from Taffs Well … and the gurgling weir is beside you as you walk, with the crunch of the gravel beneath your feet, the song birds starting to sing, the nesting birds pairing up and starting to nest, and always the daffodils, the Taffodils as they sometimes call them in Cardiff, Caer Dydd, as they write on the busses, with the river Taff flowing there, just above you, as you climb the embankment and the River Taff flows beneath you now, all black and swift and deep and swollen with the end of the winter rains … and the Taff cradles as it flows the finest of fine coal dust and carries it down to the sea … and the fish and eels are born eyeless, so the fishermen say, as they measure out the length of the whoppers that got away, because nothing can be seen in the River Taff when it’s as black as that … and in places you can walk on it, they say, it’s so laden with coal dust from the worked out seams of the nearby Rhondda, and what use are eyes in a river where the coal dust is impenetrable and the water’s like a dense black stew …

               … and spring is Easter and Easter is when the Barbarians Rugby Football Club make their annual Easter Tour of Wales and the southern part of Wales is rugby mad on Good Friday, and we have just been released from the prison camps of our schools for the Easter Holidays, and in our new found freedom we go to Penarth where the Sea-Siders, as we call them, play against the Baa-Baas, as we call them, and we park the car at the top of the hill near the centre of Penarth, and we walk and half run to the playing fields down at the bottom of the hill, squeeze ourselves like toothpaste, in through the gates, squeeze ourselves small in the gathering crowd and there they are, the mighty Barbarians, 14 internationals from England, Ireland, Scotland, and occasionally France or South Africa,  and standing firm against them, the men from Penarth, 15 average tiny Welshmen, perennial losers, doomed to their annual failure, but not today, as Bernie Templeman, “Slogger” to his friends and intimates, kicks a penalty and drops a goal, and the giants are shunted all round the park and almost off the scoreboard … and we shout ourselves hoarse and it’s Penarth 6 and the Barbarians 3 … and all that international strength and might vanishes, Goliath felled by David on a damp Good Friday night … in the spring time, in my childhood, in Wales …

               … and on Easter Saturday, we stay in Cardiff … and we have tickets for the stand where you don’t have to stand at all, but can actually sit in luxury … and my friend’s dad has a friend who has friends who have season tickets … but they have just won the football pools and they have left Wales and are travelling around the world on a cruise ship, and they have left us their tickets, their wonderful tickets in the stands, and we sit on the half way line and watch this magnificent game where they, the Barbarians, have fourteen internationals and a school boy who will one day be an international, but we have fifteen internationals because this is Cardiff … the best club side in the world … and this is the Capital of Wales … and we are playing at Cardiff Arms Park, at the ground where my father played and my grandfather before him, and we are watching history, and family history, and everyone who plays for Cardiff also plays eventually for Wales, and my father came here, like my grandfather, as a visitor, not part of the home team, and Swansea were the champions back then, not Cardiff, and my grandfather played for Swansea, way before the First World War, and my dad …

               …  well, I don’t know much about him and his rugby because he changed from rugby to soccer because my mother’s family, who all had English and Scottish blood, thought rugby was dangerous and they wanted him to play soccer, so he did, and he broke his ankle playing soccer and never played sports that well again, though he was a great sportsman, more than 6 foot tall, yet I take after my mother and I’m tiny like her, and “much better to have had a girl, with him as small as he is” some neighbours said and others said “Don’t worry; he’ll grow!” but I never did and so I became a runner not a rugger, but my father’s side of the family could never understand why I wasn’t out there, like my father and my grandfather and “A good little ‘un is just as good as a good big ‘un” they used to tell me, so I played occasionally, especially in the spring, and there they were, giants at six and seven foot tall, and there I was a dwarf, a pigmy, at five foot tall, and it’s lies they tell you sometimes, myths and lies, because five foot can never match six or seven in spite of everything they say about a good little ’un … but this is Cardiff and Cardiff always wins and win we do … and we all go home happy …

               … but on the morning of Easter Sunday we set  out for Swansea and the bungalow in Bishopston, where we will spend the night, and we have our knapsacks on our backs and in our knapsacks we have our sandwiches and our snack bars and our bathing trunks, and we’re all ready for that first Easter visit to the beach … and we catch the train at Cardiff General and go from Cardiff General to Swansea High Street, and when we’re in Swansea we run to the bus station and catch the next bus, the next brown and yellow Swan bus, and it takes us out along the Mumbles Road, and up the Mayals, and over Bishopston Common, which is still open land and not the least bit enclosed, and there are skylarks rising early in the morning, and cows, and ponies, and sheep, and sometimes they are found wandering on the road that crosses the common, but not today … and we leave the common and rush through the narrow lanes, at breakneck speed, and the trees lash the bus windows with their branches, inches from our faces, and we duck as the leaves smack the glass in front of us, even though we know the windows are there and the leaves can’t touch us … and at Pyle Corner, we leave the bus and it’s down through the lanes, and it’s out to the bungalow which hasn’t been opened yet, and we’re the first there, so it’s light a fire and warm the place up, and dry the mattresses, and get the damp out of the one bed we’ll sleep in, all of us, and then it’s down to the hard stone beach at Pwll Ddu, and we wander on the shore fully dressed and dare each other to swim as we wander across the pebbles and yes, we decide to do it, to strip, and the wind turns us blue and there’s nobody else there, just us, and it’s Easter Sunday, and the sea-gulls are daring us to take off all our clothes and bathe naked in the naked sea beneath a naked, cloudless sky …

               … and it’s not as warm as we remembered it from last year, and the wind whips our naked flesh and turns it blue and we run up and down trying to keep warm and then we plunge into the icy water and the water must be a degree or two warmer than the land, but it’s still cold in the water and even colder when we come out … and I remember now that my grandfather was a member of the Swansea Polar Bear Club and swam, each Christmas, in the docks at Swansea and also on new Year’s Day and he must have been mad, even if he did join a club of equal nut cases, ‘cos we’re freezing, I tell you, and this is Easter Sunday, not New Year’s Day, though the year is new enough for us and the cycle of the seasons is just beginning, and the old year ends with winter and the new year starts with Easter, and this ritual turning blue as though we were all daubed and tattooed with woad, and the annual, ritual dip lasts for about two seconds, two seconds of total immersion, like baptism, with your hair wet or it doesn’t count and “Watch out!” there’s someone coming down the cliff path and we’re no longer the only ones on this beach and we leap into each other’s clothes just to have something on when the others arrive, whoever they are, these neighbours, these nosy neighbours are … and “Skinny dipping. were you?” they say, “We’ll tell your ma, we will.” “You can’t she’s in Cardiff!” “Well we’ll tell your grandma then, she’s still in Swansea, I saw her at the market yesterday, and she’ll tan your backsides — should be ashamed of yourselves, bathing naked on Easter Sunday.”  “Aw, don’t tell gran; remember: you were young once!” “Yes! I was; but I didn’t run naked on the beach on Easter Sunday!” …

               … and it’s back to the bungalow with everything soon forgotten and the bungalow is warmer now, from the fire and the woodstove, and you know automatically where everything is, the oil lamps, and the wood fire stove, but there’s no electricity and we have forgotten to get water and unless we drink rainwater from the barrel it’s down to the end of the field, with its single tap that feeds and waters the whole field, 26 summer houses and only three of them occupied, two by people who live there all year round, and one by us, now, at Easter, and the neighbours drop in to see we are all right … and we talk and they help us to trim the wicks and set the lights and one of the neighbours comes in and helps us to make a pot of stew on the wood stove, a Welsh stew with potatoes, and cabbage, and onions, and carrots, and a bit of meat they lend us so we will not be tempted to use the piece of old dry smoked bacon left over from last summer, and hanging still from the rafters, out of reach of the mice and the rats who have taken back their empire and scuffle and scrimmage each night, like Barbarians, over the roof and through the walls … and we can hear them at midnight, as they travel the pathways they have built around us …


               … and we can also hear the cows, out in the field all night, as they rub their bodies up and down against the bungalow walls, and there are fresh cow pats where they have sought human company and the warmth of the fire because it’s cold at night even though it’s spring and when Monday dawns, first  it’s breakfast and Brandy Cove, where the beach has changed shape after the winter storms … and all the paths are slightly different, down from the cliffs to the sand, and we are not the first, for there are new paths and footprints and one of our neighbours is there in the cove with his canoe which he paddles all winter, every day, at full tide, in Brandy Cove at first, then out round the headlands to Caswell and Langland, Pwll Ddu and Three Cliffs and we don’t know now that one day he’ll go out on that tide, but he’ll never come back, and they’ll hold a funeral for him, but they’ll never bury him, because they’ll never find his body … and this year, again, he’s all sun tanned and brown and doesn’t look at all like one of us, we white skinned boys, with our sunless winter skins not yet exposed to wind and sand save for that one appearance yesterday that blued us as if we were dyed in woad,  as if we were ancient British warriors and the old Celtic Race was reborn in tattoo and blue … and fearsome we are, we warriors, we blue men, marching up Snowdon with our woad on, never minding if we’re rained or snowed on, and slap us on the chest and we are all bowmen they say, and the spring is here and the summer campaigns can be planned, but first, it’s back to the bungalow, finish up the food, clear everything away, make sure the fires are all out, lock all the doors, and off down the lane, we go to catch the bus back into town, the brown and yellow bus that was once driven by my great-grandfather, not in bus form, but he put a plank in the back of his truck and he gave people lifts, and this was the first informal transport system, ages and ages ago, long before the First World War, and everyone knew him and everyone knows me, but me I have left … and I don’t know anyone any more … but they all know all about me …
              
               … and we get off the bus at the Swansea Recreation Ground and we walk to St. Helen’s for the game, because today Swansea play the Barbarians and my uncle is there and he used to play for Swansea and he’s in his usual place … we know just where to find him … and we stand by him and talk to him and everyone is wearing something white today, because Swansea are the Swans when they play soccer and the All Whites when they play rugby and Cardiff play in Cambridge Blue and Black and I cannot remember the colours worn by Penarth, because we only go there once a year to watch them and nobody in the family ever played for them …

               … and Swansea is great because the stand is low and players can kick the ball over the stand and then the little boys, which is what we are in the eyes of the grown ups, though we think are big and tall and Celtic Warriors, quite capable of bathing at Pwll Ddu on Easter Sunday, with nothing on, which the grown ups would never think of doing, well, we little boys are told to run and get the balls which have been kicked over the grandstand out into the street where the Mumbles Railway still runs, right beside the Cline Valley Line, and all the traffic is stopped because the balls are rolling around and the boys are chasing them and whenever the grown men get tired of playing and need a breather, why, one of them kicks the ball over the pavilion roof and I can remember in the cricket season when a ball was hit over the pavilion roof and it landed in a coal truck that was passing on the railway line and it travelled all the way up to North Wales where it was discovered, lying on the coal, and the grown ups all said that we boys had stolen the ball, until it was discovered, a week later lying on the coal … and I can’t remember whether Swansea won or lost, but I think they won, because I don’t think the Barbarians won anything in Wales that year, and that night after the game it was back to High Street Station and back up to Cardiff General on the train, and the next day was Easter Tuesday ….

               …. and the holidays are almost over … but on Easter Tuesday, the Barbarians play Newport in Newport at Rodney Parade … and nobody in the family likes Newport, because the people from Newport are neither English nor Welsh and they change allegiance and go with whoever’s winning, England or Wales, and they move in and out of Wales, playing for England when the Welsh don’t want them and they can’t get a game with our team … and we don’t like that …  so nobody trusts them and you can see people from Newport playing on the English side, in white, with a red rose on their shirts … but Ken Jones wouldn’t do that … and he’s from Newport … and he’s fast, very fast, and he’s got an Olympic bronze medal for sprinting, and the crowd all sing the Skye Boat Song, except the words are different and  they sing “Speed, bonny boat, like Ken Jones on the wing, onward to score a try!”

               … and although we’re meant to support Ken Jones and the Newport team, we secretly support the Barbarians, but not too loudly, because there are some big, and I mean big, Newport supporters close by us, so we don’t make too much noise … and I can’t remember that game either because Rodney Parade isn’t very nice and nobody from my family would ever think of playing for them …

               … and Wales, as I remember it, was still very tribal … and people in Newport, Cas Newydd,  live on the border, and by the border, and we’re never sure which side of the border they’re fighting on, and that’s totally prejudiced and unfair, and politically incorrect … but that’s also tribal warfare, so there! … and it’s perfectly fair to support the Barbarians against Newport because in the folk lore, of that part of Wales, at that time, well, the people of Newport were Barbarians … and they didn’t know whether they were English or Welsh … and they were mixed breeds, mongrels, Heinz 57’s … and they kept the pubs open on Sundays too …

               … ah well, most of those things happened a long time ago and they’re all forgotten now, the rivalries, the family feuds, but some things you never forget … like Easter and the Barbarians Tour of Wales and the daffodils in the Castle Grounds and Roath Park in Spring and Blackweir Gardens … and suddenly, so suddenly, Easter Tuesday was over … and it was back to school … and the holidays were done … and Easter was done … and those are my memories of Spring … in Wales … where the blackbirds still whistle and sing on the garage roof … and all the world is yellow with gorse and sunshine and all those Taffodils …

Rage, Rage 36 & 37

Rage, Rage
36

How many times
must I open these
Pandora’s Boxes
packed so lovingly
to give me the tests
I loathe?

Yesterday they gave me
a throw-away plastic potty,
and three wooden spatulas.

I also got
an air-dry sample card,
stamped and dated.

37

Today
a teenage apprentice
prompts me to reveal
my birthdate, then binds my arm
with a thick rubber thong.

She tells me to make a fist
and probes with blunt fingers,
searching in vain for a fresh vein
she can open to extract
and bottle a sample
of my precious blood.

I watch my body’s sap
pumping out
in irregular spurts,
driven by my heart,
that worn-out
flesh-and-blood machine.

Drip by febrile drip,
blood accumulates
and the teenager smiles
with youth’s perfections:
slim body, wit, and grace.

Now, my heart is once more
a time-bomb ticking
beneath her fingers.

Comment:

“Youth’s perfections: slim body, wit, and grace.” Those were the days, my friends, I thought would never end. Then I watched my weight rising, my body thickening, my hips and knees sticking. But I am still me – my own hair, my own teeth, my own limbs, creaky as they are.

I remember. back in the days, watching the TV series – $6 million dollar man.” remember him? Artificial everything and he could out run a car, out jump a kangaroo, outswim an otter, out fight the world’s greatest ever boxers, with one hand tied behind his back. Everything artificial. The willing suspension of disbelief.

Well, I called a couple of friends from my rugby playing days, and guess what? They were all in competition with the $6,000,000 man. An artificial hip… an artificial knee … an artificial shoulder. One of my friends, probably the best player of the lot, had a shoulder replacement, two hip replacements, and two knee replacements. Try going through a metal detector with that lot clanking like Don Quixote’s armor on a warm day.

And DQ was lucky. His magic balsam would heal a man, even if he had been chopped in half by a malignant giant with a sharp sword. Instructions to his squire – “if that happens to me, just join the two halves together as closely and as carefully as you can. Then sprinkle a few drops of the balsam on my body and watch how the two halves grow back together, almost instantly.”

Well, it doesn’t always work like that. I spent half an hour soaking my thumbs in hot water when I got them stuck together using some form of Crazy Glue or Gorilla Glue or Rhinoceros Glue or Elephant Glue or the like. Now there’s a magic balsam for you. However, don’t get into any hot water until the halves are well set and the flesh has grown afresh. Otherwise you might come apart in the bath!

PS Moo did not think this was an amusing piece. So he would only give me a very early cartoon of a ticking alarm clock – well, four of them. And each one set to go off at a slightly different time. Way to go Moo.

Rage, Rage 35

Rage, Rage
35

Now,
once a month, they stick
a needle in my arm
and check the levels
of my PSA, cholesterol,
and testosterone.

Is my blood pressure rising?
Is my cholesterol high?
Are my electrolytes
ticking slowly down?

The doctor keeps telling me
it’s a level playing field
but every week
he changes the rules
and twice a year
he moves the goal-posts.

What game is he playing?
A man in a black-and-white
zebra shirt holds a whistle
to his lips while another
throws a penalty flag.

It comes out of the tv set
and falls flapping at my feet.
Now I know for certain that
I’m living in the Red Zone
and I’m running out of time.

Comment:

Now, once a month, they stick a needle in me! Not always in the same place. But, I sometimes feel like a pin cushion. “The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” have turned into the “probing instruments of innumerable doctors.” Try repeating those lines at speed and you will end up repeating the message, from lips to ear, like the battalions waiting to go over the top, used to do in the trenches of WWI.

Original message – “Send reinforcements, we’re going to advance.” Last message in sequence – “Send three and fourpence, we’re going to a dance.” Funny how times change. I am re-reading Don Quixote (yet again) and am bowled over by the length and complexity of the sentences. Then I realize how words, culture, times, and attitudes have changed. “Change and decay in all around we see…” – indeed we do.

How many people now know what ‘three and fourpence’ means? And how about LSD – and no, it’s not a psychedelic drug, it’s code for pounds, shillings, and pence. Well, for the original Latin terms for them anyway.

Oh the joys of AI – “The terms libra, sestercia (commonly sestertius), and denarius are the direct Roman ancestors of the British pre-decimal currency system (£sd), which was in use until 1971. The system was adopted from the Roman/Frankish model where a pound (libra) was divided into shillings (solidus) and pence (denarius).”

Oh the wonders of the British pre-decimal currency system (£sd). Four farthings = one penny; 12 pennies / pence = one shilling; 20 shillings = one pound; 21 shillings = one guinea. What fun we had adding and subtracting British coinage in those days, let alone multiplying and dividing for those wonderful state examinations.

Ah well, it’s all forgotten now, as are the jabs, the needles, and the tests. Anyone got a Wills’ Woodbine? Or a Player’s Navy Cut? And how about a Lucifer to light your fag? There weren’t any fags in my boarding school. Fagging was strictly forbidden. As was smoking. And drinking. And loads of other things that we did anyway.

Rage, Rage 34

Rage, Rage
34

A squiggle of spaghetti
or twisted noodles,
that’s what my brain
has become.

My second-hand mind
is a hand-me-down,
an antipersonnel bomb
from another place
and a distant time.

Blind, in so many ways,
with nowhere I want to go,
my soon-to-end days
lie humped on my shoulders,
weighing me down
as I limp along.

Comment:

You can blame my friend Moo for the painting. “That’s my view of your brain,” he told me. “A squiggle of spaghetti or twisted noodles.” I think his painting looks like what my Beloved, courtesy of Corrie Street (as was), calls a Spag Bowl. Funny how easy it is to become muddled and confused as we age. Did I shut the back door? Double-check. Yes, I did. And you can multiply that to the power of N (or DR – for don’t remember!). And what about those windmills that wave their arms in my mind? Will that be cash or “Charge!”

Re-reading the Quixote, side by side with a very good friend, I forget some of the ideas that I once had. I try to read my penciled marginal notes. What fun! First, I can hardly read them. Second, I can hardly understand them. And third, I have to reinvent what they might possibly have told me. All good fun. But sometimes, at the end of a session, my mind feels like the bodies of Don Quixote, Sancho, and Rocinante, after their meeting with the Yanguesans – battered, bruised, and beaten! Why, can someone kindly tell me, did Cervantes treat his two main characters to such frequent and brutal assaults?

Ah well, Friday today, and Friday is fish – not Spag Bowl. Are scallops fish? Not when they are sliced off your body with a razor-sharp sword. But then, I doubt if Quixote’s sword was razor sharp. It was probably vencida de la edad – conquered by age – just like he was. Conquered? No, not yet. Happily, I just limp along, however slowly. Ah yes, I forgot. I need a name for my Nexus. Maybe I’ll call it Rocinante, like DQ’s horse.

Rage, Rage 32 & 33

Rage, Rage
32

I miss
the swish and roar
of my incoming,
outgoing breath.

I miss
those Full Moon fingers
tinkling the tides
of my inner being,
making me strive
to keep myself alive.

My body’s house,
devoid of gnomes,
wolves, and pipes,
lies vacant and silent.

The full moon’s
rampant skull
empties the sky of stars
and fills my mind
with cratered shadows.

33

Strange creatures hide in the mist
that overcomes my brain.
I see the sudden flash
of sharp, lusting midnight teeth,

My heart turns into
a time bomb ticking
its irregular beat
in the cavity of my chest.

Am I a victim, then,
as Camus suggests,
or just another assassin?

A suicide bomber, perhaps,
with explosives strapped
inside my rib-cage
rather than round my chest
in a hidden vest?

Tick-a-tock
and tickety-tick-tock,
I can hear and feel
the arrhythmic clock
alarming me
as it arms itself in my chest.”Tick-a-tock
and tickety-tick-tock,
I can hear and feel
the arrhythmic clock
alarming me
as it arms itself in my chest.”

Comment:

So, Moo has just come back from wherever he’s been and wherever it was, he’s not telling me. However, he does say that I look All Shook Up. And he’s humming Elvis Presley songs at me. And the above painting is his suggestion for me for today. “Thank you, Moo. And welcome back.” He nods at me. “Good to see you two,” he says. “You spelt that wrong,” I tell him. “I didn’t,” he says. “We all know you’re a split personality and I am saying that I am pleased to see both halves of you again.” Oh, dear, you can never win with Moo. He always paints a different angle or comes round in a wiggling circle. “Ha!” he says. “At least I don’t paint myself into corners.”

Am I a victim, then, as Camus suggests, or just another assassin? Interesting suggestion. We are either murderers or victims. But I haven’t murdered anyone, that I am aware of. And I don’t feel myself to be a victim. So what is my dear friend Albert on about? Alas, he isn’t around to ask. I just have to read his books and see myself left wondering.

I guess it was all different in Paris, in the 1940, during the Nazi occupation. Anyone can talk a good game, but what do you do when the Gestapo knock on your door at 2:00 am? Good question. Existence precedes essence. We live. We survive. That’s Jean-Paul Sartre. And so is this – “L’homme n’est rien d’autre que ce qu’il fait.” Man is no more than what he does. So there you have it. It’s never what you say you might do, or how you relate things in respect – it’s all about what you are doing right now. So – ask yourself that vital question – “What am I actually doing?” The answer you give will tell you a lot of things about yourself – if you are honest in what you say.

North Wind

North Wind

North Wind descended from the pole
sending its wolf pack through snow-
bound trees that stood there, listless.
Then wind and wolves came, cutting
and shuffling, playing snap-the-branch,
chase-the snow-flake, and strip-jack-
naked. Wolves danced on their hind-
legs, round and round, shaking trees,
biting at branches, testing winter games
until trees stood naked, stripped of snow,
tresses and garlands gobbled and gone.

Oh, the wickedness of winter, its cold-
cut cruelty, the lash of the wind, ice-
pellets hurled, picketing fences, pecking
a wild winter-song, forlorn in its fury,
its pace, its power, its reckless race
to hurl everything away, out of its way,
snow twisted, tormented, twitching
its snake-way down barren highways
devoid of secret places in which to hide
tender faces from the North Wind.

Comment:

A big storm threatening, a Nor’Easter. We have been threatened before. But over the last couple of years, the threats have come to nothing. Snow falls in Shediac, Moncton, Saint John, Saint Andrews and St. Stephen. But it spares us. Travels up to Woodstock. Then on up to Plaster Rock for the Pond Hockey or as far as Grand Falls and Edmundston. But we are spared.

Last year, I used the snowblower three times. So far this year, I haven’t used it at all. It sits in the garage and yes, I am thankful that I don’t have to go out in the cold. And my beloved is thankful that she doesn’t have to do the snow blowing either. Now here’s a Golden Oldie for you. A memory from way back when. So colorless, it’s almost a black and white photo.

Rage, Rage 30 & 31

Rage, Rage
30

A pack of miniature wolves
infiltrated the midnight forest
flourishing in my other lung.

When the pibroch played,
they pointed their noses
at the spot where the full moon
would have been, if
I had invited her in.

They mingled their howls
with the bagpipes’ caterwaul
and I lay awake all night
with my heart beating
arrhythmic suspicions
on its blood red drum.

The drum played,
the pibroch wailed,
the wolves howled,
my body lay scarred by
an absence of sleep
and the presence of moonlight
that drove stars from the sky
and filled the room with shadows
and shifting shapes.

31

The full moon drew up water,
imposed high tides,
drew the wolves
by their drawstrings
out of my chest.

The piper paid his rent,
packed up his pipes,
took a sip of his whisky,
Bell’s – ‘a drop before ye go,’
and marched away,
leaving me alone.

Now silence rules my lungs.
Five deer stand silent
in the woods beneath my window.
I watch them watch the piper
pipe himself away.

It’s all over now,
the cough, the splutter,
the aches and pains
that told me I was alive.

I miss
the swish and roar
of my incoming,
outgoing breath.

Comment:

The piper marched away, leaving me alone. That’s the funny thing about pain, especially in our old age. It lets us know that yes, we are still alive. I know we are better off without it, but when it is there, it is better than the emptiness that will follow when we slip into the dark night that awaits us. Or perhaps it will be the golden dawn of another age. Many people tell us many things, but I don’t know how many people really and truly know. As I get older, I speculate more and more.

I once asked my grandfather if he was worried about dying. He looked at me for a long time. Then he said, “Well, one thing’s for certain. I know I am going to die. I’ll die if I worry about it and I’ll die if I don’t worry about it. So why worry about it?” He was a wonderful man with a wonderful attitude about so many things. But then he had survived the trenches in WWI and there weren’t many things he hadn’t seen. He rarely talked about it, but when he did, he told the most wonderful stories. And he sang all the old WWI songs too. A one man entertainment act for the small boy that would climb up onto his lap and say “Grandpa, tell me a story….” and he would begin “Once upon a time…” and that was the start of the magic.

And it’s the magic that we need. The magic that is so often missing in this age of information overload. “What is this life if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare.” Nor do we have any time to crawl into grandpa’s lap and seek those magic words – the words that start the willing suspension of disbelief – “once upon a time, a long time ago …” And, with a wave of the magic wand we are transported into a wonderland of dream and magic.

Rage, Rage 28 & 29

Rage, Rage
28

Two small gnomes
camped, one in each
of my lungs.

All night long
they played
their squeeze-box,
wheeze-box concertinas,
never quite in unison.

Sometimes they stamped
their feet and my body
rattled in time
with their dance steps.

Their wild night music
caught in my throat
and I coughed
unmusical songs
that spluttered
and choked me.

29

This morning, the bailiff,
Mr. Koffdrop, evicted
the two gnomes from my lungs.

Landlord Bodie
placed an ad on Kiji.

He rented the free space
in the left lung
to a tiny bag-piper
who took up residence
by my heart.

All night this piper piped me
a highland pibroch
on his whisky-worn pipes.

Comment:

All night this piper piped – and there is nothing stranger than having a clogged up, congested chest and hearing your own breath whistling in and out of your lungs. It certainly kept me awake. And I lay there remembering all the pipers I have ever heard piping. One very special one, from the Canadian Black Watch, gifted me the last image “a highland pibroch on his whisky-worn pipes”. A flask in his jacket and a nip every now and then to keep the music and the energy flowing. Scotch of course. None of the Japanese or Irish whisky varieties for that kilt-clad friend of mine. I can hear him now, as I type these lines – “A drop before ye go?”

As for the accordion, well, I have always liked the small, hand-held ones – squeeze boxes – wheeze boxes – and did those lungs of mine ever squeeze and wheeze. I called them Mr. Teasy-wheezy and Mr. Teasy-squeezy. And all night long they serenaded me. And I lay there, wide awake, not even drowsing, watching  Orion gradually striding his lonely way towards the western horizon. No rest for those afflicted with the squeezy-wheezy lung syndrome. And long may it stay away.

Rage, Rage 27

Rage, Rage
27

Last night
an east wind blew
outside my window.
It whistled and groaned
as it herded the stars
from left to right.

The stars pursued
the westering moon
and planets danced
to the rhythms
of the accordion playing
music in my chest.

The sky’s planetarium
folded and unfolded
its poker hands
of silent cards
marked with my fate.

Comment:

The photo is of the Hunter moon, as seen from Island View. It is quiet out here, very quiet, with very little light pollution. At night the stars shine bright and the constellations to North and South are clearly visible. Not so much so to East and West where the older trees tower. Occasionally, we get to see the Northern Lights. They can be incredible – great curtains of light hanging from the Northern Horizon. So bright, so clear, you can almost hear them crackle.

I have always loved the image of the planets dancing. If you have followed my poetry you will know that the idea of the Master of the Terracentric Universe, in Platonic and Neo-Platonic Theory, plays a large harp. The planets dance, forwards and backwards, to the sound of that harp. Of course, all that poetic beauty disappeared with the work of Galileo, Kepler, and all the students of the helio-centric universe. It is good to remember it though.

My beloved, born a Leo, loves to follow the progress of the sun. Each day she times its first appearance as it peeps above the ridge. Then she watches for it to arrive on the kitchen walls, and times that too. It is as if we lived as they lived thousands of years ago, in touch with nature, communicating with nature. And yet we are but a ten minute drive from the city centre.

The accordion playing music in my chest – you will have to wait until stanzas 28 & 29 for me to clarify that sound for you. I have been remiss in my postings. Very irregular, like my recently diagnosed A-Fib heart beat. Perhaps, after all, everything is linked, right down to the tiniest details, like posting blog notes and remembering all my e-friends out there. The known and the unknown.

Speaking of the known – Orion is gradually striding his way to the west. He dominates the southern sky at this time of year. He reminds me a lot of the Naked Man of Cerne Abbas. Except the Cerne Abbas man doesn’t move, while Orion definitely does. Or is it us who move around him. Your answer to that question will make you heliocentric – an observer, a measurer, like my beloved. Or it will make you Terracentric – a poet like me, well, an aspiring poet, who prefers the beauty of myth to the cold realities of science. Well, sometimes. Not always. But certainly in terms of my affinities to Plato and his celestial followers.

Book Burnings

Book Burning

A sharp-edged double sword,
this down-sizing,
this clearing out of odds and ends.

Library shelves emptying.
books disappearing, one by one.

So many memories
trapped between each page,
covers, dust-bound now,
dust to dust and books to ashes.

Sorrowful, not sweet, each parting,
multiple losses, characters
never to be met again,
except in dreams.

Heroes, thinkers, philosophers, poets,
their life work condemned to conflagration.

Alpha: such love at their beginnings.
Omega: such despair,
with Guy Fawkes celebrations
the means to their ends.

Word-fires:
the means of forging
those book worlds that surrounded us.

Bonfires:
the means to end them.

Steadfast, the book-fires,
flames fast devouring

all but an occasional volume
snatched by burning fingers,
from the flames.

Comment:

Funny things, book burnings. Why would anyone burn anything as innocent as a book? Good question. Yet people do. And people always have.

I think back to Don Quixote I, 6 and the Scrutiny of the Library. The Priest and the Barber go through the mad knight’s library and one by one examine the books of chivalry and either spare them, or cast them into the flames. This, in itself is a parody of some of the judicial actions of the Spanish Inquisition. In particular, any book that they considered to be unsafe or heretical went into the flames. Our Spanish Knight, of course, went mad through reading too many books of chivalry – and his brain dried up so that he totally lost all reason.

It is very interesting to read which books were spared and why. Equally interesting to find that many were burned on aesthetic grounds – they were not well written, or they were boring. Fascinating.

Fascinating too the book burnings that took place in Mexico during the Conquest of that country by the Spanish Conquistadores. Many pre-Columbian codices were burned. Priceless treasures and histories lost forever. Some, I think the Vindobonensis, still bear the marks of the flames when they were pulled from the fire in an effort to save them.

Moo tells me that my books will never be burned. And I am thankful for that. I asked why they wouldn’t be and he replied that nobody reads them anyway! Not such a comforting thought. So, in an effort to keep me happy and to preserve my books from the flames, another of my friends laid them out on the beach at Holt’s Point, New Brunswick. They certainly won’t burn when the tide comes in.

More important, I see that junk from Canadian Beaches, dated about 1960, has just arrived on the shores of the European continent, sixty plus years later. So – a floating book, a message, perhaps, in a time-bottle, destined to achieve immortality and live for ever. What a comforting thought for those of us who believe in the time and the tide that wait for no man! But they both might wait for his books.