Aging

Les croulants

Les croulants

That’s what they called the older
generations, in Paris, in 1963, when
I lived there, in St. Germain-des-Près.

Now, a member of that generation,
I remember those words and see myself
crumbling, failing, falling slowly down.

A façade, it’s all a façade. Here I am,
white-haired, wrinkled, watching time’s
oxen plowing furrows in my face as
winter’s snow layers a silvery thatch
of patchwork hair upon head and chin.

How much longer can I sustain my life,
exist in this metatheatre of give and take,
where each day takes its toll, and I give
away bits of myself, slowly, reluctantly,
sloughing them, snake-like, to dance,
then vanish, into the gathering dark.

Author’s Note
I used this painting as the cover for my novel People of the Mist.

People of the Mist
A Poet’s Day in Oaxaca
Click here to purchase this book.

Themes from this poem can be found in my poetry collection Poems for the End of Time. It is a series of metaphysical meditations written while listening to Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time. It is followed by Lamentations for Holy Week, a sequence based on the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola, as imitated by Francisco de Quevedo (1601 – 1613) in a series of poems composed during Holy Week. This poetry is written from the heart and expresses the authenticity of the poet’s being. Here, the poet indulges in a dialog with his time and place – much in the manner outlined by Mikhail Bakhtin in his theory of Chronotopos. This poetry is not written for the simple minded. Rather it invites the reader to explore the nature of the world, the philosophy of time and place, and the metaphysical exercises necessary to prepare for the inevitable end of time.

Poems for the End of Time
and
Lamentations for Holy Week

Click here to purchase this book.

Souvenirs

Souvenirs

Where have they gone,
the old days, the old folk,
the old ways of doing things?

I search for them, day after day,
but my cell phone isn’t
the old-fashioned circular dial,
nor the pick-up phone
with the shared party line,
when everybody listens in.

The garage is a mad hatter’s
maze of a workshop,
in which things grow legs
and walk this way, that way
every way to Sunday,
constantly getting lost.

I think I can hear them.
chittering, chattering.
but I cannot see them
nor hold them,
even though I would like
to clutch them tight.

Bats in the belfry,
and in the attic
mislaid items,
pens, ink, paints,
a tuck box, with keys,
a cricket bat,
cracked and yellow,
abandoned,
and forgotten.

Coal Face

And Every Valley

And every valley shall be filled with coal.
And the miners will mine, growing old
before their time, with pneumoconiosis
a constant companion, and that dark spot
on the grey slide of the sidewalk a mining
souvenir coughed up from the depths
of lungs that so seldom saw the sun
and soaked themselves in the black dust
that cluttered, clogged, bent and twisted
those beautiful young bodies into ageing,
pipe-cleaner shapes, yellowed and inked
with nicotine and sorrows buried so deep,
a thousand, two thousand feet down,
and often so far out to sea that loved ones
knew their loved ones would never see
the white handkerchiefs waved, never
in surrender, but in a butterfly prayer,
an offering, and a blessing that their men
would survive the shift and come back
to the surface and live again amidst family
and friends, and always the fear, the pinched
-face, livid, living fear that such an ending
might never be the one on offer, but rather
the grimmer end of gas, or flame, or collapse,
with the pit wheels stopped, and the sirens
blaring, and the black crowds gathering, and
no canaries, no miners, singing in their cages.

Comment: A friend wrote to me about the closing of the pits in Nottinghamshire and how the mining communities had suffered, were still suffering, and might never recover. This poem is the first one in a sequence on the mine closures in South Wales and other mining communities. Poems For the End of Time – the book is available here.

Low Ebb

Low Ebb

We have been apart too long, my love,
night’s dark corridor lying between us
and neither of us approaching the other
when doors close and blinds are drawn.

The way to the heart of the matter is not
an easy path to walk, not any more.
Our secret ways and dreams lie cold
upon chill, empty sheets and pillows.

Each day the tide revives the beach,
flowing out, abandoning its wet debris
for the sun to perform its magic: fresh
seaweed drying above warm sand.

Sea-birds bury their beaks, writing claw
letters as crabs burrow, dig deep, waiting
for the tide to return and re-create
its alternate reality of dreamy waters.

Half of my bed performs its nightly duty.
The other half lies cold, empty, lonely.
No sea-life wanders there, not even in
my most creative dreams of sun and sand.

Comment: The loneliness of old age is compounded by many factors, including ill-health, sleeplessness, and the need to sleep in separate rooms. How many homeless people suffer that loneliness, and more, and at ages much less than ours? And then there’s the distress of trying to live in poverty, to survive from day to day, with safety net that will not protect us, if we chance to fall. A sad world then, as Polly Toynbee points out in today’s Guardian.


Flight

Flight

Such a miracle: those first steps to flight
taken by the cormorant over water.
That first one heavy, creating ripples,
the second one lighter, and the third one
scarcely touching the water.

The need to take flight lies deep within me.
Fleeing from what? Flying towards what?
Who knows? All I know is that the future
lies ahead where my bird’s beak points and
the past, a rippling wake, lies behind me.

That white water, trailing its kite’s tail,
tells me where I have been. Machado’s
voice calls out from the past: “Traveler,
there is no road, just a wake across life’s sea.”

Comment: The photo is a golden oldie, one of the first I ever posted on this blog. The poem is part old, part new. In reality, it is a revision, completed today, of the earlier poem associated with that old blog post. It is interesting to compare the two visions – with those seven extra years of creative experience between them. Let me know what you think!

A special thank you to my long-time friend, Dale Estey, for commenting and suggesting an improvement for the fourth line. Spot if if you can!

Janus

Janus

I walked backwards into my childhood
a step at a time. I failed to find it
where I thought I had left it.

I opened cupboards, doors, drawers,
searched beneath beds, went outside,
rummaged through garden and garage,
and found absolutely nothing at all.

 My past was as dry as a squeezed orange
when the juice has gone and long days
left on the window ledge has dried it up.

I looked in the mirror, and the man
I saw was not the boy I had seen
the day before. How could he be?

Janus, two-faced, looks forwards and back.
I will no longer seek the self that was

I shall accept the self that is, the one that grew
outwards and upwards from the one
that was before. Acceptance. I can do no more.

Crossing the Bridge

Crossing the Bridge

When I got to there, I couldn’t cross it.
I sat in the coffee shop, over-looking
the River Severn and ordered a cup
of cafeteria tea. Time limped slowly by
and I let my untasted tea grow cold.

What was there for me on the other side?
Empty stood the house where I was born.
Sold, the bungalow, built by my father
and his father, the summer home I loved
so much. Lost the kitchens I remembered
so well, kitchens in which I had come of age.

I tried to picture the ghosts of Christmases
past walking the logs that flamed in the fire.
Ghosts? They inhabit my mind, share my life,
dwell in my days, dream with me most nights
when a golden moon sails past my window,
and silver stars fill my dreams with light.

Underworld

Underworld

In the secret world of my goldfish bowl
I speak in bubbles but only hear silence.

My fish-eye lens bends the pendulum
of the grandfather clock. Westminster chimes,

inaudible, do not intrude. Noiseless are time’s
ripples across the surface of my submarine sphere.

I feel, rather than hear, my troubled heart beat.
The foreboding sounds of distant voices leave

me untouched and becalmed. Rocked in love’s
cradle, these amniotic waters nourish and soothe.

In my beginning will be my end. One day I’ll return
to the beaches of my childhood, where the sun

always shines, and the moon path over the waves
is a welcoming walkway leading to the underworld.

Skype or Zoom

Skype or Zoom

I sit and watch the grandfather clock,
listening to every tick and tock.

So slow, the sullen pendulum swings
as time limps by on leaden wings.

When they arrive, the house will fill
with youthful joy and much goodwill.

Age will flee for a week or two,
then we’ll be alone, just me and you.

Watching the telly, watching the clock,
counting each tick and every tock.

We will be lonely, left here alone,
waiting for them to telephone.

The very best thing to lighten the gloom
is to see them again on Skype and Zoom.

What is the most important thing to carry with you all the time?

Daily writing prompt
What is the most important thing to carry with you all the time?
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What is the most important thing to carry with you all the time?

Things I carry with me

            That old black cast-iron stove, wood-fired, that baked the best ever breads and cakes and warmed the bungalow on cold, summer mornings. The Welsh dresser with its age-blackened rails that displayed the plates, and cups, and saucers. The old tin cans that ferried the water from the one tap located at the end of the field. Full and wholesome, its weight still weighs me down as I carry it in my dreams. The Elsan toilet from the shed by the hedge and the shovels that appeared, every so often, as if by magic, as my uncle braved the evening shadows to dig a hole on the opposite side of the field, as far from the bungalow as possible.

            The outhouse at the end of the garden. The steps down to the coal cellar where they went when the sirens sounded, to sleep in the make-shift air raid shelter, along with the rats and mice that scurried from the candles. The corrugated iron work shop in the garden where my uncle built his model ships, the Half-Penny Galleon and the Nonesuch. The broken razor blades I used to carve my own planes from Keil Kraft Kits, Hurricanes and Spitfires, an SE5, and once, a Bristol Bulldog. Twisted and warped, they winged their ways into nobody’s skies, though once we built a paper kite that flew far away in a powerful wind and got tangled in a tree. The greenhouse from which I stole countless tomatoes, red and green. Kilvey Hill towering above the window ledge where the little ones sat when there were more guests than chairs in the kitchen. The old bombed buildings across the street. The bullet holes in the front of the house where the Messerschmidt strafed us.

            The old men spitting up coal dust from shrivelled lungs. The widows who took in lodgers and overnight travelers. The BRS lorries, parked overnight, that littered the street. The steep climb upwards into those lorries. The burrowing under dirty tarpaulins to explore the heavy loads, and many other things. The untouchable, forbidden drawer where the rent money waited for the rent collector’s visit. The old lady, five houses down who, when the shops were shut, sold warm Dandelion & Burdock and Orange pop for an extra penny a bottle.  The vicious, snub-faced Pekinese that yapped fierce defiance from the fortress of her lap. The unemployed soccer referee who on Saturdays walked five miles to the match and five miles back just to save the bus fare, his only financial reward. My father’s shadowy childhood. His first pair of shoes, bought at five years old, so he wouldn’t go barefoot to school. 

            Wet cement moulded onto the garden wall, then filled with empty bottles to be smashed when the cement set solid. The coal shed where the coal man delivered the coal: cobbledy-cobbledy, down the hole. The outside toilet with its nails and squares torn from yesterday’s newspaper. The lamp-lighter who lit the lamps every evening as the sun went down. The arrival of electricity. The old blackout curtains that shut in the light and shut out the night. The hand rolled fabric sausage that lay on the floor by the door and kept the heat of the coal fire in the kitchen. The kitchen itself with its great wooden chair drawn up by the fire. That chair: the only material possession I still have from that distant past.