Art

Carved in Stone 16 & 17

16

The Bulls of Guisando,
pre-historic, unweighable,
the bearers of Roman graffiti,
itself two thousand years old.

Were they carved as boundary markers,
or designed to designate pastures,
for horses, pigs, sheep, and bulls,
all grazing in their stone dreams?

Celtic, pre-Roman,
they speak to my Welsh blood,
and to the Irish soul
that will always be a part of me.

I place my hand
on the dimpled granite hide
and feel time coursing
beneath the stone skin.

Granite ships,
islands in a sea of time,
I sense a heart beating,
something surviving
within the stone.

17

We are powerful people,
we creative artists,
we carvers of stone,
we dreamers,
whether we dream
by day or by night.

Those of us
who dream by day,
often see our day-dreams
come true.

Commentary:

“Those of us who dream by day, often see our day-dreams come true.” Lawrence of Arabia – The Seven Pillars of Wisdom. You recognized the quote of course, wrth gwrs. Intertextuality, the weaving of words through text after text in different combinations according to our time and space. Some of us think we are original, but there are only so many plots to a play, 24 or so, if I remember my Aristotle correctly, and I have changed the number, just to test you. Oh ye of too much faith!

We think we are original, but, as Picasso said, the painters of the cave paintings, all those many years ago, created everything we artists could ever dream of. We all borrow in one way or another and originality is merely a disguised form of borrowing. The faces change, the actors change, the medium changes, the times change, but otherwise, everything else is the same. Sad, really, that we should claim originality (and fresh water) for all that water that has passed under so many bridges.

Welsh blood and Irish soul – not even original, but shared by so many in my family. Add an English education, studies and residence in Spain, France, Mexico, Canada, and the USA, and what do you have? An intellectual mongrel, that does not know its own mother, like so many other mongrels, and that shakes its coat only to shed so many multi-cultural and multi-lingual fleas.

And remember – “Great fleas have lesser fleas upon their backs to bit them, and lesser fleas have smaller fleas, and so ad infinitum.” Intertextuality – they were only playing leap-frog and one jumped over and another jumped over someone else’s back.

Growing Old Together

Growing Old Together

You and I are growing old together.
We have been together for 59 years
and married for 54 of those.

We watch each other slowly breaking down,
the memories going,
the body parts not functioning
the way they used to.

In some ways,
it is incredibly beautiful.
In other ways,
it is so tragic, this slow waltz
around life’s dance-floor
towards who knows what
that last dance will bring?

It gets harder and harder
to find the right things to say,
sometimes to find anything to say.

There are days
when we just sit in silence,
filling in time,
doing a crossword or a sudoku,
or just gazing into space,
trying to avoid
the mindlessness
of endless adverts
on the television.

Commentary:

Not much to say, really. The poem and the photo speak for themselves, as good art always should. Sometimes the artist plans everything, and out it pops, all ready-made. On other occasions, a small miracle takes place and words and images tumble out, fluff their feathers, settle down and wow! – it’s a work of art. As long as one other person, other than me, thinks so, then I will be happy. “If I can reach out and touch just one person.”

I often wonder how many people are touched by traditional art nowadays. There is so much shock and awe out there, that the humble homely corner with its two doves or the image of an elderly couple dancing slowly around their kitchen, hanging onto each other – for what? And both of them waiting – for what, exactly? I expect it varies with each couple. But what I pity most are the lone doves, abandoned, autonomous, living on their own-some with nobody to talk to and only the TV to listen to. How many of them are out there, I wonder? When I walk around town, I see the street people, the homeless, the really lonely ones, just sitting, or slowly pushing a grocery cart with all their belongings tied up in plastic bags. Heads down, they plod on, never stopping, never looking.

“A sad life this, if full of care, we have no time to stop and stare.” W. H. Davies.

Carved in Stone 13

13

What is life?
Is it just an illusion,
as Calderón tells us,
and nothing but a dream?

And what is time?
Does it bend, as Dalí shows us
when his surreal clock breaks into pieces,
time and numbers flying off
as it explodes over a waterfall?

Another clock folds –
a pancake draped
over the bough of a tree.
 
Time – a water clock,
a marked candle,
a grandfather clock,
with Roman numerals,
and time marching,
round and round,
erasing the past,
establishing a future
that will itself
soon be erased.

And what am I
but a moment on time’s clock,
a drop in the clepsydra,
a striation on a flickering candle,
a piece of roughly polished sea-glass
perched on a lonely beach?

Commentary:

Well, Moo has done me proud this time. Two early paintings, both depicting aspects of time, as conceived by Moo. In the first, time is seen as a tick-tock time bomb, or rather a set of tick-tock time-bombs. In the second, in imitation of Salvador Dali (Moo always set his sights high!), a clock going over a water fall and the hours flying off the clock face as time bends. So, tell me if you can, what is time?

Perhaps more important, what is life? Is it a dream, an illusion? And if it is a dream, what happens when we wake up? I know what happens when I wake up – I get up and go pee. Is that to be my final reality? By extension, is life our only reality? Or is our life a series of lives, as some religions would persuade us? And if a cat has nine lives, how many lives do we have? Can they be numbered? Or, like innumerable onions, do we peel away layer after layer? And if so, what is in the centre of the onion when we finally get down that far?

And why do some people write center while others write centre? Is life an illusion, a play? If so does it take place in a theatre or a theater? Or is really a sort of metatheatre or metatheater, life in rings, like the onion, lay after lay, layer after layer? Oh dear, this is all much too complicated. I’ll ask Moo to paint me a painting of life and we’ll see what he comes up with. He’s a bit lazy at the moment and his paint brush has the bends and refuses to cooperate. It’s probably made of cat bristles, and is untrainable and almost impossible to train, let alone to herd. Never mind. We’ll abandon all this for now and give the cat the task of training Moo to paint another painting.

Carved in Stone 12

12

A Ruffed Grouse sought refuge
among the berries
of the Mountain Ash.

I shot him,
not with a gun,
but with a camera.

Intertextuality –
a friend borrowed the photo,
turned it into elegant brush strokes,
and now the painting
hangs on my wall,
opposite the tree
where once he sat.


 
A still-life
face to face with its reality
as early morning dew
forms on spider webs,
hammock-strung
between grass-blades,
bending in the wind.

And what if the spell breaks
and I can no longer see the fine seeds
of the dandelion clock kissed away
by the lisping lips of time?

What is life?
Is it just an illusion?

Commentary:

I shot him, not with a gun, but with a camera. Interesting. I have never seen the need to take the life of living creatures, except in cases of absolute necessity. And no, I have never killed, let alone for fun or sport. Shooting with a camera, that’s my ideal, and when a friend and fellow KIRA artist likes the photo and offers to paint it … well, that leads us into the nature of intertextuality, where reality becomes photo, becomes painting, becomes a text, and you, dear reader, are contemplating all those moments that join us.

The fine seeds of the dandelion clock kissed away by the lisping lips of time. This image comes from my walks in the Welsh countryside around Brandy Cove, Gower, with my paternal grandmother. “What time is it Nana?” I can still see her, bending down, plucking a dandelion, and holding it out for me to blow the seeds away – one puff, one o’clock, two puffs, two o’clock. I recall the seeds, drifting away on the summer breeze. “The Good Lord loved those dandelions,” she once told me. “That’s why He planted them everywhere.”

What will happen when the wells run dry and water runs out and there are no more dandelion seeds? How long will it be before I can no longer see them? Vis brevis, ars longa. The answer to my questions – I care, but I really don’t know.

Last Dance

Last Dance

Ten years ago,
in the Hospice for patients,
the shy lady in the corner,
body withered by cancer,
stood up to dance.

She bowed to the band
then floated into movement,
dancing alone.

She clung to the empty air
as she once clung to her lover.

Nymphs and shepherds
played sweet music at midnight
in this room turned sacred grove,
where naiads and dryads
emerged from the shadows.

Her dance-steps
were a draught of joyous water
from the fount of eternal youth
and lasting love.

Commentary:

Moo offered me one of his paintings for this poem. He calls it Keep on the green side. Every Wednesday, in the hospice, a local band came in to play. Some patients danced, others sat and watched, some stood on the sidelines and listened to the music.

I had the fortune to be present at the singular performance recounted above. I never found out that lady’s name and I never saw her again afterwards. She remains a mystery, like the naiads and the dryads, and the hamadryads, who inhabited those mythological woods where so many of us dream our dreams of one last chance and one last dance.

Carved in Stone 3

3

Death is everywhere.
It rides a pale horse
in the lands
where Odin reigned.

Sleipnir, his eight-legged steed,
carried him round the world.

It also carried the god
to the underworld,
and brought him back,
one of the few to enjoy
a return ticket.

Purity, innocence, power,
the White Horse rules
these Wiltshire hills,
a symbol of hope and renewal.

Above the horses,
hill forts in high places,
lie hidden.

Wave after wave
of earth-wall and ditch
blend into the landscape
making the forts
invisible from below.

Commentary:

Odin > Wodin > Wednesday, in English, not Mercredi (French) or Miercoles (Spanish). English, via Anglo-Saxon, often goes back to the Nordic gods of the invaders. Not so in Welsh for Wednesday in Welsh is Dydd Mercher, the word breaking down into “Dydd” (day) and “Mercher” (which is named after the Roman god Mercury). Alas, it is all too easy to reduce language to its most basic level. But dig below the surface and the wonders of language, history and culture, adoption and rejection, complication and simplification, are all there to be seen.

Our language links us, binds us, holds us across our culture and history. And remember ‘to lose our language is to lose ourselves.’ While to learn another language is to grow another heart and soul.

 

Clepsydra 51 & 52

51

… and thus I sit in silence
     while unspoken words
          echo through
               my empty skull

I cannot produce
     the grit that oysters use
          to smoothly shape
               the pearl of great price
                    that radiates with light

the word
     once spoken
          can never be recalled

word magic
     water magic
          liquid trickling
               from cup to earthen cup

time slowly dripping away
     filtering through my fingers

flickering and dying,
      and the snuffed candle flame
          absent now
               and everywhere
                    the pain of its absence …

52

… and me like so many others
     caught up in time’s dance
          a shadow among other shadows
               moving on the cave wall
                    while the fire flickers

I try to hold them
     as they flit by
          but they vanish
               drifting like dreams
                    half-glimpsed
                         in early morning light

dancers and dance
     must fail and fade away
          when the music ends

I recall snippets of song
     that fan the unborn fires within

what am I
     but a tadpole
          swimming bravely
                into my next metamorphosis

the dancers hold hands
     and sing, oranges and lemons
          as they circle under the arch

“Here comes a candle
     to light you to bed

and here comes a chopper
     to chop off your head

 and when will that be
     ring the bells out at Battersea

I do not know
booms the great Bell of Bow” …

Commentary:

And here ends Clepsydra. One sentence, one poem, 52 sequences. Time, frozen in the writer’s mind, the passing of time, measuring time, internal time, external time, sidereal time, historical time … all linked through memories … personal, cultural, literary, family, events … all tied up with what Miguel de Unamuno called intra-historia, those deep, very personal little histories, that lead us away from great historical events into the minds of the observers, the witnesses, the readers, all with their interior monologue and their own mindfulness.

For those of you who have chosen to walk this road with me, I offer you my gratitude. I do hope you have enjoyed – if not the whole journey, then selected parts of it that may have touched you, or amused you, or aroused your interest. Pax amorque.

Writing in the Red Zone

Writing in the Red Zone

The Red Zone:
it’s a familiar concept.
Monday Night football
talks about it all the time.

“Success percentage
in the Red Zone,
offense and defense.”

It’s not just football.
Other sports, soccer, rugby,
have their red zones.
So does life, my life,
for better or for worse,
and now I know I’m in
the Red Zone.

I can see the goal line.
I can feel the tension rising.
I know the clock’s ticking down.
I can sense it, but can’t see it.
I no longer know the score,
and I don’t know whether
I’m playing offense or defense.

They tell me it’s a level playing field,
but every day they change the rules,
and today I wonder what the heck’s
the name of the game I’m playing.

Clepsydra 37 & 38

37


… now I am absent from myself
     but can an absence
          be a presence

 I guess it can
     like when I lose a tooth
          I lament the loss of its presence
               and run my tongue
                    around the tender gum

a space where my tooth once stood
     where the candle flame
          once flickered and flared
               before it disappeared …

38

… I grieve for my mother
     standing in the garden
          her magnolia bleeding
               ivory petals
                    as soft as spring snow

some settled on her head
     crowning her
          with youthful beauty
               as she walked towards me
                    eyes shining arms held out

yet when I try
     to recapture that scene
          I only see a winter garden
               with withered blossoms
                    on a leafless tree …

Commentary:

“Can an absence be a presence?” Good question I asked Moo that and he showed me several paintings of trees in winter and vacant faces that he had knowingly filled with sorrow. But I preferred the image of “I only see a winter garden with withered blossoms on a leafless tree.” So I chose my own photo. Moo was very upset and asked me to put in one of his winter paintings anyway, so here it is.

Now Moo is very happy, and he needs to be, because he has had a bad day. I am so glad I am not Moo when he has a bad day. His cardiologist wanted Moo to wear a Holter. Moo didn’t want to wear one. But he listened to his specialist, and obeyed. He was very stressed when he went into the hospital. The acquisition of the Halter was meant to take 15 minutes, maximum. Moo sent 75 minutes sitting in a cold room with no shirt on, terminals attached, and no Holter available. “Can an absence be a presence?” Indeed it can. And Moo is still very upset and very stressed. Nobody’s fault. Things happen. “The candle flame once flickered and flared before it disappeared.” Now you see it, now you don’t. And Moo laments the absence of what should have been a presence and then became a delayed presence. Oh fickle life and times!

I still grieve for my mother, standing in the garden, her magnolia bleeding ivory petals as soft as spring snow. I remember that some settled on her head crowning her with youthful beauty as she walked towards me, eyes shining arms held out. Yet when I try to recapture that scene I only see a winter garden with withered blossoms on a leafless tree. Maybe Moo, with all his stressed out Moo-ds saw that scene more clearly than I did. So, Moo boosts me, and I boost Moo, and that’s what best friends always do. So you go out and boost your best friend too. Blessings and blossoms. And may you all help each other to fare well.

Clepsydra 34

34

… my heart so broken
     I can’t count the pieces
          nor solve the puzzle

scars are trenches
     deep defensive lines
          gouged into my face 

every night
     the black dog returns
          and I wake up from a dream
               to find myself pincered

attracted by the light
     squeezed tight
          between cave walls

my top half struggles to be free
     my bottom half
          hips down is held
               in a ferocious grip

I scream the way
     a stuck pig screams
          when the knife flashes
               and the hot blood spurts

all at sea
     I move up and down
          on dark restless waves

I reach for a life raft
     but find only an apple
          bobbing as it floats …

Commentary:

Moo thought I needed cheering up, so he did this painting for me. U R My Sunshine, he said to me, then gave me the painting for today’s post. I think he was rather taken with the phrase ‘attracted by the light’ … hence the nice, bright, sunny painting. Whenever I feel down, Moo reminds me that every cloud has a silver lining. Today’s clouds over Island View certainly do. They have actually brought rain and we need that rain so badly. We are in the middle of a drought, in places it is a severe drought. Wells are drying up, the river and the aquifers are low, we need rain – and now we have some. Too late for the apple orchards and the farmers who do not have enough winter feed for their cattle. Too late for the local deer who do not have their usual post-summer glossy looks. And too late for the trees that look drab, having lost their usual fall glow to appear very pale and peaky. Let us hope that a little more rain, on a regular basis, will change all that, and give us the sort of silver lining that, next year, will produce golden apples and brightly colored fall leaves