Bees
This year, we mark them by their absence.
There is a stillness in the bee’s balm,
a withering of early blossoms and still no bees:
will they ever come back? The bee-keepers
don’t seem to know as they scratch their heads
and search dry colonies only to find
dead and dusty hives, with cells devoid
of the lust and life of their former inmates.
Each day we watch over the flowers,
and hum as we wait for the bees to buzz:
“will ye no come back again …”
Rage, Rage
49
Waiting in the doctor’s office,
I hear two old women
gossiping about friends
and family, the intimate
details all laid out
to fester in my fertile mind.
Never will I be able
to put faces to those girls
with breast cancer,
to the women
weighed down
with diabetes,
to the old men
with their strokes
and heart attacks.
50
“Just one of those things,”
one of them whispers,
“my husband gone
leaving me alone
with the grandkids.”
“Is it four years? Or five?
I remember his name,
but I forget his face.”
“And our fourteen-year-old,
her belly already swelling …”
“You’ll cope somehow …”
Silence wraps its scarf
around their flapping mouths.
I think of all my own lost loves,
buried before their proper time.
Lives and worlds end …
new ones begin.
Comments:
Lives and worlds end … new ones begin. How true it is. The olde order changeth lest one good custom should corrupt the world. Tennyson, I believe, from Idylls of the King. King Arthur and his knights of the round table. Each of them rode into that dark night, some quickly, some more slowly, but all were lost, as so many things are lost.
That was also the heading of the departures section of my old school magazine. At the end of the year, pupils left the school, many graduating, never to return, and the old order did indeed change. The fourth formers moved up to the fifth, the fifth to Transitus, then to the sixth, and finally, the scholarship students arrived in Ichabod. Ichabod, Ichabod, the glory that used to be. I look at old school photos and I wonder what became of so many of my childhood friends. The website for my old school also contains an obituary section. I consult it, every so often, to see who else has passed on. Fewer names than I would expect. Not everybody keeps in touch. I am in contact with few old boys from school, but nobody from my undergraduate university. Ships passing in the night, all of us. Our conversations lost in the mists of time.
The old order changes and the language changes with it too. When I was visiting Spain regularly, my first stop, every year, would be the local barber’s shop. I just sat there and listened while I waited to get my haircut, Spanish style. I listened for the new buzz words, the names that now floated around, the latest jokes, the ideas that were currently in fashion. Change is everywhere.
Covid changed the Spanish language, gave it a whole new set of terms that I do not recognize. The same thing happens with English, French, any language. French is not the same in Moncton, New Brunswick, as it is in Shediac. And the Acadian Peninsula is slightly different. As is the language of Grand Falls, and that of Little Falls, aka Edmundston, the capital of the Republic of Madawaska. The language also changes close to the border of Quebec where Joual can be heard. Same thing along the St. Lawrence river and out from Matane to Mont Albert and beyond. Small changes, sea changes, enormous varieties of change.
I often wonder what is happening in Wales both to Welsh itself and to the English language as it is spoken there. English in Swansea / Abertawe was never the English of Llanelli, nor was it the English of the Rhondda Valleys. How could it be? And Cardiff / Caer Dydd was always different. As was Newport / Cas Newydd. I haven’t been back there since 1988. 38 years of change – friends gone, family gone, nobody left. I couldn’t bear to stay in a hotel in a town where once I lived in my family’s homes.
How does one end a rant like this? In silence, of course. For silence wraps its silken around flapping mouths. I think of all my own lost friends and loves, buried so long ago, many before their proper time.
Rage, Rage
46
I fall into
the easy sleep of age,
pencil in hand,
notebook on knee.
Shadows grow longer
as my life grows shorter,
day by day.
Now it is so easy
to stumble and fall,
each slip a steep slope
down which I slide.
So difficult now
to regain my feet.
I must crawl to where
I can haul myself
first to my knees
and then stubbornly
upward until I can stand.
47
Now-a-nights
I fall easily into dreams
that all too often
turn into nightmares
that rise up from my past
to trouble my sleep.
I struggle and scream
and pinch myself awake,
only to find my cheeks
wet with tears and my mind
all shook up by the return
of childhood fears.
Freud and Jung pull the strings
of those mental puppets
that dance in my head.
Some nights I am afraid
of falling asleep,
for fear that I may never
get up from my bed.
Comments:
Coming to the end of Rage, Rage. When it is finished, that will also be the end of the trilogy – Clepsydra [Chronotopos I], Carved in Stone [Chronotopos II], and Rage, Rage [Chronotopos III]. I have written a fourth volume in the sequence – No Dominion [Chronotopos IV], but this is very personal and I will probably only share it with family members and the closest of friends. However, do not despair – I have an alternate fourth volume, but that is still being written. It us under wraps, and may well replace No Dominion. We shall see.
As for Freud and Jung, they certainly do pull the strings of those mental puppets that dance in my head. Moo says that there should be no strings attached. He has therefore drawn all those strange puppet like figures, a but like an Aunt Sally, really, but has left out the strings and the man / men / woman / women / people pulling them. An Aunt Sally or a lovely bunch of coconuts? Time well tell, if you ask it nicely.
Maybe one of my teddies will tell. They all romp around the room with me at night and I am sure they suspect much of what goes on in my dreams. Here they are – a selection of friendly teddy bears. Be very careful, though, they can be very grumpy, especially if you wake them up suddenly. They don’t like things that go BUMP in the night.
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, 25
A carton of eggs,
milk left behind,
a walking stick
abandoned on a cart,
discovered
in the lost and found
in the supermarket.
My cousin’s face,
her daughter’s name,
the parking spot
where I left my car.
Time and place
wave goodbye
and are quickly gone.
So much has become
ephemeral.
“What day is it today?”
I check my watch
for the third or fourth time.
I forget phone numbers.
I look at photos
but they are blank spaces,
gaps in the photo album.
Scenes on the tv screen –
“I recognize those faces,” I mutter,
“who are they?
Where did I see them before.”
Comment:
Ephemeral – “Something that is fleeting or short-lived is ephemeral, like a fly that lives for one day or text messages flitting from cellphone to cellphone.” Heraclitus says we can never step in the same stream twice – because the waters are not the same and neither are we. We change, things change. They do not stay the same. Here today and gone tomorrow. Like the flowers our kind neighbor brought us when our kitty cat passed away last week. She, too, was ephemeral. Just like the flowers. Just like us.
Some things leave us with sorrow – our pussy cat was 18 years old, and her passing took away her pain. Yet she still left us sad and grieving. And those 18 years seemed to pass in a dream. Where did they, where did she go? There is sorrow too in memory loss. The days of our lives, once fresh their memories, now filling with a sadness as we try to recall them. Memory loss – one of the great sorrows of aging.
So many things slipping away. Seasons passing. Daylight hours waning then waxing again, just like the moon. Water between fingers. Grains of sand through the hour glass. So many blank faces in the photo album. “Who is that?” “I can’t remember.” More and more of the family names fading away, slipping into the distance. And all too soon, we shall join them, leaving an empty nest, for, as Cervantes once wrote – “No hay pájaros en los nidos de antaño” – there are no birds in last year’s nests.
Rage, Rage
8
A late summer storm
lays waste to the doggy daze
that clouds my mind.
Carnivorous canicular,
hydropic, it drains my soul,
desiccates my dreams,
gnaws me into nothingness.
Tonight, the old black hound
will dog me,
sending my head spinning.
It will force me
to chase my own tail,
round and round
in ever-decreasing circles.
It will devour my future,
leaving past failures
to ghost through my mind.
9
Where now are the hands
that raise me up,
that rescue me
from dark depression,
that haul me out
from life’s whirlpool,
that forestall
the jaws that bite,
that save me
from the claws
that snatch?
Where are the hands
that move the pieces
on the chess board
of my days and nights,
that prepare my breakfast,
that bake my birthday cake
and count the candles
that they place and light?
What will I do
without them
now they are gone?
Commentary:
Gnawed into nothingness – the umbra nihili of the medieval mystics, the shadow of nothingness that sometimes falls upon us, threatening our peace of mind. An AI search offers – Umbra Nihili (Latin for “Shadow of Nothingness”) refers to a concept of cosmic loneliness or existential void famously cited by Meister Eckhart. A great many of my friends have recently discovered this umbra nihili. I am not sure why. I guess it varies for each one of us. Mal de todos, consuelo de tontos / that everyone suffers consoles only fools, the Spaniards say. What can we do at such times? Reach out, help when we can, count only the happy hours, as the inscription on the Roman sundial tells us – horas non numero nisi serenas.
Many have walked this way before. But that should not be a consolation in itself. Rather, it should be an acknowledgement that there is an exit to the maze, a key to unlock misery’s door, a thread to lead us out of the labyrinth. We must just acknowledge that fact and search for the exit, the key, the thread, that will prove to be our personal salvation, and hopefully the salvation of other fellow sufferers as well.
Rage, Rage
1
Old age creeps up on you,
slowly, ambushes you,
catches you unawares.
At first, you don’t believe
that it’s real.
You ignore the signs,
pretend they aren’t there.
Then comes a knock on the door.
There, did you hear it?
Around you your body’s house
slumbers in comfort.
You lose your footing,
but you do not fall.
Your book drops to the floor,
you bend down and pick it up.
Everything is as it always was.
Or is it? One of your friends
slips and falls down the stairs.
You descend the stairs
with more care than usual.
No, you don’t need a cane.
Nor special shoes and socks.
You convince yourself that
all is well. And so it is,
for a little while longer.
Commentary:
Rage, Rage
against the dying of the light
Dylan Thomas’s famous poem celebrates the passing of his father. “Do not go gentle into that good night, / old age should burn and rave at close of day. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”
I am no Dylan Thomas, although I am still a Swansea boy at heart and, as my paternal grandfather used to sing while at the fighting front during WWI – “and still I live in hopes to see Swansea Town once more.”
Alas, I never will see Swansea Town, save in my dreams, for Swansea Town is no longer a town. It is now Swansea City and no, I will not be leaving Island View again, not even to return to Wales, the land of my fathers. But I can and do age, and ageing is a strange and very personal experience. These pages contain the thoughts that occur to me, in my solitude, as I come to terms with my diminishing existence.
Moo has been very silently recently. But when he saw this poem he climbed out of the woodwork where he had been hiding like a silent spider and he said “Roger, have I got just the painting for you.” The painting is also called Rage, Rage – make of that what you will.
Carved in Stone
56
I stand before the Tzompantli,
the Aztec Skull Racks
in the ruins of the Great Temple
in Mexico City,
and gaze in wonder,
at the multiple meanings
of these decorated deaths.
57
At Teotihuacan,
I climb the Sun Pyramid,
with its carved serpent,
slithering sideways,
as the sun moves.
I heave myself upwards,
panting, sweating,
and when I get to the summit,
I sit there, feet over the edge,
and I feel my heart thumping
as I fight to regain my breath.
Now, I feel purified,
cleansed, sweated dry,
as I watch poor mortals
struggle as I did
to take that final step.
I imagine them laid
on the sacrificial stone,
their chests carved open.
Each beating heart,
when extracted,
will cover altar, priest, and sky,
with a fountain of blood,
so hard those hearts
are pounding. Blood seeds
shoot into the sky
to revive the setting sun
as it drowns in its own blood.
Commentary:
Incredible, looking back, those moments in Mexico when I came face to face with a culture, so old, so alien to me, that I had difficulty coming to terms with it. I do not understand human sacrifice. Nor do I understand the mentality of the conquistadores who held the Aztec Emperor’s feet to the fire and burned them to the bone, leaving him alive. And still he would not tell them the secrets of the kingdom.
“The setting sun as it drowns in its own blood.” A nod to Charles Baudelaire, of course, – “Le soleil s’est noyé dans son sang qui se fige.” Wonderful how these images stay with us. Sunrise – and the sun is born in blood – sunset and the sun sets in its own blood. And was it really true that only the blood of humans, drawn through human sacrifice, sometimes voluntary, sometimes not, would keep the sun in the sky?
And there we go – in blood we were born, in blood we will probably die – all hail the power of blood – unless of course / wrth gwrs – it is contaminated. And what will happen to us then?
54
On the Night of Sorrows,
the Spanish invaders,
defeated,
fled the city.
Plunder weighed them down –
gold and silver,
images carved from jade,
wealth beyond measure.
The fleeing troops,
floundered, then foundered,
sinking rapidly
in the lake’s dark waters.
55
Cortés retreated to the coast
where he built small boats
and carried them in pieces
back to Tenochtitlán
He assembled them there,
and attacked, by water, the Aztec city
that had only been attacked by land.
Tenochtitlán,
one of the world’s great wonders,
more populous than London or Paris,
destroyed by internal conflict
and an armada of small boats
that outsailed the Aztec
dugout canoes.
What was there, at the end,
but wailing, burning, and death.
Carved in Stone
50
Here, in the castle of my own home,
I sit and write and patiently wait
for the enemy’s superior forces
to arrive and overwhelm me.
But death is not the enemy.
He is the friend
who has walked beside me
every day, since the day
that I was born.
I know him and I trust him,
though I am unaware
of when he will come to call
and I am ignorant of the shape
he will finally take.
Commentary:
Francisco de Quevedo, the 17th Century Spanish Neo-stoic and Metaphysical poet, wrote “the day I was born I took my first step on the path to death.” And so it is, with all of us. Sometimes we are able to choose our paths, sometimes they are forced upon us, sometimes they appear – with choices – and we make our selection and move on.
There are so many roads to travel. For Antonio Machado (Spain, Generation of 1898) there is no road. There is only a wake upon the sea – “Caminante, no hay camino, solo hay estela sobre el mar.” We must look back, to see where we have come from and where we have been. But there are many other possible paths, beside that of the sea – gravel paths, cobbled ways, log trucking roads in the Canadian Forest, cattle roads, transhumance roads, winding roads, straight Roman roads, roads that run up hill, down hill, or twist and bend following the paths of rivers.
The picture above shows the old Roman Road that leads to the Puerto del Pico, in the province of Avila. It followed the contours of the hill and formed part of the Ruta de la Plata, the road that took Latin American silver from Seville to the Spanish capital in Madrid. Look carefully and you can see the modern highway that runs parallel to the old Roman road. Nowadays, that older road is used for transhumance, the movement of cattle from the valleys in the winter to the hills in the summer. The same road, the same pass, so many different uses, and the road a wake upon the path of so many lives.
rogermoorepoet 