Existence

Gorilla Drives the Zoo Bus

Gorilla Drives the Zoo Bus

Gorilla drives the same zoo bus
all day, every day;
same starting time, same finishing time,
same route, same stops,
different passengers,
but every passenger the same:
faceless.
Gorilla doesn’t want to know their names.

“Please tender the exact fare!”
Not a penny less, not a penny more,
and he polices every penny.
Bus conductor and master
of every passenger’s destiny,
he opens and shuts the door,
letting passengers on and off the bus,
but only at official stops.

Every passenger has a ticket,
and he punches every ticket
with a neat, round hole.

He never makes mistakes.
He grinds, like God’s own mills,
exceedingly small.

He has spent all his life in uniform.
He has a belt and braces to hold his trousers up.
He’s always prepared for the worst.  

Ten, fifteen, twenty years:
an anonymous wife;
anonymous little babies;
at shift’s end, a pension,
and another bus.

St. Peter’s at the wheel.
He doesn’t want to know
where gorilla wants to go:
he wants to know where he’s been.

Commentary:

Moo didn’t have a painting of a gorilla driving a bus, so he offered me a painting of the passengers instead. Look carefully – you might even find a portrait of me or you in there. Who knows where Moo goes and who he sees? I certainly don’t. Remember Picasso – he used to run downstairs, out into the street, see a face he liked, and run back upstairs and paint it from memory. I wonder if Moo does the same thing. I’d ask him, but if he doesn’t want to answer the question, he just grunts. And I can imagine him grunting at that one.

Anyway, we all know and recognize the gorillas when we meet them. They are totally unimportant, have a miniscule job to do, but do it with absolute authority and the utmost perfection. Like Gorilla – “Not a penny less, not a penny more, and he polices every penny.” – “he opens and shuts the door, letting passengers on and off the bus, but only at official stops.” – “he punches every ticket with a neat, round hole.” – and probably in the exact same spot of every ticket! – “He never makes mistakes.” – and if he does, it’s the passenger who suffers, because ‘Get on, get off, who ever you may be, I am the lord of the bus,’ says he.

What will happen to us at the end of our shift? I really don’t know. And I don’t think anyone else does, either. Will St. Peter be there to greet us? (I don’t know.) Has the Zoo bus replaced the ferry over the River Styx? (I don’t know.) What will we be asked when we get there? (I don’t know.) How will we answer? (I don’t know.) Is there a little book in which all our deeds, good and bad, are written down? (I don’t know.) Are we to be divided into sheep and goats? (I don’t know.) What will poor monkey do when he is turned into a sheep or a goat? (I don’t know.)

So many questions, deep questions, packed into one small poem. Most of those questions unanswerable. But that’s one of the joys of poetry – to open a poem is to open a tin of calamares – there’s always another something or other left in the corner. Look, over there, bottom left, right at the bottom of the can, I spy with my little eye another question. ‘What is that question?’ you ask. Sorry, mate, I’m afraid I don’t know.

Monkey’s Clockwork Universe

Monkey’s Clockwork Universe


Some days, monkey winds himself up
like a clockwork mouse.
Other days he rolls over and over
with a key in his back like a clockwork cat.

Monkey is growing old and forgetful.
He forgets where he has hidden the key,
pats his pockets, and slows right down
before he eventually finds it
and winds himself up again.

One day, monkey leaves the key
between his shoulder blades
in the middle of his back.

All day long,
the temple monkeys play with the key,
turning it round and round,
and winding monkey’s clockwork,
tighter and tighter,
until suddenly the mainspring breaks
and monkey slumps at the table –
no energy, no strength,
no stars, no planets, no moon at night,
the sun broken fatally down,
the clockwork of his universe
sapped, and snapped.

Commentary:

I guess we normal human beings, not the monkeys who live in the Monkey Temple, think of this as a sort of mental and physical burn out. It can happen to anyone really. You don’t have to be a monkey. But if you live in a clockwork universe where you clock in at nine and clock out at five, and regulate everything – your eating, your breathing, your visits to the loo – by the tick of the tick-tock work clock, then I guess this can happen to you.

Escarmentar en cabeza ajena – a lovely Spanish proverb that means ‘to learn from the blows delivered to another’s head’. Much better to let this poor monkey teach you that yes, you have to take breaks or, like monkey, you will break down. You must learn to pace yourself, not to be put upon by others, and to look after yourself. Because, if you don’t, others will take advantage of you and push you to, and beyond, your limits. Don’t learn that lesson the hard way, by ending up broken, run down, and in hospital. Learn from monkey’s experience. Keep the key hidden. Don’t let other people see it, or steal it, or wind you up with it.

Life is hard enough anyway. Look after yourself first. And then you will be much better able to look after other people – especially your family and friends – when they need your help. A difficult lesson to learn, especially in this world of multi-tasking where too many people hold too many low-paying jobs and work long, long hours, day after day, just to make ends meet.

There is no escape from the clockwork labyrinth, you think. Alas, that too is true, all too often. But escape you must. Somewhere, Ariadne’s thread will lead you out. You must seek it, even in the darkness and the gloom. Once found, it will lead you out from the darkness and back into the light. And that is what we must all hope for and work for. Pax amorque – and blessings.

Things

 

Things

I fumble in my mind for things
long lost in an upper attic.
I can no longer read the words
I wrote. What does this mean?

At night I dream of things
beyond my reach. My fingers
clutch but cannot clasp
those clouds that clutter.

Who, oh who, the owl cries,
can free the mice that nibble
through my mind and set me
gnawing at my own soul?

Once upon a time, a long
time ago, I thought I saw light
at the end of the tunnel.
I travelled on a ghost train.

The light I saw was a gaslight
ghosting my mind with fictional
fantasies of an illusive kingdom
that would never be mine.

Elusive, these memories of things
that never were, but might have been.
Will o’ the wisps dancing shadows
on the salt-marsh of my unknown life.

Commentary:
Memory loss. I guess it happens to all of us at one time or another. One of my long-lost friends visited yesterday and between us we could hardly put two consecutive memories together. Every other sentence was punctuated with a pause – ‘Now, when did that happen?’ ‘What was his name? I can’t remember now.’ ‘Me neither.’

I am not particularly worried by such happenings. I am a poet and a story-teller. Sometimes, I forget the truth – so what? – I just go ahead and reinvent it, tickling it here, sticking a spot of paint there, adding a word or two, or a magic moment. I often remind myself of Oscar Wilde when he created a magic moment of verbal ingenuity – “I wish I had said that, Oscar.” “You will, Roger, you will.”

Best of all, even in those moments when personal memories fail me, literary magic returns. I think of Dylan Thomas and his words spring to my mind – ‘time has ticked a heaven round the stars’. Wonderful. Or Francisco de Quevedo ‘soy un fué, y un será, y un es cansado.’ / ‘Tired I was, tired I am, tired I always will be.’ My own translation from the summer of 1963 when José Manuel Blecua introduced me to the poem, or rather Blecua introduced the poem to me, in that summer’s courses of the UIMP.

So, according to this theory, even when you feel lost, you are never really lost, because there are an enormous number of people living inside your head, who who will step out from the shadows, when needed, and give your memory a little boost. But don’t get too carried away. Think too of José María Valverde and his poetic premonition: ‘Pobres poetas de hoy, destinados a ser polvo seco de tesis doctoral.’ / ‘Poor poets of today, destined to be the dry dust of doctoral theses.’ (My translation).

Dust to dust and ashes to ashes – ‘Serán ceniza, pero tendrá sentido. Polvo serán, pero polvo enamorado.’ Quevedo, of course. But you didn’t need me to tell you that. You might need me to help you with the translation, though – ‘Ashes they’ll be, but ashes with feeling. They will be dust, but dust that burns with love.’ (My translation, with a little bit of exaggeration [sorry, don Francisco!] just at the end.)

This Vessel in which I Sail

This Vessel in which I Sail

Trapped in this fragile vessel, with the pandemic
a passenger waiting to board, I drift from port to port,
looking for a haven, safe, to have and to hold me.

No harbour will let me dock. “No room at this inn,”
they say. “No haven here.” They wave me away.

Now I have no destination. Aimless, I float and every
where I go the message is: “No vacancy: no room at all.”

Unwanted, abandoned, I wander with wind and waves,
my only friends seals, porpoises, and whales.
I walk the whale road, leaving a frail, white wake behind.

This vessel has become a gulag now, a prison
camp where I exist just to survive. Each hour of each day
endless, boundless, like this shadowy, haunted sea.

Today there is no motion, no goal. What is there to achieve
but survival? Each day’s journey is sufficient unto itself.

Commentary:

Moo’s cartoon, Naval Gazing, dates from 2015. That year I spent eight weeks in Moncton at the Georges Dumont, gazing at my navel while waiting for my anti-cancer radiation treatment. Naval gazing / navel gazing, indeed. Good one, guys. You make a great pairing.

The poem dates from 2020 when Covid stalked the streets and we wore masks when we were not confined to our houses. I thought of the tour ships, wandering the seas, with the disease on board, and no port wanting them. It was a strange time.

Golden Oldies, then, both poem and painting. There are signs, small at present, but still visible, that such days are on their way back. We must each ask the question – What is there to achieve but survival? Hopefully we will come up with a similar answer – Each day’s journey is sufficient unto itself. Journey well and journey safely, my friends.

Apocalypse when?

Apocalypse When?

A strange, milk-cloud sky, skimpy, with the sun
a pale, dimly-glowing disc and my pen scarce
casting a shadow as the nib limps over the page.

Out on the west coast, fires still range free and this
is the result, these high, thin clouds casting a spider
web cloak over the sun face and darkening the day.

The west coast: five or six hours by plane and three
whole days to get there by train, even longer by bus,
all chop and change with multiple stops.

The wind blew and the clouds came widdershins,
backwards across the continent. Today they reached
across the ocean to claw the sun from European skies.

It is indeed a small world after all. Isostasy:
you push the balloon in here, and it bulges out
over there in the place you least expected.

Now we are all interconnected in an intricate network
of a thousand ways and means. What does it all mean?
Ripples ruffle the beaver pond’s dark mirror.

The forest mutters wind-words, devious and cruel,
that I sense, but cannot understand. High in the sky
clouds turn into horsemen on plunging steeds.

Fear, fire, flood, foe, poverty, pandemic, crops destroyed,
unemployment, and, waiting in the wings, the threat of civil
unrest, leading to the apocalypse and the war to end all wars.


Clepsydra 12 & 13 – Pilgrim in this barren land …

Clepsydra 12 & 13 –
Pilgrim in this barren land …

12

… pilgrim in this barren land
     lost in my wanderings
          the wander-lust still tugging at me

in my back-pack
               dusty with memories
                    photos that only I have seen
                         sepia
                              spotted in places

only I know names and faces
     recall relationships
          a mystery to me, an outsider,
               such images haunt me
                    move me in ways
                         I do not understand

the irregular heart-beat
     of my life walks inside me
          down new corridors of time
               fresh music
                    strums my heart-strings

a heart
     a bridge a time too far
          lost I wander the woods
               searching for things
                    I know I must find
                         my lost self among them …


13

… but to find myself
     I must first lose myself,
          not in a barren land
               nor in the inner depths
                    of my suffering mind
                         nor the deeper depths
                              of another’s body

am I nothing more
     than an offering on the altar
          where nothing alters more
               than this interchange
                    eye to eye
                         mind to mind
                              body to body

will the I ever transform
     into the power of us
          together
               both of us

and are we much more
     than one plus one
          with three or four or more
               conjured from the word
                    that was from the beginning

or is all of this
     nothing more than
          the woven magic of pillow-talk …

Butterflies

Butterflies
Miguel de Unamuno

… butterflies … temporal forms … fluttering …
existing for one sweet day … they perch … spread
their wings … fan us with their beauty … flourish …
catch our attention … then caught by a gust
tear their wings on a thorn … and perish … blink
your eye and they are gone … yet reborn … they
cluster and gather in dusty ditches …
congregate on bees’ balm … smother Black-Eyed
Susan and Cape Daisy … shimmer in shade …
butterflies by day … fireflies by night …
terrestrial stars floating in their forest
firmament … dark tamarack … black oak … bird’s
eye maple … silver birch … impermanence
surrounds us … dances beneath stars … sings with
robins … echoes the owl’s haunting cry …
eternity held briefly in our hands …
then escaping like water or sand … black
words on white paper capturing nothing …
… my dialog … my time … my place … butterflies …

Note: “La poesía da permanencia a las formas temporales del ser / Poetry gives permanence to the temporal forms of the self.” Miguel de Unamuno (1864-1936)

The temporal forms of the self – and so much today is unsettled, changing, insubstantial. I have often wondered how one makes time stop. Is it even possible to do so? Time and tide wait for no man. And why should they? Fray Luis de León – “Con paso silencioso, el cielo vueltas dando, las horas del vivir le va hurtando.” / With silent step, the ever-turning sky, steals away life’s hours. Or Fancisco de Quevedo – “Que sin saber ni cómo, ni adónde, la edad y la salud se hayan huído. Falta la vida, asiste lo vivido, y no hay calamidad que no me ronde.” Without me knowing how or where, age and health have fled. Life is lacking, past life flew by, and there isn’t a calamity that doesn’t hound me.

Ars longa, vis brevis – art endures, life flies by. My translations are freer than usual today, but I too feel like being creative in my own language. So, if we can’t slow time down, what can we do? We can create – poems, paintings, photos. We can read – and translate from one language to another. We can, like butterflies, perch on flowers and enjoy our brief days in the sun. Mindfulness – we can make the most of each moment by living it thoroughly and well. Carpe diem – we can seize each moment of every day and live it to its full measure. And, above all, we can write and read poetry – because, as Unamuno says – Poetry gives permanence to the temporal forms of the self.

Time Flies

Time Flies

… bends like a boomerang,
flies too rapidly away,
limps back to the hand.

Endless this shuffle of unmarked
days dropping off the calendar.

Hands stop on the clock.
The pendulum swings:
time and tide stand still,
do not move.

‘As idle as a painted ship
upon a painted ocean.’

The painting in my grandma’s room:
seemingly moving seas,
sails swelling out,
but the ship doesn’t move,
it stays firm in its frame.

Our garden fills with birds
and squirrels, light and dark.
Morning ablutions: each day
a twin of the day before.

The TV screen churns ceaselessly,
tired, shadow faces boring us
with shallow wit
and worn-out wisdom.

Time:
an albatross around the neck,
an emu, an ostrich, a dodo,
an overweight bumble bee,
too clumsy, too heavy to fly.

What brings a tear of joy to your eye?

What brings a tear of joy to your eye?

Peeling onions, of course. As my Welsh grandfather told me, years and years ago

“If, if, if,
onions climbed a cliff,
potatoes would rise
with watery eyes
if it wasn’t for if.”

There you have it, in a nutshell, or should that be an onion skin? So, why does peeling onions bring a tear of joy to my eye? Because of the things that I make with them, of course. Where would paella be, if there were no onions in the mix? Can you imagine French Onion Soup with no onions in it? How about a Spanish Omelet / tortilla española? Okay, okay – I know some purists, especially in Galicia, say that the tortilla española should consist of egg, potato, salt, and nothing more, save a touch of olive oil, perhaps. But most of the tortillas españolas that I have enjoyed (and made) include an onion or two to blend with the potatoes. And how about salsa mexicana or salsa pico de gallo? Unthinkable without their dash of sliced onion.

So, peeling onions – that always brings a tear of joy to my eye, because I know how I am going to use them and how tasty they will be. And for those who have forgotten the hungry in this world, myself included in this particular post, do not forget Miguel Hernández and his poem Las nanas de la cebolla / The Onion Lullaby. Reading that poem and understanding its background will surely bring a tear to your eye, as it always does to mine. This time, however, it won’t be a tear of joy!

Absence in Presence

Absence in Presence

Just before her flight left,
she came up
from the basement,
her cleaning tasks
complete,
and smiled at me.

In the background, music,
a Golden Oldie,
the Rolling Stones playing
‘This could be the last time.’

Present in her eyes,
and in my heart,
the thought,
more than a thought,
the knowledge
that those words
might actually be true.