Existence

Downsizing

Books abandoned on the sea shore of life.

Downsizing
Francisco de Quevedo

I chose each book, held it in my hands for
one last time, then placed it peacefully in
its new resting place. Old friends, they were …
I broke that friendship and set my friends free
to fulfill their promised afterlife on
another reader’s shelves.

Mind to mind, though they had
lived five hundred years ago,
I strove to engage them in lively
conversation, Bakhtinian dialogs
within our time and space, and
that space my basement library.

I loved to hear their lilting speech,
to listen to their wisdom with open eyes
and mind. I answered them with words
I quickly pencilled on each page.

One day, a man arrived from the university.
He carried them away in a delivery truck
and they were borne to a wider world.

If you see on, bless it, read it, cherish it.
Blind now my eyes that devoured their words.
Deaf now my ears that heard the dead,
for I can listen no more.

Note: “Escucho con mis ojos a los Muertos /
I listen with my eyes to the words of the dead.”
Francisco de Quevedo (1580-1645)

With thanks to Nicholas Wermuth, who was kind enough to comment and help me revise and restructure this poem.

Survivor

Survivor

Every day, now he’s learning to speak Welsh,
he finds out something new about his childhood.
It’s not the need to talk so much as the necessity
of diving into himself and mining his memories.

Brynhyfryd / Mount Pleasant.
Pen-y-Bont / the End of the Bridge.
Ty Coch / the Red House.

This latter the house in which he was born,
way out of town, by Fairwood Common,
away from the strafing and bombing.
The war generation of his family all born
in the same in-the-country Gower bed.
No room in war-time hospitals
not even for the birth of war babies.

Three of his brothers did not survive
those rough, household births.
He still bears the forceps’ scars
from the moment the doctor
plucked him out, head first,
and hung him up by the heels,
shaking him, bringing him back to life.

He bears other scars as well
from the survivor’s burden of carrying
three dead brothers for seventy long years,
alive and kicking in the womb-warm
crevices of his still beating heart.

Eyeless in Kingsbrae

Eyeless in Kingsbrae Garden

A feather upon the cheek,
this fern held fragile, hesitant
between fine fingers.
Touch and smell:
two senses engaged.

A paint brush sounds,
brush-brushing lightly
on expectant skin.
Faint the taste tested
suggestive on tongue tip.

No sight, just insight.
I have a sense of senses lacking.
My words reach out like fingers,
but they can neither retain
nor explain the meaning of it all.

Eyeless in Kingsbrae,
They push me, blindfolded,
around the garden.
Gravel crunches beneath
the wheelchair wheels,
sharpens my inability to be sure
of shadows and shapes
that are no longer there.

The ones who push me talk
and tell but cannot show.
How could they hold a rainbow
before my sightless eyes
or explain those lights that
crisp and crackle in the night sky?

There’s warmth in a color,
and heat’s visible to the touch.
Shocking pink has a different
feel beneath blind fingers,
and it has no name
that you and I, sighted,
would ever know.

Oh, Song of Songs, and the singer
deaf to his own sublimity.
Oh dealer of false cards,
fingerless pianist,
and dancer shuffling
on amputated stumps.

Comment: The poem Eyeless in Kingsbrae Garden is contained in my book One Small Corner: A Kingsbrae Chronicle (2017), available online at Amazon / KDP.

Monkey Throws Away the Keys

Monkey Throws Away the Keys

Monkey is tired of writing reports
that are never read.
He is fed up with frequently asked
questions and their unread answers.
To every lock, there is a key.
Monkey looks at the red and gold
locks of the last orang-utangs
and wonders how to unpick their DNA.

Monkey would give his kingdom
for a key, a key, a little silver key:
the key to a situation, the key to a heart,
the office key, the key to the door,
at twenty-one, the keys of fate,
the Florida keys, the key to San
Francisco’s Golden Gate,
a passe-partout, a skeleton key,
the key to Mother Hubbard’s cupboard,
where she hides dry bones …

On the last day, when monkey leaves work
he takes a lifetime of keys
and throws them down a deep dark well.

As they halve the distance to the water,
he listens to the sound of silence and wonders
if they’ll ever hit the bottom.

Monkey Temple:
the complete book, is available on KDP and Amazon.

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, one day,
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.

Candle Light

Candle-light

Five candles burn at my table.
Outside, the night wind howls like a dog
and scratches its pelt on my roof.

The wind has torn branches from the trees
and polished the evening frost until
it sparkles like eighteenth century silver.

A moth circles, sizzles, and flares.
I keep my vigil at night’s altar
and place a wrinkled palm
into the candle’s liquid flame.

Put out a candle, put out a child.
Who would put out a dog on a night like this?
Outside, playing tag between dark trees,
the wind runs wild.

Empty Head

           

Empty Head

I sat in class, head in hands, avoiding eye contact. I hoped the priest wouldn’t point me out, call on me, nominate me with a finger, but to no avail. He called my name.

“You have sixty seconds to speak about,” he paused, then produced the rabbit from the hat. “Matches. Come along, stand up, sixty seconds, starting,” he watched the second hand go round on the classroom clock, then counted down: “5, 4, 3, 2, 1 …” waved his hand, and shouted: “Start now!”

            Images flashed through my head: matches: cricket matches, boxing matches, rugby matches, soccer matches, chess matches, matches to light the burners on the gas stove, the oven, to light the fire in the fireplace … matches, matchsticks, Match Box toys, Dinky toys, toys for little boys, toys for big boys …

            “Fifteen seconds have gone … you have forty-five remaining.”

            “When I think about matches, I think about …”

            … the first spring day in the bungalow, our summer home. The rooms are cold and damp after the winter and nobody has been here since last year. We lay a fire in the grate, but the wood is damp, as is the old newspaper we gather from our last visit. We search for sugar to aid the blaze that we hope to start, but the sugar bowl is empty. We go to the stove. Cold, winter ashes crowd the fire bowl. We scrape them together in a desperate search for charcoal remains …  but we find nothing. We move to the oil-fired lamps and oil stoves. Matches dragged across soggy sandpaper fail to spark …

            “Come along, boy. We haven’t got all day. You’ve got thirty seconds left.”

            Silence fills the room. It is broken by the childhood sniggers and chuckles of long-forgotten classmates who never became friends My cheeks grow red. I start, stammer, and stop.

            … we leave the bungalow. Go next door to where our neighbours winter over. We knock on the door. “Can you lend us a match?” we ask, holding out our hands. Mrs. Williams beams at us. “A match,” she says. “First time in after the winter?” We nod. “I thought so. Saw you arriving. Wondered why you hadn’t come earlier. The weather’s been nice. Here: I can do much better than a match.”  She moves over to the fireplace, picks up the little coal shovel, scoops up a generous portion of her fire, heaps on another lump, then two, of fresh coal, and “Here you are,” she says. “Just put it in the fireplace and add some wood and coal. This can be your first fire. Here, you’d better have some matches too.” “Thank you, Mrs. Williams,” we say. “No problem,” she replies. “It’s good to see you back. It’s been lonely here this winter without you.”

            “Time’s up,” the priest says. “That’s sixty seconds of silence and you can hardly find a word to say on a simple subject. Are you stupid or what?

            My face turns red and I suffer the hot, burning cheeks of childhood shame.

Comment:

This is a theme to which I have returned on many occasions. Click on the link to see the original post. https://rogermoorepoet.com/2016/05/page/2/

Autumn

Autumn
and all that jazz

1

Slow last drag of summer’s sad trombone
sliding its airs between stark, naked trees.

Golden memories float face down in tranquil
waters, life and the summer drained away.

A voice, her voice, ripples across the pond,
echoes over drowned and mirrored leaves.

2

Grey the sky, white the birch trees:
Narcissus kneeling, dark waters flooding.

Tumble-dried by this autumn sky,
leaf words falling, still her voice echoes.

3

Tintinnabulation: a tin-pan alley of leaves
blown against windscreen and car windows.

I, who a grief ago sat here watching her walk,
now sit here alone, waiting for her return.

4

I who am nothing know nothing, save that I
am a burnt-out ember, cold, in a grey-ash grate.

A grating of old bones, these hips and knees,
and if I fall, sweet heart, please love me more.

5

Here endeth today’s lesson: that of the fall,
the fall of all things finally into deep water.

Fall, fall asleep to the rhythmic leaf beat
that summons us all to our appointed end.

The Unexamined Life

The Unexamined Life

“The unexamined life is not worth living.”
Socrates.

A philosopher’s life’s based on thinking,
and drinking, and thinking about drinking,
and thinking while drinking,
and drinking while thinking,
and thinking about thinking when drinking.

He gazes on and on at his navel,
every day for as long as he is able,
and talks to his wife
about trouble and strife
and the problems they have to unravel.

But all is not doom and gloom
when a philosopher enters the room,
though none can debunk
the size of the trunk
of the elephant stuck in the room.

As for me, I am caring and giving,
and although I work hard for my living,
I’d willingly share
with a friend in despair
half my cloak and a third of my living.

“The unlived life is not worth examining.”
Pseudo-Socrates.

“Join the army,” that philosopher said.
“There’s no life like it,” he said.
“You get very few thanks
when you’re in the front ranks,
but it’s better than walking round dead.”

Striations

There are striations in my heart, so deep, a lizard could lie there, unseen, and wait for tomorrow’s sun. Timeless, the worm at the apple’s core waiting for its world to end. Seculae seculorum: the centuries rushing headlong. Matins: wide-eyed this owl hooting in the face of day. Somewhere, I remember a table spread for two. Breakfast. An open door. “Where are you going, dear?” Something bright has fled the world. The sun unfurls shadows. The blood whirls stars around the body. “It has gone.” she said. “The magic. I no longer tremble at your touch.” The silver birch wades at dawn’s bright edge. Somewhere, tight lips, a blaze of anger, a challenge spat in the wind’s taut face. High-pitched the rabbit’s grief in its silver snare. The midnight moon deep in a trance. If only I could kick away this death’s head, this sow’s bladder, this full moon drifting high in a cloudless sky.

Comment: This is the prose version, from Fundy Lines (2002). The prose version was based on an extract from a longer poem that first appeared in Though Lovers Be Lost (2000). Though Lovers Be Lost is also available on Amazon and Kindle.