Giving Thanks

Rage, Rage 58

Rage, Rage
58

“What is this sound?”
It is your own death sighing,
groaning, growing
while you wait for it
to devour you.

“What is this feeling”
It is the itch of your own skin
wrinkling and shrinking,
preparing to wrap you
in the last clothes you’ll wear.

“What is this taste?”
It is the taste of your life,
bottled like summer wine
once sweet tasting,
now turning to vinegar.

“What is this smell?”
It is waste and decay,
the loss of all you knew
and of all that knew you.

“That carriage outside?”
It is the dark hearse
come to carry you
to your everlasting home.

Comment:

Moo thinks that his portrait of me is perfectly good for this poem. He told me not to rage, rage against the accuracy of the portrait, but he did tell me to rage, rage against the lack of paper. Où est le papier, indeed. As for the rest of it, he said it’s the same for everyone, so stop making a fuss about it. “You’ve got one last bottle of mescal on the shelf,” he told me. “I know. I’ve seen it. Just swig it down, worm and all, and you’ll have nothing to worry about.”

Oh dear. The worm in the bottle. They used to sell the gusanos in Oaxaca’s mescal street at a price of five for ten pesos. I used to buy a two litre coke bottle, filled with mescal from a barrel, and drop ten worms in it. They made yellow streaks as they descended through the liquid. Sweet dreams when you chewed on that lot – and an end to your worries. El brujo, the witch doctor, told me to stick a marijuana plant in the bottle of mescal and when the leaves turned white to rub the liquid into my arthritic knees. “Which doctor was that?” one of the tourists in my apartment block asked me. But I didn’t tell her. Nor did I do it. A waste of good mescal. And to think I now have one last half bottle left. And one little squirmy, crunchy, chewy worm.

Speaking of chewy, crunchy – I had never eaten chapulines, fried grasshoppers, until I went to Oaxaca. I didn’t like the look of them. At the first party I attended was confronted by the host who demanded I eat some. I told him they were taboo, against my religion. He shrugged. When he, and the other guests lost interest in my presence, I tried a couple. They were delicious. A real delicacy. I loved their crunchy little legs.

I guess one is always afraid of the unknown – the gusano in the mescal, the chapulines on the plate, that first plate of calamares en su tinta – squid in its own ink. I love bara lawr – Welsh laver bread – or Welsh caviar, as Richard Burton used to call it. I also know that people who have never eaten bara lawr won’t go near it – it looks like cow pats – but luckily doesn’t taste like them. Don’t ask me how I know. Some people get over their fear of the unknown, others don’t. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what happens.

Rage, Rage 55

Rage, Rage
55

I walk on thin ice
at the frayed edge
of my life.

I search for the key
that will re-wind me,
but I fail to find it.

Who will winch up
the pendulums on
my grandfather clock,
resetting it
in spring and fall?

Who will watch
time’s sharp black arrows
as they point the path
of moon change
and the fleeting hours?

Each hour wounds,
or so they say.
Who will tend me
when that last one kills?

Comment:

Omnia vulnerant, ultima necat. / Each one wounds, the last one kills. That’s how the Romans thought about the collection of hours that make up a day. An interesting way of putting it. In lapidarian fashion. Four words that are worth a whole book of philosophical thought.

What is this thing called time? Good question, and one which is being asked more and more. Clearly time does not flow evenly within the human mind, though it is remarkably regular on the clocks we have invented to mark time for us. And remember, there are many types of time – seasonal time – spring time, summer time, autumn time, winter time. Strange that autumn – or fall as I have now learned to call it – is the only one that doesn’t have the word time attached to it.

And what about time changes – spring forward, fall back – when we change our clocks in order to make the most of daylight hours. A tedious process for many of us. I see some provinces are rejecting those changes and sticking to the same time, all the year round, from season to season. Personally, I would prefer life without those time changes, as would many of my friends.

Celestial time also known as sidereal time – the time as showed by the planets as they seem to march around the earth in the terra-centric universe. Rephrased, the positions of the planets as the earth turns slowly round the sun in the helio-centric universe.

Then there is the personal time of individual experience. An hour watching football or rugby on the tv set passes much more quickly than an hour passed in the doctor’s waiting room or the dentist’s chair. Of course, an hour watching a five day cricket test can also be a slow process, unless England are playing Australia in the Ashes. As one friend of mine commented, a long time ago, “I thought those English cricketers were unfit. But I’ve never seen anyone go out to bat and come back to the pavilion so quickly. They must be super-fit.” Alas, their cricketing problem, as usual, was centered on the three cants – can’t bowl, can’t bat, can’t catch.

En fuga irrevocable huye la hora.
La que el mejor cálculo cuenta
en lectura y lección nos mejora.

Irrevocable is the hour’s flight.
The one that counts the most
in learning or reading improves us.

Francisco de Quevedo
(1580-1645)

And remember – the hours fly by and your time is limited – spend it wisely and enjoy each and every day to the full limits of your abilities.

Rage, Rage 38

Rage, Rage
38

Now, my heart is once more
a time-bomb ticking
beneath her fingers.

I dream of walking tall,
with her by my side,
in the youthful paradise
of a distant,
long-promised land.

My tom-tom heart,
softening clay,
putty beneath her fingers,
thumps out a hoodoo
voodoo beat on its drum.

Victor Sylvester,
and his orchestra,
Sundays on BBC radio,
announces his signature rhythm –
slow, slow, quick, quick, slow –
my mind waltzes to the music
plucked from my heart strings.

Wild winds blow in from the shore
buffeting my heart, breaking it apart.
Blown open, in spite of my dreams,
my secret is not a secret anymore.

Comment:

Absent without leave, I have chased the dreams of rugby and cricket and abandoned my poetry until another today. And here I am, a week after St. David’s Day, still dreaming, still raging, still recalling so many things.

Wild winds blow in from the shore buffeting my heart, breaking it apart. You can see, in the photo above, the wind tugging at the waves. A lurid sky fills with heavy clouds and oncoming rain. My heart is out there somewhere, wave-washed, blown open by the simple beauty of wind and sea.

How many now recall Victor Sylvester on BBC Radio on a Sunday afternoon? Or the Billy Cotton Band Show? That was our Sunday afternoon entertainment long before we had TV. You can’t imagine it, can you? A world without TV. So many things fade away from far too many people.

Who now will talk of my Voce and my Larwood, long ago? How many saw Hammond at his best, with his imperial cover drive? Ken Jones? Cliff Jones? JJ and JPR? Lloyd and Bleddyn? Old visions, buffet my heart, breaking it apart. Frank Worrall in Swansea at St. Helen’s. Everton De Courcy Weekes at Bristol, in the County Ground. I have the photos. I have the memories. And I have a broken heart when I remember things, some personal, some not, that so few people do.

Dydd Dewi Sant Hapus

Dydd Dewi Sant Hapus!

Happy St. David’s Day

Spring in Wales.

Spring in Wales

               Spring in Wales comes very quickly.  Sometimes, if you blink twice, it has gone again. But usually, you take a step outside the door one morning and suddenly there are daffodils everywhere. And they all come so early, crowding together like party-goers, tossing their heads in the bright yellow sunshine, and the whole world green and yellow, like the round yellow eye of this first blackbird, whistling on the garage roof or on a branch of the apple tree which is suddenly covered with a warm green fuzz of threatening leaf …

               … all so early, I say, and the countryside yellow with daffodils by March the First, St. David’s Day, our Dewi Sant, and especially in the Castle Grounds and Blackweir gardens, where the daffs grow wild and cluster beneath the trees, like huge, enthusiastic, rugby crowds, clapping and waving at every passing moment, and all the leaves on all the trees are just starting to sprout and there’s a pale, watery sun, but the wind is still fresh with the daffodils all tossing their heads in sprightly dance …

               … and you can walk the dog in Blackweir Gardens without a winter coat and without your wellington boots, though it’s as well to wear thick socks and good, stout shoes, just in case there are still puddles and the autumn leaves that fell last year may still be wet and soggy and slippery after their winter out in the rain and snow and the Feeder Brook which used to feed the Old Castle Moat, drained now, and no longer a stock pond for trout and carp,  is running strongly and quite fast, all the way down from Taffs Well … and the gurgling weir is beside you as you walk, with the crunch of the gravel beneath your feet, the song birds starting to sing, the nesting birds pairing up and starting to nest, and always the daffodils, the Taffodils as they sometimes call them in Cardiff, Caer Dydd, as they write on the busses, with the river Taff flowing there, just above you, as you climb the embankment and the River Taff flows beneath you now, all black and swift and deep and swollen with the end of the winter rains … and the Taff cradles as it flows the finest of fine coal dust and carries it down to the sea … and the fish and eels are born eyeless, so the fishermen say, as they measure out the length of the whoppers that got away, because nothing can be seen in the River Taff when it’s as black as that … and in places you can walk on it, they say, it’s so laden with coal dust from the worked out seams of the nearby Rhondda, and what use are eyes in a river where the coal dust is impenetrable and the water’s like a dense black stew …

               … and spring is Easter and Easter is when the Barbarians Rugby Football Club make their annual Easter Tour of Wales and the southern part of Wales is rugby mad on Good Friday, and we have just been released from the prison camps of our schools for the Easter Holidays, and in our new found freedom we go to Penarth where the Sea-Siders, as we call them, play against the Baa-Baas, as we call them, and we park the car at the top of the hill near the centre of Penarth, and we walk and half run to the playing fields down at the bottom of the hill, squeeze ourselves like toothpaste, in through the gates, squeeze ourselves small in the gathering crowd and there they are, the mighty Barbarians, 14 internationals from England, Ireland, Scotland, and occasionally France or South Africa,  and standing firm against them, the men from Penarth, 15 average tiny Welshmen, perennial losers, doomed to their annual failure, but not today, as Bernie Templeman, “Slogger” to his friends and intimates, kicks a penalty and drops a goal, and the giants are shunted all round the park and almost off the scoreboard … and we shout ourselves hoarse and it’s Penarth 6 and the Barbarians 3 … and all that international strength and might vanishes, Goliath felled by David on a damp Good Friday night … in the spring time, in my childhood, in Wales …

               … and on Easter Saturday, we stay in Cardiff … and we have tickets for the stand where you don’t have to stand at all, but can actually sit in luxury … and my friend’s dad has a friend who has friends who have season tickets … but they have just won the football pools and they have left Wales and are travelling around the world on a cruise ship, and they have left us their tickets, their wonderful tickets in the stands, and we sit on the half way line and watch this magnificent game where they, the Barbarians, have fourteen internationals and a school boy who will one day be an international, but we have fifteen internationals because this is Cardiff … the best club side in the world … and this is the Capital of Wales … and we are playing at Cardiff Arms Park, at the ground where my father played and my grandfather before him, and we are watching history, and family history, and everyone who plays for Cardiff also plays eventually for Wales, and my father came here, like my grandfather, as a visitor, not part of the home team, and Swansea were the champions back then, not Cardiff, and my grandfather played for Swansea, way before the First World War, and my dad …

               …  well, I don’t know much about him and his rugby because he changed from rugby to soccer because my mother’s family, who all had English and Scottish blood, thought rugby was dangerous and they wanted him to play soccer, so he did, and he broke his ankle playing soccer and never played sports that well again, though he was a great sportsman, more than 6 foot tall, yet I take after my mother and I’m tiny like her, and “much better to have had a girl, with him as small as he is” some neighbours said and others said “Don’t worry; he’ll grow!” but I never did and so I became a runner not a rugger, but my father’s side of the family could never understand why I wasn’t out there, like my father and my grandfather and “A good little ‘un is just as good as a good big ‘un” they used to tell me, so I played occasionally, especially in the spring, and there they were, giants at six and seven foot tall, and there I was a dwarf, a pigmy, at five foot tall, and it’s lies they tell you sometimes, myths and lies, because five foot can never match six or seven in spite of everything they say about a good little ’un … but this is Cardiff and Cardiff always wins and win we do … and we all go home happy …

               … but on the morning of Easter Sunday we set  out for Swansea and the bungalow in Bishopston, where we will spend the night, and we have our knapsacks on our backs and in our knapsacks we have our sandwiches and our snack bars and our bathing trunks, and we’re all ready for that first Easter visit to the beach … and we catch the train at Cardiff General and go from Cardiff General to Swansea High Street, and when we’re in Swansea we run to the bus station and catch the next bus, the next brown and yellow Swan bus, and it takes us out along the Mumbles Road, and up the Mayals, and over Bishopston Common, which is still open land and not the least bit enclosed, and there are skylarks rising early in the morning, and cows, and ponies, and sheep, and sometimes they are found wandering on the road that crosses the common, but not today … and we leave the common and rush through the narrow lanes, at breakneck speed, and the trees lash the bus windows with their branches, inches from our faces, and we duck as the leaves smack the glass in front of us, even though we know the windows are there and the leaves can’t touch us … and at Pyle Corner, we leave the bus and it’s down through the lanes, and it’s out to the bungalow which hasn’t been opened yet, and we’re the first there, so it’s light a fire and warm the place up, and dry the mattresses, and get the damp out of the one bed we’ll sleep in, all of us, and then it’s down to the hard stone beach at Pwll Ddu, and we wander on the shore fully dressed and dare each other to swim as we wander across the pebbles and yes, we decide to do it, to strip, and the wind turns us blue and there’s nobody else there, just us, and it’s Easter Sunday, and the sea-gulls are daring us to take off all our clothes and bathe naked in the naked sea beneath a naked, cloudless sky …

               … and it’s not as warm as we remembered it from last year, and the wind whips our naked flesh and turns it blue and we run up and down trying to keep warm and then we plunge into the icy water and the water must be a degree or two warmer than the land, but it’s still cold in the water and even colder when we come out … and I remember now that my grandfather was a member of the Swansea Polar Bear Club and swam, each Christmas, in the docks at Swansea and also on new Year’s Day and he must have been mad, even if he did join a club of equal nut cases, ‘cos we’re freezing, I tell you, and this is Easter Sunday, not New Year’s Day, though the year is new enough for us and the cycle of the seasons is just beginning, and the old year ends with winter and the new year starts with Easter, and this ritual turning blue as though we were all daubed and tattooed with woad, and the annual, ritual dip lasts for about two seconds, two seconds of total immersion, like baptism, with your hair wet or it doesn’t count and “Watch out!” there’s someone coming down the cliff path and we’re no longer the only ones on this beach and we leap into each other’s clothes just to have something on when the others arrive, whoever they are, these neighbours, these nosy neighbours are … and “Skinny dipping. were you?” they say, “We’ll tell your ma, we will.” “You can’t she’s in Cardiff!” “Well we’ll tell your grandma then, she’s still in Swansea, I saw her at the market yesterday, and she’ll tan your backsides — should be ashamed of yourselves, bathing naked on Easter Sunday.”  “Aw, don’t tell gran; remember: you were young once!” “Yes! I was; but I didn’t run naked on the beach on Easter Sunday!” …

               … and it’s back to the bungalow with everything soon forgotten and the bungalow is warmer now, from the fire and the woodstove, and you know automatically where everything is, the oil lamps, and the wood fire stove, but there’s no electricity and we have forgotten to get water and unless we drink rainwater from the barrel it’s down to the end of the field, with its single tap that feeds and waters the whole field, 26 summer houses and only three of them occupied, two by people who live there all year round, and one by us, now, at Easter, and the neighbours drop in to see we are all right … and we talk and they help us to trim the wicks and set the lights and one of the neighbours comes in and helps us to make a pot of stew on the wood stove, a Welsh stew with potatoes, and cabbage, and onions, and carrots, and a bit of meat they lend us so we will not be tempted to use the piece of old dry smoked bacon left over from last summer, and hanging still from the rafters, out of reach of the mice and the rats who have taken back their empire and scuffle and scrimmage each night, like Barbarians, over the roof and through the walls … and we can hear them at midnight, as they travel the pathways they have built around us …


               … and we can also hear the cows, out in the field all night, as they rub their bodies up and down against the bungalow walls, and there are fresh cow pats where they have sought human company and the warmth of the fire because it’s cold at night even though it’s spring and when Monday dawns, first  it’s breakfast and Brandy Cove, where the beach has changed shape after the winter storms … and all the paths are slightly different, down from the cliffs to the sand, and we are not the first, for there are new paths and footprints and one of our neighbours is there in the cove with his canoe which he paddles all winter, every day, at full tide, in Brandy Cove at first, then out round the headlands to Caswell and Langland, Pwll Ddu and Three Cliffs and we don’t know now that one day he’ll go out on that tide, but he’ll never come back, and they’ll hold a funeral for him, but they’ll never bury him, because they’ll never find his body … and this year, again, he’s all sun tanned and brown and doesn’t look at all like one of us, we white skinned boys, with our sunless winter skins not yet exposed to wind and sand save for that one appearance yesterday that blued us as if we were dyed in woad,  as if we were ancient British warriors and the old Celtic Race was reborn in tattoo and blue … and fearsome we are, we warriors, we blue men, marching up Snowdon with our woad on, never minding if we’re rained or snowed on, and slap us on the chest and we are all bowmen they say, and the spring is here and the summer campaigns can be planned, but first, it’s back to the bungalow, finish up the food, clear everything away, make sure the fires are all out, lock all the doors, and off down the lane, we go to catch the bus back into town, the brown and yellow bus that was once driven by my great-grandfather, not in bus form, but he put a plank in the back of his truck and he gave people lifts, and this was the first informal transport system, ages and ages ago, long before the First World War, and everyone knew him and everyone knows me, but me I have left … and I don’t know anyone any more … but they all know all about me …
              
               … and we get off the bus at the Swansea Recreation Ground and we walk to St. Helen’s for the game, because today Swansea play the Barbarians and my uncle is there and he used to play for Swansea and he’s in his usual place … we know just where to find him … and we stand by him and talk to him and everyone is wearing something white today, because Swansea are the Swans when they play soccer and the All Whites when they play rugby and Cardiff play in Cambridge Blue and Black and I cannot remember the colours worn by Penarth, because we only go there once a year to watch them and nobody in the family ever played for them …

               … and Swansea is great because the stand is low and players can kick the ball over the stand and then the little boys, which is what we are in the eyes of the grown ups, though we think are big and tall and Celtic Warriors, quite capable of bathing at Pwll Ddu on Easter Sunday, with nothing on, which the grown ups would never think of doing, well, we little boys are told to run and get the balls which have been kicked over the grandstand out into the street where the Mumbles Railway still runs, right beside the Cline Valley Line, and all the traffic is stopped because the balls are rolling around and the boys are chasing them and whenever the grown men get tired of playing and need a breather, why, one of them kicks the ball over the pavilion roof and I can remember in the cricket season when a ball was hit over the pavilion roof and it landed in a coal truck that was passing on the railway line and it travelled all the way up to North Wales where it was discovered, lying on the coal, and the grown ups all said that we boys had stolen the ball, until it was discovered, a week later lying on the coal … and I can’t remember whether Swansea won or lost, but I think they won, because I don’t think the Barbarians won anything in Wales that year, and that night after the game it was back to High Street Station and back up to Cardiff General on the train, and the next day was Easter Tuesday ….

               …. and the holidays are almost over … but on Easter Tuesday, the Barbarians play Newport in Newport at Rodney Parade … and nobody in the family likes Newport, because the people from Newport are neither English nor Welsh and they change allegiance and go with whoever’s winning, England or Wales, and they move in and out of Wales, playing for England when the Welsh don’t want them and they can’t get a game with our team … and we don’t like that …  so nobody trusts them and you can see people from Newport playing on the English side, in white, with a red rose on their shirts … but Ken Jones wouldn’t do that … and he’s from Newport … and he’s fast, very fast, and he’s got an Olympic bronze medal for sprinting, and the crowd all sing the Skye Boat Song, except the words are different and  they sing “Speed, bonny boat, like Ken Jones on the wing, onward to score a try!”

               … and although we’re meant to support Ken Jones and the Newport team, we secretly support the Barbarians, but not too loudly, because there are some big, and I mean big, Newport supporters close by us, so we don’t make too much noise … and I can’t remember that game either because Rodney Parade isn’t very nice and nobody from my family would ever think of playing for them …

               … and Wales, as I remember it, was still very tribal … and people in Newport, Cas Newydd,  live on the border, and by the border, and we’re never sure which side of the border they’re fighting on, and that’s totally prejudiced and unfair, and politically incorrect … but that’s also tribal warfare, so there! … and it’s perfectly fair to support the Barbarians against Newport because in the folk lore, of that part of Wales, at that time, well, the people of Newport were Barbarians … and they didn’t know whether they were English or Welsh … and they were mixed breeds, mongrels, Heinz 57’s … and they kept the pubs open on Sundays too …

               … ah well, most of those things happened a long time ago and they’re all forgotten now, the rivalries, the family feuds, but some things you never forget … like Easter and the Barbarians Tour of Wales and the daffodils in the Castle Grounds and Roath Park in Spring and Blackweir Gardens … and suddenly, so suddenly, Easter Tuesday was over … and it was back to school … and the holidays were done … and Easter was done … and those are my memories of Spring … in Wales … where the blackbirds still whistle and sing on the garage roof … and all the world is yellow with gorse and sunshine and all those Taffodils …

Rage, Rage 30 & 31

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 27

Rage, Rage
27

Last night
an east wind blew
outside my window.
It whistled and groaned
as it herded the stars
from left to right.

The stars pursued
the westering moon
and planets danced
to the rhythms
of the accordion playing
music in my chest.

The sky’s planetarium
folded and unfolded
its poker hands
of silent cards
marked with my fate.

Comment:

The photo is of the Hunter moon, as seen from Island View. It is quiet out here, very quiet, with very little light pollution. At night the stars shine bright and the constellations to North and South are clearly visible. Not so much so to East and West where the older trees tower. Occasionally, we get to see the Northern Lights. They can be incredible – great curtains of light hanging from the Northern Horizon. So bright, so clear, you can almost hear them crackle.

I have always loved the image of the planets dancing. If you have followed my poetry you will know that the idea of the Master of the Terracentric Universe, in Platonic and Neo-Platonic Theory, plays a large harp. The planets dance, forwards and backwards, to the sound of that harp. Of course, all that poetic beauty disappeared with the work of Galileo, Kepler, and all the students of the helio-centric universe. It is good to remember it though.

My beloved, born a Leo, loves to follow the progress of the sun. Each day she times its first appearance as it peeps above the ridge. Then she watches for it to arrive on the kitchen walls, and times that too. It is as if we lived as they lived thousands of years ago, in touch with nature, communicating with nature. And yet we are but a ten minute drive from the city centre.

The accordion playing music in my chest – you will have to wait until stanzas 28 & 29 for me to clarify that sound for you. I have been remiss in my postings. Very irregular, like my recently diagnosed A-Fib heart beat. Perhaps, after all, everything is linked, right down to the tiniest details, like posting blog notes and remembering all my e-friends out there. The known and the unknown.

Speaking of the known – Orion is gradually striding his way to the west. He dominates the southern sky at this time of year. He reminds me a lot of the Naked Man of Cerne Abbas. Except the Cerne Abbas man doesn’t move, while Orion definitely does. Or is it us who move around him. Your answer to that question will make you heliocentric – an observer, a measurer, like my beloved. Or it will make you Terracentric – a poet like me, well, an aspiring poet, who prefers the beauty of myth to the cold realities of science. Well, sometimes. Not always. But certainly in terms of my affinities to Plato and his celestial followers.

Bleak Mid-Winter

Bleak Mid-winter
from
All About Angels

The reverse side of a tapestry this fly-netting,
snow plugging its tiny squares,
clotting with whiteness the loopholes
where snippets of light sneak through.
Black and white this landscape,
its colorless contours a throwback
to earlier days when dark and light
and black and white held sway.

Snow piled on snow.
The bird-feeder buried and buried, too,
the lamps that can no longer shine
beneath their cloak of snow.

The front porch contemplates a sea of white,
wave after wave cresting whitecaps,
casting a snow coat over trees
with snow-filled nests standing
shoulder-deep in the drifts
while a slow wind whistles
and high and dry in the sky above
the sun is a pale, thin penny
drifting through ragged clouds
hat threaten to bring more snow.

Comment:

A Golden Oldie, or rather, a Black and White Oldie, from when New Brunswick winters were colder and much more snowy. The iterative thematic imagery in the poem links to the hymn, In the bleak mid-winter. There are several reminisces of the hymn within the above lines.

It used to be sung as a an entry hymn in the Christmas Carol Services at King’s Stanley Church, along time ago, when I was in school. The procession would exit the vestry and move slowly though the church towards the altar. The first verse of the solo was sung solo. Then a duet followed. Then the whole choir joined in. I remember doing the solo one year, when both our lead singers were stricken with some form of laryngitis. We drew lots and I got the short straw.

The unique drum accompaniment that day was the sound of my knees knocking together, backed up by the loud beating of the heart in my chest. I preferred hiding in the choir, to stepping up out front and leading it.

Last year, we used our snow blower on three occasions. This winter, we have yet to use it. If during the next month or so I am forced to wake it up and shake it out of its cobwebs, I will be sure to sing “In the bleak midwinter” as I plow my drive. Alas, there will be no choir to accompany me. Those days are long past, and in the past they must remain, as the Flower of Scotland reminds us. They will be singing that in Edinburgh on Valentine’s Day. And Scotland will need a strong brave set of hearts to upset the invading armies from south of the border.

Wild Life

Wild Life

I see green grass
Small ponds
Winding roads
Patches of sorrow

Turquoise blues 
Hills to climb
Softness
Strength 

Flowers blooming
A small animal
Covered in feathers 

An eye
Keeping watch
Purity of white

Ekphrastic Poem
©
Yolande Essiembre

Comment:

My good friend Yolande Essiembre sent me her Ekphrastic poem after viewing this morning’s painting by Moo. Wild Life II is a better representation of the colours of the original. However, Moo added in some (what he calls!) helpful touches – the black shapes that reinforce the suggestions of the original. Yolande wrote her poem based on Version I – but with the stronger colors of version II. Magic – oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive. And all artists weave their webs of deceit. As Cervantes says – Tanto la mentira es mejor, cuanto más parece verdadera. / The closer it approaches the truth, the better the lie.

Imitatio – imitation – one of the bedrocks of classical rhetoric. “Imitation is the best form of flattery”. Flattery, yes, but what we find, in art above all, is that there exists only one original. However good the copy, the flattery – the imitation, if you prefer – it is never as good as the original. The original of this painting exists in one time and one place. The two deceptions are not the original. In fact, Wild Life I no longer exists because Moo has repainted it. It has turned into Wild Life II.

So many questions – which version do you prefer – I or II? De gustibus non est disputandum. There is no arguing about taste. Which is the better version? Well, each viewer must choose. But remember, each version is a deception, and each deception is a lie. And there is only one original. Oh what a tangled web we weave.

But we can, I hope, agree on one thing – Yolande’s verbal version (which I publish here with her permission) is verbally picture perfect. It is how she sees the painting. It is what the painting means to her.

Thank you so much Yolande. Moo and I hope to publish your words and visions more often. With your permission. we will do so.


Rage, Rage 22 & 23

Rage, Rage,
22

I trace dark contours,
scarred desiccated lines
blurred on the back
of my wrinkled hands.

Blood maps, they are,
unremembered encounters
with immovable objects,
wounds that bleed freely,
deep below the surface,
subcutaneous.

23

When I dream,
I imagine the sky
to be a crystal ball,
twinkling with stars
that tell the time
and my fate.

With silent steps
they creep and steal
hours, days, weeks, years,
whittling my life away,
splintering it
a little bit more
every day.

Time, like golden sand,
trickles through
night’s fingers.

I hold in my hands
an hourglass
through which my life,
secretly, silently,
slides down
and trickles away.

Comment:

“Unremembered encounters with immovable objects,” – oh dear. Anti-coagulants, blood-thinners for short. Moo’s skin is dry anyway. Now that he’s on anti-coagulants, he bruises every time he bumps into something. And Moo bumps into things. He’s one of those people who fall out of bed and go bump in the night. How do I know? He stole my teddy bear and my teddy bear told me. Anyway, his cardiologist calls it collateral damage. A sort of side dish that arrives when ever he stumbles into anything. That’s Moo, not the cardiologist.

As for me, I miss the old myths. I love the idea of the platonic, terra-centric universe. The planets move back wards and forwards around the earth in a slow dance. In order to dance, you need music. So the Platonic creator is a master musician who pays the harp. The stars dance to his music. Fray Luis de León uses this Neo-Platonism in his poetry. For him the sky is ‘un gran transunto donde vive mejorado todo lo que es, lo que será, y lo que ha pasado’. – a large space where, much improved, dwells everything that is, that will be, and that ever was. A lovely thought. Nothing is lost. Everything is saved – but in a state of betterment, all mistakes erased.

Moo would like that. His collateral damage all turned back into perfect skin. Oh dear. He wouldn’t be happy. He’d have nothing to paint. I am sure he paints his bruises when he runs out of inspiration.