Cloud of Unknowing
Sometimes the yearning heart
wraps itself in a cloud of unknowing.
Then come doubts and fears and a sense
of being alone and abandoned,
adrift on a rising sea, with night
drawing nigh and no horizon in sight.
But, at the centre of that cloud
that aching heart still thirsts
for cool water to soothe and cure
the ills of an internal world
that seeks a lighthouse on a shore
yet finally finds that light within itself,
and then is safe, and lost no more.
Shadow
“- sometimes we live in the shadows –
sometimes we live in the sun –
but even when the sun is shining –
a shadow can fall on anyone -“
Blue Birds Over
There used to be “Blue birds over, the White cliffs of Dover” – and I remember how white and bright they were, when I was a teenager, returning from my summers in France and Spain, to see them, shining, and to know that I would soon be back in England – an England I no longer recognize.
Windmills, cliffs collapsing, line-ups for miles of trucks and traffic waiting to make their way into a Europe that we rejected. I remember travelling to France, Spain, Germany, Holland, Belgium, Luxemburg, Switzerland, Italy, Portugal and always being welcome. I remember the days when, as a pre-teen and an early teen, visas were still necessary for entry into some countries. And I remember how, later, with a European Passport, I was welcomed as a member of a larger community.
The Latin Mass, a common factor throughout Europe in my youth, now celebrated in many languages, is only open to those who speak those languages. Progressive or Retrograde? I guess, like beauty, everything is in the eye of the beholder. De gustibus non est disputandum – and that’s how it should be. But I long for that freedom, that sense of adventure, that sense of belonging that once, so long ago, I knew.
And yes, I wish I could still see those bluebirds over the white cliffs of Dover, not just lines of lorries and piles of portaloos and stress and discontent and impatience and misery. Just sign me sad, I guess, but now I know why those bluebirds are blue.
My Morning Coffee
The Water Tower
15
“The only photo I took today was of my morning coffee.
Looks calm and peaceful, doesn’t it? It wasn’t!
The wind gusts were unrelenting, with just
enough moments of calm and warmth from the sun
to give me hope.
There was also some rain, snow, and a little hail,
just enough to get me running for cover.
A wise man once told me that
‘some days you’ll be the hammer,
and others the nail.’
Today I was the nail.”
School Days
Sixty years ago, in 1962, somewhere around today’s date, I left my public school – private school – boys’ boarding school and entered the real world as a free man. I was lost. They educated me to be part of a world that no longer existed, the world of walls, and boundaries, of lists and rules, of school reports and chains of authority, older boys > house monitors > prefects > head boy of house > head boy of school > masters > house masters > head master. That great chain of authority was to rule me for the rest of my life.
Lists
This is my clothing list. Six times a year I packed all items into my school trunk, 3 times to go to school and 3 times to go home. Six times a year I unpacked all items from my trunk, 3 times when I arrived at school and 3 times when I arrived home.
Reports
I still have my school reports signed by by teachers, initials only, and my father, full signature. He had to sign so that the teachers could ascertain that yes, he had read my school report and that no, I had not hidden it from him. The report is a disaster story. I look back on some of the comments and wonder what worlds, what different realities, were we living in? One verbal remark, made in class: “Why are you in the sixth form?” “I am going to university, sir.” “The only way you’ll go to university is on a train.”
I sent that gentleman my train ticket, but he didn’t choose to remember the comment, made to a fifteen year old boy.
Scars
I still carry them. So many of us do. Less than most, possibly, for us ne’er do wells and miscreants.
In the beginning was the word, and the word, maybe, may endure. I guess, maybe, one day we’ll find out.
An Experiment Gone Wrong
Not everything turns out the way you want it to, and some experiments are total failures. Just look at the poor snowman in these cartoons.
On the left – “I won’t believe in global warming until April or May.”
On the right – “April May be too late.”
Oh dear – all those crows and doggy dump time. How embarrassing.
As for me, I tried painting today with my paint and draw kit on my computer. What a disaster: I handle a mouse even more clumsily than I handle a paint-brush. I was going to publish the ‘first attempt’ as a warning to others. But it wouldn’t convert. So I looked for a better idea: no innovation and back to the tried and true.
Oh Moo of little faith.
This isn’t a poem, so there’ll be no sound track with this one. “Oh brothers and sisters I bid you beware – of giving your heart for a snowman to tear – especially when the sun is warming the air.”
“Do you like Kipling?”
“I don’t know, I’ve never kippled.”
Mirror Image
I am the one who throws his hands up
into the air to join all the clocks that stop
at midnight, when the moon is full, and ghosts
patrol the streets in search of their loved ones.
I am also the one who leaves this place,
and returns to this place, all places being one.
I think I know who I am, but I have my doubts
when I shave. The razor rasps across my chin’s
dry husks and I see the bare bones of eye-sockets
staring back at me from my bathroom mirror.
Three witches dance on the soap dish. One spins
the yarn, the second measures the cloth, while
the third reaches for the razor that will one day sever
my thread, poor earth-bound, time-worn creature
that I am, born only to one day die.
You too must one day see yourself in that mirror,
oh fraudulent reader, my lookalike, my friend.1
1 oh hypocrite lecteur, mon semblable, mon frère – Baudelaire.
Listen to Roger’s reading on Anchor.
Mirror Image
Comment: A whole week since I last posted. Nothing much has happened. I have been writing, revising, and critiquing the work of my friends, but I have posted nothing. I regret the absence, the current lack of commitment. I guess power losses, T-storms, rain and storm watches have something to do with it. Also the current nature of the world – for avoiding reality, in all its forms, including the poetic, is sometimes the easiest path to take.
Garcilasso
“When I stand still and contemplate
the path that led me here.”
I see purple arrows
painted on the corridor floors
their sharp ends
pointing to the treatment room
where the machine’s stark metal throat
waits to swallow me.
I shed my Johnny Coat
and lie on the bed.
I mustn’t move
as they adjust me
tugging me this way and that,
in accordance with the red marks
painted on my belly and hips.
Then they raise my feet,
place them in a plastic holder,
cover me with a thin cotton sheet,
and leave the room to take refuge
in the safety of their concrete bunker.
With a click and a whirr,
the bed moves up and in,
the ceiling descends
and claustrophobia clutches.
The machine circulates
weaving its clockwork magic:
targeting each tumor, scrubbing me clean,
scouring my body, scarring my mind.
Click here for Roger’s reading on Anchor.
Garcilasso
Comment: It all happened a long time ago now, but one never forgets. The desire to reach out and help and comfort any and all sufferers is still with me. This is the link for my book, A Cancer Chronicle.
Hair
Some have it, many don’t.
Some find it floating
one morning on their pillow,
short or long, all gone,
a dream faded in the light of day.
A woman’s crowning glory,
or so they say
yet I admire the bald skull,
its stiff stubble
stubbornly growing back
beneath head scarf or cap.
The lucky ones wear wigs,
often made from
another person’s loss.
The bravest flaunt their baldness,
battle flags their shining skulls,
blazing like badges of glory,
shiny medals awarded
in this never-ending war
against our own fifth column
and the enemy who devours us
from within.
Comment: Yet another of my friends is suffering from cancer. When will it ever end? This is my tribute to all who fight, or who have fought, the enemy within. Meet him head on. Never surrender. D o not give in.
Oily-Garcks
And the oily-garcks betrayed the earth.
They drilled it full of holes
until the planet looked like a circle
of Swiss bankers’ cheese floating in space.
Mining, fracking, exploitation, internal combustion,
everything combined to make rainfall rise,
rivers flood, wild winds blow, hurricanes hustle,
lightning strike, again and again,
until forests flared, skies grew dark with cinders,
and land was reduced to water, dust, and even more ash.
The oily-garcks read their bibles and in their pride
they built super-fortunes, super-structures, super-yachts,
modelling those super-yachts, two or three each,
on double or triple the dimensions of Noah’s Ark.
Then they loaded them. They invited, two by two,
their friends, physicians, doctors, opticians, surgeons,
specialists, generalists, nurses, masseurs and masseuses,
body guards, anybody, really, who would keep them alive.
Next came their wives, concubines, girl friends, partners,
and those they loaded, old and new, by the dozen.
Earth warmed and her ice caps melted.
The seven seas rose higher and higher until
there was only one cruel, grey, destructive sea.
The oily-garcks set sail in their arks beneath
dark skies and an even darker future.
They sailed for forty days, forty weeks,
forty months, and then for forty years.
Nothing.
Gaia, raped, mocked, tortured, and destroyed,
had neither given nor promised a rainbow covenant.
No let up in the rains and winds, no supply ships,
no neutral landing sites, no undrowned friends,
no friendly rainbow in the sky to promise peace.
The oily-garks had brought no living food.
Their fridges were stacked with frozen dishes,
caviar, lobster, tenderloins, great wines, fine liqueurs.
They didn’t even bring a dove, just helicopters
launched from helipads that took off, year after year,
in search of the land that had disappeared.
They searched and searched until their fuel ran out.
In all that time, what did they see? They saw the sea.
Click here for Roger’s reading on Anchor.
Oily-garks
rogermoorepoet 