Humor

Carved in Stone 27

The philosopher in search of his stone.

Carved in Stone

27

Miguel de Cervantes –
I read and re-read his words,
envious of his ability to reach out
with language that thrills me still.

I see him as a total entity,
while I see myself in pieces,
broken, unable to express
the simplest thoughts.

As I age, I sense the water
slipping from the water-clock,
the candles burning lower.

I still cannot make the mark
I want to make, for they are beyond me,
those marvelous word-worlds.

My words are mortal, his are immortal.
Mine just ink stains on a humble page,
his cast in print, but crafted to last forever.

As I bear witness to those powers,
so much greater than mine,
my eyes fill with tears.

Commentary:

They are beyond me, those marvelous word-worlds. Indeed they are. But I do not seek to create ‘a marvelous word-world’. I am happy with ‘ink stains on a humble page’. I seek to reach out and find those one or two people who accept me for what I am and find their own selves in a small corner of the tiny gardens I discover or create. Not a world, then, but a tiny corner of my own world, described, and offered to those who have eyes to see and ears to hear and hearts and minds to feel and understand.

And what is this infatuation with the poem itself? I no longer write individual poems, I write sequences of linked poems, a set of poetic narratives, if you need to find a label for what I am trying to do. Cervantes once wrote “La épica también puede escribirse en prosa.” / Epic poetry can also be written in prose. What happens if we reverse that statement and say – “A narrative sequence can also be written in poetry.” Interesting, eh?

And what is this desire to leave something, some trace of us, behind? I cannot answer that question. The answer will vary for each one of us, and for each fall wall flower perishing against the garden wall. I look at the homeless, pushing their grocery carts, head down. Their existence is as important as mine. Their desire to survive, for another day, another week, another season – and winter is coming one – is more powerful than any poet’s desire to leave a work – a magnum opus – to celebrate their lives.

And yes, my words are mortal, as I am mortal, as Miguel de Cervantes and all the great writers were mortal. Patrick Lane once told me that if poets leave one poem behind them that is remembered, they have done well. Even the greatest poets, and you can check this in the anthologies over the ages, rarely leave more than ten or a dozen memorable poems. As for me, I am happy to say that I have never had a poem included in an anthology. Not to my knowledge anyway.

And what does Magnum Opus actually mean? I leave you with the quote from Wikipedia set out above. Click on it, and find yet another way to distract, deflect, and change the direction of our lives! Given that road, who would ever want to walk it to its end?

On Writing Poetry

On Writing Poetry

I sit here writing poetry
and, head in hands, I cry
at all the things I’ve left unsaid,
and then I wonder why
I wasted so much time on things
that perished before my eye.

Outside the night is dark and cold
and shadows flit and filter by.
I know that I am growing old,
that soon my story will be told,
and when it ends, I’ll die.

I know that death is not the end,
yet I do not want to die.
I want to paint the autumn trees,
the clouds that float on high,
with evening lights that stain the sky.

But rhyming is not all I do.
I often write in prose, with words
that wound, and sow dark seeds,
that root and flourish, grow like weeds,
and nourish other people’s needs.

Alas, I know not what I do,
nor yet what I have done,
nor when, nor where, the seeds
were sown, nor if they aided anyone
to turn away from the dark inside
and walk in the light of the sun.

Commentary:

A Golden Oldie that turned up on my Facebook page. So I copied it and pasted it here. What fun. I’ll probably revise it and sharpen it up a little bit. All best wishes to all my readers.

And remember, Remembrance Day is for Remembering. Both my grandfathers served in WWI and were decorated. Never forget those who sacrificed themselves to give us life and freedoms we enjoy.

Carved in Stone 16 & 17

16

The Bulls of Guisando,
pre-historic, unweighable,
the bearers of Roman graffiti,
itself two thousand years old.

Were they carved as boundary markers,
or designed to designate pastures,
for horses, pigs, sheep, and bulls,
all grazing in their stone dreams?

Celtic, pre-Roman,
they speak to my Welsh blood,
and to the Irish soul
that will always be a part of me.

I place my hand
on the dimpled granite hide
and feel time coursing
beneath the stone skin.

Granite ships,
islands in a sea of time,
I sense a heart beating,
something surviving
within the stone.

17

We are powerful people,
we creative artists,
we carvers of stone,
we dreamers,
whether we dream
by day or by night.

Those of us
who dream by day,
often see our day-dreams
come true.

Commentary:

“Those of us who dream by day, often see our day-dreams come true.” Lawrence of Arabia – The Seven Pillars of Wisdom. You recognized the quote of course, wrth gwrs. Intertextuality, the weaving of words through text after text in different combinations according to our time and space. Some of us think we are original, but there are only so many plots to a play, 24 or so, if I remember my Aristotle correctly, and I have changed the number, just to test you. Oh ye of too much faith!

We think we are original, but, as Picasso said, the painters of the cave paintings, all those many years ago, created everything we artists could ever dream of. We all borrow in one way or another and originality is merely a disguised form of borrowing. The faces change, the actors change, the medium changes, the times change, but otherwise, everything else is the same. Sad, really, that we should claim originality (and fresh water) for all that water that has passed under so many bridges.

Welsh blood and Irish soul – not even original, but shared by so many in my family. Add an English education, studies and residence in Spain, France, Mexico, Canada, and the USA, and what do you have? An intellectual mongrel, that does not know its own mother, like so many other mongrels, and that shakes its coat only to shed so many multi-cultural and multi-lingual fleas.

And remember – “Great fleas have lesser fleas upon their backs to bit them, and lesser fleas have smaller fleas, and so ad infinitum.” Intertextuality – they were only playing leap-frog and one jumped over and another jumped over someone else’s back.

Growing Old Together

Growing Old Together

You and I are growing old together.
We have been together for 59 years
and married for 54 of those.

We watch each other slowly breaking down,
the memories going,
the body parts not functioning
the way they used to.

In some ways,
it is incredibly beautiful.
In other ways,
it is so tragic, this slow waltz
around life’s dance-floor
towards who knows what
that last dance will bring?

It gets harder and harder
to find the right things to say,
sometimes to find anything to say.

There are days
when we just sit in silence,
filling in time,
doing a crossword or a sudoku,
or just gazing into space,
trying to avoid
the mindlessness
of endless adverts
on the television.

Commentary:

Not much to say, really. The poem and the photo speak for themselves, as good art always should. Sometimes the artist plans everything, and out it pops, all ready-made. On other occasions, a small miracle takes place and words and images tumble out, fluff their feathers, settle down and wow! – it’s a work of art. As long as one other person, other than me, thinks so, then I will be happy. “If I can reach out and touch just one person.”

I often wonder how many people are touched by traditional art nowadays. There is so much shock and awe out there, that the humble homely corner with its two doves or the image of an elderly couple dancing slowly around their kitchen, hanging onto each other – for what? And both of them waiting – for what, exactly? I expect it varies with each couple. But what I pity most are the lone doves, abandoned, autonomous, living on their own-some with nobody to talk to and only the TV to listen to. How many of them are out there, I wonder? When I walk around town, I see the street people, the homeless, the really lonely ones, just sitting, or slowly pushing a grocery cart with all their belongings tied up in plastic bags. Heads down, they plod on, never stopping, never looking.

“A sad life this, if full of care, we have no time to stop and stare.” W. H. Davies.

Carved in Stone 14 & 15

14


The sun throws shadows
across the cathedral’s face.

Crosses, arrows, stars,
masonic symbols
hammer-and-chiseled
into the granite sea-cliff
of the entrance way,
reveal the signatures
of the master masons
who laboured here.

And not just here,
for they traveled everywhere,
adding their stone signatures
to those of the other workmen
who left a piece of themselves,
carved in stone.

15

In the cathedral
of Santiago de Compostela,
Maese Pedro sculpted
a statue of himself,
a figurine, small,
low down, facing the main altar.

Students rub noses with him
before their exams,
when they look for luck
having forsaken their studies.

Illiterate people
consult these carvings
in the same way the educated
seek knowledge in their books.

16

The Bulls of Guisando,
pre-historic, unweighable,
the bearers of Roman graffiti,
itself two thousand years old.

Commentary:

… workmen who left a piece of themselves, carved in stone … I couldn’t find my masonic markings from the cathedral in Avila, so I added the words carved into one of the Bulls of Guisando instead. Amazing how people want to make a little bit of themselves eternal – in the sense that we extend our names, our graffiti, our messages beyond our lifetime and, stones thrown into a pond, who knows how long the ripples from those tiny word-waves will endure?

So, what’s it all about, Alfie? And which Alfie are we referring to, the one who burnt the cakes or the (in)-famous gorilla in Bristol Zoo, who went missing? And how many Alfies are there out there? And why buy an Alfie-Romeo when you can buy a neat tombstone for a much smaller sum of money and have it remind people of you long after you have gone?

Silly questions, really, but this is what poetry is for, to open up the curious mind and to dig warrens for bunny rabbits so that the hunters of curiosities can dig their ways down and find whatever they shall find. But do we ever find what we are looking for when we first start out? Good question. Carve your answers into a piece of rock and leave it by the roadside to see what happens to it. Or else, you can write a message, stick it in a bottle, and send it out to sea to float on the waves. Put my name on it, along with yours, and maybe, one day, it will arrive at my doorstep in Island View and, if I am still here, I will reply to you by the same method.

Carved in Stone 13

13

What is life?
Is it just an illusion,
as Calderón tells us,
and nothing but a dream?

And what is time?
Does it bend, as Dalí shows us
when his surreal clock breaks into pieces,
time and numbers flying off
as it explodes over a waterfall?

Another clock folds –
a pancake draped
over the bough of a tree.
 
Time – a water clock,
a marked candle,
a grandfather clock,
with Roman numerals,
and time marching,
round and round,
erasing the past,
establishing a future
that will itself
soon be erased.

And what am I
but a moment on time’s clock,
a drop in the clepsydra,
a striation on a flickering candle,
a piece of roughly polished sea-glass
perched on a lonely beach?

Commentary:

Well, Moo has done me proud this time. Two early paintings, both depicting aspects of time, as conceived by Moo. In the first, time is seen as a tick-tock time bomb, or rather a set of tick-tock time-bombs. In the second, in imitation of Salvador Dali (Moo always set his sights high!), a clock going over a water fall and the hours flying off the clock face as time bends. So, tell me if you can, what is time?

Perhaps more important, what is life? Is it a dream, an illusion? And if it is a dream, what happens when we wake up? I know what happens when I wake up – I get up and go pee. Is that to be my final reality? By extension, is life our only reality? Or is our life a series of lives, as some religions would persuade us? And if a cat has nine lives, how many lives do we have? Can they be numbered? Or, like innumerable onions, do we peel away layer after layer? And if so, what is in the centre of the onion when we finally get down that far?

And why do some people write center while others write centre? Is life an illusion, a play? If so does it take place in a theatre or a theater? Or is really a sort of metatheatre or metatheater, life in rings, like the onion, lay after lay, layer after layer? Oh dear, this is all much too complicated. I’ll ask Moo to paint me a painting of life and we’ll see what he comes up with. He’s a bit lazy at the moment and his paint brush has the bends and refuses to cooperate. It’s probably made of cat bristles, and is untrainable and almost impossible to train, let alone to herd. Never mind. We’ll abandon all this for now and give the cat the task of training Moo to paint another painting.

Carved in Stone 10 & 11

10

Firelight dances,
bringing things back to life.

Each morning,
I take time to empty my mind
of those restless cats
I herd at night as they shimmy
through my troubled dreams.

By day, each cat
throws a different shadow
that parades before me
in the sweetness of soft sunlight
where a honeyed sweetness reigns
and no bitterness dwells.

My own cat haunts me,
purring for butter,

sitting there, staring,
eyes wide open, hypnotic.

What, I wonder,
does she really want
as she turns her back,
walks away,
and stalks a different prey
among my books?

11

Does she hear the clock’s dry tick
and sense the Roman numerals
marching round, left – right – left,
always in step
with the pendulum’s sway.

Does she recall migrating birds
or those gaudy summer butterflies,
fanning their wings
as they perch on Cone Heads,
Bees’ Balm, Black-eyed Susans,
generic butterflies,
specific flowers,
planted by my own hands?

I often ask myself –
“What does she know
that I don’t know?”

Commentary:

A strange thing knowledge. I have learned the hard way that “the more I know, the more I know I don’t know.” Just look at today’s second stanza. I would love to know more about, and understand better, migrating birds, summer butterflies, especially the lovely Monarchs that fly at Mexico and back, the flowers themselves, the way language substitutes the generic (butterflies, flowers) for the specific (Red Admirals, buttercups), and as for that cat, I really would like to know what she knows that I don’t know. I have never been able to train her, but she has certainly managed to train me!

And I would love to understand humor and laughter. Slapstick aside, humor is one of the cultural secrets that travels least in translation. Jokes in French or Spanish just do not translate well into English. It takes a deep cultural and linguistic knowledge to grasp foreign humor at first glance.

Take today, for instance. I drove the car to the garage to change the tires from summer to winter. I asked the garage guy, my friend, if he would drive me home, and he said he would. He got i the passenger side and I drove home. Then he drove the car back to the garage. He opened the garage doors, drove the car in, turned the engine off, hoisted the car up, and changed the tires. When he’d finished, he tried to start the engine. No luck. He called me – “Where’s the key?” “In my pocket!” I replied. We were having such fun chatting we never thought to offer or request the car key when we exchanged drivers. Well, we are all still laughing about it.

When I got into the house, even the cat was laughing, and as for that cat, I really would like to know what she knows that I don’t know. Maybe, it’s just that we humans, especially as we age, aren’t as clever as we sometimes think we are. Some things, I guess, I’ll never know.

Clepsydra 39 & 40

39

… all too soon I too shall move on
     leaving behind me
          fading memories and cloud shadows


yet I recall
     standing beneath the cathedral’s
          great rose window
               on a sunny day
                    my body dressed
                         in a harlequin suit
                              of glistening lights 

in such splendour
     mortal things like words
          cease to flow

I held my breath
     shocked by an enormous presence
          that filled me then
               as it does now
                    with the knowledge
                         that nothing happens in vain …

40


… illumination
     I must find it for myself
  were another to tell me
      where it dwells
            its light would be untrue

only I can strike the match
     ignite the flame
          and trap its warmth
              in my body’s bone cage

when it flowers within me
     I’ll need no candle
          not even in the darkest mine

in Alma, I have seen
     the tide lower
          Fundy fishing boats
               down into the mud

like those boats
     I lack the power
          to resist both time and tide …

Commentary:

I asked Moo for a painting of boats from Fundy, preferably from Alma, lying on their sides at low tide. “Let me see what I am meant to be illustrating,” he said. He read the above excerpt from Clepsydra and told me “You’re navel gazing again. I thought I told you not to do that. Now, have I got a painting for you.” I didn’t dare refuse to post it – he’s had a bad couple of days and it has sharpened his sense of humor – so it’s here it is. Moo calls is – now don’t laugh – Naval Gazing.

“Nothing happens in vain.” So maybe I was predestined to ask Moo for a painting he didn’t have and to end up with one that tickled his fancy. Now that set off a light bulb in my skull. Mr. Dimwitty came to his sense – I have been navel gazing. Naughty, naughty. How many of you remember Mr. Dimwitty, the not too bright schoolmaster on BBC radio? Hold up your hands, and I’ll count them.

Meanwhile, things happen to Moo and me, and like the boats on the Fundy, we lack the power to resist both time and tide. And that’s why we help each other, carry each other along. “We few, we few, we band of brothers.” That was Shakespeare. Nowadays we have to say “we band of siblings.” It pays to be inclusive. Speaking of bands, I saw a man walking down Main Street yesterday, blowing a rubber trumpet. I asked him what he was doing and he told me that he was looking for a rubber band. Joy to the world and help spread the joy. If you don’t like joy, spread Marmite. And if you don’t like Marmite I am sure you’ll love Vegemite. Ma might, but Pa won’t. That’s why it’s not called Pa-mite.

Writing in the Red Zone

Writing in the Red Zone

The Red Zone:
it’s a familiar concept.
Monday Night football
talks about it all the time.

“Success percentage
in the Red Zone,
offense and defense.”

It’s not just football.
Other sports, soccer, rugby,
have their red zones.
So does life, my life,
for better or for worse,
and now I know I’m in
the Red Zone.

I can see the goal line.
I can feel the tension rising.
I know the clock’s ticking down.
I can sense it, but can’t see it.
I no longer know the score,
and I don’t know whether
I’m playing offense or defense.

They tell me it’s a level playing field,
but every day they change the rules,
and today I wonder what the heck’s
the name of the game I’m playing.

Clepsydra 37 & 38

37


… now I am absent from myself
     but can an absence
          be a presence

 I guess it can
     like when I lose a tooth
          I lament the loss of its presence
               and run my tongue
                    around the tender gum

a space where my tooth once stood
     where the candle flame
          once flickered and flared
               before it disappeared …

38

… I grieve for my mother
     standing in the garden
          her magnolia bleeding
               ivory petals
                    as soft as spring snow

some settled on her head
     crowning her
          with youthful beauty
               as she walked towards me
                    eyes shining arms held out

yet when I try
     to recapture that scene
          I only see a winter garden
               with withered blossoms
                    on a leafless tree …

Commentary:

“Can an absence be a presence?” Good question I asked Moo that and he showed me several paintings of trees in winter and vacant faces that he had knowingly filled with sorrow. But I preferred the image of “I only see a winter garden with withered blossoms on a leafless tree.” So I chose my own photo. Moo was very upset and asked me to put in one of his winter paintings anyway, so here it is.

Now Moo is very happy, and he needs to be, because he has had a bad day. I am so glad I am not Moo when he has a bad day. His cardiologist wanted Moo to wear a Holter. Moo didn’t want to wear one. But he listened to his specialist, and obeyed. He was very stressed when he went into the hospital. The acquisition of the Halter was meant to take 15 minutes, maximum. Moo sent 75 minutes sitting in a cold room with no shirt on, terminals attached, and no Holter available. “Can an absence be a presence?” Indeed it can. And Moo is still very upset and very stressed. Nobody’s fault. Things happen. “The candle flame once flickered and flared before it disappeared.” Now you see it, now you don’t. And Moo laments the absence of what should have been a presence and then became a delayed presence. Oh fickle life and times!

I still grieve for my mother, standing in the garden, her magnolia bleeding ivory petals as soft as spring snow. I remember that some settled on her head crowning her with youthful beauty as she walked towards me, eyes shining arms held out. Yet when I try to recapture that scene I only see a winter garden with withered blossoms on a leafless tree. Maybe Moo, with all his stressed out Moo-ds saw that scene more clearly than I did. So, Moo boosts me, and I boost Moo, and that’s what best friends always do. So you go out and boost your best friend too. Blessings and blossoms. And may you all help each other to fare well.