Premonitions

Rage, Rage 16 & 17

Rage, Rage
16

I doze in my chair.
The book I am reading
tumbles to the floor.

I fumble with my claw
and its metal hand
pincers the book,
then raises it.

The cat needs feeding.
I pick up her bowl
with my claw
but scatter her kibble
on the floor.

I can’t remember
where I put
the garden kneeler –
I just leave the kibble
where it lies.

Icing on the cake,
I pop my pills and now
I’ll feel less pain
for an hour or two.

17

On my own.
Outwitting old age,
accepting its growing limitations
 with as much grace and humor
as I can and must.
Trying to feel no bitterness.

That aspirin this morning,
falling into my shirt,
then appearing on the floor
a moment before
I sat on the loo.

A blue-eyed, mini-aspirin
winking at me quite happily.

I reached for my claw,
picked the pill up
and swallowed it,
washing it down with a smile,
and a draught of laughter.

Comments:

I doze in my chair. Just about sums it up. I remember playing darts in the Red Lion, Knowle, Bristol. When I threw an occasional good dart, the locals would whisper “Dozy, dozy.” To them it meant “lucky, lucky.” After a bit, I began to play better. One of the professionals made me my own darts set. Hand made. Adjusted to how I throw. I got better and better. One night, playing 301, double in, double out, I needed 131 to finish. I made it in a three dart finish – 57 (treble 19) – 42 (treble 14) – 32 (double 16). This was the only three dart finish, over 100, that I ever made!

I left the darts there. “Weed the board,” they shouted – meaning – clear the board of wasted darts so the next player could throw. “Check!” I countered, meaning I wanted them to check that I had won the game. “Dozy, dozy,” they cried. And, if I went back there, more than sixty years later, those who survived, and remembered, would still call me Dozy.

So, I sit here and doze about my life. The good days, the bad days, the in-between days. Faces drift in and out – [that’s why Moo painted me the picture] – and sometimes I can put names to them and sometimes not. And that’s life. A collection of personal memories – very vivid – and a selection of faces that we can no longer name and names to whom we can no longer fit a face.

My life – A blue-eyed, mini-aspirin winking at me quite happily.



Rage, Rage 10

Rage, Rage
10

My body’s house
has many rooms
and you, my love,
are present in them all.

I glimpse your shadow
in the mirror, and your breath
brushes my cheek
when I open the door.
Where have you gone?

I walk from room to room,
but when I seek,
I no longer find
and nothing opens
when I knock.

Afraid, sometimes,
to enter a room,
I am sure
you are in there.

I hear your footsteps.
Sometimes your voice
breaks the silence
when you whisper my name
in the same old way.

Comment:

Rage, Rage – and still I rage against the dying of the light and, like Dylan Thomas, ask the ageing of this world not to go gentle into that dark night. Yet, as my beloved and I age, we watch day’s shadows growing longer, and night stealing steadily along. What can we do?

Well, since the winter solstice, we can start counting the minutes as each day adds a minute or two and gifts some more light and strength to the sun. Sunrise today – 8:03 AM. Sunset today – 5:09 PM. That means 9 hours and 6 minutes of sunlight. Well, it would, if it weren’t cloudy, with a cold wind, and a dropping temperature. My guess is that it will get dark much before it ought to. And that’s not nice – no respect!

Of course, my beloved is a sun bunny and a Leo, and she perishes in these shortened days. I was born in them and they don’t affect me as badly as they do her. But I can still Rage, Rage, because there is so much to rage about – icy streets, the usual potholes, roads that hide ice beneath a thin covering of snow, some strange drivers who don’t seem to have bought winter tires. Oh yes, I love them. One came twisting and turning down the same side of the road as me only this morning. Luckily he hit the snow bank before he hit me. But, I ask you, what was he thinking?

So there’s Rage, and Rage Rage, and also Road Rage. Way to go! I think we should call a national rage day and all stay home for 24 hours, just to cool us all down for a bit. Oh dear, that might lead to cabin fever – and that would be an out–Rage.

Rage, Rage 8 & 9

Rage, Rage
8

A late summer storm
lays waste to the doggy daze
that clouds my mind.

Carnivorous canicular,
hydropic, it drains my soul,
desiccates my dreams,
gnaws me into nothingness.

Tonight, the old black hound
will dog me,
sending my head spinning.

It will force me
to chase my own tail,
round and round
in ever-decreasing circles.

It will devour my future,
leaving past failures
to ghost through my mind.

9

Where now are the hands
that raise me up,
that rescue me
from dark depression,
that haul me out
from life’s whirlpool,
that forestall
the jaws that bite,
that save me
from the claws
that snatch?

Where are the hands
that move the pieces
on the chess board
of my days and nights,
that prepare my breakfast,
that bake my birthday cake
and count the candles
that they place and light?

What will I do
without them
now they are gone?

Commentary:

Gnawed into nothingness – the umbra nihili of the medieval mystics, the shadow of nothingness that sometimes falls upon us, threatening our peace of mind. An AI search offers – Umbra Nihili (Latin for “Shadow of Nothingness”) refers to a concept of cosmic loneliness or existential void famously cited by Meister Eckhart. A great many of my friends have recently discovered this umbra nihili. I am not sure why. I guess it varies for each one of us. Mal de todos, consuelo de tontos / that everyone suffers consoles only fools, the Spaniards say. What can we do at such times? Reach out, help when we can, count only the happy hours, as the inscription on the Roman sundial tells us – horas non numero nisi serenas.

Many have walked this way before. But that should not be a consolation in itself. Rather, it should be an acknowledgement that there is an exit to the maze, a key to unlock misery’s door, a thread to lead us out of the labyrinth. We must just acknowledge that fact and search for the exit, the key, the thread, that will prove to be our personal salvation, and hopefully the salvation of other fellow sufferers as well.

Rage, Rage 7

Rage, Rage
7

Blood of my blood,
my daughter’s daughter,
time is not on our side.
 
I sometimes wonder
if I’ll survive,
if you and I
will ever meet again.

When we talk online
I see you trying
to understand, to hold
my image in your mind,
to figure out this shadow
that moves and talks
on the computer screen.

Words, born from old Welsh
melodies, bring poetry
to my heart, place music
on my lips.

But they fall short,
and fail to satisfy
my need to reach out
and hold you.

In spite of that I still survive
and live in hopes to see you
in our realities of flesh and blood.

Commentary:

When I first came to Canada, such a long time ago, I communicated with home by means of air mail letters written on special air mail paper that came in very thin, foldable envelopes. Very rarely I communicated by means of very expensive telephone calls of a limited three minute duration. How times have changed. Now via Skype (as was), Team (as is), Messenger, FaceTime, and other means, we can have unlimited face to face conversations, free of charge, with people on the other side of the world. And yet, face to face and screen to screen, there is still something missing. The cat senses it. She stares at the screen and sniffs – then she bristles and hisses. She fails to understand a known voice that has sound and movement but no smell.

And yet, what we now have is so much better than what we had before. Communication is so much easier. We have generated a generation that works in the audio-visual world, not in my preferred world of written verbalization. How we have changed. I can do so many things, in my head, that the younger generation cannot do, even with pen or pencil and paper. However, when my computer fails me, or my cell phone acts up, it is to that younger generation I go, because they dominate this new world in which we live.

I gave one of my academic articles to a friend the other week. “I can’t read this,” he said. “Tell me, what’s it all about?” I started to explain. “Hold on,” he said. He asked his AI program to read my article and generate, in words a 14 year old could understand, the main contents of my not-so-easy-to-read academic writing and thinking. About thirty seconds later, the analyzed contents appeared on the screen before him. I threw my mind back to when Coles Notes were forbidden. “Anybody caught using Coles Notes will be given an automatic F.” Then I looked at my own article, analyzed perfectly, and set out in the very way I had planned it, albeit with a simplified vocabulary – and the longer words explained in a sort of appendix. Quite simply, I was blown away.

Then my mind went back to my childhood in Wales. No running water, no electricity, no indoor toilets, no telephones, no television, a radio with limited stations and programming … imagine what we have come from – imagine where we are going. My only questions – will we control it or will it control us? And you know what it is. The clarion call goes out across the centuries. – Quis custodiet ipsos custodies? Who shall guard the guards? Who shall police the police? Who shall program the programmers? Each generation must find its own answers to those questions. And the sooner you do it, the better because it’s not going to be my problem for much longer!

Rage, Rage 4

Rage, Rage
4

I walk from room to room,
startled by shadows,
and open doors,
search under the table,
look behind chairs.

Nothing. No one.
The house stands
still and empty,
but for the sadness,
the silent sadness,
that fills each room
with their remembered
presence.

Commentary:

Absence and presence. How many of us feel that something is there, walking beside us, or just behind us? How many feel that an empty room is not empty, but is filled with a presence, something we feel, half-recognize?

I have been in houses, invited for the night, where I would not sleep. Why? I do not know. But I felt a presence, a prescience, if you wish, that filled me with a desire to leave and not to stay.

What is it? Is it other memories, other lives, that impinge upon ours in this current time frame? I do not know. But I do know that there are houses and rooms in which I will not stay. I also know that there are others that throw open warm arms to welcome me.

Look at Moo’s painting(s). How many of them welcome us in? Do some of them shut us out and make us shiver with a fear, not of the unknown, but of the hardly-remembered, that lies in wait to shake us out of this dream which is our present life?

Rage, Rage 2 & 3


Rage, Rage
2

These problems start the day
you realize you are alone.
Your beloved goes away,
for a holiday,
to be with your daughter
and grandchild.

Now the house and the cat
are yours, and yours alone.
No problem you say and
everyone believes you.

You jumped in the car,
drove daughter, and child,
holidays done,
to the airport.

Your beloved went with them,
her holiday about to begin.
And that’s when it all began.

3

When I come back home
from leaving them at the airport,
the front door stands open.

I thought I had closed it
when we left.
I tip-toe in and call out
“Is anybody there?”

Echo answers me –
‘… there, there, there …”

Commentary:

Raymond Guy LeBlanc, one of my favorite Acadian poets, published his poetry book, Cri de Terre, in 1972. My painter friend Moo, who also likes Acadian poetry, borrowed the title and changed it slightly when he painted this painting – Cri de Coeur. Earth Cry / Heart Cry.
What is all creativity, visual of verbal, but a cry from the land or a cry from the heart? Sometimes it is more than a cry – it becomes a clarion call, a shout out, a calling out.

So many of us are born with creativity in our hearts. So few of us carry that creativity, be it verbal or visual, into the adult world, a world that all too often grinds us down and sifts us out. We become grey people in grey clothing sitting behind grey desks beneath artificial lighting, doing grey jobs that slowly turn us into nine to five (or longer) dusts.

Moo has promised me a series of red paintings for this sequence. We shall see how he does. Red for anger, red for age, a red flag for danger, a red rag to wave at the raging bull of life, to provoke it, then bring it under control.

Nadolig Llawen – Welsh for Have a Joyous Festive Season. You can add other languages, as you wish. But above all remember Pedro Calderon de la Barca’s words – “Life is a dream and dreams are nothing but dreams.” One day, we shall all wake up. Artists and dreamers, grey ghosts and people of straw and dust.


Carved in Stone 70 & 71

Carved in Stone
70

Where can I survive
in this harsh world
where poetry and ideas
struggle to be free,
a world in which
the great literary myths
have been destroyed?

Where mass media rules,
sensationalizes, lies,
falsifies the power and glory
of words, now used
not to delight and educate,
but to manipulate.

A treacherous world
in which an evil genius rules
and constantly misleads us.

71

An Age, not of Enlightenment,
but of Endarkenment,
this is not the world
in which I want to live.

My chosen world
is that quiet corner,
outside El Rincón
in the Plaza Zurraquín,
by the Mercado Chico,
in Ávila, Spain,
where leaves and confetti
dance to the wind’s tune.

A world of mystery and dream,
personal perhaps,
but well known to
all of those dreamers
who have the eyes to see
and the heart to stand still
and listen.

Commentary:

“There is no earth, no heaven, no extended body, no magnitude, no place and that nonetheless I perceive these things and they seem good to me. And this is the most harrowing possibility of all, that our world is commanded by a deity who deceives humanity and we cannot avoid being misled for there may be systematic deception and then all is lost. And even the most reliable information is dubious, for we may be faced with an evil genius who is deceiving us and then there can be no reassurance in the foundations of our knowledge.” René Descartes (1596-1650).

Cervantes wrote about such times in Don Quixote. Do we see what others see? What is truth and what is fiction? How do we approach and understand authority? What do we believe and why do we believe? Are they windmills or giants, wineskins or warriors, a flock of sheep or an invading army? “Only believe, and thou shalt see” – but what do we believe and why do we believe. “The fault, dear Brutus, lies in ourselves, not in the stars, that we are underlings,” Shakespeare, from one of his many plays.

Carved in Stone 67 & 68

Carved in Stone
67

At night, on the cool
sea-shore of my dreams,
the calls of shore-birds
at Ste. Luce-sur-Mer
are borne on the wind.

High-pitched, they are,
like the voices of children,
or of men and women,
in distress.

I walk on the sand
at low tide and a lone gull
flies past my head,
battering itself
against the wind’s cage
with outraged, sturdy wings.

68

Sunset.
Sea mists descend.
The church on the headland
steps in and out of darkness.

Shadows gather, persistent.
Gulls surround a lone heron.
It clacks its beak in anger
forcing the gulls to scatter.

These words are not my words.

They came to me in the speech
of birds hidden in the foliage,
or carried on a feathered plume
sprung from the osprey’s wing.

Some came from the click
of the crab’s claw as he dug
deeper into the sand
a refuge where he thought
he could live safely.

Commentary:

Sunset. Sea mists descend. The church on the headland steps in and out of darkness. And so do I. I seek clarity, but there is no clarity when the sea mist descends, just the blurred image and the clouded thought. The cloud of unknowing, one philosopher called it, many years ago, and it is still with us. Especially when the sunlight fades and we are left wandering in the mists of unknowing.

“Is it here, you ask, or over here?” Well, if you do not know, I cannot tell you. But I will ask you this, and think very carefully before you answer – does the answer come from outside of you, given by another, or does it come from the deep, sacred intimacy of your own soul? The answer to that question will tell you all you need to know, one way, or the other.

These words are not my words. They came to me in the speech of birds hidden in the foliage, or carried on a feathered plume sprung from the osprey’s wing. Some came from the click of the crab’s claw as he dug deeper into the sand a refuge where he thought he could live safely. Sunset. Sea mists descend. The church on the headland steps in and out of darkness.

Carved in Stone 61 & 62

Carved in Stone
61

Water through the water clock,
water off a duck’s back,
the waters of life,
continually flowing,
trapped in our children
and their children,
and the love we create
never lost, just circling,
like the hands of the clock,
like the planets and stars.

But who will wind up
the clockwork universe,
and tend the mechanism
that balances planets and stars?

What will happen
when the clockwork
finally runs down,
the last candle is snuffed,
and the water clock dries up?

62

Whoever, whatever remains
will be left to contemplate
Ozymandias with his two vast
and trunkless legs of stone,
standing in the desert.

“Look on my works,
ye mighty, and despair.”

Commentary:

“Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair.” Well, Moo does have a sense of humor after all. I thought he did. From Ozymandias to the meaning of “works” to the destiny of the work we did. What a journey. It goes from the joy of the children who build a snowman to the warm spring wind that melts him to the crows and the dog who do what crows and doggies do. Intertextuality – the links between verbal and visual and think about it – such strange things happens in Moo’s creative mind.

But what do we leave behind? Think about it. Only the wake of the ship in which we sail. The wake – that white trail we leave behind us, on the surface of the sea, slowly vanishing as we also vanish, pulling away into the unknown that always lies ahead. Moo is right – so many things disappear out of the frame of the painting. “There are no pockets in shrouds” said the preacher in the hospital where I took my father, so long ago for treatment.

And even if there were, how would you fit a snowman, several crows, a cardinal, and the rear end of a dog into the pocket? “Contemplate Ozymandias with his two vast and trunkless legs of stone, standing in the desert. Now contemplate the fate of the snowman. Now look on my works, ye mighty, and despair.”


Dorset Knobs and Old Vinny

Dorset Knobs and Old Vinny

Five Lysol wipes remain in the can.
As rare as hen’s teeth or Dorset Knobs
and old Vinny, they have become precious
items sold in marked up prices online
by people who stocked up at the beginning
of the crisis on commodities they were able
to seize before rationing stepped in
and limited quantities were permitted
to each purchaser who waited patiently,
in line, to enter the super-market.

I place my leather glove on my hand
and move to the gas pump. How many people
have used it, pumping gas with bare hands,
and the metal surface retaining how many germs
who knows for how long? I cannot wear my mask
while pumping gas. Cover my face and they will
not serve me for fear I may flee without paying.
I finish pumping, open the car door, remove
my glove, put on my mask, pick up my cane,
and walk into the gas-station shop to pay.

As I limp towards the door, a man, mask-less,
holds the door open for me, his face less
than a foot from mine. “There you are, sir,”
he says, showing his teeth. “Service with a smile.”

I return to the car, remove a precious sanitizing wipe,
clean my glove, the car door handles, every spot
my gloved hand touched. Then I wipe the handle
of the gas pump and dispose of the precious wipe
in the garbage can nestled between the pumps.

Commentary:

Well, I am willing to place a bet with my favorite bookmaker, at Covey’s Print Shop, that not many of you out there know what Dorset Knobs and Old Vinny is or are. Moo has joined me in my wager and he is willing to bet that very few of you know where the line “où est le papier?” comes from. Even fewer will be able to sing the whole song! Oh dear, our world is only artificially intelligent, not really intelligent. In my teaching days I would ask the class if we were in a smart classroom. “Yes, sir,” they would reply. I’d then walk to the wall, tap it and ask it “What’s 2 + 2?” The wall never answered. I’d try again. “What’s 2 + 2?” – Silence. “Not such a smart classroom then,” I’d say to the students.

But I bet you all remember Covid, the days of taking all sorts of precautions, of wearing masks and gloves, of washing everything that came into the house, of washing hands, and not touching surfaces in public places where the unwashed may have left a winning lottery ticket with your Covid Number upon it. Oh dear, those were indeed the days. And this little poem, a golden oldie, recalls them. Let us hope they do not return. And let us doubly hope they do not return with a mutating or mutated helix of sinister proportions.