Grief

Rage, Rage 49 & 50

Rage, Rage
49

Waiting in the doctor’s office,
I hear two old women
gossiping about friends
and family, the intimate
details all laid out
to fester in my fertile mind.

Never will I be able
to put faces to those girls
with breast cancer,
to the women
weighed down
with diabetes,
to the old men
with their strokes
and heart attacks.

50

“Just one of those things,”
one of them whispers,
“my husband gone
leaving me alone
with the grandkids.”

“Is it four years? Or five?
I remember his name,
but I forget his face.”

“And our fourteen-year-old,
her belly already swelling …”

“You’ll cope somehow …”

Silence wraps its scarf
around their flapping mouths.
I think of all my own lost loves,
buried before their proper time.

Lives and worlds end …
new ones begin.

Comments:

Lives and worlds end … new ones begin. How true it is. The olde order changeth lest one good custom should corrupt the world. Tennyson, I believe, from Idylls of the King. King Arthur and his knights of the round table. Each of them rode into that dark night, some quickly, some more slowly, but all were lost, as so many things are lost.

That was also the heading of the departures section of my old school magazine. At the end of the year, pupils left the school, many graduating, never to return, and the old order did indeed change. The fourth formers moved up to the fifth, the fifth to Transitus, then to the sixth, and finally, the scholarship students arrived in Ichabod. Ichabod, Ichabod, the glory that used to be. I look at old school photos and I wonder what became of so many of my childhood friends. The website for my old school also contains an obituary section. I consult it, every so often, to see who else has passed on. Fewer names than I would expect. Not everybody keeps in touch. I am in contact with few old boys from school, but nobody from my undergraduate university. Ships passing in the night, all of us. Our conversations lost in the mists of time.

The old order changes and the language changes with it too. When I was visiting Spain regularly, my first stop, every year, would be the local barber’s shop. I just sat there and listened while I waited to get my haircut, Spanish style. I listened for the new buzz words, the names that now floated around, the latest jokes, the ideas that were currently in fashion. Change is everywhere.

Covid changed the Spanish language, gave it a whole new set of terms that I do not recognize. The same thing happens with English, French, any language. French is not the same in Moncton, New Brunswick, as it is in Shediac. And the Acadian Peninsula is slightly different. As is the language of Grand Falls, and that of Little Falls, aka Edmundston, the capital of the Republic of Madawaska. The language also changes close to the border of Quebec where Joual can be heard. Same thing along the St. Lawrence river and out from Matane to Mont Albert and beyond. Small changes, sea changes, enormous varieties of change.

I often wonder what is happening in Wales both to Welsh itself and to the English language as it is spoken there. English in Swansea / Abertawe was never the English of Llanelli, nor was it the English of the Rhondda Valleys. How could it be? And Cardiff / Caer Dydd was always different. As was Newport / Cas Newydd. I haven’t been back there since 1988. 38 years of change – friends gone, family gone, nobody left. I couldn’t bear to stay in a hotel in a town where once I lived in my family’s homes.

How does one end a rant like this? In silence, of course. For silence wraps its silken around flapping mouths. I think of all my own lost friends and loves, buried so long ago, many before their proper time.

Rage, Rage 39 & 40

Rage, Rage
39

Was I day-dreaming
when knife slipped
and ended up slicing
through my finger?

Blood everywhere
and a deep ugly, red wound
wedged between torn,
fleshy cliffs.

Short, sharp
shocks of shrill pain.

Little finger, left hand.
A glimpse of white bone.
Nobody here to help.
Don’t panic. Think.

40

Sheet from paper towel,
staunch, press down,
more pressure, find gauze,
a bandage, quick.

Take kitchen towel
from rail. Run
down hall, leaving
fresh blood spoor,
the cat following,
sniffing, licking
my blood
from the floor.

Open garage door,
get into car,
use one hand, clumsy,
on steering wheel,
hold other high,
blood seeping
down wrist
to soak sleeve.

Drive to emergency.
Fast.

Comment:

So fast, so quick, so clean. Look away, lose your attention for just a fraction of a moment and … as we grow older, so we must grow more aware of the pitfalls that surround us, especially if we live alone. I don’t live alone, but my beloved was away in Ottawa visiting our daughter and grandchild when that happened. I remember it so well.

Luckily, I had taken the St. John Ambulance First Aid course. The instructor told us – if anything happens you will go into overdrive and know exactly what to do. And I did. Cold running water, ice cube, paper towels, then real ones. Stop the blood flowing from the wound or else staunch it, slow it down.

But the hero of the day was that cat. She followed me down the corridor and my last mage of her, as I closed the door to the garage, was that of her licking the blood, my blood, from the floor. I remember too that one handed drive to the Emergency. Good job we had an automatic, not a gear shift. Don’t know what I sliced to cause so much blood – but it didn’t stop, wouldn’t stop, refused to stop.

And more about that next time I write.

If I don’t go AWOL, as well I might!!!

Rage, Rage 28 & 29

Rage, Rage
28

Two small gnomes
camped, one in each
of my lungs.

All night long
they played
their squeeze-box,
wheeze-box concertinas,
never quite in unison.

Sometimes they stamped
their feet and my body
rattled in time
with their dance steps.

Their wild night music
caught in my throat
and I coughed
unmusical songs
that spluttered
and choked me.

29

This morning, the bailiff,
Mr. Koffdrop, evicted
the two gnomes from my lungs.

Landlord Bodie
placed an ad on Kiji.

He rented the free space
in the left lung
to a tiny bag-piper
who took up residence
by my heart.

All night this piper piped me
a highland pibroch
on his whisky-worn pipes.

Comment:

All night this piper piped – and there is nothing stranger than having a clogged up, congested chest and hearing your own breath whistling in and out of your lungs. It certainly kept me awake. And I lay there remembering all the pipers I have ever heard piping. One very special one, from the Canadian Black Watch, gifted me the last image “a highland pibroch on his whisky-worn pipes”. A flask in his jacket and a nip every now and then to keep the music and the energy flowing. Scotch of course. None of the Japanese or Irish whisky varieties for that kilt-clad friend of mine. I can hear him now, as I type these lines – “A drop before ye go?”

As for the accordion, well, I have always liked the small, hand-held ones – squeeze boxes – wheeze boxes – and did those lungs of mine ever squeeze and wheeze. I called them Mr. Teasy-wheezy and Mr. Teasy-squeezy. And all night long they serenaded me. And I lay there, wide awake, not even drowsing, watching  Orion gradually striding his lonely way towards the western horizon. No rest for those afflicted with the squeezy-wheezy lung syndrome. And long may it stay away.

Rage, Rage 26

Rage, Rage
26

In my dreams, I track 
the sails of drifting ships,
white moths fluttering
before the wind.

I think I have caught them
in overnight traps,
but they fly each morning
in dawn’s unforgiving light.

I give chase
with pen and paper,
fine butterfly nets
with which to catch
and tame wild thoughts.

I grasp at things
just beyond my fingertips.

I wake up each morning
unaware of where
I have traveled
in my dreams.

Comment:

White moths fluttering before the wind – my dreams at night. How do I trap them, catch them, squeeze them between my fingers, hold them, pin them to the show case of memory? I remember in Oaxaca – the young boys, trapping the moths. Huge, gigantic butterflies, moths, as large as birds. They severed their wings, and sold them to the passing tourists. Such beauty, such colour.

I heard an angry buzzing, looked down, and saw flightless bodies, wings clipped, rowing their stumps of bunt oars, skidding sideways across the gutters, and dreaming painfully of the stars.

Rage, Rage 25

Rage, Rage, 25

A carton of eggs,
milk left behind,
a walking stick
abandoned on a cart,
discovered
in the lost and found
in the supermarket.

My cousin’s face,
her daughter’s name,
the parking spot
where I left my car.

Time and place
wave goodbye
and are quickly gone.
So much has become
ephemeral.

“What day is it today?”
I check my watch
for the third or fourth time.
I forget phone numbers.

I look at photos
but they are blank spaces,
gaps in the photo album.

Scenes on the tv screen –
“I recognize those faces,” I mutter,
“who are they?
Where did I see them before.”

Comment:

Ephemeral – “Something that is fleeting or short-lived is ephemeral, like a fly that lives for one day or text messages flitting from cellphone to cellphone.” Heraclitus says we can never step in the same stream twice – because the waters are not the same and neither are we. We change, things change. They do not stay the same. Here today and gone tomorrow. Like the flowers our kind neighbor brought us when our kitty cat passed away last week. She, too, was ephemeral. Just like the flowers. Just like us.

Some things leave us with sorrow – our pussy cat was 18 years old, and her passing took away her pain. Yet she still left us sad and grieving. And those 18 years seemed to pass in a dream. Where did they, where did she go? There is sorrow too in memory loss. The days of our lives, once fresh their memories, now filling with a sadness as we try to recall them. Memory loss – one of the great sorrows of aging.

So many things slipping away. Seasons passing. Daylight hours waning then waxing again, just like the moon. Water between fingers. Grains of sand through the hour glass. So many blank faces in the photo album. “Who is that?” “I can’t remember.” More and more of the family names fading away, slipping into the distance. And all too soon, we shall join them, leaving an empty nest, for, as Cervantes once wrote – “No hay pájaros en los nidos de antaño” – there are no birds in last year’s nests.

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 1

Rage, Rage
1

Old age creeps up on you,
slowly, ambushes you,
catches you unawares.

At first, you don’t believe
that it’s real.
You ignore the signs,
pretend they aren’t there.

Then comes a knock on the door.
There, did you hear it?
Around you your body’s house
slumbers in comfort.

You lose your footing,
but you do not fall.
Your book drops to the floor,
you bend down and pick it up.

Everything is as it always was.
Or is it? One of your friends
slips and falls down the stairs.

You descend the stairs
with more care than usual.
No, you don’t need a cane.
Nor special shoes and socks.

You convince yourself that
all is well. And so it is,
for a little while longer.

Commentary:

Rage, Rage
against the dying of the light

Dylan Thomas’s famous poem celebrates the passing of his father. “Do not go gentle into that good night, / old age should burn and rave at close of day. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

I am no Dylan Thomas, although I am still a Swansea boy at heart and, as my paternal grandfather used to sing while at the fighting front during WWI – “and still I live in hopes to see Swansea Town once more.”

Alas, I never will see Swansea Town, save in my dreams, for Swansea Town is no longer a town. It is now Swansea City and no, I will not be leaving Island View again, not even to return to Wales, the land of my fathers. But I can and do age, and ageing is a strange and very personal experience. These pages contain the thoughts that occur to me, in my solitude, as I come to terms with my diminishing existence.

Moo has been very silently recently. But when he saw this poem he climbed out of the woodwork where he had been hiding like a silent spider and he said “Roger, have I got just the painting for you.” The painting is also called Rage, Rage – make of that what you will.

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.

Carved in Stone 56 & 57

Carved in Stone
56

I stand before the Tzompantli,
the Aztec Skull Racks
in the ruins of the Great Temple
in Mexico City,
and gaze in wonder,
at the multiple meanings
of these decorated deaths.

57

At Teotihuacan,
I climb the Sun Pyramid,
with its carved serpent,
slithering sideways,
as the sun moves.

I heave myself upwards,
panting, sweating,
and when I get to the summit,
I sit there, feet over the edge,
and I feel my heart thumping
as I fight to regain my breath.

Now, I feel purified,
cleansed, sweated dry,
as I watch poor mortals
struggle as I did
to take that final step.

I imagine them laid
on the sacrificial stone,
their chests carved open.

Each beating heart,
when extracted,
will cover altar, priest, and sky,
with a fountain of blood,
so hard those hearts
are pounding. Blood seeds
shoot into the sky
to revive the setting sun
as it drowns in its own blood.

Commentary:

Incredible, looking back, those moments in Mexico when I came face to face with a culture, so old, so alien to me, that I had difficulty coming to terms with it. I do not understand human sacrifice. Nor do I understand the mentality of the conquistadores who held the Aztec Emperor’s feet to the fire and burned them to the bone, leaving him alive. And still he would not tell them the secrets of the kingdom.

“The setting sun as it drowns in its own blood.” A nod to Charles Baudelaire, of course, – “Le soleil s’est noyé dans son sang qui se fige.” Wonderful how these images stay with us. Sunrise – and the sun is born in blood – sunset and the sun sets in its own blood. And was it really true that only the blood of humans, drawn through human sacrifice, sometimes voluntary, sometimes not, would keep the sun in the sky?

And there we go – in blood we were born, in blood we will probably die – all hail the power of blood – unless of course / wrth gwrs – it is contaminated. And what will happen to us then?