Silence
silence
between words
tranquil movements
the world
stands still
suspended
in space
silent space
between the stars
Aurora Borealis
soundless night
drenched
in silent light
listen –
can you hear
your heart beat
can you hear
the silence
of your house
time
sifting silent
through an hour glass
filled with light
drifting into
night
Silent Light
Silent light,
breaking soundless,
dispelling night’s mists,
lighting up flowers,
so graceful,
when decked out in light.
At night,
the moon turns into a mirror,
a silver boat
suspended in space.
Silent,
its light enlightening
the heart’s dusky craters,
the mind’s gloomy shafts,
where hidden treasures hide,
waiting for the light.
The Value of Space
Space, round an object,
reveals its aura,
its implicit innocence.
Consider the shimmer –
a sunlit orange
basking in its basket.
Observe
the pride of the cat,
nestled on cushions,
its coat prickling
with sunlight.
Space
surrounds us.
We walk within it,
live because of it.
Space
fills us.
Water
in our body’s sponge
a part of us,
as we become
a part of it.
Author’s Notes
We crave the space around us, the silence between words, but invasive noise destroys us, body and soul. We must seek the sanctity of silent light and space.
A Broken Heart
What does a broken heart look like? Good question – and I, for one, don’t know. Maybe my artist friend, Moo, does. He painted this image of a Fragmented Heart the other day. Not that his heart was broken. He told me he was interpreting the words and feelings of a close friend (who shall remain nameless) who has been having the feelings associated with a heart that was actually breaking. Tough times, eh?
Rejections get me down and annoy me, but they don’t break my heart. I submitted a short story to a magazine on January 4, 2023 and got a rejection letter yesterday, May 6, 2024. It was a form letter, 16 months after submission, just to say “no”!
Of course, the few acceptances that I actually do get make up for the many rejections, as is always the case. However, there seem to be fewer of these acceptances as my thoughts look inwards and I turn from ‘poetry of play to poetry that expresses the authenticity of being‘ (Johannes Pfeiffer). In this day and age, I fear that readers seek entertainment and distraction and prefer the light-hearted to the heavy hand of deep thought and poetic authenticity. And remember, I do not distinguish between poetry and prose, as many do. For me, poetry is writing, be it in poetry or prose.
But back to the theme of the broken heart. Here are three linked poems.
Old Wounds
“The slow wound
deepens with the years
and brings no healing.”
The Minister by R. S. Thomas
How deep time’s wounds
have cut and carved,
not just in flesh and bone,
but in the embers
of that slow-burn fire
they call the heart.
Memory and mind
have also played their part.
Some days, those wounds
don’t ache at all.
But there’s no real healing,
and a moment of madness
or a knife-edged finger nail,
careless, in the dark,
opens them up again
to bleed afresh
and remind us
of the frailty of the flesh.
I Remember
“I remember so well how it was back then.
I was lonely, my heart so broken I couldn’t
count the pieces, nor put the puzzle together,
although I tried so hard to make it whole again.
I still bear scars, trenches dug so deep,
lines gouged into my body. I can’t always sleep.
Nightmares pave a crooked, cobbled way to day.
Some nights, I wake up suddenly from a dream
and scream the way that stuck pigs scream
when, hot, their blood comes steaming out.
Other nights, in pain and panic, at shadows I shout.
I search for someone to care for me. I want them
to understand my grief and help me forget the thief
who stole my joy and left me this life of disbelief.”
Signs of Age
What is pain, but the knowledge
that we are alive, and relatively well,
and still on the green side of the grass.
Long may it last. For when the pain is gone,
we shall soon follow. And this is age,
and age is this pain, and the painful
knowledge that we are no longer young,
can no longer bend the way we bent,
or touch our toes, or even see our toes,
some of us. The golden arrow pierces
the heart. Fierce is the pain. But when
that arrow is withdrawn and the heart
no longer feels alive, why, how we miss
that pain, how we weep to find it gone,
perhaps never to come back again.
Pain, like rain, an essential part of the cycle
of the seasons, of the days and the weeks,
and all the months and years that walk us
around the circadian circle, in time with the earth
and its desire to open its arms, and welcome us,
and greet us, and bring us our rest, from pain.
So much wisdom sewn into the wrinkled skin,
the gap-filled grin that glows with humor,
the crow’s foot signals of old age,
or merely those we associate with ageing,
and the knowledge that, yes, many
have walked this wobbly way before,
and many more will follow in our footsteps.
Take your pick – ‘poetry of play to poetry that expresses the authenticity of being‘ – but I know which I prefer and ‘still I live in hopes to see poems of authenticity.”
In Place of Grief
A double meaning of course / wrth gwrs. (a) to be in a place of grief and (b) to do something in place of grief i.e. instead of grief. Take your pick. One of my close friends immediately called it Chains. I replied – Ray Charles – “Take these chains from my heart and set me free.” Sometimes, with a great effort, we can do that ourselves. But, if the hole we have dug for ourselves, or that has been dug for us, is too deep, then we may need help.
Creativity is always a help. Painting and poetry, for me. And sometimes the hand of friendship, reaching out from the anonymity of hyperspace – the space beyond the space in which I live and with which I hold my Bakhtinian Dialog what he calls my chronotopos – my dialog with my time and place. Alas, sometimes it is a monolog – and then, when I get not reply, either from time nor from place, I feel an existential grief.
Door
A door slammed shut
in my heart.
That closed door
left me outside,
shivering in the cold.
Now I no longer know
who or what I am.
The shadow of nothingness
wraps its black shroud
around my shoulders.
Dark night of the heart,
and me alone,
walking an unlit road
with no end in sight.
(a) The shadow of nothingness is Meister Eickhard’s Umbra Nihili. A reference to the medieval philosopher.
(b) The dark night of the heart is a reference to St. John of the Cross’s dark night of the soul, part of the Via Purgativa, the mysterious road walked by the Mystics.
Ice Flow
Free fall, then scree on the road
to Wolastoq. with the fresh air
speaking to the rock face
in a long-forgotten tongue,
broken words metamorphosing
into fragmented scree at rock-foot.
Just for a moment we glimpse
the ancient water in the stone,
catch the flow of winter words.
The January sun, low in our eyes,
heavenly glory glancing off rock
to give earthly joy, golden beams
highlight damp, glistening slate.
Afternoon frost, water and rock,
polished into ice-maiden tears
that dance their sparkling way
and are held for a moment
in a vision that will last forever.
Comment:
Such beauty in silent things, ice, rock, sky. But learn to listen and perhaps you will hear them talking, one to the other. One day, you too may share their words of wisdom.
Choices
Winter-low sun in my eyes,
I sit at the breakfast table
blinking back rainbows.
Light quivers into fragments.
Too much light and my world
turns dark. I can no longer see
the computer screen, nor am I
able to write in the old-fashioned
way with pen, ink, and paper.
To continue working, I must lower
the blinds or move to the other room
away from the sunlight.
Another option:
to forget deadlines and schedules
to lay down my pen, to close my eyes,
to bask in early morning pleasures,
purring like an ageing cat
enjoying the sun.
Comment:
A Golden Oldie that suddenly surfaced from “among my souvenirs”, as Connie Francis once sang. Or was it twice? Sunshine is certainly a magic balm for old bones. Only now am I starting to understand the wisdom of animals, that old dog, lying in the sun, the ageing cat curled up in a sunny window, the ancient donkey, seeking warmth, away from the shade. Such joy in the small things that make life so much better.
Islands
Bewildered
by the rush hour
surge of traffic
we peer at street signs,
slide slowly round
roundabouts
sprung up overnight,
mushrooms
grown to confuse us.
Swept along by the main
street’s vibrant flow,
we fail to recognize
new shops standing
where we remember
old cracked paint
and the woman who sold
curiosities.
A face in the crowd
holds us for a moment.
Grey hair, unshaven,
clothes ragged,
a scarecrow on the street,
was that the man
who once ruled our world?
That old woman,
hunched, wrinkled,
her face a Hallowe’en mask,
her limp, her canes
and dragging feet:
is that the dancing queen
who ruled beside him?
Lights change.
Cars move on.
Another island
beckons
as we pull away
from the past
and drive
into the future.
What makes you feel nostalgic?
I am not sure that nostalgic is the right word. I think of Robbie Burns with his “man’s inhumanity to man” and I realize that “the war to end all wars” never ended anything. It only started a series of new cycles. I am certainly not nostalgic for these endless cycles of violence and inhumanities. I am though nostalgic for man’s humanity to man, that spark of kindness and good will that seems, on the last day of the old year, with the new year about to come in, to have vanished. Could it be forever? I certainly hope not. May the new year (2024) bring peace, happiness, love, and understanding, to all the human beings on this tiny planet we, of necessity, share.
My friend Moo’s painting (above, thank you Moo), has for its title Fiat Lux – Let There Be Light. I am nostalgic for that light. May it soon return to our world.
Remembrance Day
11 November 2023
I wasn’t there
I never saw the gas clouds
rolling over our positions
never felt the barbed wire’s bite
nor the bayonet’s jab
I never hung out my washing
on the Siegfreid Line
(“Have you any dirty washing, mother dear?”)
never broke out of barracks
never did spud bashing
nor feasted on bread and water
nor heard the rifle’s rapid rattle
I wasn’t there
to see them carried away in carts
coughing spluttering vomiting
or bandages over their eyes
walking slowly to triage a hand on
the shoulder of the man ahead
the sighted leading the blind
I wasn’t there
but both my grandfathers were
both decorated
one mentioned in dispatches
signed by Winston Churchill
that one uninjured
the other one gassed
coughing up his lungs
bit by bit for forty years
I am here now
to remember
and to honor them
though so much
has been lost
What relationships have a positive impact on you?
I think one of my poems answers this question best. I write “one of my poems” but it is really my ‘free’ translation of one of Francisco de Quevedo’s sonnets – Retirado en la paz de estos desiertos. I have changed the poem slightly, but I am sure Don Francisco (1580-1645) will excuse Don Roger’s impoverished effort (2023).
On Loneliness
29 December 2023
Resting in the peace of these small rooms,
with few, but welcome books together,
I live in conversation with my friends,
and listen with my eyes to loving words.
Not always understood, but always there,
they influence and question my affairs,
and with contrasting points of view,
they wake me up, and make me more aware.
The wisdom of these absent friends,
some distant from me just because they’re dead,
lives on and on, thanks to the printed word.
Life flits away, the past can’t be retained.
each hour, once past, is lost and gone,
but with such friends, I’m never left alone.
The painting, by my friend Moo, is called Fiat Lux – Let There Be Light. It is reminiscent of Dylan Thomas’s poem, Light breaks where no light shines. Intertextuality – Quevedo drew inspiration from the Stoics. I drew inspiration from Quevedo. Moo drew inspiration from Dylan Thomas. The nature of creativity and its continuing links throughout the ages shines clearly through these wonderful associations.
First Snow Blow
4 December 2023
A dry old stick of a man
I hang a warm coat
on my scarecrow frame
and don thick mitts
to keep out the cold.
Gripping grimly
the snowblower’s handles,
and hanging on tight,
I plod my wobbly way,
working the gears as I go.
The snowblower, this year,
is a recalcitrant shopping cart
with me, the shopper,
frantically pushing, pulling,
forcing the machine along
a narrow aisle of snow.
Out of breath, I stop,
breathe deep, and try to
regain control, first
of my heart and lungs,
and then of this machine
that so frustrates me.
It seems inanimate, but
some spirit must dwell within
and force me to follow
its devilish whim, instead
of going the way I want to go.
Comment:
Just the one snowfall so far, but there’s more on the way. Winter in New Brunswick, Canada, is never complete, without multiple falls of lovely snow. Lovely to look at, but not so much fun when you’re getting old and the snowblower snorts into life meaning that it’s time, once more, to go outside and clear the snow.
rogermoorepoet 