Wednesday 30 June 2010

George Szirtes' poem NOT from beyond the grave!


As a divertimento a poem now from an undead poet!

The usual self-assembly rules apply. Only one line from any poem is allowed. All the selected lines are then assembled to make the new poem.

The LIVING poet George Szirtes has generously given Poet-in-Residence permission to abuse his work in this way.

The beyond the grave series will continue in the near future with Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath jointly producing a new poem from the beyond. They will contribute alternate lines.

But now back to George Szirtes:

George Szirtes' poem NOT from beyond the grave

Even here there are shadows of places: serene,
no bigger than flies. If I strain my ears
I know you are there, somewhere above
heads bobbing like a shooting gallery

and all too small or piqued or plentiful.
I was nothing and the grass was nothing,
celestial and perfect, more or less.

The question is where you go. Come hope, come home.
It is night in the zoo of the universe. Stars lurk
somewhere in the halo of the lamp.

We feed on nonsense whatever it may mean.
The winter is not metaphorical.
In the plenitude of etcetera comes a fullness
strangely moved. It was a long time ago.

__________
gw&gs 2010

Wallace Stevens' poem from beyond the grave

This, the third poem in the current series, follows the guidelines laid down in the initial Thomas Hardy's poem from beyond the grave post which is to be found 2 posts below this one.

Wallace Stevens' poem from beyond the grave

But salvation here? What about the rattle of sticks
Rising upon the doctors in their beds
And of him that sees, beyond the astronomers
In a moving contour, a change not quite completed?

Look round, brown moon, brown bird, as you rise to fly
Without understanding, out of the wall
Or a lustered nothingness, Effendi, he
Bears us toward time, on its

Tinsel in February, tinsel in August
The months of understanding. The pediment
Begins again and ends again -
The gardener's cat is dead, the gardener gone.

__________
gw,ws 2010

Dylan Thomas's poem from beyond the grave

For guidelines on how to construct these novelties, see Thomas Hardy's poem from beyond the grave. It's the post immediately below this post. And so we come now to Dylan Thomas's attempt at communication from the other side.

Dylan Thomas's poem from beyond the grave

All game phrases fit your ring of a cockfight
The breath draw back like a bolt through white oil
Tongue and ear in the thread angle the temple-bound
Through the devilish years and innocent deaths.

Convenient bird and beast lie lodged to suffer
My nest of mercies in the rude red tree
Ducked in the twelve disciples seas
I tell her this before suncock east.

So solve the mystic sun, the wife of light
The child shall question all his days
Crowing to Lazarus the morning is vanity
I fled that ground as lightly as a feather.

____________
gw & dt 2010

Tuesday 29 June 2010

Thomas Hardy's poem from beyond the grave

The blogger Weaver of Grass posted a poem written and yet not written by R S Thomas. What she did was to take various lines from different R S Thomas poems and then assemble them to make a new poem. I thought I'd give it a try. About 20 minutes ago I turned to Thomas Hardy. Here then is the result. The poem is compiled from lines from different Hardy poems selected by 'feel'. The result surprised me.

Thomas Hardy's poem from beyond the grave

It is a storm-strid night, winds footing swift
the twinkling gleams of lamp's sad beams
a car comes up, with lamps full glare
the eternal question of what Life was
changed to a firmament-riding earthless essence
the substance now, one phantom figure
saying that now you are not as you were.

I seem but a dead man held on an end
we were irked by the scene, by our own selves; yes.

This is the weather the cuckoo likes
his crypt the cloudy canopy
a black cat comes,wide-eyed and thin
a longlegs, a moth, and a dumbledore.

Church timbers crack and witches ride ...

________
gw2010
(aided from the Beyond?)

*dumbledore here is a large bumble bee and definitely NOT a Harry Potter character.

old lady

in window light
smiling into the fire
- yet looking away

______
gw2010

When we want to value the worth of a society we give a deal of thought to how it looks after its vulnerable people. In some countries it is sadly almost the norm that old ladies are forced to sell their houses in order to finance the care they will need in the sunset of their lives.

Many of today's elderly women, those in Britain for example, farmed the land and fed the nation or did dangerous work in munitions factories during World War II. Others saw their husbands and children sacrificed to the fray. These women did their bit, as the saying goes. And so, if only for this, they deserve better in old age.

Today, in order to bring the world's financial markets into some semblance of order, we are being informed that we must devalue, amongst other things, old people's only source of income - fixed pensions. But in reality this is going to be done to give the corrupt and the criminal a bit more breathing space.

The world's G-clubs (8, 20, 16, 23 or whatever - the actual G-number matters not) get together on a semi-regular basis for champagne and sandwiches, at our expense, and they do so in some choice locations: Switzerland, Canada, Sweden, Italy etc..

It's costing the rest of us a pretty fortune.

Some leaders, like President Obama, know in their hearts that it's high time that expenses-fiddling politicans, ultra-greedy investment bankers and all the other debased and dangerous disciples to greed lounging in the shadows like insatiable crocodiles were made to tighten their gucci belts.

There must always be a glimmer of hope on the horizon!

Notwithstanding all or any of the above, it's high time that old ladies in their dotage were given, at last, a decent break. They deserve it.

_______
*old lady -
because women live longer!

La Forza del Destino at Vienna's State Opera


Guiseppe Verdi (1813-1901) (courtesy Wikipedia)


The Italians are the world's best opera singers! And Italian is the natural language of opera!

We need think only of the gondolier calling to his friend the inn keeper across the Grand Canal in Venice, or of the busy Naples housewife hanging out her washing on her high balcony while calling out to her child in the street far below and the child calling back. It's all opera. And opera, when all is said and done, is an Italian word (from the Latin opus).

And so Richard Wagner, knowing the source, plagarised the best Italian composers to some tune. But I digress.

After witnessing yesterday evening's performance of Giuseppe Verdi's opera, La forza del destino, at Vienna's State Opera I am more convinced than ever of the basic truth of my opening statement.

The main protagonists: Micaela Carosi (Leonora); Alberto Gazale (Don Carlo); Fabio Armiliato (Alvaro); ably supported by Nadia Krasteva (Preziosilla) and Sorin Coliban (Melitone) were nothing less than superb. The Vienna State Opera Orchestra, finely conducted by Marco Armiliato, was also nothing less than superb. The rest of the cast and also the Vienna State Opera Choir were, it has to be said, also superb. It was altogether, as you may have gathered by now, an altogether superb evening of top class opera!

During the period leading up to the scheduled premier in 1861 it so happened that Italy was at war with Austria. It was the time of the infamous Battle of Solferino, a field of slaughter so bad, that the whole of Europe was left in a state of shock. How could so many perish in one day; in one battle? The figure was, I believe, over 30,000 killed. An unbelievable toll, even for those times. It was, in fact, out of the Solferino carnage that the Red Cross was born. Not surprising then, that La forza del destino, premiered not in Milan but in St. Petersburg. It would be 1869 before Italian audiences got to see it.

David Poutney's sparse scenery had the advantage that the players could perform at the top of their ability without the distractions of superfluous ornamentation and unrequired props. I say players because performers must be more than mere singers; there was so much opportunity on Poutney's set for some fine acting, and it very often came to the fore.

The symbolism was contained in the few props; the moving shadows, the subtle light changes. It was enough; the story, the atmosphere, the effect of the music and the text, was all the stronger for that. White crosses on holy books and bloodstained swords have, after all, the same shape. And it seems, quite often, the same stark message: Where corruption and debauchery reign war will surely follow.

The wheel of destiny revolves not unlike the barrel of a revolver and sometimes the bullet flies out to find its target. If your name is on the bullet it will find you. In the opening cinematography the revolver spins and tumbles in space with hypnotic elegance and grace. Finally the bullet emerges from the barrel and spins towards its destination. In this case a man. His name is the Marquis of Calatrava. He dies. It is an accident. And it is also destiny. The bullet was intended for the one who held the revolver. His name is Alvaro. Now he must flee.

The dead man's daughter Leonora, like her suitor Alvaro, will flee too. She will seek refuge at a monastery in the mountains. Disguised as a hermit she will find sanctuary in a cave in the rocks. Amid gentle organ music and subdued lighting she will prostrate herself and give herself to the religious life, witnessed by a violin solo of the first magnitude; a new cross will be born in a golden light and a light shower of harp music.

But as we forsee, after some years, destiny will bring the couple together again. And when this happens the hand of fate will give the wheel of destiny another spin. Leonora will perish. The bullet of destiny will bring her down. Only God, waiting in heaven, can make amends.

Verdi's majestic overture was played to a black and white film of a slowly spinning wheel and then suddenly there was a blank screen and from being hypnotised we suddenly became aware that we could concentrate, focus our attention, on the final musical crescendo.

In the second act, by way of contrast, the overture will work around a heavenly sunrise and a birdlike sound, perhaps it's a lark, and maybe it's rising to heaven. Perhaps a lark ascending (as with Vaughan Williams) and now bringing new hope. But we shall have to wait and see what destiny has to say. This much we know from the distant rumble of dark notes.

The gun, the book, and the word of God. But what are they when destiny is in the game?

To put on La forza del destino, a 3-hour story of Pace and Guerra, and the effects of War and Peace on our destiny is a tremendous undertaking. It needs top quality in all departments to get away with it. Otherwise don't bother. But they had the quality in all departments and they certainly took the bother to show it.

The reward - a well deserved standing ovation. Many bravi, brava, bravo, and bravissimo from the delighted audience.

And so, as the 19-year term of Ioan Holender as the Vienna State Opera director draws all too quickly to its close we can reflect that we, the public, have during his term enjoyed some of the best new opera talent from around the world. It has been our destiny and our privilege to do so. It has been Ioan Holender's destiny to discover it and provide it. I, for one, thank him with much gratitude.
___________
gwilym williams

Monday 28 June 2010

roman soldier

marcus aurelius
a mosquito drilled him
the fatal wound

______
gw2010

I recently visited Corbridge (UK) and Carnuntum (AUT) on the trail of the great Roman soldier and philosopher. At Carnuntum I was bitten from head to foot by many mosquitoes. Fortunately for me the Carnuntum mosquitoes are relatively harmless these days. Another fate is continually bestowed upon millions of poor people, especially children, in Africa and elsewhere.

In 1944 my father-to-be contracted malaria from a mosquito bite during war service as an engineer in India. He received the appropriate medical treatment and, luckily for me as well, he survived. Is it beyond our power in 2010AD to provide proper medicine and care for the needy and the deserving when and where it is required? If we can rescue irresponsible bankers from bankruptcy we can surely rescue the poor and vulnerable from the mosquito.

Sunday 27 June 2010

Bermudas

Andrew Marvell observed that "the poet is placed ... in a paradise of delights, and ... has a duty to contemplate them". If there is such a place as an earthly paradise perhaps it's the remote island of Bermuda, a pink and white jewel on a green baize cloth set in a turquoise sea and protected from invader and storm by a barrier reef inhabited by shoals of wondrously coloured fish and the ancient wrecks of many ships which sailed a little too close to her shores.








Bermudas

Where the remote Bermudas ride
In the ocean's bosom unespied,
From a small boat, that rowed along,
The listening winds received this song.-

"What should we do but sing His praise
That led us through the watery maze,
Unto an isle so long unknown,
And yet far kinder than our own?
Where He the huge sea-monsters wrecks,
That lift the deep upon their backs.
He lands us on a grassy stage,
Safe from the storms' and prelates' rage;
He gave us this eternal Spring
Which here enamels every thing,
And sends the fowls to us in care,
On daily visits through the air;
He hangs in shades the orange bright,
Like golden lamps in a green night,
And does in the pomegranates close
Jewels more rich than Ormus* shows;
He makes the figs our mouths to meet,
And throws the melons at our feet,
But apples° plants of such a price,
No tree could ever bear them twice;
With cedars, chosen by His hand,
From Lebanon, He stores the land;
And makes the hollow seas, that roar,
Proclaim the ambergris on shore;
He cast (of which we rather boast)
The Gospel's pearl upon our coast,
And in these rocks for us did frame
A temple, where to sound His name.
Oh, let our voice His praise exalt
Till it arrive at Heaven's vault,
Which thence (perhaps) rebounding, may
Echo beyond the Mexique Bay."

Thus sung they, in the English boat,
An holy and a cheerful note,
And all the way, to guide their chime,
With falling oars they kept their time.

_________
Andrew Marvell (1621-1678)
*Hormuz
°pineapples
The Bermudas, originally the uninhabited Somers' Isles, named after the man who discovered them, are said to comprise 365 islands and islets. Bermuda has an area of 21 sq. miles. It is in the Atlantic in the Sargasso Sea, and certainly not in the Gulf of Mexico as in Marvell's poem. These days the "unespied" islands are famous for the capital Hamilton's Front Street shops, the thousands of buzzing mopeds, the 20mph island wide speed limit, the British-style bobbies on point duty, the manicured golf courses, banking, pharmaceuticals, the Newport-Bermuda Yacht Race and the hoards of college week tourists from Boston.
For the words 'He' and 'His' I've taken the liberty of using an upper case H throughout and made some minor modifications to words like list'ning, th' and wat'ry.

Tuesday 22 June 2010

The Short Circuit


by Gwilym Williams
_____________

A loud bang, a squeal, a clatter, a jangle, a jingle, a short silence, and then an almighty BOOM! And then a protracted silence.

UFO1 lurched drunkenly and plunged towards the centre of Galaxy M22.

Soap bubbles and black smoke swirled up the stairwell. An old man smoking a briar emerged onto the bridge. He was wearing a once-white lab coat now torn to shreds. His soot-stained hair stood on end and from his left hand there dangled the melted remains of a large rubber torch.

"That's torn it," he said mildly to the two men on the bridge.

"Chief Engineer Einstein, what do you mean exactly by 'torn it'?" said Captain Newton from his revolving chair.

"The light speed machine is kaput, sir."

"On our present course we shall rendezvous with the black hole in M22 in precisely 0.333 of a light year," observed Navigator Galilei, gazing through the starboard porthole.

"I don't suppose you can fix the thing?" growled Captain Newton, his chair slowly revolving to a stop.

"Difficult," said Einstein, after a long pause.

"If not impossible," said Galilei.

"Mind you, we can't expect UFO1 to go on forever. She is 20 billion light years old. Mechanical problems are bound to arise," said Newton philosophically.

"It's not as if we have any spare parts," said Einstein ruefully.

"Or any hope of getting any," added Galilei gratuitously.

At that moment Midshipman Hawking arrived with a tray of steaming ersatz coffee.

"Perhaps young Hawking can help us?" mused Newton.

"How, sir?" asked Hawking nervously.

The three officers fell into deep thought. Hawking shuffled and recalled that the crew's toilets, showers and laundry facilities had been wrecked by the blast.

"Hawking," snapped Newton at last, "can you remind us about the speed of light?"

"300,000 kilometres per second," Hawking answered brightly.

"And...," said Netwon, waiting for more.

"And it's constant," added Hawking.

"Why is it constant, Hawking?" demanded Newton.

"Because of the effect of ... UFO1's machine?" Hawking ventured uncertainly.

"A good shot," said Newton.

"Shall I explain?" said the Chief Engineer.

"Please do Mr. Einstein, otherwise we shall be here forever."

"The universe," said Einstein, beginning to pace backwards and forwards, "can only exist because of the effect of the light-speed machine, or the LSM as we shall call it. The LSM works like an old Buster Keaton movie but its rate of flicker is obviously much faster. In fact it flickers at an amazingly high speed. The LSM here on UFO1 is responsible for keeping the speed of light constant throughout the universe."

The Chief Engineer paused to let this top secret piece of information sink in. He struck a match and slowly lighted his briar.

"Well I never. How extremely clever," said Galilei smiling.

"So the universe that you think you see is not really there all of the time," said the Captain.

Hawking gasped.

"You may continue Mr. Einstein."

"Thank you, Captain. Now where was I? Ah yes ... young Hawking ... and you Galilei ... you may both consider that the universe is in effect blinking on and off like an old film but you can't see the gaps. You can only say that the light seems to be coming at you and going away from you at a terrific speed."

"Unless there's a time slip," said Newton, casually swirling the dregs in his coffee mug.

"Time slip," echoed Hawking.

"Yes Midshipman Hawking, a time slip. Just as in those old films the film suddenly jumps a few sprockets, so it can happen in the universe when the LSM computer is having an off-day. There can be a slight disorientation of time in various odd places; there are glimpses into the future and other such phenomena. These are simply the work of the gremlins in the LSM."

Hawking considered this.

"Mr. Einstein," he said after a few moments, "is the LSM totally defunct?"

"I just saw the remains of it sailing past the starboard porthole," said Galilei.

"I guess it is," said Einstein.

There was a long silence as they all considered the implications.

"I'm afraid it's the end," said Newton at last.

"Yes, the whole kit and caboodle is going to go up in smoke pretty soon," said Einstein, drawing deeply on his briar.

"I concur," said Galilei, fiddling with UFO1's navigational instruments which continually failed to respond.

"But didn't you once say, Mr Einstein, that 'God doesn't play dice'?" said Hawking.

"By God, I did."

"Yes, you're right," said Galilei, turning to smile.

"I knew it," said Newton, "the boy's a genius."

"What we need to do," said Hawking is reduce the size of the universe to ... let me think ... yes, about one kilometer in diameter should do it ... I can calculate the exact size later."

"This is a possiblility," said Netwon, "since the universe size mechanism, the USM, is undamaged."

"Then," said Einstein, realising immediately where the discussion was heading,"when we've reduced the galaxies to the size of chocolate buttons we won't need the LSM because if light takes billions of light years to cross a chocolate button size galaxy like our own Milky Way then for all intents and purposes the speed of light will be as near to zero as makes no difference."

"But the people ...," began Galilei.

"Yes, the people will be reduced to the size of quantum particles," enthused Hawking, "but they won't know it, because everything else will be reduced correspondingly."

"Then let's do the sums, Mr Einstein," said Newton.

In no time at all the three officers, closely observed by Hawking, did the math. It transpired that the ideal size for the new universe was within 1% of Midshipman Hawking's prediction.

Newton took his seat in front of the USM and the others, now joined by other members of UFO1's crew, including Lieutenants Copernicus and Ptolemy of the night shift who had managed somehow to sleep through the crisis, peered over his shoulder.

Carefully Newton turned the red dial and reset the USM before pressing the button marked 'GO'. All heads turned as one to face the starboard porthole. There floating in space and contained in what appeared to be a large soap bubble was the whole universe. Spontaneous applause broke out. Copernicus and Ptolemy quickly produced, as if by magic, a magnum of champagne and enough glasses to go round.

"No need to worry any more about black holes," said Galilei, "UFO1 is now bigger than the whole universe. We have plenty of time to repair our steering mechanism."

"Thank you Galilei, and thank you too Mr. Einstein and you too Midshipman Hawking. It seems that together we've won the day."

"Thank you, Captain Newton," said Hawking, "but in the excitement we've all forgotten something important,"

"What's that?" said Newton.

"Today," said Hawking, "is the 25th of December. It's your birthday!"

Newton rose slowly to his feet. He permitted a faint smile to cross his countenance.


THE END

______
Gw2010

Monday 21 June 2010

Heinrich Maier, the quiet man


The life-size headless carved man with his hands raised to form a silent megaphone is Dr. Dr. Heinrich Maier; priest, theologian, philosopher, underground resistance leader, and the last man to be executed by the Nazis shortly before they retreated from Vienna.

In line with their leader's scorched earth policy Hitler's soldiers destroyed the pipeline carrying the city's drinking water supply from the mountains, blew-up the 9 bridges over the Danube, set the city centre and the cathedral ablaze (a white flag had earlier been raised on the cathedral roof) and took the city's fire engines with them as they retreated in the face of a Russian advance.

Prior to his beheading, a few days before the end of the war, in the Mauthausen Concentration Camp - the notorious camp is the subject of the famous war film The Hill - Heinrich Maier was brutally tortured and interrogated many times but consistently refused to answer questions about his group. His last words as he was taken to the guillotine were: "For Christ and Austria!"

The memorial to Dr. Dr. Heinrich Maier is to be found in the parish church of St. Leopold in Vienna's 18th District.

the quiet man

In the silence
the voice of God
speaks loudest

______
gw2010

Sunday 20 June 2010

Alan Morrison's Keir Hardie Street*

Scruffy, unkempt as a street-scummed urchin,
Knelt on the ground to finger the pages
Of a moss-bound book, apparently blank,
Liberated from the clamping of print -
Something resembling a freak summer breeze
Ruffled the pages ...
(p34 Keir Hardie Street)


The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, is the working class classic, from the pen of South African writer Robert Tressell, who sadly died before he could give us more; and it is more than an inkling of what Alan Morrison is all about.

Philanthropists is a searing searching conscience pricking truth that every corrupt, expenses fiddling politician, every war mongering general, every overpaid layabout living it up in his favourite sunny yacht harbour or favourite shady casino or favourite 5-star brothel, every carelessly gambling away your pension and the roof over your head billionaire banker and his friend the stock market speculator, every greenhorn president and every pretender to the throne of the prime minister, every black-gold at any price oil man, and many many others of that ilk would do well to read.

In reality and in truth only the poor and the exploited are the world's real philanthropists. And that's not only an unjust situation but it's also highly dangerous. The centre cannot hold in such a world. It is plainly out of balance. Something, or someone, will have to give. History tells us that this is so.

Give me some truth! John Lennon said. And perhaps, that's the moral here; it's also a starting and an ending point.

You might call Morrison a modern day ragged trousered poet; he'd probably be pleased if you did. Readers already familiar with Morrison's ouvre will be aware that the poet has a strong socialist conscience and more than a leftward leaning slant; he's more than a nod towards the political philosophy of writers like Tressell. I imagine him on his breezy way to his work as a Poet-in-Residence in an English south coast psychiatric institution, his warm scarf wrapped around his neck, a copy of the Morning Star under his oxter and a new poem idea for his patients to work on, it's part of their therapy, simmering on a gas jet in his head.

To think of Alan Morrison as some kind of Saturday morning town centre socialist tub-thumper, is to miss the point. Through his poetry and his website, he promulgates intelligently, it must be said, many subjects and situations that need to be addressed and attended to. And he invites others, from whatever part of the political or poetic spectrum, to join him if they have something intelligent and relevant to say. Many have. The Recusant, his 3-year old internet child, already boasts more than a quarter of a million visitors and a fine collection of eclectic poetry.

When our eyes are opened we see that the men and women, and in many countries the children, who work from dawn to dusk in poor conditions, often risking their already fragile mental and physical health, for a few paltry crumbs from the rich man's table are the real philanthropists in our unjust world. Morrison is their champion. And he's a very good one at that. Check out the website at The Recusant (via my A-Z LINKS) to see what makes him tick.

There are 3 long poems in the 96-page book. The title poem Keir Hardie Street is comprehensively annotated and every difficulty and nuance is explained. We see here the mind of the poet at work. His raw material sources are laid bare. There are no clever tricks up the sleeve. The character of the fictitious narrator Allan Jackdaw is based on Robert Tressell (and also the poet John Davidson). The method used is impasto; a thickly applied impressionist method used by painters. The result, like some of Morrison's previous work, is almost Dylanesque (after Dylan Thomas that is); it's a read aloud 908 line piece that you can perform at home for yourself, or even for a gathering of friends at your local pub. It's a kind of play for voice/s. And it begins, typically, thus:

Gash of grubby blood-brick buildings
Congealed under a bandaged sky
In every doily-curtained window heaves a life -
Motionless stout spectators crouch, watch the trains snail in ...

My notes on reading this include a short quote from Nelson Mandela, that came into my mind; it's a kind of raison d'etre for a man's work in his own field, and that said, it is also a motto I sense is followed by Alan Morrison in his struggle against injustice. There's no need for deep analysis. A man's first instincts, if he has a heart and a conscience, are always correct; as when Mandela said to the world This isn't right.

Keir Hardie Street is a book that demands to be read closely and slowly. It has a lot to offer; the sounds, the imagery, the articulations, the music; it is all there to be enjoyed; but now it is only right that I leave the last word here to Alan Morrison himself: It's from the poem Clocking-in for the Witching Hour:

You can keep your Kipling and his 'If',
there is no If about it;
put away your Plain Tales From The Hills
for the plainer truth of things ...



______
*author's note:
an earlier draft of 'Keir Hardie Street' was published in The Mansion Gardens (Paula Brown, 2006).

Keir Hardie Street by Alan Morrison publisher Smokestack books, price 7.95p, ISBN 978-0-9560341-6-8
official launch & date:
Housmans Bookshop, 5 Caledonian Road, Kings Cross, London N1 9DX
5:00pm Saturday 24th July 2010
______
Alan Morrison's poem 'Snapdragon' is on the Poet-in-Residence Poetry 2010 page.

Friday 18 June 2010

A Farewell

The sun goes down behind the mountains
and in the valleys the evenings dawn
with cool breezes and long shadows.

Oh, see! How like a silver barque
the moon floats on the heavenly sea.
Under the dark spruce I felt the breeze.

The streams sang louder and
the flowers glowed in the twilight
as Earth breathed peace and sleep.

All desires will soon be dreams
for tired men plodding wearily home
with forgotten happiness of youth.

Birds crouch in twigs. The world sleeps on.

The breeze blows cool through the spruce
where I stand and wait for my friend.
Where I wait to bid him a last farewell.

I yearn, O friend, to enjoy the beauty
of the evening at your side. Where are you?
I've been alone so long.

With my lute I wandered back and forth
on paths on which the soft grass swelled.
O beauty! O eternal love! O life!

When from his horse he dismounted
and handed me the parting drink. I asked
him where he must go, and why.

When he spoke his voice was choking:
"My friend, in this world
I've had little good fortune.

"So, where do I go? I go to the mountain.
To seek my peace for my heart, to see my town,
my home; not to stray abroad."

My heart is still and waits for the hour.

The dear Earth everywhere
newly blooms with green Spring.

All over, eternally, a distant blue sky!
Eternal... eternal...

______
gw2010
after Hans Bethge, Emily Ezust, Mong-Kao-Jen & Wang Wei

Friday 4 June 2010

Kloy Nagro goes to Paradise

Kloy Nagro goes to Paradise

Fifteen years ago Kloy Nagro's village was completely wiped-out by the Great Earthquake and Kloy was lucky to escape with his life. A passing eagle plucked Kloy from the edge of the widening gap in the field where he was playing with his toys and dumped him safely in the crown of a tree where he was later found by the rescue services.

So why is Kloy Nagro now on his way to the bus station with a bomb in his rucksack, you might well ask.

The person who can answer that question best is Kloy Nagro himself. Unfortunately by the time we catch up with him he will have blown himself and six others to smithereens.

Kloy Nagro's professor at the New University would also know the answer since it was he who planted the seeds of discontent in Kloy's mind before giving him the bomb.

Unfortunately we can't ask the professor either.

The professor's 90-year old mother happened to be on the same bus as Kloy Nagro. She was reduced to a Breaking News statistic.

The lead writer on the Three Suns newspaper will write that the mind of a great professor has sadly been reduced to that of a gibbering idiot.

Micro-seconds after the bomb exploded Kloy Nagro found himself sitting in the sunshine on the bank of a meandering river in a green and pleasant land. Birdsong trilled through the still air. Rainbow fish splashed in the low mist on the river. Somewhere nearby somebody was playing a soft melody on a harp. It's wonderful, thought Kloy, just like the professor said it would be.

Kloy rose to his feet and gazed at the pastoral scene with great happiness in his humble subatomic heart.

Looking about him he was delighted to see that he was not alone. There were some animals; sheep, goats, and cows grazing in a nearby field.

And over there; why there were some nice looking people too. They were standing in the shade of a plane tree. Suddenly, almost joyfully it seemed, the small group ran towards Kloy Nagro.

In the bright sunlight a large bird circled overhead.

______
gw2010

King of the Hobos


King of the Hobos

With a final wave of his owl-feathered stick
Steam Train Maury took a westbound freight.

He took a train to Toledo, to the end of the line
His white hair blowing like steam in the air.

Old friends were there when the train pulled in -
Frying Pan Jack with a scrubbed-out stewpot
And the Philadelphia Kid with a deck of crumpled cards -

Steam Train drew an 8 and a 9.



gw2010
(early version of poem in Poetry Monthly during 2007)

Steam Train Maury Graham, last Grand Patriarch of the American Hobos, passed away on 18th November 2006 near Toledo. He was 89. Probably the end of an era.

Having read his anguished words

Having read his anguished words

I too am moved to dip my pen
into the spilled inkpot of a
Welsh sunset:

Dear Iago,

My wonderful ancestor, the mangels docked
you kept the knife and grinned
your way to the hunchback rain-soaked
church beside the sea. You found it locked
and bolted; the place in darkness. Empty.

Below, in the Ship, others like you
in brighter humour, were crowding the bar
noisy over the price of lamb the latest haul
of fish.

Iago, under your blue slate slab
below the trembling hill pray rest
easy in your seashore bed.

_____________
gw 2003, 2010
note: a version of the above poem won 1st prize in the Autumn 2003 JBWB poetry contest. These and links to other contests can be found at www.jbwb.co.uk

Tuesday 1 June 2010

Deuce to pay

Deuce to pay


Break out the devil's books
And deal the devil's playthings

Spread out the devil's dozen cards
On the table where the players are blind

now devil take
now devil snatch
now devil fly away with thee

one pulls the devil by the tail
one whips him round the stump

The devil's bones rattle in the cup
There will be the deuce to pay

______
gw2010