More Ant Manoeuvres

In the forests of Brazil
Ants are building the Great-Ant-Hill
A fortress for ten million insects
With a thousand tunnels to their nests
All lined inside with cemented earth
And having ten chambers within each berth;
A quiet excitement pervades the work,
In the drainage channels soldiers lurk
And on the bridges more soldiers watch
No slave can run or shirk or botch;
And when from the forest on full moon nights
The shuttles run down from the heights
Of the highest trees to the neighbourhood
And feelers tap-tap through the woods
They sign the way to the guarded gates,
To the 7th wonder of the Great-Ant-State

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gw2010
image: free-clip-art

To an athlete dying young

The time you won your own town race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.

Today, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.

Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields where glory does not stay
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.

Eyes the shady night has shut
Cannot see the record cut
And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears:

Now you will not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honours out,
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died before the man.

To set, before its echoes fade,
The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
And hold to the low lintel up
The still-defended challenge cup,

And round that early laurelled head
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girl's.

-
A. E. Housman (1859-1936)

Ant Manoeuvres

Our large-headed soldiers
Are odd ungainly creatures
Whose heads can stop-up doors
Whose jaws can split the husks of grain,
Though for the most part they are idle, since
They only need to come to life
And run around and snap their sickled jaws
At foreign creatures who come too near
Or sometimes cast a listless eye upon a line
Of workers, until it's time to march again; when
Our Queen sees need of a greener scene
Living off the land will mean living on the hoof;
If a horse be tethered we shall pick it clean
And its bones will rest where we have been

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gw2010

Asteroid Apophis

for Seamus Heaney's 90th birthday

Asteroid Apophis is heading towards Earth. It may or may not cause worldwide prayers and panic in the weeks leading up to 13th April 2029 - that remains to be seen. I have seen various odds against a direct hit on our planet ranging from 30/1 to 60/1 and have also read theories that Apophis will pass safely between Earth and Moon (as in this Wiki-photo where the white line is the official margin of error).

I remember how we all watched the TV news for pictures every night fascinated and safely terrified when a comet, Shoemaker-Levy I think, plunged piece by piece, like a broken string of firey beads, into the gas giant Jupiter some years ago.

I also remember drawing a sweepstake ticket for a horse called Foinavon when it won the Grand National, against all predictions, at odds of 100/1.

Asteroid Apophis*

Blake's God measures the future
with hair blowing in torn sail
ragged in the east wind's gale
with golden dividers fixed at 90°
- the span of his left hand

Circumscribes the universe
with exactness and precision
then leaves Apophis on the way
- neglects to clear the builder's debris
and rests upon the seventh day

______

*Apophis:

an evil snakelike demon

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gw2010

the brass monkey's idea of hell

i.m.
Aldous Huxley and Jacob Bronowski


fire is earth
fire is air
fire is water
fire is fire

and that is
in 12 words
the essence
of fire

except to note
in passing
that fire was never alive
and well (or even dead)
down there in hell, and
not one speck of ash was ever found
in that non-existent place

fire is the purifier
the creator
the bringer of light
and life

fire is energy
unlike absolute zero
which is a dead
nothingness
and which is
whichever way you want look at it
only to be found in
a cold place beyond bitterest cold
colder than the brass monkey's proverbial balls
created in the roaring fire
of 1942
and then fallen without hope

the demi-god Prometheus knew it,
and today it's true
that we all do too,

hell is a cold dead and dismal place
where one single atom
(or one single sub-atomic particle)
if it could exist
wouldn't
and doesn't

no. 273 on kelvin street

in downtown
deathsville
is an address
you wouldn't want to know

it's kind of
below
here,
and
that kind of
below bit,
at least that little bit,
is a fragment of an un-
intended truth
a spark of light
escaped

in a manner of speaking
said the brass monkey

to himself

on examining his own reflection
_____
gw2010
image: Stanthorpe brass monkey (wiki-commons)

Emergency Verse

Anyone lamenting the absence of 'state of the nation' writing to challenge the prevailing political orthodoxy of austerity and hard-nosed welfare reform need despair no longer - Gordon James, The Guardian

Poetry in the defence of the Welfare State from Michael Horowitz, Michael Rosen, Bill Greenwell, Ken Worpole, Debjani Chatterjee, Mario Petrucci, Sebastian Barker, Judith Kazantzis, Victoria Field, Robert Ilson, Barry Tebb, Alexis Lydiard, Julie Whitby, Brenda Williams, Alan Corkish, Jim Bennett, Prakash Kona, Andy Croft, Sally Richards, John O'Donoghue, Peter Street, Tom Kelly, Keith Armstrong, Steve O'Brien, Sam Smith, Alan Dent, David Kessel, N S Thompson, Gwilym Williams (that's me), Alan Morrison (that's Alan in the photo below) and more than 70 other concerned poets...

This 300-page poetry book is downloadable for only 2.99p at the RECUSANT (sidebar A-Z LINKS>>>). Get it and get it NOW! and Save the Welfare State.

The first great UK political anthology of 2010 is shaping up to be 'Emergency Verse' - Todd Swift, Eyewear
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We're trying to prove poetry can make things happen - Alan Morrison
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I warmly welcome 'Emergency Verse' - Caroline Lucas MP
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A 'POETRY KIT' BOOK OF THE MONTH (SEPTEMBER 2010)
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