The Truth of Beauty

Sometimes a thing sudden
Out of nowhere
Will knock you breathless
Stop you dead, shaken
The water pooling in your eyes
Ready to brim and spill
Say the moon in the window
Floating filling the frame
The lime white clean white
Reaching limbs
Of plane trees lined up
Against that gentian sky,
Terracotta stone with brick, creams and pink
Irregular in patches
Rubbed and weather-worn
Solid stood for centuries
Golden fish with gills translucent
Curving winding
Blowing bubbles
Matisse women ecstatic
Ever given to the dance
And oh! Hepworth's polished precious child!
Or that soprano soaring
Crystal sweet sublime
Smell of cinnamon/ vanilla
Taste of perfect William pear

Some things sudden
Out of nowhere
Grab you by your collar
Pick you up and shake you
Jolt
Out of the daily the passing of hours
The stock and the regular
Not even clocked
A burst of beauty
Stand-out extraordinary
Message and portent
The signal is strong
It’s truth and it’s other
Transcendent, transforming
It shines in the drabness
Hits on the heart
Bang
Do you wonder we cry?

29th November 2009, Hounoux

England's Glory

England’s Glory

Don’t ask me to
Puff out my chest
And wave the union flag
To paint my face
With red and white
To swell with pride
At monstrous words
In mawkish Hope and Glory
What then, forget Iraq?
Or strutting Blair o’erweening
Or all the way to colonies
To slaving ships
And white god, tinkling teacups
Genteel lawns and vicars
Iron fist revealed concealed
In velvet bloody gauntlet?
Patriotic Daily Mail
I spit on you
Despising
The most I’ll manage
If we must
Delight, albeit tempered
Disbelieving
When national team
Our boys in white
Fail to lose at cricket

But when we stamped
Across the globe
In name of God and monarch
One legacy we left behind
Our English tongue transplanted
And root it took
And shoot and branch
In tropic soil it ran amok
Interbreeding native stock
In hybrid glorious
Bastard forms
And though the French will try – in vain-
You can’t contain a language
Or water in a sieve
Convolvulus is obstinate
Its tendrils creep unseen
To thrive, survive and overrule
The wasteland’s Morning Glory

So glad I am
For native tongue
The accident of English
For euphony and harmony
For synonyms and antonyms
For accent dialect and burr
The richness, wealth and vigour
For false friends, puns
And slang and street
For imports exports world wide
Web communication
Poems, for specialist and general
For Queen’s, RP
And rapper’s binge
For daily neologism
Writ in letters, signed on hand
Cryptic in a crossword
Formed in the infant mouth
A mammana a boppata
We all adopt his terms
(And grieve for them, outgrown)
Fashion fad or ancient
Word, beloved of generations
Esoteric vocab
Exclusive to the few
Dog’s bollocks to the printer
Cat’s whiskers or pyjamas
Where does the bee locate his knees?
Or mother’s clapping hammer
A hundred phrases, idioms
A cornucopia and feast
Excessive manic splurge

So I will hymn
Eschewing pride
The language of my birth
The plethora and surplus
The joyous surfeit, glut
Extravagance exuberant
Mine by chance
Geography
Imbibed with mother’s milk
Democratic free for all
Beloved English tongue

22nd November 2009, autoroute to Narbonne

Wake-up call

Wake-up Call

This week two men came to stay
Plus one, of course, already here
Man’s work to be done
Involving shovels, mortar
Sand, breeze-block stacking
Loud voices and opinions
Mercifully not football
Spared Arsenal/ Man-U rows
And Chelsea, Liverpool and
All the inglorious rest
But need for stoking
Calories upon the plate
(Though I might call it tarte au chevre)
And constant brews
How fortunate there’s me indoors
To fly the female flag
My domain it seems
The kitchen, here I’m queen
Free to choose the menus
The hour for washing-up
Or other light domestic chores
And sometimes to essay
A contribution, verbal,
Of my own, or half at least
Before they interrupt
Snatch back the conch
Run the full pitch length
To touch it down
I’ve taken to flouncing
And sullenness, childish
Sad response
Just where would we be if
Germaine, the Pankhursts
The burners of bras
Hunger strikers, martyrs
Had burst into tears
Dissolving in petulant sulks?
Here where I am, seven days
Salutary
Thank god for the harridans
The strident the strong
Viragos and feminists
For solidarity with friends
For post-war birth date
The pill, women’s lib
Greenham, rights enshrined
Some attempts at least
At last at equality
Balance and redress
So easily tipped
Default position, masculine
Lesson learned this week
Wake up call

October 18th 2009, Hounoux

Sheherazade's Treasure

Scheherazade’s Treasure

Open your eyes, listen
It isn’t just me
The clamour is visible
Waving hello
Look there in the corner
Precious post-war toy,

One loving owner, careful

The butterfly stitched
By our son when a boy
The photos in albums, capturing the day
Child with a gap where her milk teeth had been
Chunk of her hair cropped
Remember, with scissors she found
The cushion embroidered
Tells of your mother, Derbyshire girl
Picking the wild flowers, here stitched with care
Or there, pride of place
The table’s a storyboard
Polished French oak
For gathering random, strangers and friends
And daily creating
Encounters and tales
Clicked in a photo
Painted in oils
Words in the guest book
See here, baby teeth
Stored in a box
Tooth fairy plunder
Twenty years old
Artefacts, relics, history’s clues
Tangible visible oral passed on
Scheherazade’s treasure
For thousands of nights
A subtext a chorus for backdrop for bliss
Everyday everywhere
Stories to tell

10th September 2009, Hounoux

Red

Red

I laughed out loud
In sheer delight
At turn of idle
Browsing page, listed under ‘red’
Exotic shock in desert dust
A pop-up flower show,
Carnation, poppy, fuchsia
Rose, cottage-garden pink
And then the paint box lifted lid
Inhale! Good enough to lick
Carmine crimson cramesy
Scarlet nacarat vermeil
All heady ruddy
Russet cherry
Apples berries fruits
The beaded bubbles
Claret Burgundy Bordeaux
Ruby on the lips, drips
Scarlet woman tempting Titian
Auburn henna hair
Or cinnabar and cardinal
Zinging in the south
Hot Tuscan earth the potter
Baked to terracotta clay
On burnt sienna hills
A happy chance, encountering
Pure serendipity
A catalogue proclaiming loud
The glory of the red

21st November 2009, Hounoux

So sings my soul

So sings my soul

Pan’s shadow trailing
Clouds or rustling winter leaves
Inner flame
Ineffable black hole
Or hard and shining shell
Caramel at core
Or tortoise carapace
Behind the eyes
Between the heartbeats
At touch of fingertips
Or lips, beneath the tongue
There where the atom splits
Or cells collide and fuse
In crystal drop from tearful duct
Or muscle creased to smile
Where synapse clicks, connects and fires
A diamond chain, bright linking
Thoughts to words, ideas to deeds
How, when no trace
No scent or sound
No hint or clue is left
Can man, however grand he grows
Discern his soul immortal?

17th November 2009, Hounoux

Love not eroded

Love not eroded

Whenever I look up
There, she sighed
Relief at last
Shall ye be
And so it is for thee and me
Your solidness a given
Certain
Your foot on spade
Your hands in soil
Fingernails in mourning
Your bulk to be a windbreak
A winter warming cave
And shelter, shade
A man for all the seasons
Beloved constancy

18th November, 2009, Hounoux, for A, of course, in gratitude

And what of god?

And what of god?

And what of god
Your childhood friend
Long ago sent packing?

So once again the much-tried

Cure, the self-help guide
With careful steps
Or packet mix repellent
But weight-loss guaranteed
And fast
The serious exercise regime
Row for your life
Breathe in, stay calm
Repeat this mantra daily
Above all keep the faith
Another glass of red?
Or mindless televisual
Crap, always a store
Saved, to be replayed
Numbing, hypnotic
Charm of babble and of noise
Prattle, a tale told
Neatly, sweetly
Organised to soothe
Imbibe ingest the drug
Of fiction and escape
Marian Keyes I
Swallow you, devour you
Or is that in reverse
Me, lost gone obliterated
In the pages and the verse?

And what of god
Your childhood friend
Long ago sent packing?

When all and none
Of the above
Will do the trick
Still the rats who gnaw
And bite, not pretty sight
Gruesome, reeking havoc
Then do you yearn
For mum and dad
For black and white TV
Before the F word everywhere
For good behaviour sure
To be rewarded
And are you tempted to your knees
Arthritic now and painful
To call upon him
Childhood friend
Long ago sent packing?

18th November 2009, Hounoux

Luca's Moons

Luca’s Moons

The sickle moon
Crescent, cheese-knife paring
Slivered from the whole
He bids me draw
And draw again
His eyes in O
Of wonderment
Another moon he cries!
It is his passion
His delight
On paper or on high
A ghost at noon
Or lit by night
Vast lantern shiny hung
He counts them left and right
Not one, but multiple
In his small world
The magic of the moons

November 14th 2009, Hounoux

Love

Love

Just the one word
Umbrella
Insufficient
For all the world
Its depth and breadth
From love of life and country
To child and friend and wife
For family pet and favourite food
For football team or colour red
Designer shoes by Jimmy Choo
Scent of grass or wood smoke fire
Remains of passion
Worn with age
Or current surging
Brand new lust
Imperative and must
All senses filled incontinent
From searing heat of fireball
To tender mother’s bliss
Kiss of newborn
Just the one word
Omnipotent
Love

8th November 2009, Brighton

Clear as Stars

Clear as Stars

You write
So poignantly
Clear as stars
Bright message
From eternity
Of love, life blood
Pulsing, of
Fire in the veins
A perfect pairing
Two halves made whole
Dire separation’s purest pain
Your taste forbidden fruit fantastical
Of heaven and of hell

You paint a passion
Sharpened steel
Stiletto slicing skin
Bleeding crimson
Drop by drop
Each other’s drug and need
Completion
Clear as stars
Bright message
From eternity
Of love

6th November 2009, Brighton, for J with love

Thoughts on Fry and Forster

Thoughts on Fry and Forster

Only connect, imperative
The writer's stout command
And by god, by Google
Twitter tweets and blogspots
Online digitally doors
Ever open, portals posted
Facebook friends texts twitched
From modern thumbs, rapid fire
Touch pad touch base
Click here befriend/ un-friend
Comment console critique and cry
Pluck a rabbit from a hat
Blow bubbles in a pipe
Something out of nothing
Chimera dazzles on the screen
All sorcery and sleight of hand
Flummery and froth
Puffed up, drummed up
Trending blasting down the lines
Plastic celebrity
Virtual or real?
Fickle-fingered fame
Thoughtless thumbs
Respect, man, respect
Engage brain before blog
Tread softly
Daydreams trashed in trample
Fragile under foot
Only connect, reflect
Handle with care

3rd November 2009, St Michael's Place, Brighton

Survival Guide

Survival Guide

I bought a book a life ago

To keep the wisdom in

Words to cherish, comfort, cheer

Provoke or soothe, my own

Anthology and treasure trove

Battered now and cover worn

From thirty years companionship

Trips abroad, in rucksack

Pocket, bag

Ever there, in India

Chennai's dust and shoreside sand

Recording lines from Gandhi

Rabindranath Tagore

Confucius, ancient and anon

Some thoughts

Found in a Bondi book store

Or engraved in stone

In Arlington, redolent of grief

Regret

A poem posted on a tube train

London underground, haiku emailed

From a friend, or Sidney Carter

Lord of the Dance

Guardian obituary page

Another etched in a Sussex graveyard

Or read at mother's passing/

Son's wedding/ world's welcome

For a sweet grandchild

I thank her now in retrospect

Elderly Quaker, name now gone

Who passed me her suggestion

Her emergency collection

A precious tome to rescue in event of fire

A book of wisdom, constant consolation

As faithful as a husband

Ever by my side

October 16th 2009, Hounoux

Friends' Meeting, November 1st

Friends' Meeting, November 1st

Wet Sunday

November skies weeping

For all the saints

Who from their labours rest

Day of the Dead,

All Hallows' Eve now done

Small fanged and ghostly

Creatures, sugar-rushed

Nauseous to bed

Tricks and treats dispensed

Pagan diary closed

Pending solstice hibernal

Lord of Misrule etc

December's bright enlighteners

Wet Sunday

Taxi and hobble

(Smack of ankle bone

Crack, crippling)

To Ship St Meeting

Friends in silence

Calm and quiet, balm dropping

Dew soothing soul

Like rain on desert

Dunes, the lilies shoot and bloom

Within this room

What where who?

Me, you, the promise

Quakers hold for truth

Attend to that of god

In everyone and everywhere

In stillness

Life's brief oasis

Seeker after peace

I do

November 1st 2009, Bagelman cafe, Ship St, Brighton, for Jude