Poems, Polemicks and Licks

More of the Shame

We walk this morning to the reservoirs,
these great pools filled with winter rains,
filled to overflowing like broken hearts.
We await the coming of the geese
skimming in like military drones.

Far away the cruel satanic choirs
of shells chant barbarous refrains
reminding us humanity departs
when ignorance undoes our sense of peace.
We hear the sound of tramping from their homes,

the hundred million miles of refugees,
their haunting songs bewildered on the breeze.

At Seventy

Is there more to say, much more to know?
You'd think in seventy years you'd have seen it all,
had heard all wisdoms, sown the seeds that grow
luxuriant grasses, fertilised and tall
with understanding, comprehension like
a second sense, a knowing, winking eye.
But no. This age is more a Pennine hike
than a country stroll, each step a swallowed sigh.

It seems a shame you've not made more of it,
stuck at something, chased some small success.
Yet not for any transitory fame,
more, participating in the game
continuing around you as you bless
all those you've loved. They're the core of it.

Memoriam
For Arthur Wesney 1915-1941

If I could, I'd come to visit you,
where your bones have lain these eighty years.
In Libya's dangerous soil you are interred
beneath the ground you died on as a youth,
so many dreams unfulfilled and gone.
My father, who fought with you, is now gone too,
but died an old man, lying in his bed
still thinking of the way you fell in battle,
your sacrificial blood drained in the sand.
What would be gained by coming to your grave
is indefinable. I cannot tell  
you of the millions subsequently slain
and feel your sorrow heave beneath the earth,
but only kneel to give you back your name.

Never Lost

You talk to me in the way you like to do,
your words, all news, what's happening in the world.
I adore you for your vast humanity,
the way you'll never cease to show how love
transforms us all so we are never lost.

Out of the Dark

"The mind, once enlightened, cannot again become dark"
                                     Thomas Paine

The journey started many years ago,
as Hesse had, heading to the East,
his mind a fragile butterfly of hope.
And once he settled there he realised
there was no returning, no way back.
Yet still he yearned for the warm comforts of sin,
an ignorance of unknowing dreams.
He dreamt only of stillness and respite.

Knowledge is like a sparkler in the night,
thirty seconds, just on the edge of sight,
the marks of it left inside your eyes
as firefly sparks crackle and quickly die.
But somehow these images remain,
illusions of light that guide us out of the dark.