Category: Poems

Eyeless in Gaza

Lachrymose, morose
hidden faces
shielded eyes;
the years of war
like purgatory,
a putrid sore.
Like Samson was,
his eyes put out
the actors in this
sordid play
bereft of love
of empathy,
forever blind.

On the Knocker

I knock your door to see if you're ok,
to ask you if there's something I can do
that puts food on your table, feeds your kids,
protects you from the scourge of climate change.
Your answer is a stare of bewilderment
as I try to explain what I think is the cause
of our immiseration, our defeat;

the power of financial capital,
the gross inequalities of wealth,
the longest pay squeeze for two hundred years,
the greedy prowess of the oligarchs
that leads to war, displacement, refugees.
At this you seem to wake, Yes them, you say.
If I had my way I'd take 'em off at the knees.

Remembrance
i.m. David Baker
Where they died is still the sand and rock
you encountered then, fought for by
an army of young men so similar
except for the uniforms they wear.
Born to mothers under their blue skies
but somehow distant in ideology
and time, yet war is their familiar,
their eternal link; how each young man dies.

The seventy-five years separating you
has, it seems, been wasted has it not?
The lessons which you'd think we should have learnt
we have not learned; it appears we have forgotten.
Of course, each generation forgets anew
the truths, the lies, those things we thought we knew.

Jackdaws

They arrive again in this early Spring,
homing in upon the chimney pots,
lilac wing-sheen shining as they turn,
land quite drunkenly, settle on the rims.
They soon begin their foraging;
indisciplined construction showers twigs
upon the drive and block-paved path below,
as off they fly for more from trees nearby
to scratch and scrape and saw. We hear them
on the roof, inside the flue, the urgent
impulse braided in their hearts to nest,
to build these fragile havens for their young,
a threnody as ancient as the stonework
of the house they claim, this Spring, as home.

In boyhood he stalked the Warsash shore
intent on treasure, found preciousness
in cuttlefish bleached like polystyrene,
light as cork. Lifted stones disturbed
with light translucent creatures a low tide left,
awaiting the lung of a flood tide freeing them.

Among the tarred stones and green weed
were barnacled bottles filled with darkness,
archeological cans, driftwood smoothed by
a hundred years afloat and, once, a pirate's chest,
like a piece of left luggage he hid in the marram grass.

And now these images, worn like the driftwood,
haunt his declining nights sleeplessness.
He spends his dreams rearranging the contents,
picking over life's findings like flotsam,
discovering again those things he counts as treasure.

Magpies

If only you could taste the way they stare,
Disdainful as a lemon, bitter as gooseberry.
Their mock Tudor plummage neatly pressed,
They line up in pairs with jocular eyes,
Calls, half cough, half a swallowed laugh
Waiting for the next jape they can pull.
Of any birds you'd like to have a pint with,
Let it be these avine comedians.

Farewell Performance

I'm reading the later poems of Vernon Scannell,
idiosyncrasies of ribald humour,
love, regret, not a little flannel,
penned in his fervent race against the tumour
clinging to the inside of his voice,
a voice of perfect diction. His form of phrase,
confirming always fine poetic choice,
brings laughter, tears, linguistic holidays.

He loved the scan of a pentameter,
though he composed in other forms as well,
with its rhythm of the human beater
pumping blood and love in parallel.
  So too, he scribed a craftily wrought sonnet,
  always his wry humanity stamped on it.

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 several thousand years 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.