Sunday 28 September 2014

Warm September

September, balmy as June,
And the air has a warmth and a thickness,
And the rosehips glow
In the afternoon,
Prepubescent in their spotlessness,
But ladybird-like in their redness,
Though altogether too slow,
To be ladybird-like in their quickness.
But a ladybird squashed by a bike
Must cease to be ladybird-like;
But does becoming lifeless
Make it rosehip-like in its deadness?
September, balmy as June
And the fruit of the blackthorn is sloe,
Upsidedown
In the heat of the afternoon,
Adolescent in its sleepiness
As a sloth and just as slow.
And the blackness comes and goes,
Now it glows
Like the nose of that creature,
With beetle-like, granite-like shininess,
Then it seems to absorb,
All the light of the orb,
And a new distinguishing feature:
A bloom of dullness and dreariness grows.
And September balmy as June,
Turns me barmy as loonies out under the moon,
As a dreamy, afternoon weariness shows
In my face, as my mind
Leaves all reason behind,
And begins to see fruit hanging up by its toes.

Harpsichord



Jangling tunefully under my bed,
The sound rising up
Through the old deal floor,
Filling, persistently, my head,
With harmony
Spelled out by plucked gut and brass,
The reason of some ancient season 
Speaking not to the soul
As the Erard and Broadwood,
Not affecting, a lunar like pull
On the whole tide of emotion,
But appealing to order,
And understood by some
Instinct known to Pythagoras.

Rameau, Scarlatti, Daquin,
Handel, Bach and Couperin
Providing energy, brilliance,
Commotion, and a joyful demonstration
Of the power of rationality,
Precision, joy, vitality, glittering elegance,
Consisting of and insisting on intelligence.

https://youtu.be/m71_m_oXp0U

https://youtu.be/sImPb1RJkwI
https://youtu.be/GjuyUTiskZo

https://youtu.be/oWkChhFFunc
https://youtu.be/xTGIgbzWcmk
https://youtu.be/v5lvdFLtUxw

https://youtu.be/XbBBNCFwKrs
https://youtu.be/JyTo4Arb_uU
https://youtu.be/jB_HZN8lQwA
https://youtu.be/6X4myFuf5y4
https://youtu.be/QKcDFIMrbng

https://youtu.be/Cbi3o72AJZ4

https://youtu.be/y5xcBR8BGos
https://youtu.be/8_k9bfPrRpY
https://youtu.be/780x8Blgyyg
https://youtu.be/hiw3s1Q3g3M
https://youtu.be/m71_m_oXp0U

https://youtu.be/m71_m_oXp0U



Wednesday 24 September 2014

A Memory



September, as I remember it from childhood,
Was the scrunching of beech leaves in the wood,
Among the skeleton bluebell stalks that stood
Bleached like sun-drenched, ancient bones, by filtered light.
From May to August under pale-green canopy
We played and sheltered from the summer rain, not quite
Aware that autumn always came again, its mood
As fickle as the friends we made at school.  One year
The rain was endless and the streams began to flood,
Carrying tides of foam as if they ran with ale.
And in Assembly in the vast and woody hall,
We learnt 'To be a Pilgrim' and I understood,
Somehow with new appreciation, the idea
Of fitted words and music, all bound up as one
Convenient package, to take out and get undone
At will, beside the scummy stream and in the mud.







Tuesday 9 September 2014

Guardian Angel?

I felt your presence first and knew your purpose,
You did not need to speak, just filled my soul,
My heart, my mind with understanding,
The sense that death was fast approaching,
That my mother's life was near its end.
There was no rush of fear, no apprehension,
No ecstasy, no great elation,
Just deepest peace and total comprehension
Beyond any desire to comprehend.
And then it seemed the sky split open
And in the silver sliver like a migraine
In the space, the tear, the rend
Between the sky and light and air
Was confirmation,
A certainty of God's existence,
Unnecessary, for resistance
Was not within my scope of action.


And then you waited at my shoulder
At my left hand in the kitchen,
Beyond the moment of acceptance,
Like a doctor with a patient
Until you knew it safe to leave me,
When you became the chiaroscuro
Reassuring shadow of a friend.

Monday 8 September 2014

Lucifer (Iblis)

He walks abroad: inhabits souls,
Possesses, those who would know God,
Convinces them he is the Lord, patrols
The inner city streets;
In search of frail minds.

He rapes and tortures, cuts off heads,
And all the while the weak look on,
Or turn and look the other way,
Or make excuse because the kinds
Of men the Devil finds,
Are different.

But those who turn, cast down their eyes,
As first he 'grooms' with love then treats
His victims as his slaves,
Accomplice him after the fact.

Christ taught his followers to pray,
'Deliver us from evil'.
We do not pray, we do not act,
Inhabiting the rational sphere,
Believing man is good and wise.
We only heed the words instead:
"Judge not, lest ye be judged",
Preferring to misunderstand
The words of John
We intellectualise
To countenance our fear.

Should we not call out Lucifer?
Should we not label right and wrong?
If we do not, how can we say
Our consciences are clear?

Seeking ever to comprehend,
We make excuse, we lose command.
The truth is simple, hear!


Wednesday 3 September 2014

Third of September 2014, (another beheading of a hostage by a British Jihadist, David Cameron seeming to think the most pressing problem is Putin's 'Hitler-like' intentions towards Ukraine, meanwhile nothing being done about the rape of 1400 white girls by Muslim men in Rotherham)

"In describing the vacillation and incompetence of the government during the reign of Ethelred Unraed, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle says that when the enemy was in the east then our levies were mustered in the west, and when they were in the south then our levies were in the north, and that whatever course of action was decided upon it was not followed even for a single month."

From a comment on the Telegraph blogs by one "The Real PM".

The enemy was violent in the east,
And so we wagered war towards the north.
And next we closed our minds and almost ceased
To notice inhumanity; poured forth
A worthless propaganda to drum up
Support for causing further bloodshed when
Ceasefire had just then been agreed.My cup
Of absolute contempt runs over. Men
Will vacillate, and dither else cause harm
By pointless interference; then ignore
The consequences of their actions,  arm
Guerillas, condemn self defence... Yet war
Against the enemy within's forbidden,
"Lets kick over the traces, keep things hidden!"