Wednesday 28 July 2021

Truth

 Truth

The truth dawns. 

That is how you know it,

Mostly it dawns literally,

But perhaps it’s always dawn somewhere,

So if it should dawn

When it’s not yet morn

Where you are,

Don’t eschew it,

Don’t reject it,

Don’t blow it,

Imagine you’re there.


Truth dawns

But don’t expect to shoe it

Into one of your pre-existing theories,

Or discover it.

Truth, frog-like, spawns,

In safe places

But you can’t uncover it

By determination,

Although it leaves traces,

Clues,

Truth is not news, comment, views,

You might get near it,

But remember, near is

As good as a mile.


Truth plants seeds,

But germination 

Sometimes takes years,

And truth seeds don’t always grow 

Amongst your other ideas,

Truth might be biology,

But it isn’t ideology.

Truth doesn’t care 

About what you think you already know.

Though when it hits you

You might shout “I knew it!”

Truth has no style,

No affectation,

Isn’t prone to exaggeration,

Needs no long winded explanation,

And is not always easy to digest,

However long you chew it.



Sunday 25 July 2021

On ‘Post Pandemic’ Hymn Singing

 

Two rondeau joined together 





Sung Eucharist and hymns, today

And sunlight pouring in to pray

And warm the ancient whitewashed walls

And still yet empty choir stalls

And hear the musty organ play

The Sanctus and the Agnus Dei,

And know that we had gone astray

But had returned, and that our calls,

Sung Eucharist and hymns,

Were some repentance for the way

We’d never dared to disobey

Our earthly leaders. Lacking balls

We’d shut our mouths. In power’s halls

They’d hoped to end by slow decay,

Sung Eucharist and hymns.

And always out of love we sing,

And give our thanks to God the King

We must learn lessons we’ve been taught:

Our good intentions come to naught

When bossy men claim everything

Could dread disease to others bring,

Though this is nonsense, as hymns spring

From prayers and praise and kind support,

Always out of love. 

And loving God removes the sting

From all our earthly suffering.

We should have argued, should have fought

But lacked the balls and so were bought

And now take orders from a ‘ping’,

Always out of love?

Wednesday 21 July 2021

Dropping Off


A fraction of a dream, dense, small,

Before the moment of the fall

Into the full engrossing sleep

An image, most intense and deep,


A vision and a distant call


A picture drawn from some rushed trawl

Through visions stored we don’t recall,

And from the bottom of the heap,

A fraction of a dream.


Sometimes it warns and can appal, 

So we cry out, although we drawl

Our tongues in knots, we wake and weep,

And know that what we sow, we reap,

And what we are is here, is all,

A fraction of a dream. 

Monday 19 July 2021

The Hardy Ones Beloved By Bees

 I gardened once, compulsively,

Which means I shopped obsessively,

And learnt the lovely Latin names,

Of tender things, I grew in frames,

With RHS books close at  hand,

I scoured the internet and planned

My garden as a hiding place,

A dream, a paradise like space.

And yet the work that was required

To keep it as I had in mind

Grew faster than the weeds I'd find

Had killed the rare things which I'd sought

And raised by hand or gladly bought

At great expense.  And only now I understand

As I lie reading in my chair,

Or simply sitting still, to rest,

In put on, tired frailness,

In summer heat and gentle breeze,

That common things are often best:

The roses which sweet scent the air,

The catty smelling elder trees

And even thoughts, as dull as these

Have meaning in their staleness,

Like hardy things beloved by bees.





On The Wrath Of God

Where once the 'wrath of God', we saw,

and knew it for the thing it was,

We now seek other explanations

Fitting modern expectations.

And yet there are still Gods, these days,

These Gods are science, new ideas,

Which crush our hope and increase fears,

We worship these and give them praise.

Our fellow men we loathe, abhor

And blame each other now, because

We do not wish to mend our ways.



Thursday 15 July 2021

Democide (Deaths in 'Care' Homes, Deaths from Experimental Injections Against Covid 19, Deaths From Lockdown, Deaths From 'Saving the NHS ' at the Expense of Treating Patients with Serious Illness Other Than Covid, Death From a Determined Desire to Decrease the Popuation Because of 'Climate Change' Etc


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democide


Family of woman say treatment by care home 'tantamount to torture'



https://mol.im/a/9826097

Though once we did not speak of 'democide',

And governments themselves don't use the word,

Yet their knowledge of its meaning, by their action is implied,

Though areas are grey and lines are blurred.

There were those whom the government preferred

Should trouble them no longer, such men died,

Government disposed but yet no cost incurred.

Though once we did not speak of 'democide'

For modern men were satisfied

That those dependent on the wisdom of the herd

Did not dispatch, wished merely to divide.

And governments themselves don't use the word,

Yet boldly act it out, quite undeterred

By moral principle, their actions coincide

With what they call the public good, which is absurd.

Yet their knowledge of its meaning by their action is implied,

Daily, and governments have always lied,

Ambitious politicians whipped, demurred,

Their Christian objections cast aside,

Though areas are grey and lines are blurred,

So ignorance is easily averred,

By those who do not own their acts, but hide,

Such cowards as they are. Yet undeterred

We shall not now let evil men preside,

Though once we did.

Tuesday 13 July 2021

Where Our Sense Of Self Begins in 2021,

https://unherd.com/2021/07/the-chinese-future-isnt-bright/



(based on the above essay in today’s Unherd, which was actually quite good, but one line in the conclusion annoyed me) 



“Every generation has to re-define what it means to be “free”, where our sense of self begins. In a digital age our individuality begins at the place where our data cannot understand us. Freedom emerges in the space between the algorithms and our actual lives. Tech can deliver many wondrous and terrible things, but it will always fall short of really knowing what makes us human.“


This generation feels the urgent need

To re imagine, comprehend anew,

What freedom really is. This generation must succeed,

For they believe their forebears failed. They view

Their task as more than progress for the few;

They seek to benefit us all, proceed

As if they have some fresh, trustworthy clue.

This generation feels the urgent need

To understand where self begins, it's not agreed.

To set the world aright for all, it seems requires a slew

Of legislation drawn up in haste, at speed.

To re-imagine, comprehend anew,

Our individuality, requires us to construe

New interpretations, how much should we concede?

And were there those who ever knew,

What freedom really was? This generation must succeed,

Convince the people not to act with greed,

For freedom’s simply data’s end, where we are not seen through,

That’s all. Ignore what’s gone before, they plead,

For they believe their forebears failed. They view

The notion as complex, fraught, and seek to strew

The onward path with technocratic jargon, each phrase a weed

That multiplies, grows tall and dims from sight what’s true,

So liberty’s a distant place, always seeming to recede,

This generation feels. 

Sunday 11 July 2021

“The thing I would, that I do not; and what I would not, that I do”


The thing we would is just not true,

The thing we would is just a plot,

And this is useful for our schemes

Derived from some great point of view,

Would often lead us to extremes.

The end point of all rational thought

Is not the truth, as we are taught,

For logic leads us to distort

And find solutions which are short.

And then what we would not

Is what we do,

And since we do it, we know that it’s true,

So truth is what we would not

And false is what we would,

What hope is there for man,

Who seeks to do what’s good? 



Sunday 4 July 2021

How I See Myself Reading News and Comment

 How I See Myself  Reading News and Comment


I can’t explain why truth is true,

How right is right or how I knew

That something everyone believed

Was utter rubbish, ill conceived.

I couldn’t give an interview

And prove by some great mental fight

Another chap was talking shite,

I can’t examine figures and explain

How they do not back up another’s claim.

And when I speak in words as old and plain

And simple as the best things always are,

I sound as boring and as dreary as the rain,

While others, full of fervour, eyes aflame,

Are more convincing, propping up the bar. 

And still I read the papers every day,

And listen to ideas and the way

That they’re presented as established fact,

And as I am plain thinking, lacking tact,

I read, I think, I stew and I react

As if a guiding light had shown the course,

Though I might not know the reasons, 

Or the motives of the source,

I am merely an earnest news inspector,

Experienced through many cycles, seasons,

With finely tuned and honed bullshit detector.