A Kindle near me on the toilet seat,
A fine Prosecco and pizza to eat,
My i-pad playing loudly in my ears;
Ah, who could find a Paradise more sweet?

She woke me up
this morning
when I overslept.

She brought a cup of tea.

When I opened my eyes
she wasn't there.

Nor was the tea.

For Johnny
John Pudney
1909-1977

Do not despair, for Johnny head in air.
He sleeps as sound as Johnny under ground.

Fetch out no shroud for Johnny in the cloud,
and keep your tears for him in after years.

Better by far for Johnny the bright star,
to keep your head and see his children feed.

I took a walk through the park today.
The leaves were gently dropping
through the light and shade of an Indian summer.
The warmth was quite unseasonal
and that weird contrast between autumnal death
and the arousing sunshine’s heat
struck me with the strangest thought
that that could almost be
a metaphor
for me.

by John Gillespie McGee Jr.

Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
and danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings.
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling
mirth of sun-split clouds, and done a hundred
things you have not dreamed of - wheeled
and soared and swung high in the sunlit silence.
Hovr'ring there, I've chased the shouting wind along,
and flung my eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up, the long, delirious, burning blue,
I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace
where never lark, or even eagle flew.
And while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
the high untrespassed sanctity of space,
put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

                      John Gillespie Magee, Jr., September 3, 1941

Once upon a time I was a rebel.
It was not what I chose to call myself;
In my mind I was a fighter –
A fighter for freedom:
A counter-oppressor.
Rebels were the others.

I was nourished
on a code of justice;
a racial attribute
taken with my mother’s milk
and reinforced
by family teachings.

Or preachings.
And it did not take too long
before my back was turned
in self-disgust on
what I termed sermonising.
(They called me a rebel.)

It was not what I chose to call myself.

There’s no sympathy for single mothers
she said.
He sniggered.
Social services:
what do you expect?
I left me ‘usband when ‘e beat me up.
They’d ‘ave been ‘appier to spend
the public funds
on a grave.
No gravestone.
Just a plot to mark the spot
and two tiny tots
clutching a bunch of weeds from the
roadside.
And no place to put ‘em.

The symbols of arriving springtime have come late this year
in north-west London.
The blossom on the apple tree outside my bedroom,
heralding the anticipation of renewal
and the promise of life to come
has been delayed by several weeks.
And the flowering is less profuse than ever.

I try to seek the metaphor;
the concatenation of my personal survival
conveyed by the tree’s own growth.
But what does the linkage signify?
Another year?  Another life?  Another death?
Or none of these?

And if I yearn for signs of immortality
then I am doomed to morbidity,
as the tree is programmed to portray
a slow, inexorable but unmistakable decline.

And still I know that morning light
will daily draw me to my bedroom window
and the forlorn desire to see some sign
some hope, some promise, some assurance
that there is no inevitability
of change,
save that it be change itself.
Instead of which I am presented with
a demoralising symbol of uncertain hopes.

Spring should be an optimistic season;
the blossom on the tree should herald
a renewal, not a death.
But this poor springtime growth has
merely served to reinforce
the fears and sadnesses of
Winter’s  tribulationary concerns.

ENVOI
Five days the blossom stayed
and then was gone.
Nor were concerns allayed,
but hopes were thus betrayed
and possibilities undone.

Our lives were always
so interconnected,
so entwined.

Despite her years
of pain
and suffering,
her concern
for my wellbeing
was always
evident.

Since her death
my own health
has
miraculously
improved.
I am fitter now
than I have been
for years.

This morning
I awoke
to the most absurd
thought:
did she die
that I might live?

I am the difference that
shelters the difference;
I am the hope to
nourish the heart;
I am the truth that
lights up the darkness,
And causes all fear to depart.

I arouse myself from joyful slumber
and contemplate the assault
on all my senses
that I know will aggravate me
as I anticipate

the odour of freshly chopped onion
that assails my nose,
in contradistinction
to the aroma of freshly mown grass
that elevates my soul.

When politicians speak their lies
my nostrils twitch,
in complete contrast
to a metaphysical debate
that enchants my essence.

I consider the “gherkin” in London
that degrades my sight,
so divergent from
the view of the Parthenon in Greece
that arouses my spirit.

And as I make the best of it,
I grit my teeth
and hold my nose
and settle back to contemplate
my inner peace and calm.

Today is to enjoy
and not think about tomorrow.
it is better to live in joy
than it is to die in sorrow.

Let blockheads read what blockheads wrote,
Lord Chesterfield once said.
Thereby inviting us to judge him
As a dunderhead.

Let wise men read what wise men wrote
Is what I say instead,
And you may judge me for yourself
Since my work’s quite widespread.

It is a perfectly formed teardrop;
or the gold of an autumnal leaf;
it is the first apple or peach blossom
of spring.

It is the sight of a rainbow to a child;
or the sight of the child itself
observing that rainbow
for the first time.

A miracle is the sight of a loved one
beside me when I awake.
It is her hand in mine
to still that ache.

Yet Hume would have us believe
that miracles do violate
the laws of nature.
O, so not so!

For me the laws of nature
are the miracle.
To know that season follows season
is the awe.

And those who despise reason
to favour faith
are merely
self-deluded fools.

Not for me the accusation
of the psalm that would
make me a fool for
disbelieving god.

That I abandon faith
and choose instead
to reason with my brain
thus verifies belief.

It is as hard for the believer
to abandon a belief
as for a man of science
to discard old laws.

But moral values are self-evident.
I do not need an act of faith
to emphasise
A moral code.

It is enough to know that I am one
with all humankind and
whatever touches another,
touches also me.

I seek no vague salvation;
no sweetmeat in the sky;
it is enough to hold most dear
what is simply “I”.

We’ve wandered far from miracles,
from acts of faith and such,
but life itself’s miraculous
e’en to a worthless wretch.

I have now reached the age
where concern with
the colour of my *****
and the colour and consistency
of my faeces
have become matters
of matutinal preoccupation.

If the dead can hear the living
albeit for a while
then this they know:
“You have not left us,
you have not gone away;
you rest as firm
as some long-planted tree."
Here.
Now.
Forever.

I used to have expectorations
But now I don't give a spit.

Un silence profond.

Pour un instant
tout mouvement cesse
et mon esprit achève
le sommet
de la solitude.

Et puis
tout à coup
le bruit recommence
comme un ruisseau
brédouillant.
Le vacarme assourdissant
remue
les enchevetrêments
de mes pensées.

jusqu'à ce que. . .
jusqu'à ce que. . .
jusqu'à ce que
la paix
revienne.

Et c’est une
situation
qui se répètent
sans cesse.
Comme un robinet
qui coule.

Les gouttes de la
mémoire.
Les gouttes des espoirs.
Le bruit exaspérant,
épouvantable
qui monte,
qui fait revenir
des expériences
qu’on a cru
bien cachées.

Et après
recommence
la lutte.,
la bataille
entre
les souvenirs joyeux
et les chagrins.

Et
au moment où
je me sens crevé
. . .
un silence profond

by Leigh Hunt

Jenny kissed me when we met,
Jumping from the chair she sat in.
Time, you thief! who love to get
Sweets into your list, put that in.
Say I'm weary, say I'm sad;
Say that health and wealth have missed me;
Say I'm growing old, but add-
Jenny kissed me!

I arouse myself from Morpheus’ embrace,
In panic,
and prowl the stark, bleak blackness
of my flat.
Is it that I cannot contemplate
with equanimity
the possibility
that, once returned to sleep,
I’ll not awake?

I want to see her one more time;
One more time to say the things
I should have said before;
One more time to say I’m sorry
and how much I deplore
the ill-concealed behaviour
that she could not ignore.

I want to see her one more time;
One more time to gaze upon
that so beloved face;
One more time to visualise
that look of peace and grace
so unappreciated
while it was commonplace

If only I could see her one more time,
I’d be able to expiate my crime.

by Matthew Prior

Sir, I admit your general rule
That every poet is a fool!
But you yourself may serve to show it,
That every fool is not a poet.

                                 Matthew Prior

If I can touch the heart and inmost soul
Of just one doubting anxious questing mind,
Responding to the most impassioned call
Of question marks that remain undefined,
Then may my sadly feeble efforts be
Rewarded without danger of rebuff
And my own inner doubts allowed to flee,
As touching just one soul would be enough.
If I have brought the monstrous regiment
Of hidden doubt or even abject fear
To bitter rage or hate or merriment,
Then would I count the cost to me less dear.
And finally what held me in distress
Would be resolved into unworthy bliss.

It’s a pity, they said glumly,
that because of your neglect
we are obligated to remove it;
and although it’s been quite comely
and you may wish to reflect,
there is absolutely no way to improve it.

They gazed into my eyes and said
“Once it’s gone it will look bad
but there’s no way it can be corrected.
When something dies it must stay dead.
Best to remember what you had
than hope some day it might be resurrected.”

But though I took their words to heart,
I swore I’d not forget it,
although it left me in some disarray.
There are some things from which we cannot part
painlessly.  And I regret it;
and still deplore the day they took my Porsche  away.

We thought that we could have it all;
we were wrong.
We were naïve
to believe
that love would keep us in thrall.

We thought that we would simply scale
those mountains of deceit;
that should we fail
we’d merely use
our own ejection seat.

We were wrong.

My candle burns as brightly as of yore.
“Your what?” the punster gaily asks.
Oh, please do not be such a bore,
I’m really not up to linguistic tasks.

There is no verse that I adore
enough to don one of those casques,
and do not carelessly abhor
The adulation in which Millay basks

Knowing that I had but a short span
of time before
I would depart,
and cognisant of all that I had built
upon the trellis of my dreams.
I wondered how best to preserve
those unique sentiments
as my endowment to the world.
There seemed to be
no formula for one such as myself
to entertain the posthumous
yet valid sustentation of my life.

But then the gods,
or such as pass  for them
in my philosophy,
took pity on this sinner
and vowed to store his yet
unsatisfied  expressions
of Life’s truths
for all posterity.

They salted a rain cloud
with my spawning seed
that I might yet persist
in word and deed.
Then storms produced
a prophecy,
a bequest to my progeny
that when I am no more,
and worms have done their worst,
the nascent grains of my philosophy
shall still remain intact and undispersed.

And so these morbid lines
continue to enhance the pages
of this conduit;
to bore, excite, annoy, exasperate
and otherwise to plague their readership.
But have no fear:
take heart dear reader,
persist in honest faith
and reassurance that
the peregrinations of this verbal inning
is closer to its end
than its beginning.

Frost said
Home is the place where
When you go there
They have to take you in.
But what if there’s no place to go home to?
What if there’s nowhere that provokes
A sense of sight, or sound, or smell
Or taste or feeling
That evokes a memory?

You are cut adrift,
A piece of flotsam
Going where the current takes you.

The tide runs out,
The current ebbs and flows
Yet never ceases.
And you . . .
A piece of driftwood,
Lacking even the semblance of design
That might inspire a sculptural creation,
End in a vortex.

May the fleas of a thousand camels invade
the crotch of the person that ruins your day.
And may their arms be too short to scratch
that invasion away.

Some days I look in the mirror
and my father looks back at me.

So long as I can see his reflection,
sometimes sombre, sometimes sad,
occasionally smiling;
for that length of time, at least, I know
that he is not dead,
but lives on in me.

Thus do we survive.

Some day, perhaps, my son will look in a mirror
and I will look back at him.

It is so vexing
To achieve what you wanted
And not to know it.

The sun has brightened up
the dull autumnal morn
and those remaining birds
who have not yet begun their exodus
have now commenced their song.
Let us then rejoice.

And so another year has passed me by
And once again I sigh a mournful sigh
As I recall the wondrous gift of joy
The passing seasons gave me as a boy.

Where have they gone those thrills of yesteryear?
(Nostalgic loss almost too great to bear)

by Joyce Grenfell

If I should go before the rest of you
Chuck not a flower nor inscribe a stone,
Nor, when I am gone, speak in a Sunday voice
But be the usual selves that I have known.
Weep, if you must, parting is hell
But life goes on - so sing as well.

                              Joyce Grenfell

So finally they’ve been forced to confess
that they have found a complication,
that they will now have to redress
and will require procedural reflation.
Calling it a procedure is less worrying, I guess,
than calling it an operation.
And if it ends up in a mess
the end of which is a cremation,
there’s no need for that to depress,
at least it will provide a point of conversation.

Decomposing bodies.
swollen stomachs
hollow sunken eyes
Beaten and degraded
Less than animals
Music bursts forth from their wounds
The blood long since gone from dried veins.

Those chimneys stand there still
As vast totem poles
To pay silent tribute
To those six million souls
They will be reborn
as new flowers from the dust,
new life from death.
Remember them
but for an accident of birth
it might have been you . . .
or me.

The suddenness of her departure
came as a vast shock.
She had clung to life as tenaciously
as a limpet to a rock.
But her acceptance of her final breath
as though she had been blessed
with relief long sought from suffering and pain
took her to a deserved and peaceful rest.

I heard a voice that spoke to me
in tones so sweetly mellifluous
they filled me with a strange delight
and rendered speech superfluous.