Each year it happens.
The apple tree viewed from my balcony
gives up its fruit
until at last one solitary apple
remains high up,
beyond reach,
riper, redder, more robust
than any of the others
that have fallen or been gathered.

Unmoved by rain,
unshaken by winds.
It is as if
this one remaining fruit
is determined to resist
the onset of winter.

Day after day
I awaken;
raise my bedroom blind,
rub my eyes
and seek it out
amidst the protecting foliage.

At first resistant to my gaze,
it then proudly displays
its presence,
as if to say
“Behold, I still remain,
a testament to the perseverance of Fall.”

Each year I too remain
despite the apple’s everlasting reminder
that I myself am transient
and will one day
be shaken from my bough.

I am reminded of O. Henry’s last leaf
painted by an aged artist
to give support and strength and sustenance
to fading hope of life’s recovery.
Perhaps the apple, too, is but a dab of oil
on canvas.

Indeed, am I myself a product of
an artist’s keen, unfailing eye;
living in some vast
parallel universe
adjacent to and yet unseen
by all those bygone friends,
amidst an orchard of fallen, rotting apples?

We laughed when we built castles in the sand.
We laughed through the tidal disarray.
We sang with joy when the new-born babe arrived
We sang with grief when she was borne away.

But who is laughing now that all is gone?
Who is singing the last song of all?

Whose is the last laugh?
Who plays the last trump?

She has gone
She is no more
A light has been extinguished
and the world is a poorer place.

No.
I correct myself.
She is not gone,
she is still with me
and I love her so much.

The loving tree that we plant in each other
is the blooming tree
we carry in our hearts.

And the branches can reach out
when we are long gone.

There is country that is far away
In time and space no more than shadow play;
A land designed to elevate the soul
More lofty than a soaring oriole.

A place that helps to make my spirit sigh
And soar as light as any dragonfly,
Respecting each the rights of every other
Where every man to me is my blood brother.

I lived there in miasma quite opaque
Within a dream I dreamt while still awake.
A land that’s still as far away in heart
As this which very soon I must depart

Although they seem so very far away
Neighbours are a cynic’s sobriquet
For people who are simply non-aligned
With nothing but contempt for all mankind.

Within the real world all is selfish interest
But not so far away in truth this is the best.
True patriots there are who here assemble
Be warned you tyrants that you stand and tremble.

Poetry is like
the stars one cannot see
in the daytime.
It is a sense of fright
in the night.
It is metrical
but does not need to be
symmetrical.
It is knowledge
that precedes sentience
but lags behind
sensitivity.
It is fuelled
by consternation
and ****** by
flocculation.
It is ambiguity;
it is obscurity;
it is enigma.

Poetry is like
the stars one cannot see
in the daytime.
It is a sense of fright
in the night.
It is metrical
but does not need to be
symmetrical.
It is rhythmic,
but does not
need to rhyme.
It is knowledge
that precedes sentience
but lags behind
sensitivity.
It is fuelled
by consternation
and ****** by
flocculation.
It is ambiguity;
it is obscurity;
it is enigma.

I disengage the padlock of my mind
allowing thoughts free access
to what lurks behind the spread
of undisclosed agendas
and secrets unconfined.

I look back to that time
when  joys were simple,
before
awareness of pain
and suffering
had started
to leave their mark.

Where have they gone,
those times of
yesteryear?
How do I rediscover
those simple joys,
experienced
before the aches
and tribulations
of adult life
had intervened?

Alas
the past
continually advances;
the future recedes.
There will be
less and less to
anticipate,
and more and more
to recall.


The future is a foreign country
and I don’t speak the language.

The mistakes we make and then
occasionally the paths we take,
as we attempt to reach
the topmost pinnacles
of long sought for success,
may be nothing more than the sad contrail
that precedes our choice of a crooked trail.

And we may frequently end up
unable to achieve those sought for graces.

Sometimes we make the wrong choices
to get to the right places.

He has gone.
A mere shadow of his former self.
But I still see him in the passing faces,
or queuing for the bus,
or shopping In the supermarket.

I see him
not as I saw him last
in his bed:
his penultimate resting place,
but as he was throughout those
years.

A child,
a playmate,
an adolescent evacuee,
a youthful, excited participant
in all those artistic delights.
The nudes, the landscapes,
the biblical, familial and  historical
inspirations.

And during those
Italian years.
Honing his artistic style.
Enjoying, and being enjoyed by,
that colourful scene
as eccentric as he himself
was destined to become.

And now he is no more.

And I am suddenly
and painfully
struck by this terrible thought:
he was the oldest surviving relative
of that generation,
the offspring of
a mother who was
the sister of my father.

It is a mantle I have had ****** on me.
I am the patriarch.

The poet and the platonist
Were seated side by side
A carriage on the Circle Line
Was what they occupied,
While gazing at a map aloft.
It was the station guide

The train was running on its tracks
Running with all its speed
The carriage held but these two men
Great intellects indeed,
Deliberating mysteries
On which they disagreed.

Alongside Mr Gregory
Was seated Mr Syme
The former quite anarchic;
The latter, quite sublime,
For whom the whole discussion
Seemed but a waste of time.

The time has come the poet said
To speak of many things
Of God and Truth and Transcendence
And Saratoga Springs
And whether miracles exist
And archangelic wings

“O poet” said the Platonist
“Please look at what you’ve done!
You’ve ridiculed my arguments,
Where have my dogmas gone?”
“No need for such concern,” he said
“I’ve swallowed every one!”

I believe in the power of positive thought
I believe I can affect the future and that
the natural course of events is not immutable.
I reject the normalcy bias which assures me that
because it has never happened, it can never happen.
Sometimes life’s greatest lessons come from the
most unanticipated experiences.

And yet,
and yet . . .

My favourite Scripture Ecclesiastes assures me that
what has happened before will happen again;
what has been done before will be done again;
and that there is nothing new in the whole world.
Resonance of the “history repeats itself” dictum
whose lessons Santayana warns us to ignore
at our peril.
Whereas
my favourite history teacher “Tinny” Newman
had a more appropriate prescription:
“History does not repeat itself, historians do.”

How do I reconcile these apparently conflicting beliefs?
[Silent screams]
It is a precious lesson to be learned.

And perhaps my belief that the power of my thought
is sufficient to alter the course of my life
is merely another example of
the Ecclesiastes’ “vanity of vanities, all is vanity”.
[If there’s a telekinetisist in the house, will you please raise my hand]

At one time I could not recall experiencing anything
that I had failed to envision and
this had always enabled me
to make due provision
for any nasty aftermath such as the
problems involved in leaving a slippery bath.

Thus it was with an absence of concern
that, having suffered a really bad fall,
I immersed myself in a bath and then found
I could not escape at all and this stimulated me
to reflect on other instances
where prescience, or the lack of it,
had failed to intersect.

How do I recover these memories?
[Knee ****!]
It is a potential hazard.

Saddest of all is not what is or what might occur
so much as what might have been.
What we do not realise, or are reluctant to accept,
is that we inhabit the world we deserve.
Returning, equally reluctantly, to my thesis,
and returning to Scripture, we are told that
one generation gives way to another
but earth abides, and I cannot decide
if this is a cause of regret or one of delight.

And when I am told
in wisdom there is grief
and that increasing knowledge
will also increase sorrow,
I’m tempted to set it all aside until tomorrow.

Okay.  Oy veh!
I’ll leave it for another day.

If you can see within yourself,
to discover the nature of your being,
dislodge the shackles of slavery,
and know what hides the truth,
perhaps the way to freedom
unto you may be revealed.

And yet are there not those
who may enjoy their fetters?
Those to whom liberty
is nothing more than loss?
Those for whom freedom
may exist only in *******?

For such sad creatures
liberty implies responsibility
and if prepared to pay the price,
those others who would curtail freedom
may find the shackles not enough,
whilst being free is being lost.

The liberty in an instant gained,
may be abandoned in an hour.
A state achieved too easily,
inevitably is poorly prized.
Those who claim to favour freedom
must be prepared to give it up.

Freedom can, like power, corrupt.
The liberty to live one’s life
oblivious to temptation,
implies a generosity of love:
to say that “I will give to you
what I would willingly deny myself.”

Freedom is as freedom does,
the tree of liberty must be refreshed
as Jefferson informed us
with blood of patriots and tyrants.
Freedom has to be, it must be said
and must remain, unfinished business.

I look back to the memory of one revered
and recognise belatedly that, as I feared,
with all such thoughts that are but refugees
from Life’s repugnant and loathsome disease
that is a chronic chronicle of cardinal regret,
the anguish is not prepared to leave me yet.
The pain enters the maelstrom of my mind
sufficiently, it would appear, to raise the blind
on life’s insidious theatrical disguise
that renders impotent such exercise.

The jack hammer’s incessant pounding in my brain
brings infinitesimally lesser pain;
whilst rotting matter that life does excrete
continues to mould pallid at my feet;
and I, the perpetrator of the piece,
anticipating the relief of a surcease,
must yet continue suffering the bitter blend
of redress that forestalls the dividend.

There is a situation that, when taken out of season,
evokes a painful memory for whatever reason.
A rainbow within a bubble of soap,
the search for trouble with a bronchoscope,
the desperate wish just to recuperate,
despairing hope that they will not reciprocate.
And when all else is but a heap of ash,
other than that consigned to a memory cache,
then it is time to place within that store
those ills from which recovery can be no more;
to tread a path and seek a blessed state
from which to be a learned advocate
of such as heaven and not the living hell
in which the guilt of conscience still does dwell.

Now count your dead, you others who survive
as bees continue to enjoy their nectar in a hive.
As animals may play, imprisoned in a cage,
As we creative writers persevere despite our age.
It is but propaganda to deceive
and not sufficiently authentic so as to believe
when  Death, that great aggressor, determines to intrude
and interrupt the joy of an imperative  good mood.

I’ve opened curtains and raised many blinds
and peeped into the crevices of minds.
And now it seems at last it’s all been said
There’ll be no further peeps, and so to bed.


.

There we were
on the grass
legs threshing
and thrashing
fondling on the grass
stroking on the grass
hands searching
and seeking
and finding . . .
Stop it you fool
now you’ve scratched me!
Should have cut my nails,
should have been gentler.

The love we share may have deep roots;
the branches of the love we share
may exceed the length of those roots;
my arms may stretch out and enfold you
as the branches of a tree
may embrace whatever they hold captive.

We may stand together as tall
as the depth of the roots of our love.
But the roots of our love may extend
beyond the length of its branches.

I remember saying:
“If you notice
Any change in me,
Any loss of faculties,
Any lapse of memory
Any sign of frailty,
Any sudden disability,
Promise, promise, promise
You will bring it to
My attention.”

But he never did.

Now he suffers from
The onset
Of his own dementia
And I have made
No comment on it.

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?

Prosaic’ly he plods the path of peace,
Avoiding pitfalls when the dusk is nigh
By treading warily.  Does not release
In gay abandonment a heartfelt sigh
Such as the vagabond of Nature’s road
Permits himself when shades of darkness fall;
For he has not to carry such a load,
And is but one of many that make all.

There is a taste to violence,
a tang, a smell,
a strange delight
that thrills and yet disgusts
the fickle sense of worth,
the sweet austere caress
that fills and then combusts
to leave the hated spirit
stained in hell.

Words are not enough.
Those that are not meaningless
may simply lack importance
or else be capable of
myriad interpretations.

Let us set aside dissimulation
and deception by flattery.
Let’s put an end to empty words
or unctuous, or sanctimonious,
holier-than-thou, obsequious,
intended-to-deceive euphemisms.

Words that were the greatest boon
to civilization: that made it possible
for humans to engage in dialogue,
to see inside each other’s hearts,
to identify each other’s needs
and substantiate our own,
took on, eventually, another role.

Time it is to recognize
how words have now become a tool
for scoundrels to dissemble.
Time it is to liberate the human heart
from language that holds us in thrall.

Time it is to reconnect
with our humanity.

Dear friends, you’ve asked me
how it was I came to poetry.
Let me seek to give an answer.

I was early held in thrall by words
and sought to find
a weapon of expression.

I explored a vast variety
of differing forms including
prose and drama and ballads.

I did not come so easily to poetry.
Poetry came to me.
It sought me out and overflowed.

And did it share the secret I'd explored?
Could I answer that, dear friends,
it would not be poetry.

Like a bad smell that’s gone viral, like a **** within a ****,
To expel it in a spiral is effectively an art
You may squeeze it out quite gently, or let it just go rip,
You may do it differently, hold it in a tight clenched grip,
Knowing it will not be anything like lavender in bloom
As the **** moves like a zephyr sending fumes around the room.
Like the noises that I find coming out of my behind.

Like a small bug that’s attacked me, like pill on top of pill
What it does to my digestion is a matter of ill will
If I know that it is bad for me why do I ask for more?
Like one tequila, two tequila, three tequila - floor!
I have a simple question, Is it something that I ate?
If I wasn’t meant to eat it, why’d you put it on my plate,
Producing noises undefined coming out of my behind?

Food that gurgles in my belly, drink that goes right to my head,
Why does my stomach rumble every time I go to bed?
Like a morsel that you swallow, it simply holds its own
As it travels through a passage where the sun has never shone;
And though it would appear that my obsessive petomania
May be derived from meat that I once ate in Transylvania,
I hope you will excuse me; I don’t mean to be unkind,
And I know that this last comment is completely unrefined,
But take your nasty thoughts and blow them out of your behind

I have found so much joy and peace
since I first learned how best
to embrace my inner self.

And of all the several rules
that I have decided to follow,
the most enduring and secure
are those that involve
self-belief, love and
gratification.

These may be summarized
in three simple maxims
and one simple word:
the word is “nice”.

Rule number one is to say
nice things about myself.
Rule number two is to do
nice things for myself.

Rule number three is
the most important of all
and if I obey the dictates
of this final rule, I may safely
disregard all the others.

Rule number three is simply
to have someone else
say and do nice things to me
and, above all, to
buy nice things for me.

Neurotics talk to their analysts,
Sinners talk to their priests
Hypochondriacs visit their doctors
Writers write.

The words I use are no better
Than those of any other poet,
But the spaces between the words . . .
The spaces . . . aah, those are my poetry.

You may be unable to control
what is happening
in the world outside yourself,
but you can always control
your response
to what is happening.

And usually
that is good enough.

by Philip Larkin

They ******* up, your mum and dad.
  They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
  And add some extra, just for you.

But they were ****** up in their turn
  By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
  And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
  It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
  And don't have any kids yourself.

                                         Philip Larkin

We have our exits and our entrances.
It has been said before.
But in the lifelong scheme of things
The next farewell will likely be our last.
The Earth itself will one day die
And return unto its frozen, lifeless state.
A finality that is perhaps not too far off.
Without a sigh, without a whimper
Even without an ultimate warning blast.
We made our entrance, enjoyed our stay,
Played our part in the performance.
And soon it will be time to say goodbye.
Farewell, adieu, exit left or right.
But leave the stage.  Just go!

I cannot believe
in my own mortality.
Am I a vampire?


Being close to you,
no matter how far away,
I’m closer to me.


Once I’d learned to crawl
I yearned to reach to the sky
and prove I could fly

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.

There’s another timeline somewhere,
where people are mourning me;
where family and friends are living
their natural spans,
achieving all that was hoped for,
but lost along the way
in my parallel universe.

Whatever strength and sustenance is mine to give
are yours to take and use;
to nourish you
throughout
the pain and trials
that lie ahead.

There is an invisible tie
that links my daughter and me.
Though not visible
It is as strong and as sharp
as tempered steel.

Though we have spent
so much time far apart,
the bond has never weakened,
and nothing can diminish
the way we feel.

Success had made no mark on him.
He remained the self
I honoured and loved:
the dichotomy
of arrogance and modesty
that required no forgiveness
because he was defined
by his own tolerance
of others.

Now he is gone,
but what remains
is the part of his life that
will forever be a part of my own.

I have neither time nor patience
for anyone who lacks the strength of character
to admit blame when they know they are wrong.

Personally I would always
confess my faults immediately,
if I had any!

She came and it was light:
The light of countless twinkles in a champagne glass.
She spoke and all was bright:
The brightness of the sunset in a narrow pass.

What matters how she came or what she said?
Of small importance, now, the cause of strife.
But when she went I wished that I were dead,
For all the light departed from my life.

Longmoor 1948
Subsequently published in Uncultured Pearls, ASPEN-London, 2014.

When will I learn
that all I need,
or all that I believe I need,
I already have.

When will I learn
that all I want
is not to be confused with
all I need.

When will I learn
that all I need,
or all that I believe I need,
I already have.

The only thing I lack
is to accept the fact
that there is nothing that I need
that I don't already have.

Tout ce que je veux, c’est toi.
Tout dont j’ai besoin, c’est toi.
Tout que j’admire, c’est toi.
Rien ne me manque, sauf toi.
Et
si je quitte le monde
je le quitterai content,
car
je t’aurai connu,
et toi, et toi, et toi.

To shake forbidden fruit
from off the sacred tree,
to quell the hungry yearnings
of the phantom bough
and hide the mystic longings
of the barren heart.
These are the secret wishes
that are keeping us apart.

.
Dreams follow strange patterns:
They appear and disappear
both sleeping and awake,
And while we are in their thrall
they place gossamer
fingers on our
imagination.
And when they go
they do not go quickly;
they die
little
by
little.

For so long were we happily united.
The divergence began a few years later.
It marked a time of sad and poignant loss.
A death with no cadaver.

What had we lost?
What had been ours to share and was no more?
How to apportion blame?
Why should blame even need to be considered?

There had been so much unity.
Our lives had meshed so thoroughly
and what had fingered one,
had snared the other.

Nothing is ever lost  (a physical law).
Every negative implies a positive.
So where was to be found
the serenity and joy
that had marked so many gleeful years?

The vacuum was vast and needed to be filled.
Her arms were opened wide;
while mine were clenched about myself.

I thought I could discern a pattern:
a repetition of highs and lows.
Perhaps, I thought, this could be the start
of a voyage of self-discovery,
and since, as Proust has said,
such voyages are less concerned
with seeking new landscapes,
than having new eyes,
I will have to microscopically
examine every facet of myself,
in order to find my true identity.

Then, perhaps, we will also learn
how to restore that unity.

And yet, and yet, the question
returns and re-echoes again and again:
After so many years, so many years,
how could we diverge so rapidly?