If you read somebody’s poem and it makes you want to say,
“I think this piece is wonderful; it really made my day,”
just go ahead and say it – feedback like this is good,
but saying why you like it will please them (well, it should).

If someone that you don’t know says, “Please comment on my writing,”
and you look at it, and find it … let’s say, rather unexciting,
then don’t forget – be tactful, find something good to say
before you start on finding fault – don’t ruin someone’s day.

And if you think it’s terrible, be careful how you speak.
Some people write as therapy; their life may be quite bleak.
Don’t be too harshly critical and leave them feeling worse,
but simply go to look elsewhere, and just ignore their verse.

Some poems, though, may leave you with a puzzle or a question,
or even make you want to give some tentative suggestion.
There’s nothing wrong with doing this – just get it off your chest,
but don’t think your ideas are necessarily the best.

With members, though, who claim they are God’s gift to Poesy,
(if there’s nothing to commend them as far as you can see)
you can state your own opinion – of course you have the right –
but don’t forget the golden rule: *be honest but polite.

I have been aware of your presence close by me in a crowd
I have seen your smile
I have felt the soft touch of your hair on my cheek
        I have known what it is to be enchanted

I have felt the pressure of your hand replying to mine
I have felt your body melt when I surrounded you with my arms
I have felt your lips brush against mine like leaves in the wind
        I have known wishes come true

I have heard your voice tell what your words could not say
I have tasted the longing in your heart
I have seen the tears behind your eyes
        I have known tenderness I have not had to earn.

1/
I called your number and
your voice answered –
“Sorry I’m not available.
Please leave a message.”
I put down the phone
without speaking,
and hoped you might pick up
my thoughts.

2/
I called your number and
your voice answered,
sounding tired and lost.
I wished I could hug you better,
but the voice said,
“Who did you want to speak to?”
– It wasn’t you,
but I still wanted to hug you.

3/
I called your number and
your voice answered,
and this time it was you.
I said hello,
and you said hello,
but what could I say
(that I wanted to say)
that you didn’t already know?
So we talked about trivialities
until we said goodbye.

What is this feeling,
overwhelming, new, yet somehow
half remembered,
uncomfortable, ferocious,
and where even fear is not unknown?
Is it the same when I look deep inside you?
when I touch your hand?
when I know you want me to be there
(even though you do not speak or look at me)?
when you struggle for the words to tell me
what you want to say?

My heart races, I want to shout, laugh,
cry, hold you, be still with you.
I have known happiness,
but this goes much further.
Happiness belongs to the world;
like the things of the world it can fade.
Joy is of the spirit;
it exists of itself, intense, in the spirit,
yearning and fulfilment in one,
and it will not let me go.

The chair she sat in had seen better days,
any resemblance to a burnished throne
pure fantasy, for half its springs were gone,
cover and stuffing on their separate ways
towards disintegration; in the maze
of wire and fluff inside it a half-done
crossword, peanuts, a sweet, a dried-up bone
the dog had lost. In fact, to turn a phrase,
burning, not burnishing, was what it needed;
all thought of restoration or repair
into a distant hope had long receded.
Once it had been a comfortable chair,
the children's cosy nook, almost a friend,
but things wear out. The bonfire was its end.

today i bring you
no glittery greeting card
no filling-station flowers
only a very special offer
you cant refuse
(i wont let you)
a part used bargain
from the hearts department
bruised and scarred
but still beating
and its yours for nothing

do with it as you will
only
pause before you throw it away
(please dont throw it away)
if you dont want it now
save it for later
keep it like a lucky penny
press it with rose petals in a book
put it at the back of a drawer
take it out from time to time
and remember
or find it maybe when youre looking
for something else
and think of me and smile
(i hope youll smile)

but please dont throw it away
its bound to come in handy
even if you never use it

(Pompeii/Florence, 1997)

Vulcan was real, alive as you were,
you and your language, long dead now.
Your town was prosperous, with its paved streets,
bars, bath-houses, brothels,
mosaics, painted walls, graffiti.
Your domestic gods too were real to you;
they had saved you before,
and when the superhuman hammer blows shook
your houses, you repaired them,
decorated in greater splendour,
erected a temple to your protectors.
But Vulcan was not appeased - years are not long
to the lord of earth and fire.
This time he struck swiftly, sending you death
from his mountain, overwhelming you
as you ran. Your garden
gave you no protection,
hot fumes choked you,
hot ash surrounded you,
sealed in your tomb as you died.

The ones who excavated your town
marvelled at its completeness,
and in the ash that filled your garden
they found hollows.
Filling the hollows with plaster,
they found . . .  not you,
but echoes of yourselves,
like statues in a museum.

We came to see you, and after that
to the Academy, standing in awe
at David's perfect marble humanity.
But we were troubled by the others,
the uncompleted ones, the Prisoners,
their twisted limbs, hidden faces,
frozen in the act of emerging
from the stone, recalling too painfully
in their unfinished creation
your own agonised poses
as you died.
"I had seen birth and death,
  but had thought they were different."
.

HEART, not only are you much taken for granted
- how many million beats do you make
in one lifetime? and rarely a grumble -
but you are not even responsible
for most of what you are blamed for.
Am I hard-hearted?
Am I half-hearted?
Nothing to do with you, blame the brain
or wherever the soul or the spirit is.
As for heartburn, that is merely a slander
put about by the digestive organs.

Who knows better than you
that I may experience a change of heart
without a transplant?
or search my heart,
without needing surgery or a body-scan?
a heart of gold, or of stone,
may do for a statue, but not for me, thanks.
And if I hear a heart-warming story,
you still maintain
your good old ninety-eight point four.
I can pour my heart out
but you always stay put.
If my heart aches,
do you need an aspirin?
If I say my heart is in my boots,
or in my mouth,
if I wear it on my sleeve,
we both know you are where you always are.
(Thank goodness my heart's in the right place.)

OK, if I see a face of heart-stopping beauty,
you may pump extra blood to my giveaway cheeks,
even palpitate a little,
but stop? No, not you.
And when I met (long ago)
a girl after my own heart,
and she stole my heart away,
was I left heartless? Of course not, because you,
faithfully beating inside me,
are only one of my hearts, and the other,
though it may well be less *****
than metaphor,
is as necessary to a lover
(or a poet)
as you are.

A body on the line at Basingstoke -
the train to Waterloo has been delayed.
You'll have to wait; the plastic bag brigade
are clearing up and trying not to choke.

Commuter suicide's no news to us.
We don't suspect foul play; it's by the book.
But one train driver, terror in his look,
takes the day off, wishing he drove a bus.

Neighbours or strangers, those who saw him leap
could never know what so possessed his mind.
His unwished legacy - they long may find
the image of his death disturb their sleep.

The quiet desperation of a life
brought by that final step over the rim
to its conclusion - weep no tears for him,
his torment's over. Who will tell his wife?

The mother ***** died at the side
of the road, another hit-and-run
victim. Her still warm fur
unblemished, luxuriant, russet,
now with life's bloom on it,
will soon be a shelter for worms,
must turn to dust,
her milk-heavy teats return to earth.
The hungry cubs whose birth
gave fulfilment to mother-love
will cease their shrill
unanswered pleading, become victims
in their turn. I can't pass by
and do nothing. Lay her at least
on grass, where soul of beast
may be at home,
not on concrete.

This is where I came from,
and the place to which I shall come back at the end.
I have been away many times,
and between the setting out and the returning
there are towns, villages that are home to others,
rivers and mountains that are familiar to them,
but all are strange to me.
The people that I meet, good people for the most part,
even those with whom I travel some of my journey,
are not my people, and I am not sad
to part from them.
So I travel on, and each time
my journey brings me to the same place,
and I am happy to know it again.
Sometimes, alone and far away,
I see men and women happy to be where they are,
and notions may come to me in the night
that I too could be happy somewhere else,
that another place could be home.
But with the sunrise, as the mists disappear,
I see those phantoms for what they are,
the ramblings of a lonely soul, fantasies,
imaginations of what might have been.

.
I cry out your name silently
over and over in my head
and hope that no-one will hear
except you.

They weren't kings really, those other visitors. The chaps that wrote the story down (and that was years after), they knew it, called them "wise men". Don't know where the "king" idea came from. Wizards, more like, astrologers even. Maybe there's something in that astrology stuff, but they were nearly a fortnight late. We were there at the birth, well, pretty soon after.

I don't know about angels. There was a light, like a star had exploded or something, but angels? We may have said so at the time; I'm not sure now. We'd gone into the village, some of us, looking for a drink and a change of company, but perhaps it was too late. Or perhaps it was just that the village was full of ­strangers claiming a royal ancestor. Pity they were all so ordinary.

But then we heard this baby, a real new one, in a cow-shed, with a pitiful little cry on him, and we went to have a peep. We had a lamb with us. Nothing unusual about that; he was only just weaned, and his mum had kicked him out, so we were keeping him warm. Lovely little chap he was, not a mark on him, just the kind for an offering in the temple. So when we saw the mum and dad so worried and lost-looking, and that scrap of a baby, well, they needed all the luck they could get. I suppose that was why we gave them the lamb.

But this is the bit that still scares me. When the baby saw the lamb he stopped  crying, and he looked ... peaceful. Wise. Only sad too, almost as if he knew what the lamb was in for. And - you'll say I was imagining it, but I know sheep, and I know what I saw - the lamb looked back at him the same. I've never seen that expression on a sheep again, and I've looked for it, believe me. It was almost as if he knew, too.

To repay you all the love you've shown,
what can I say to give you peace
from all the troubles you have known?
What can I do to bring release?

What can I say to give you peace
during the day and through the night?
What can I do to bring release
from all the horrors in your sight?

During the day and through the night
I want to shield you with my love
from all the horrors in your sight,
my darling girl, my rose, my dove.

I want to shield you with my love
from all the troubles you have known,
my darling girl, my rose, my dove,
to repay you all the love you've shown.

Why does a cow say moo, Daddy?
  How many leaves has a tree?
Why am I smaller than you, Daddy?
  How does food turn into me?

Why is an elephant big, Daddy?
  And why is an ant so small?
Why can't a cat be a pig, Daddy?
  Can't you answer my questions at all?

How do puddles see their reflection, Daddy?
  Have unicorns ever been?
And, not that there's any connection, Daddy,
  Why is a tangerine?

I've puzzled as hard as I can, Daddy,
  But why can't I go to the moon?
Will I know it all when I'm a man, Daddy?
  Will I be grown up soon?

I know that the sky can be red, Daddy,
  So why can't the sun be green?
And the thoughts that go round in my head, Daddy,
  How do I know what they mean?

Where does yesterday go, Daddy?
  I don't mean to ask out of turn,
But with so many things I don't know, Daddy,
  How else can a little boy learn?

Still waters, deep,
surface like glass reflecting green above;
and below are trees, sky,
shadows, leaves, sunlight,
moving and motionless.
Here silent images shimmer now,
and - air breathing suddenly - break.
Unbidden feelings confuse
reality and fantasy.
Which is which?
Fantasy and reality confuse;
feelings unbidden break, suddenly breathing air;
and now shimmer images,
silent here, motionless
and moving....
(sunlight leaves shadows).
Sky, trees are
below - and above -
green, reflecting, glass-like surface.
Deep waters, still.

Found in the churchyard of St Botolph's, Aldgate,
one distant lunchtime sixty years ago,
and saved perhaps from second burial
less ceremonial than its first had been,
would Hamlet have mused on this? A finger-bone,
less striking than a skull but just as dead.

I keep it now and wonder  
what skill he had possessed, the one who owned it.
Was he a tailor or a silversmith?
a carpenter? a weaver? or (none of those)
a lowly labourer, or a sly pickpocket?
Was it a woman's finger, a high-born lady?
or housewife (working her fingers to the bone)?

Did that hand long ago once guide a pen,
inscribe long lines of figures in heavy ledgers,
telling the tale of profit or of loss?
Did it write sonnets? messages of love?
or thoughts to pass on to an unknown future?
I cannot know, but still this humble bone,
the nameless relic of a city's past,
may have some little life, if only for me.

The flag, a white crescent and single star
on a field of crimson — kırmızı, not just 'red' —
tells of Islam. The men drinking beer and rakı
at pavement tables, even in Ramadan,
and the short-skirted, bare-armed girls,
parading with bare-faced confidence,
tell of other influences;
but at the appointed hour we hear the call to prayer
from the marble minaret, a slim finger
pointing to the sky beside shining domes
reflecting the vault of heaven.
At five a.m. we hear it faintly through hotel double-glazing,
or at sunset, as a peaceful accompaniment to the spectacle,
and we remember where we are.
But especially at the midday hour,
when the voice of the muezzin echoes
over noisy street or market,
and from another minaret and another
the duet becomes a trio, a quartet
of different melodies, out of tune
with each other but never discordant
(in these tones the word has no meaning),
the faithful are reminded, however busy they may be,
that their God requires something of them.
Then, entering the cool calm of the mosque,
entering the quiet forest of pillars,
feeling through the soles of our bare feet
marble polished by the tread
of generations of worshippers,
fine-grained wood,
the rich softness of crimson carpet,
we luxuriate in the textures as they combine
with the formal floral patterns of the tiles,
the ornate calligraphy of the inscriptions,
the rich colours of the glass,
and we realise that the builders of these mosques
knew what they were doing, so many years ago,
how peace can enter the soul
through the senses.

Gloriously green in spring and summer, these leaves
turned to bright shades of flame, lit up the fall,
and autumn's winds tumbled them to earth.

Decaying, their remnants now enrich the earth,
and winter buds fatten for next year's leaves,
which in their turn, we know, will wither and fall,

an endless cycle of growth, decline and fall.
We too decline, return at last to earth,
and memory is all our existence leaves

until we rise in new leaves, and fall again to earth.

If I could go beyond time,
And life be transformed into music;
If all that is subject to change
Could be fixed into an intricate pattern;
And what is expressed in words
Distilled into pure sense,

Perhaps what we experience in the physical sense
Could be extended to infinite time.
Then what we now perceive as words,
And what we think of as music,
Would all be part of the same pattern,
And things would not always have to change.

But if nothing were ever to change
Can we be sure it would all make sense?
Our life is part of a pattern,
But a pattern that is lived in time.
The emotions inspired by music
Have to be forced to fit into words,

And when I communicate my feelings to you, my words,
And your understanding of them, are liable to change.
When I hear what is deep in the heart of the music
It speaks directly to my sense.
Though I may interpret it differently each time,
The rhythm, the melody, the harmony form a pattern.

Then, as I struggle to set down that pattern
In what I know must be inadequate words,
Sometimes I feel the echo of a time
Before I was aware of life’s continual change.
Yes, I can be transported, in a sense,
To a time or a place recreated in the music.

Trumpet, *****, or seven-stringed lute recreate the music
That existed first only as a pattern
In the mind of one who could give it sense.
Thus in my own way I search for the words
To express myself in a way that will not change,
So that this much of what I have felt may go on through time.

And if I can make the music ring in the words,
If I can weave my thoughts into a pattern that may resist change,
Then, but only in that sense, maybe then I can go beyond time.

The painter adds more layers on
until he thinks his picture's done.
The sculptor has to chip away
until there comes to light of day
his vision from inside the stone.
Novelists too pile details on,
but poetry works a different way.
The poet chips the dross away.

I write my shopping-list in rhyme.
It doesn’t take me too much time,
and always helps me to remember.
(I’ve been doing it since last September.)

Wholemeal bread
low-fat spread
strawberry jam
dry-cured ham
Cheddar cheese
frozen peas
free-range eggs
chicken legs
grape jelly
pork belly
lamb chops
lemon drops
fillet steak
chocolate cake
cookie mix
seafood sticks
tortilla chips
salsa dips
instant coffee
treacle toffee
dried sultanas
ripe bananas
runner beans
a bunch of greens
new potatoes
vine tomatoes
and (really urgent)
liquid detergent.

Now that I've written my shopping-list,
I hope there's nothing that I've missed.
And if you don't think much of the verse,
Consider this - it could have been worse!

Will Granny be coming for Christmas,
the same as she does every year?
- No, we won't be seeing her this time;
she's too ill to travel, my dear.

She'll stay in the hospice for Christmas.
They'll have hats and balloons, just like us.
But my darling, your granny is dying,
and she'd hate us to make any fuss.

We'll still have the presents to open,
with paper all over the place,
and even though everyone hates it,
I expect we'll play Chasing the Ace.

We'll still have the turkey and pudding,
and the tree standing out in the hall.
   But if Granny's not coming for Christmas,
   it won't seem like Christmas at all.

Stand there, he told me.
Look up, try not to move.
So I stood there
while he painted me in half-profile.
I looked at the sky
tried not to move
and thought of nothing,
but (you know how it is)
the thoughts come into your head.
So I looked at the sky and remembered.
Tears in my eyes?
No, it was just that the sky
was very bright that day, I remember.
I remember a lot of things.
Some of them I’d prefer not to.

Joy is not the same as happiness,
not warm, not comfortable.
It is unsettling, difficult,
painful even.

Happiness belongs to the world;
like the things of the world it can fade.
Joy is of the spirit;
it exists of itself, intense,
in the spirit.

Bach knew about joy. His Heaven
shines glorious in his music,
searching, yet certain of the outcome,
restless, yet at peace,
yearning and fulfilment in one.

Yesterday
I saw you
everywhere
all the time
and I wasn't even looking for you.
It was a good day.

Today
I was looking for you
all the time
everywhere
but I didn't see you,
not even once.
Life can be so cruel.

----------

Hier
je te voyais
partout
tout le temps
sans même t'avoir cherchée.
C'était un beau jour.

Aujourd'hui
je t'ai cherchée
tout le temps
partout
mais je ne t'ai pas vue
une seule fois.
La vie peut être si cruelle.

[I have written a few pieces  in French, or partly in French, but this is the only one to be based on a play on French words. Translation and explanation follows the poem.]

Je ne voudrais jamais
t'embarrasser,
mais ...
si le verbe avait deux lettres de moins,
je ne pourrais en toute vérité
jurer le même.
Et puisque le second de ces cas
impliquerait fatalement le premier,
je me trouve dans une position
impossible.
Autre exemple des ambitions,
espoirs,
désirs,
rêves
qu'il vaut mieux
ne pas exprimer.

---------------

I would never want
to embarrass you,
but ....
if the verb (in French) lost a couple of letters (^)
I could not in all honesty
swear to the same.
And since the second of these cases
would unfailingly lead to the first, (^^)
I am placed in
an impossible position.
Another example of the ambitions,
hopes,
desires,
dreams ...
that it is preferable
to leave unexpressed.

-----------

(^) i.e., if "embarrasser" (to embarrass) became "embrasser" (to kiss).
(^^) i.e.,  kissing would lead to embarrassment.

Embrasser,  curiously enough, doesn't mean "to embrace". And whilst "a kiss" is "un baiser", the verb "baiser" means somewhat more than "to kiss"!  Still, we all know that words are curious things.

The gardener
This is my garden; my apple tree
has over-reached itself.  The branches,
weighed down with fruit, threaten to break.
If I had read the signs, thinned out when it was time,
the crop would be less heavy, the fruit less small.
And what there is, is damaged.  If it’s not birds
it’s caterpillar, wasp, or earwig.
It will all be rotten soon.  I don’t know why I bother.

The blackbird
This is my garden; this tree I sat in
and proclaimed my own when it was full of blossom
with war-cry love-call song.
Then mating, nesting, bringing up the brood.
The days were scarcely long enough, but that
was long ago.  My children gone,
there’s time now for myself, time for a treat.
My yellow chisel bill breaks in the flesh
of these fine apples. Delicious. This is the life.

The wasps
This is our garden – insects do not have time
for individuality.  We built the colony, us lads,
chewed wood to make our paper nest, and now
we work to feed the grubs.
“Lads”, that is, using the word loosely – for us
gender is not important; that’s for the queen,
and, as it may be, the ones who service her,
none of our business.
But we need food too,
and if sustenance gives pleasure,
so much the better.  When we find a fruit
where blackbird’s chisel bill has broken in,
we eat our way inside, till only skin and core
encase our private eating/drinking den.
So what if it’s fermenting?  If we get tiddly,
and roll about, and buzz a drunken hum,
then who’s to care?  And if they do, we’ll sting ’em.

The trees are coming into leaf;
the sap is pressing through the wood.
Violets, suspending disbelief
in spring, reveal now one by one
flowers of self-defining hue;
while butterflies with purple sheen
on flimsy wings try out the sun;
the sky's a half-forgotten blue.
Brash celandine invades the beds,
covers brown earth with green and gold;
bold daisies dare to show their heads.
The grass puts on a different green
and grows apace - I knew it would
(when was it mowed last? I forget)
and tangled branches really should
be pruned, but I've not got the heart
to execute or amputate;
in this profusion, who'd be so cold?
Though some day soon I'll have to start
(my neighbours think I've left it late)
I won't rush in and then regret -
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.

When afternoons would ******
a shank of sun across the kitchen,
and dust would loop and swarm like dumb bugs,
and warring bedroomed voices
pinned me cruciform,
cheek moored against the cool wall,
counting silences to find the storm,
sometimes, the white frame of Hands with Bouquet
would graze my head, its knowable
art like an unction, its thousand
possibilities intact.

How can I tell you what is in my mind,
how can you know what is in my heart,
when I cannot express it?
The words that do come to mind, again and again,
words that are few and simple,
are not appropriate for the situation, only the feeling,
and even for that they are not enough.
Then I remain silent, or talk of other things,
and so do you, but whether for the same reason,
or different, or none at all,
I cannot even ask, nor could you tell me.
The words would only get in the way.

If I seek your monument, it is only
everywhere.
The violet and the nightingale
and the rainbow all remind me,
even the wild strawberries, though they
happened long ago.
All are part of you,
being in that part of my mind
which is yours.
If I think about you, it is only
all the time.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The inscription on the plaque in St Paul's Cathedral to the architect Sir Christopher Wren – "Si monumentum requiris circumspice" – translates as "If you seek his monument, look about you."

I gave you violets;
you gave me your smile.

I gave you elderflower wine;
you gave me wild strawberries.

I gave you a small brown bird
that hid in the white shadows;
you gave me the nightingale
singing to the summer midnight.

you gave me almost-tears
and rainbows;
I gave you my poems.

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.
                              But to what purpose
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves
I do not know.
                        Other echoes
Inhabit the garden. Shall we follow?
Quick, said the bird, find them, find them,
Round the corner. Through the first gate,
Into our first world, shall we follow
The deception of the thrush? Into our first world.
There they were, dignified, invisible,
Moving without pressure, over the dead leaves,
In the autumn heat, through the vibrant air,
And the bird called, in response to
The unheard music hidden in the shrubbery,
And the unseen eyebeam crossed, for the roses
Had the look of flowers that are looked at.
There they were as our guests, accepted and accepting.
So we moved, and they, in a formal pattern,
Along the empty alley, into the box circle,
To look down into the drained pool.
Dry the pool, dry concrete, brown edged,
And the pool was filled with water out of sunlight,
And the lotos rose, quietly, quietly,
The surface glittered out of heart of light,
And they were behind us, reflected in the pool.
Then a cloud passed, and the pool was empty.
Go, said the bird, for the leaves were full of children,
Hidden excitedly, containing laughter.
Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind
Cannot bear very much reality.
Time past and time future
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.

Over the years, I taught so many classes
in many different schools,
long-term or short.
Hundreds and hundreds of  students,
all ages, three to eighteen years old.

But how could I remember
all of them?
I was the teacher; they were there to learn.
Those were our roles; that was the contract.
They would move up and I move on, for all of us
always a new beginning.

But now and then
one will return to haunt me, like the girl
whose secret friend, Little Mister Hansford,
drove a tiny red plastic car.
I keep it now, in my drawer,
and remember.

The boy, his skin
flaking and cracked with eczema, trying to resist
the urge to scratch, but always failing.
How could he bear to wake each day to face that life?
Yet I was proud he claimed me for his brother;

On a school exchange visit,
an older girl, seventeen,  
crossing the Alps in a coach,
moved beyond tears
by her first sight of real mountains.

Do they remember?
Maybe they do.  
A young man I met by chance
one day on a Spanish street
surprised me by recalling
how I read Winnie-the-Pooh when he was small,
and did the animals in different voices.

So many children, so many years have gone,
but memories, like love, can linger on.

I saw you again today
going shopping
I knew it was you
how could I not recognise you?
your hair
your height
your walk
you were there
but I could not catch up with you

it's always the same story
I see you
too far away
and you disappear
why will you never stay
and let me speak to you
hear your voice again
look into your eyes?

it's a long time
I know
ten years?
twenty?
half a lifetime?
but you are always close by
just out of reach
never out of mind

I miss you

please come back

The love of a mother for her child
is not the same as the child's love for his mother.
The love of a man for a woman changes
after they are married
from what it was before,
and her love does not correspond in all points with his.
Love between man and woman
is different from the love of boy and girl.

Love can be permanent as the tides, regular, unquestioned,
with no end and no recognisable beginning.
It can come suddenly,
violently,
as a thunderstorm in summer breaks
upon the thirsty earth,
short-lived
except in the memory.

But under any one of these emotions
what is there for us to say?
Only, I love you.

Thoughts can be subdivided, classified, clothed with words.
Words fit feelings only approximately,
and our deepest feelings must often go unclothed.
So when I say I love you
I cannot analyse what I mean.
I only know that I do love you
and hope you understand.

A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.
And the camels galled, sorefooted, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
and running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages ***** and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arriving at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you might say) satisfactory.

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.

.
we may be neighbours
or separated by continents and oceans
close in age
or generations apart
brought up each in our own culture
speaking our own language
we have had different experiences
different lives
we are all individuals
each of us unique

but we are all human
we all breathe the same recycled oxygen
passing from one to another
across the face of the earth
we have known love and joy
loss and loneliness
hope and despair
turmoil and peace

we do not have different hearts

Today it is snowing,
and redwings are in the holly tree.

Yesterday it snowed
a soft, wet snow
that clung to the bare twigs
of the trees in the park
turning them into mounds
of silver filigree.
The holly tree in my garden,
scarlet berries, dark green leaves,
and branches covered in white
was a picture fit for a Christmas card.

Today also it is snowing,
and redwings are in the holly tree.
They come to my garden
in hard winters
looking for food,
and the berried twigs I would have cut
to decorate the house
will not last long.
A score of beautiful Scandinavian thrushes,
flashing their red underwings
as they flutter in the branches,
will finish the harvest today.

It may not snow tomorrow,
but the frost will preserve the snow
that lies on the trees and gardens.
The redwings will find food for a few days more
from the crab-apples in the back garden
before they move on,
looking for their next meal.
Sorry as I am to lose my holly berries
– for I shall have none to decorate the house –
I shall be sorrier to lose my lovely visitors.
But today it is snowing,
and redwings are in the holly tree.

I threw a pair of socks away today,
an old Fathers' Day present,
with a design of a comical animal
and "You're the best Dad".
But they were old, the socks,
certainly over ten years,
and though I hadn't worn them much,
the years take their toll on the fabric.
Only an old pair of socks
with a big hole in the heel,
but another link to the daughter
who died ten years ago,
and the love she gave.

This small green bear,
your name embroidered on its chest,
was never yours. It would have been
our Christmas gift to you,
had you lived a month longer.
The ones you would give
you had already bought,
wrapped, labelled -
thoughtful, organised
to the end,
to the bitter end.
We unwrapped them on the day,
smiled at your kindness,
wept at our loss.

Early Christmas gifts
that you had not organised,
that nobody could have anticipated,
went to strangers: your pancreas,
a life free from daily injections;
your kidneys, two lives free from dialysis;
your liver, divided, to a young girl
and an older lady, who would
quite simply have a life
they had almost given up hoping for.
Your heart, damaged by extended life-support,
not suitable for transplantation,
yielded its valves
to repair the damaged hearts of others.
Even bone and skin were harvested
for people you never knew.
That Christmas you gave hope
to so many people,
and to us the consolation
that they live on because of you,
and that you live on in them.

A hundred people, having known our girl,
who knew her love, and loved her in return,
came to her funeral, and there were others,
too distant, too fragile,
or too old to understand,
who would have come as well.
You were not with us, families and friends,
to see her coffin go stately to the fire;
you were not there to see us spread her ashes
on hillside and seashore, say a last goodbye.
But you, who never knew of her in life,
you also wept when you heard of her sudden death
from haemorrhage in the brain,
aged thirty-six and pregnant,
as if the facts,
the words alone, were tragic. You were touched
by the death of one whom you had never known.
You shared our loss.

These were written by 8-year-old kids in a class I used to teach. They are simply syllable-counted  - 1 2 3 4 5 4 3 2 1 - and don't have the extra requirements of so-called "diamante" poems.  You will notice that the line breaks are all in natural places, and don't split phrases.

- - THE RACE - -
          Here
        we are
      on the line
    ready to run.
Starter lifts his gun
    high in the air -
    On your marks…
        Get set…
         Bang!

RUNNING A BATH
           Put
        the plug
      in the hole;
    turn on the tap.
Cold water in first,
   hot water next.
      It's ready.
     Now jump
            in.

~ ~ (on front of envelope)

La lettre que voici, ô bon facteur,
Portez-la jusqu'à la ville de NICE,
Aux ALPES-MARITIMES (06).
Donnez-la, s'il vous plaît, au Receveur

Des Postes, au bureau de NOTRE DAME.
(Son nom? C'est MONSIEUR LUCIEN COQUELLE.
Faut-il vraiment que je vous le rappelle?)
Cette lettre est pour lui et pour sa femme.

I won't lead English postmen such a dance;
Just speed this letter on its way to FRANCE.
Sender's address you'll find on the reverse.

~ ~ (and on the back)*

At Number 7 in St Swithun's Road,
Kennington, Oxford, there is the abode
Of me, Paul Hansford, writer of this verse.

- - - - - - - - - - - - -
For non-speakers of French, the first bit goes approximately -
"Dear Postman, Please take this letter to the town of Nice, in the département of Alpes-Maritimes, and give it to the postmaster at the Notre-Dame office. (His name? It's Lucien Coquelle. Do I really need to remind you?) This letter is for him and his wife."

These two poems came from an exercise we were given in my Poetry Workshop group.  We were given five words (I don't remember how they were selected) and had to work all five into each of two stanzas.  The words were plain / shadow / mountain / light / glass.

1/
The lengthening shadow of the mountain
stretches across the plain.
The last sunlight reflects on the lake like glass.

I drain my glass.
The shadow of death looms over me like a mountain.
My future is plain. I move towards the light.

2/
Peering through my magic glass,
lights and shadows play again,
tuppence coloured, penny plain.
Explorers cross the mountain pass.

Over valley, over mountain,
sunlight now breaks out again.
What was shadowed now is plain,
like drops of glass the tinkling fountain.

(Or, It takes all sorts to make a world)

About half the world is female, while the rest of us are male,
and some of us are rather young, while others are quite a bit older.
Some people are emotional, and wear their heart on their sleeve,
and others, from the outside, may appear to be rather colder.
Some writers are extremely careful to obey all the rules,
while others in their attitude are very much bolder.
Some may be quite tolerant and easy-going,
but others seem to have some kind of chip on their shoulder.
In fact, from what I have observed over the years,
in some cases it's not so much a chip as a boulder.

Oh yes. By the way, please write this down
and store it very carefully in your poetry folder —
It is most definitely not a definition of "well-balanced"
if you are carrying a chip on both the left and the right shoulder.

It was a day when the sun rose out of the sea
washed and polished, shining gold;

a day when the pigeons, in a black and white flock,
flew out from the cliff and back again in circles
because today - surely - was the day
when that nice Mr Escher was coming
to paint their picture;

a day when the haze over the sea hid the horizon
and a fishing boat chugged slowly
across the sky;

an evening when the mountains stood out
so clear and close and sharp-focussed,
and the village halfway up luminous in the sunset,
you could have cut it up and put it in a box
for a jig-saw puzzle;

a night when the full moon hung brilliant and silver,
drawing a pathway of ripples across the sea
you could have walked on, all the way to Africa;

a night when the waves hushed on the shore
like the slow soft breath of a sleeping giant,
soothing you to sleep in the still warm air;

another ordinary, extraordinary day
in my home in the sun.

You took yourself away from the crowd
to the dark sea's edge. Alone and silent
you stood watching the waves.
I could not know how big your thoughts were.
I only remember your eyes
and the night
and the sea.