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i hope you're doing great. please find your happiness. you deserve it. -j.a.m- you can also find me on my instagram @djhonoka © All Rights ...
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Originality- my poetic gene!Hope & motivation to the heart of the world I bring! All my poems are copyright protected! Plz read through and send ...
17/F/Somewhere Beautiful
♡ stay. forever.
Poems
Obadiah Grey Dec 2013
"- Odds and sods -"
Obadiah Grey
Dec 2013
Sphincter factor nine approaches
food for the fish n roaches
methinks its time for me perhaps
to open up the rearward *****.
------------------------------------
AAChoo !!
Oh, liddle sister, Josephine,
you sure don't keep your
nose real clean.
got stalactites
o' pure pea green
my infectious sibling
snot machine.
----------------------------------------
I thought that I might shoot the breeze
with God or Mephistopheles
and ask them please to ease my wheeze
of my bad back and dodgy knees
---------------------------
Croak with the raven
bluff with the crow
the urchin
the field mouse
beneath the hedgerow
in a flurry they scurry
away away go.
Yelp with the *****
howl with the hound
and bay at the moon
till the sun comes around.
------------------------------------------
Gino's bar and grill.
Away, away afore Bacchus
doles out befuddlement
and Morpheus has his way,
lest I awake to find myself
in the company of
sodamistic bedfellows
with buggery in mind.
---------------------------------
Harry Potter has grown a beard
he lives alone and turned out weird.
Dumbledore, Albus, no more
turned his toes and 'ad a snore,
Voldemort, who's *** is taut
has no nose with which to snort.
====================
Ahem !!
Behind two Lilies- sits Rose,
then Daisies
for two and a bit rows.
with Poppy, and *****
Petunia, Primrose.
and Bryony - who gets up
- my nose.
----------------------------------------------
Amen.
God bless the Cows - for beef burgers.
God bless the Pig - for their bacon.
God bless the wife n her sharp knife
for the slice of their **** she's taken.
-------------------------------------------------
We can, no more fetter the sea to the shore
nor the clouds to the sky
or tether the glint
in a lovers eye,
As sure as the shore loves the sea
so shall I love thee, together,
together for eternity,
-----------------------------------
It bends for thee
sweet chevin,
the cane thats cleaved
by three,
wilt thou now
sweet chevin
yield, my friend ,
for me.
-------------------------------------------------
There's Marmalade then Marmite
and Jams thats jammed between
the buttered bread of bard-dom
a poets sweet cuisine.
---------------------------------------------
I took up campanology
and fired up my ****.
I rang that bell
to ******* hell
till the busies
came along.
--------------------------------------------
so, I've been whittling away
at a buoyant ****-
fashioned something approximating
a poo canoe-
in it, I intend to
surf the **** tsunami of old age
to-- death;
I have named it Public - Service - Pension.
----------------------------------------------
A surreptitious delightful tryst,
with my honey, my sebaceous cyst.
she's my pimple, my wart,
my gumboil consort.
she's the zip, in which
my *******, got caught.
--------------------------------------
Frayed at the bottoms
ripped at the knee.
baggy and saggy
big enough for three.
faded and jaded
and stained with ***
but I'm due for a new pair--
Yippeeeee!!
---------------------------------------
There's Cockerel in my ear
and he bills and coo's for you
whenever you are near
goes - **** a doodle doo !!!!!,,,,,,,,
---------------------------------------------
Oh, for the snap shut skin
in the blue twang of youth
and to un-crack the spine
on the book of love.
now the gulping years
have flown away
we take sips of the night
and are spoon fed the day.
-----------------------------
Zeus made the Moose to be somewhat obtuse,
a big deer- rather queer- I fear.
then God gave him the nod to look funny and odd
the spitting image of you - my dear !!!
---------------------------------------
Knobbly Nobby.
Nobby has a great big nose
a great big nose has he,
and nobby knows
that his big nose,
is big, as big can be,
nobby has two knobbly knees
two knobbly knees has he,
his knobbly knees,
are as knobely
as knobbly knees can be,
don’t pity dear old nobby
for soon it’s plain to see,
that nobby has a great big ****
as big, as big as three !
now nobbys **** is knobly,
as knobly as a **** can be,
so nose and knee and ****
make three,
and we - are ****- ely.
----------------------------------
The Woman that wouldn't eat meat,
had reeaally, reeaally big feet,
her **** was as big as an hermaphrodite brig
and her **** were as hard as concrete….
--------------------------------
Hearken the clarion call of the crows
afore the snow-
they caw,
hey, get your **** into gear lads-
we gotta feckin go !!!
-----------------------------
Gods pad
I took a peek within
your house
wherein on pew, I spied
a mouse,
and in his hand,
a Bible clasped,
and out his mouth,
a parable rasped,
---------------------
I'd say she had
a pigeon loft in
her eyes and
bluebells up
her nose.
But then again
I wear a flat cap
and stroll through meadows.
----------------------------
Would you care to buy our house?
It's minus Mouse n devoid o' Louse,!
Spiders, Roaches, Bugs or other,
have all been eaten by my brother,
snaffled up n swallowed down
then jus' crapped out a - yellowish brown.
so would you care to buy our house?
from an oddly pair -- devoid of nous
-------------------------
Though the Crows got her eyes
and the Worms got her gut.
comes as no surprise
death can't keep her mouth shut.
-------------------
Bevelled slick edges
and reeaal eeaasy slopes.
Chilli dip wedges
with fresh artichokes.
Wanton loose wenches
and swivel hipped ******
Daft dawgs and dentures
and granddad - who snores.
-------------------
Been whittling away at a buoyant ****
and fashioned something approximating a canoe,
in it, I intend to surf the **** tsunami of old age;
I named it, "Public service pension"
-------------------------------
.
Well,
I could wax on the wings of a butterfly
but, I ain't that kind o' guy.
rather kick the nuts off ******* squirrels
pluck the wings off - blue assed fly.
I'm the stuff that flops off dog chops
when he's up for it and high.
an infection in your sphincter,
a well
that's jus' run dry.
----------------------------------------------
befeathered and bright scarlet
is my ladies bonnet,
jauntily askew and -
lilting on a paramours
grin.
"- Gladlaughffi -"
I'm reliably informed that dear ol' Muma
sported a goatee around his **** sphincter,
now, whilst this is merely educated speculation
from my esteemed friend his "groom of the stool" !
who was in fact required to wear a mask,
ear muffs and a blindfold whilst he went about his business,
He did possess reeaaally sensitive fingertips
somewhat akin to a blind man reading brail,,
and, swore blind that said "**** sphincter' spoke him in Arabic
and asked him for a quick trim, (short back and sides)
I myself being a practising proctologist of some repute
am inclined to believe my friend the "groom of the stool"
as I've come recognise -- Arsolian when I hear it !!!!!!!!
-------------------------------------
In a Belfast sink by the plughole
where hair and gum gunk meet
'erman the germ-man and toe jam
bop the bacillus beat.
________
Doctor this I know as fact
that I have a blocked digestive tract,
I'm all bunged up and cannot go
my trump and pump is - somewhat slow.
I need unction jollop for junction wallop
some sorta lotion to give me motion.
If you could please just ease my wheeze
then I needn't grunt and push and squeeze.
-----------------------------
They are breaking out the thwacking sticks
and sparking Godly clogs
pulling tongues through narrowed lips
at the infidel yankee dogs.
------------------------------------
As a paid up member of the
lumpen bourgeoisie poetry appreciation society
I can confirm without fear of contradiction
that poetry is indeed baggy underwear
with ample ball room, voluminous in the extreme
and takes into account
the need for the free flow of flatulent gassiness
that is the want of a ****** up poet.
-----------------------------------------------
She's a rough hewn Trapezoidal gal
a gongoozler o' the ol' canal.
She's copper bottomed n fly boat Sal.
I'll have thee know that
that there hat
is a magic hat,
it renders me invisible
to the arty intelligentsia
and roots me firmly
in the lumpen proletariat .
-------------------------------------------------------
Said the sneaky Scotsman, Jim Blaik.
if the pension, you wish to partake,
bend over my son, lets get this thing done
and cop for this thick trouser snake !!
I met my uncle Albert,
down at Asda, in aisle three;
he got there in a Mazda,
jus' a smidgen after me,
said he'd traversed Sainsburys,
Tesco Liddle n the Spar,
but not one o' them flogged Caviar
Truffles or Foie gras.
He sidled past the pork pies
streaky bacon turkey thighs
a headin for the french fries
n forsaken knock down buys,
shimmied 'round the ankle biters;
expectant mums to be,
popin pills for bloated ills
in the haberdashery.
Fandango'd o'er the cornflakes
and the spillage in isle four
-----------------
I'm linier and analogue,
a ribbon microphone man
mired in the dust of the monochromatic,
the basement, the attic.
------------------------------
Simple simon met miss Tymon going to the fair,
said simple simon to miss Tymon - "pfhwarr what a luverly pair"
of silken thighs and big brown eyes and scrumptious wobbly bits,
Said simple Simon to miss Tymon---------- shame about you **** !!!
So sad sweet Shirl thought she'd give a whirl to clubbercise n pound
Squat, slightly,
tilt head 45°
and squint.
See the shimmering blurry
dot in the distance?
That, timorous ****,
is ME !
Fast twitching my
narrow white ****
to the pub.
There was a young lady named Sue.
whose ***** and **** was askew,
whilst taking a ****
she'd aim it and miss
and she lifted 'er hat when she blew.
Oh Mon Dieu !!
Obi.
food for the fish n roaches
methinks its time for me perhaps
to open up the rearward *****.
------------------------------------
AAChoo !!
Oh, liddle sister, Josephine,
you sure don't keep your
nose real clean.
got stalactites
o' pure pea green
my infectious sibling
snot machine.
----------------------------------------
I thought that I might shoot the breeze
with God or Mephistopheles
and ask them please to ease my wheeze
of my bad back and dodgy knees
---------------------------
Croak with the raven
bluff with the crow
the urchin
the field mouse
beneath the hedgerow
in a flurry they scurry
away away go.
Yelp with the *****
howl with the hound
and bay at the moon
till the sun comes around.
------------------------------------------
Gino's bar and grill.
Away, away afore Bacchus
doles out befuddlement
and Morpheus has his way,
lest I awake to find myself
in the company of
sodamistic bedfellows
with buggery in mind.
---------------------------------
Harry Potter has grown a beard
he lives alone and turned out weird.
Dumbledore, Albus, no more
turned his toes and 'ad a snore,
Voldemort, who's *** is taut
has no nose with which to snort.
====================
Ahem !!
Behind two Lilies- sits Rose,
then Daisies
for two and a bit rows.
with Poppy, and *****
Petunia, Primrose.
and Bryony - who gets up
- my nose.
----------------------------------------------
Amen.
God bless the Cows - for beef burgers.
God bless the Pig - for their bacon.
God bless the wife n her sharp knife
for the slice of their **** she's taken.
-------------------------------------------------
We can, no more fetter the sea to the shore
nor the clouds to the sky
or tether the glint
in a lovers eye,
As sure as the shore loves the sea
so shall I love thee, together,
together for eternity,
-----------------------------------
It bends for thee
sweet chevin,
the cane thats cleaved
by three,
wilt thou now
sweet chevin
yield, my friend ,
for me.
-------------------------------------------------
There's Marmalade then Marmite
and Jams thats jammed between
the buttered bread of bard-dom
a poets sweet cuisine.
---------------------------------------------
I took up campanology
and fired up my ****.
I rang that bell
to ******* hell
till the busies
came along.
--------------------------------------------
so, I've been whittling away
at a buoyant ****-
fashioned something approximating
a poo canoe-
in it, I intend to
surf the **** tsunami of old age
to-- death;
I have named it Public - Service - Pension.
----------------------------------------------
A surreptitious delightful tryst,
with my honey, my sebaceous cyst.
she's my pimple, my wart,
my gumboil consort.
she's the zip, in which
my *******, got caught.
--------------------------------------
Frayed at the bottoms
ripped at the knee.
baggy and saggy
big enough for three.
faded and jaded
and stained with ***
but I'm due for a new pair--
Yippeeeee!!
---------------------------------------
There's Cockerel in my ear
and he bills and coo's for you
whenever you are near
goes - **** a doodle doo !!!!!,,,,,,,,
---------------------------------------------
Oh, for the snap shut skin
in the blue twang of youth
and to un-crack the spine
on the book of love.
now the gulping years
have flown away
we take sips of the night
and are spoon fed the day.
-----------------------------
Zeus made the Moose to be somewhat obtuse,
a big deer- rather queer- I fear.
then God gave him the nod to look funny and odd
the spitting image of you - my dear !!!
---------------------------------------
Knobbly Nobby.
Nobby has a great big nose
a great big nose has he,
and nobby knows
that his big nose,
is big, as big can be,
nobby has two knobbly knees
two knobbly knees has he,
his knobbly knees,
are as knobely
as knobbly knees can be,
don’t pity dear old nobby
for soon it’s plain to see,
that nobby has a great big ****
as big, as big as three !
now nobbys **** is knobly,
as knobly as a **** can be,
so nose and knee and ****
make three,
and we - are ****- ely.
----------------------------------
The Woman that wouldn't eat meat,
had reeaally, reeaally big feet,
her **** was as big as an hermaphrodite brig
and her **** were as hard as concrete….
--------------------------------
Hearken the clarion call of the crows
afore the snow-
they caw,
hey, get your **** into gear lads-
we gotta feckin go !!!
-----------------------------
Gods pad
I took a peek within
your house
wherein on pew, I spied
a mouse,
and in his hand,
a Bible clasped,
and out his mouth,
a parable rasped,
---------------------
I'd say she had
a pigeon loft in
her eyes and
bluebells up
her nose.
But then again
I wear a flat cap
and stroll through meadows.
----------------------------
Would you care to buy our house?
It's minus Mouse n devoid o' Louse,!
Spiders, Roaches, Bugs or other,
have all been eaten by my brother,
snaffled up n swallowed down
then jus' crapped out a - yellowish brown.
so would you care to buy our house?
from an oddly pair -- devoid of nous
-------------------------
Though the Crows got her eyes
and the Worms got her gut.
comes as no surprise
death can't keep her mouth shut.
-------------------
Bevelled slick edges
and reeaal eeaasy slopes.
Chilli dip wedges
with fresh artichokes.
Wanton loose wenches
and swivel hipped ******
Daft dawgs and dentures
and granddad - who snores.
-------------------
Been whittling away at a buoyant ****
and fashioned something approximating a canoe,
in it, I intend to surf the **** tsunami of old age;
I named it, "Public service pension"
-------------------------------
.
Well,
I could wax on the wings of a butterfly
but, I ain't that kind o' guy.
rather kick the nuts off ******* squirrels
pluck the wings off - blue assed fly.
I'm the stuff that flops off dog chops
when he's up for it and high.
an infection in your sphincter,
a well
that's jus' run dry.
----------------------------------------------
befeathered and bright scarlet
is my ladies bonnet,
jauntily askew and -
lilting on a paramours
grin.
"- Gladlaughffi -"
I'm reliably informed that dear ol' Muma
sported a goatee around his **** sphincter,
now, whilst this is merely educated speculation
from my esteemed friend his "groom of the stool" !
who was in fact required to wear a mask,
ear muffs and a blindfold whilst he went about his business,
He did possess reeaaally sensitive fingertips
somewhat akin to a blind man reading brail,,
and, swore blind that said "**** sphincter' spoke him in Arabic
and asked him for a quick trim, (short back and sides)
I myself being a practising proctologist of some repute
am inclined to believe my friend the "groom of the stool"
as I've come recognise -- Arsolian when I hear it !!!!!!!!
-------------------------------------
In a Belfast sink by the plughole
where hair and gum gunk meet
'erman the germ-man and toe jam
bop the bacillus beat.
________
Doctor this I know as fact
that I have a blocked digestive tract,
I'm all bunged up and cannot go
my trump and pump is - somewhat slow.
I need unction jollop for junction wallop
some sorta lotion to give me motion.
If you could please just ease my wheeze
then I needn't grunt and push and squeeze.
-----------------------------
They are breaking out the thwacking sticks
and sparking Godly clogs
pulling tongues through narrowed lips
at the infidel yankee dogs.
------------------------------------
As a paid up member of the
lumpen bourgeoisie poetry appreciation society
I can confirm without fear of contradiction
that poetry is indeed baggy underwear
with ample ball room, voluminous in the extreme
and takes into account
the need for the free flow of flatulent gassiness
that is the want of a ****** up poet.
-----------------------------------------------
She's a rough hewn Trapezoidal gal
a gongoozler o' the ol' canal.
She's copper bottomed n fly boat Sal.
I'll have thee know that
that there hat
is a magic hat,
it renders me invisible
to the arty intelligentsia
and roots me firmly
in the lumpen proletariat .
-------------------------------------------------------
Said the sneaky Scotsman, Jim Blaik.
if the pension, you wish to partake,
bend over my son, lets get this thing done
and cop for this thick trouser snake !!
I met my uncle Albert,
down at Asda, in aisle three;
he got there in a Mazda,
jus' a smidgen after me,
said he'd traversed Sainsburys,
Tesco Liddle n the Spar,
but not one o' them flogged Caviar
Truffles or Foie gras.
He sidled past the pork pies
streaky bacon turkey thighs
a headin for the french fries
n forsaken knock down buys,
shimmied 'round the ankle biters;
expectant mums to be,
popin pills for bloated ills
in the haberdashery.
Fandango'd o'er the cornflakes
and the spillage in isle four
-----------------
I'm linier and analogue,
a ribbon microphone man
mired in the dust of the monochromatic,
the basement, the attic.
------------------------------
Simple simon met miss Tymon going to the fair,
said simple simon to miss Tymon - "pfhwarr what a luverly pair"
of silken thighs and big brown eyes and scrumptious wobbly bits,
Said simple Simon to miss Tymon---------- shame about you **** !!!
So sad sweet Shirl thought she'd give a whirl to clubbercise n pound
Squat, slightly,
tilt head 45°
and squint.
See the shimmering blurry
dot in the distance?
That, timorous ****,
is ME !
Fast twitching my
narrow white ****
to the pub.
There was a young lady named Sue.
whose ***** and **** was askew,
whilst taking a ****
she'd aim it and miss
and she lifted 'er hat when she blew.
Oh Mon Dieu !!
Obi.
Nigel Morgan Sep 2013
Sunday
Nigel Morgan
Sep 2013
He had been away. Just a few days, but long enough to feel coming home was necessary. He carried with him so many thoughts and plans, and the inevitable list had already formed itself. But the list was for Monday morning. He would enjoy now what he could of Sunday.
Everything can feel so different on a Sunday. Travel by train had been a relaxed affair for once, a hundred miles cross-country from the open skies of the Fens to the conurbations of South Yorkshire. Today, there was no urgency or deliberation. Passengers were families, groups of friends, sensible singles going home after the weekend away. No suits. He seemed the only one not fixated by a smart phone, tablet or computer. So he got to see the autumn skies, the mountain ranges of clouds, the vast fields, the still-harvesting. But his thoughts were full to the brim of traveling the previous November when together they had made a similar journey (though in reverse) under similar skies. They had escaped for two days one night into a time of being wholly together, inseparably together, joined in that joy of companionship that elated him to recall it. He was overcome with weakness in his body and a jolt of passion combined: to think of her quiet beauty, the tilt of her head, the brush of her hair against his cheek. He longed for her now to be in the seat opposite and to stroke the back of her calf with his foot, hold her small hand across the table, gaze and gaze again at her profile as she, always alert to every flicker of change, took in the passing landscape.
But these thoughts gradually subsided and he found himself recalling a poem he had commissioned. It was a text for a verse anthem, that so very English form beloved by cathedral and collegiate choral directors of the 16th C (and just that weekend he had been in such a building where this music had its home). He had been reading The Five Proofs for the Existence of God from the Summa Theologica by Thomas Aquinas, knowing this scholar to have been a cornerstone of the work of Umberto Eco, an author he admired. He had also set a poem that mentioned these Five Proofs, and had set this poem without knowing exactly what they were. He recalled its ending:
They sit by a lake where dead leaves
Float and apples lie on a table. She
ignores him and his folder of papers
but I found later the picture was called
‘In Love’, which coloured love sepia.
Later still, by the time I sat with you,
Watched your arm on the back of a chair
And your hand at rest while you told me
Of Aquinas and his proofs for the existence
Of God I realised love was not always
Sepia, that these hands held invisible
Keys, were pale because the mind was aflame.
He remembered then the challenge of reading Aquinas, this Dominican friar of the 13C. It had stretched him, and he thought of asking his wordsmith of thirty years, the mother of his daughters, to bring these arguments together in a poetic form for him to set to music. She had delivered such a poem and it took him some while to grasp it wholly. He wondered for a moment if he actually had grasped it. But there was this connection with the landscape he was passing through. She had mentioned this, and now he saw it for his own eyes. She had been to Ely for the day, to walk the length of the great Cathedral, to stare at and be amongst the visible past, the past of Aquinas. He remembered the first verse as only a composer can who has laboured over the scheme of words and rhythms:
The Argument from Motion
Everything in the world changes.
A meadow of skewbald horses grazes
Beneath a pair of flying swans
And the universe is different again.
And no sooner is potency reduced to act,
By a whisker’s twitch or a word,
A word, that potent gobbet of air
Than smiles and tears change places.
And everything has changed. Back
Go the tracks beyond seen convergence
To a great self-sufficient terminus
Which terminus we might call God.
And so it was in such a spirit of reflection that his journey passed. He had joined the Edinburgh express at Peterborough to travel north, and the landscape had subsided into a different caste, still rural, but different, the fields smaller, the horizon closer.
Alighting from the train in his home city on a Sunday afternoon the station and surrounding streets were quiet and the few people about were not walking purposefully, they strolled. He climbed the flights of stairs to his third floor studio, unlocked the door and immediately walked across the room to open the window. Seagulls were swooping and diving below him, feeding off the detritus of the previous night’s partying in the clubs and pubs that occupied the city centre, its main shopping area removed to a mall off kilter with the historic city and its public buildings. What shops there were stood empty, boarded up, permanently lease for sale.
Sitting at his desk he surveyed the paper trail of his work in progress. Once so organised, every sketch and plan properly labelled and paginated, he had regressed it seemed to filling pages of his favoured graph paper in a random fashion. Some idea for the probably distant future would find its way into the midst of present work, only (sometimes) a different ink showing this to be the case. Notes from a radio talk jostled with rhythmic abstracts. He realised this was perhaps indicative of his mental state, a state of transience, of uncertainty, a temporariness even.
He was probably too tired to work effectively now, just off the train, but the sense and the relative peacefulness that was Sunday was so seductive. He didn’t want to lose the potential this time afforded. This was why for so many years Sunday had often been such a productive day. If he went to meeting, if he cooked the tea, if he ironed the children’s school clothes for the week, there was this still space in the day. It represented a kind of ideal state in which to think and compose. Now these obligations were more flexible and different, Sunday had even more ‘still’ space, and it continued to cast its spell over him.
He put his latest sketches into a sequential form, editing on the computer then printing them out, listening acutely, wholly absorbed. Only a text message from his beloved (picking blackberries) brought him back to the time and day. There was a photo: a cluster of this dark, late summer fruit, ripe for picking framed against a tree and a white sky. Barely a week ago they had picked blackberries together with friends, children and dogs and he had watched her purposely pick this fruit without the awkwardness that so often accompanied bending over brambles. He wondered at her, constantly. How was this so? He imagined her now in her parents’ garden, a garden glowing in the late afternoon light, as she too would glow in that late-afternoon light . . . he bought himself back to the problem in hand. How to make the next move? There was a join to deal with. He was working with the seven metrics of traditional poetry as the basis for a rhythmic scheme. He was being tempted towards committing an idea to paper. He kept reminding himself of the music’s lie of the land, the effectiveness of it so far. It was still early days he thought to commit to something that would mark the piece out, produce a different quality, would declare the movement he was working on to be a certain shape.
And suddenly he was back on the train, looking at the passing landscape and the next verse of that Aquinas poem insisted itself upon him with its apt description and tantalising argument:
The Argument from Efficient Causality
We are crossing managed washlands.
Pochards so carefully coloured swim
Where cows ruminated last summer
In a landscape fruit of human agency.
And I think of the heavenly aboriginal
Agent of all our doings in this material
Playground of earth I can pick up,
Hold and crumble and cultivate
And air that is mine for the breathing
And the inhabited waters that cling
As if by magic to a sphere. What cause
Sustains the effects we live among?
For there is no smoke without fire
And as we sow, thus we reap. Nihil
Ex nihil, therefore something Is,
Some being we might call God.
So ‘nothing out of nothing, therefore something is’. Outside in the city the Cathedral bells were ringing in Evensong. The sounds only audible on a Sunday when the traffic abated a little and the sounds in the street below were sporadic. He thought of going out into the Cathedral precinct and listening to the bells roll and rhythm their sequences, those Plain-Bob-Majors and Grand-Sire-Triples. But he knew that would further break the spell, the train of thought that lay about him.
He sketched the next section, confidently, and when he had finished felt he could do know more. There it was: a starting point for tomorrow. He could now go towards home, walk for a while in the park and enjoy the movements of the wind-tossed trees, the late roses, the geese on the lake. He would think about his various children in their various lives. He would think about the woman he loved, and would one day assuage what he knew was a loneliness he could not quench with any music, and though he tried daily with words, would not be assuaged.
Everything can feel so different on a Sunday. Travel by train had been a relaxed affair for once, a hundred miles cross-country from the open skies of the Fens to the conurbations of South Yorkshire. Today, there was no urgency or deliberation. Passengers were families, groups of friends, sensible singles going home after the weekend away. No suits. He seemed the only one not fixated by a smart phone, tablet or computer. So he got to see the autumn skies, the mountain ranges of clouds, the vast fields, the still-harvesting. But his thoughts were full to the brim of traveling the previous November when together they had made a similar journey (though in reverse) under similar skies. They had escaped for two days one night into a time of being wholly together, inseparably together, joined in that joy of companionship that elated him to recall it. He was overcome with weakness in his body and a jolt of passion combined: to think of her quiet beauty, the tilt of her head, the brush of her hair against his cheek. He longed for her now to be in the seat opposite and to stroke the back of her calf with his foot, hold her small hand across the table, gaze and gaze again at her profile as she, always alert to every flicker of change, took in the passing landscape.
But these thoughts gradually subsided and he found himself recalling a poem he had commissioned. It was a text for a verse anthem, that so very English form beloved by cathedral and collegiate choral directors of the 16th C (and just that weekend he had been in such a building where this music had its home). He had been reading The Five Proofs for the Existence of God from the Summa Theologica by Thomas Aquinas, knowing this scholar to have been a cornerstone of the work of Umberto Eco, an author he admired. He had also set a poem that mentioned these Five Proofs, and had set this poem without knowing exactly what they were. He recalled its ending:
They sit by a lake where dead leaves
Float and apples lie on a table. She
ignores him and his folder of papers
but I found later the picture was called
‘In Love’, which coloured love sepia.
Later still, by the time I sat with you,
Watched your arm on the back of a chair
And your hand at rest while you told me
Of Aquinas and his proofs for the existence
Of God I realised love was not always
Sepia, that these hands held invisible
Keys, were pale because the mind was aflame.
He remembered then the challenge of reading Aquinas, this Dominican friar of the 13C. It had stretched him, and he thought of asking his wordsmith of thirty years, the mother of his daughters, to bring these arguments together in a poetic form for him to set to music. She had delivered such a poem and it took him some while to grasp it wholly. He wondered for a moment if he actually had grasped it. But there was this connection with the landscape he was passing through. She had mentioned this, and now he saw it for his own eyes. She had been to Ely for the day, to walk the length of the great Cathedral, to stare at and be amongst the visible past, the past of Aquinas. He remembered the first verse as only a composer can who has laboured over the scheme of words and rhythms:
The Argument from Motion
Everything in the world changes.
A meadow of skewbald horses grazes
Beneath a pair of flying swans
And the universe is different again.
And no sooner is potency reduced to act,
By a whisker’s twitch or a word,
A word, that potent gobbet of air
Than smiles and tears change places.
And everything has changed. Back
Go the tracks beyond seen convergence
To a great self-sufficient terminus
Which terminus we might call God.
And so it was in such a spirit of reflection that his journey passed. He had joined the Edinburgh express at Peterborough to travel north, and the landscape had subsided into a different caste, still rural, but different, the fields smaller, the horizon closer.
Alighting from the train in his home city on a Sunday afternoon the station and surrounding streets were quiet and the few people about were not walking purposefully, they strolled. He climbed the flights of stairs to his third floor studio, unlocked the door and immediately walked across the room to open the window. Seagulls were swooping and diving below him, feeding off the detritus of the previous night’s partying in the clubs and pubs that occupied the city centre, its main shopping area removed to a mall off kilter with the historic city and its public buildings. What shops there were stood empty, boarded up, permanently lease for sale.
Sitting at his desk he surveyed the paper trail of his work in progress. Once so organised, every sketch and plan properly labelled and paginated, he had regressed it seemed to filling pages of his favoured graph paper in a random fashion. Some idea for the probably distant future would find its way into the midst of present work, only (sometimes) a different ink showing this to be the case. Notes from a radio talk jostled with rhythmic abstracts. He realised this was perhaps indicative of his mental state, a state of transience, of uncertainty, a temporariness even.
He was probably too tired to work effectively now, just off the train, but the sense and the relative peacefulness that was Sunday was so seductive. He didn’t want to lose the potential this time afforded. This was why for so many years Sunday had often been such a productive day. If he went to meeting, if he cooked the tea, if he ironed the children’s school clothes for the week, there was this still space in the day. It represented a kind of ideal state in which to think and compose. Now these obligations were more flexible and different, Sunday had even more ‘still’ space, and it continued to cast its spell over him.
He put his latest sketches into a sequential form, editing on the computer then printing them out, listening acutely, wholly absorbed. Only a text message from his beloved (picking blackberries) brought him back to the time and day. There was a photo: a cluster of this dark, late summer fruit, ripe for picking framed against a tree and a white sky. Barely a week ago they had picked blackberries together with friends, children and dogs and he had watched her purposely pick this fruit without the awkwardness that so often accompanied bending over brambles. He wondered at her, constantly. How was this so? He imagined her now in her parents’ garden, a garden glowing in the late afternoon light, as she too would glow in that late-afternoon light . . . he bought himself back to the problem in hand. How to make the next move? There was a join to deal with. He was working with the seven metrics of traditional poetry as the basis for a rhythmic scheme. He was being tempted towards committing an idea to paper. He kept reminding himself of the music’s lie of the land, the effectiveness of it so far. It was still early days he thought to commit to something that would mark the piece out, produce a different quality, would declare the movement he was working on to be a certain shape.
And suddenly he was back on the train, looking at the passing landscape and the next verse of that Aquinas poem insisted itself upon him with its apt description and tantalising argument:
The Argument from Efficient Causality
We are crossing managed washlands.
Pochards so carefully coloured swim
Where cows ruminated last summer
In a landscape fruit of human agency.
And I think of the heavenly aboriginal
Agent of all our doings in this material
Playground of earth I can pick up,
Hold and crumble and cultivate
And air that is mine for the breathing
And the inhabited waters that cling
As if by magic to a sphere. What cause
Sustains the effects we live among?
For there is no smoke without fire
And as we sow, thus we reap. Nihil
Ex nihil, therefore something Is,
Some being we might call God.
So ‘nothing out of nothing, therefore something is’. Outside in the city the Cathedral bells were ringing in Evensong. The sounds only audible on a Sunday when the traffic abated a little and the sounds in the street below were sporadic. He thought of going out into the Cathedral precinct and listening to the bells roll and rhythm their sequences, those Plain-Bob-Majors and Grand-Sire-Triples. But he knew that would further break the spell, the train of thought that lay about him.
He sketched the next section, confidently, and when he had finished felt he could do know more. There it was: a starting point for tomorrow. He could now go towards home, walk for a while in the park and enjoy the movements of the wind-tossed trees, the late roses, the geese on the lake. He would think about his various children in their various lives. He would think about the woman he loved, and would one day assuage what he knew was a loneliness he could not quench with any music, and though he tried daily with words, would not be assuaged.
The poetic quotations are from poems by Margaret Morgan. A collection titled Words for Music by Margaret and Nigel Morgan is now available as an e-book from Amazon http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DY8RAGC
Elisa Maria Argiro Feb 2016
Ely Ford
Elisa Maria Argiro
Feb 2016
Once a place of crossing,
on this sensuously and
precariously warm
February day
I have come to be still,
and to watch, and to listen.
Shadows of trees,
so immensely tall,
stay oddly motionless
under green river water,
even as the surface
moves and swirls
carrying itself ever onward.
Leaves and mud are newly wet;
walking is softer, soundless.
Below the path winding upwards,
melted ice sings again as water.
I drink in its sound, soul diving
heart first into perfect, liquid treasure.
on this sensuously and
precariously warm
February day
I have come to be still,
and to watch, and to listen.
Shadows of trees,
so immensely tall,
stay oddly motionless
under green river water,
even as the surface
moves and swirls
carrying itself ever onward.
Leaves and mud are newly wet;
walking is softer, soundless.
Below the path winding upwards,
melted ice sings again as water.
I drink in its sound, soul diving
heart first into perfect, liquid treasure.
©Elisa Maria Argiro