Muse

Go. I cannot bear

To look at you,

So perfect I must throw

The book at you.

 

Stay. I do not dare

To berate you,

Couched, naked, free, the way

I create you.

(Sebastian Barker)

Strike The Lovely Dumb

Strike the lovely dumb, be curt with praise.

This lady is no incident so vain.

She wears the long-time miracle, she stays,

For in my heart I feel dissolving pain.

 

Wonders of love, raptures of love, dear God,

Queue at the shop where I barter words for her;

For she, Christ’s child, has brains no brain has made

Approving commerce Godly words concur.

 

In California now dark streets appraise

Her lone eyes looking from a window there

Screening a dream no Hollywood would dare.

 

For on the Pacific moonlight softly strays

Trembling with language on her parting lips

As out of clothes into these words she slips.

(Sebastian Barker)

Politics

‘In our time the destiny of man presents its meaning

in political terms.’ (Thomas Mann)

 

How can I, that girl standing there,

My attention fix

On Roman or on Russian

Or on Spanish politics?

Yet here’s a travelled man that knows

What he talks about,

And there’s a politician

That has read and thought,

And maybe what they say is true

Of war and war’s alarms,

But O that I was young again

And held her in my arms!

(W B Yeats)

Invitation to Bristol

‘Come as my doctor,

Come as my lawyer,

Or come as my agent

(First practise your lies)

For Bristol is a small town

Full of silly gossip

And a girl gets abashed by

Ten thousand staring eyes.’

 

‘Yes, I’ll come as your lawyer

Or as your god-father,

Or even as Father Christmas? -

Not half a bad disguise -

With a jingle of sleigh bells,

A sack full of crackers

And a big bunch of mistletoe

For you to recognize.’

(Robert Graves)

Envoi

The sweet ship Carbonek, with all her crew,

seen through the lines of light,

glimmers now green, now blue,

and spins from sight.

 

A jewelled ship, the Carbonek flies by,

now in, now out of Time.

Within all glows celestially.

The sounding chime

 

of every chord that fills Broceliande

marks the coincidence of joy

and stellar destiny. She finds

the marker buoy

 

that points her path along the starry plane

and caracoles in mirth,

sweeping the mile-long flames in train

around the Earth.

 

The Carbonek has golden hosts on board:

some feast, some laugh, some weep.

Circling the Earth she turns again toward

the outer deep.

(K V Bailey)

The White Goddess

All saints revile her, and all sober men

Ruled by the God Apollo’s golden mean -

In scorn of which we sailed to find her

In distant regions likeliest to hold her

Whom we desired above all things to know,

Sister of the mirage and echo.

 

It was a virtue not to stay,

To go our headstrong and heroic way

Seeking her out at the volcano’s head,

Among pack ice or where the track had faded

Beyond the cavern of the seven sleepers:

Whose broad high brow was white as any leper’s,

Whose eyes were blue, with rowan-berry lips,

With hair curled honey-coloured to white hips.

 

Green sap of spring in the young wood a-stir

Will celebrate the Mountain Mother,

And every song-bird shout awhile for her;

But we are gifted, even in November

Rawest of seasons, with so huge a sense

Of her nakedly worn magnificence

We forget cruelty and past betrayal,

Heedless of where the next bright bolt might fall.

(Robert Graves)

Sometimes Nothing

Sometimes.

Only sometimes mind you,

when the streets are quiet in

that hazy half-hour before supper.

And a late summer’s sun pulls a

curtain of reds across the far sky.

Only then when no-one can see

I slow my hurried stride, and nipping

my eyelids closer together peer into

a new world.

The light shower of but a few moments

ago burnishing the houses and paths.

High rise flats doubt my existence

and glare down on me with multi

bloodshot eyes.

A strange landscape prevails in these

darker rays of Sol, slashes of black

cloud gape across the heavens like

festering wounds.

They are bloodless, these rents in the

fabric of space.

It is I that wades through an almost

invisible gleaming gore.

Barsoomian flagstones hide a multitude

of creatures from sight, only pathetic

shapes resting upon four discs litter my

gaze; are these a challenge to my manhood.

No! Only an insult to my stunted imagination.

Who am I to arrive home,

wipe my thoughts from my feet.

And when asked ‘What are you thinking?’

answer ‘Nothing’.

‘Nothing important.’

(P E Presford)

The First Man On The Moon

This dead world never lived; barren of sound

Dust lay unstirring from the first of time.

 

Only the shattered light splinters the ground,

Only the grave-cold shadows creep and climb.

Here mountains bare their sharp white fangs and grin

Impotent greed against the abysmal train

Of stars like lances, needle-fine and thin,

Tipp’d with blue fire to slay my shrinking brain.

Silent the rocks flow in a hell of heat,

Ever the sun stares, like a madman’s eye;

Blinding the red veins in my vision beat -

My soul, O Life, might I but hear my cry!

 

Here should the shades of dead and hopeless men

Dwell, and in anguish die their deaths again.

(Marion F Eadie)

To A Poet A Thousand Years Hence

I who am dead a thousand years

And wrote this crabbed post-classic screed

Transmit it to you – though with doubts

That you possess the skill to read,

 

Who, with your pink, mutated eyes,

Crouched in the radioactive swamp,

Beneath a leaking shelter, scan

These lines beside a flickering lamp;

 

Or in some plastic paradise

Of pointless gadgets, if you dwell,

And finding all your wants supplied

Do not suspect it may be Hell.

 

But does our art of words survive -

Do bards within that swamp rehearse

Tales of the twentieth century,

Nostalgic, in rude epic verse?

 

Or do computers churn it out -

In lieu of songs of War and Love,

Neat slogans by the State endorsed

And prayers to Them, who sit above?

 

How shall we conquer? – all our pride

Fades like a summer sunset’s glow:

Who will read me when I am gone -

For who reads Elroy Flecker now?

 

Unless , dear poet, you were born,

Like me, a deal behind your time,

There is no reason you should read,

And much less understand, this rhyme.

(John Heath Stubbs)

To A Poet A Thousand Years Hence

I who am dead a thousand years,

And wrote this sweet archaic song,

Send you my words for messengers

The way I shall not pass along.

 

I care not if you bridge the seas,

Or ride secure the cruel sky,

Or build consummate palaces

Of metal or of masonry.

 

But have you wine and music still,

And statues and a bright-eyed love,

And foolish thoughts of good and ill,

And prayers to them who sit above?

 

How shall we conquer? Like a wind

That falls at eve our fancies blow,

And old Maeonides the blind

Said it three thousand years ago.

 

O friend unseen, unborn, unknown,

Student of our sweet English tongue,

Read out my words at night, alone:

I was a poet, I was young.

 

Since I can never see your face,

And never shake you by the hand,

I send my soul through time and space

To greet you. You will understand.

(James Elroy Flecker)