The Fly

There is a complicated scheme in this poem. Within each stanza the rhyme scheme and line lengths are easily seen. However, the DEF lines in the first stanza become the ABC rhymes of the following stanza. And so on. In the final stanza the DEF lines rhyme back to the ABC lines in the first stanza. Further, all line endings are single syllable masculine, except line 9 in the first stanza which is feminine. Because of the "carry over" rhyme scheme this means lines 3, 6 and 9 of the following stanzas become feminine endings except in the last stanza where only lines 3 and 6 have feminine endings: (because of the link back to the ABC rhymes in the first stanza, line 9 of the final stanza becomes single syllable masculine). Finally, line 3 in every stanza is trochaic.

   For a spot of bracing iambic pentameter, and for contrast, here's a link to "A Blackbird After Rain," written in November 2013 and posted on this blog on 4 July 2016.

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      Who doesn’t cheer October’s sun,
      Weakling, gone pasty, but still warm?
   Standing at the kitchen sink who’ll not,
Side-glancing through the open door at autumn’s dun,
      Feel body-comfort (like a corm
   Amassing energy in its tight knot
      Against the winter’s frozen thrall)
   From sun’s delightful finger dabs on skin
   And clothes, gifting a wistful concilation
         That ice-and-dark time nears,
         Wringing with wind-sprung tears.

      But first, a sleepy fly made call,
      Slow-gliding at the door, then in:
   Tottering the air in vacillation,
It pondered round the kitchen then with buzzing drawl
      It bull-nosed to the hall – a jinn,
   Wary, not over-keen on exploration,
      But seeking resting space to sink
   In season’s fuddlement – a sleep, a death,
   To end its brief life’s gene-pushed concitation,
         Those days in searching spent,
         Prospecting ordure’s vent.

      Later, both here and there, in chink,
      On wall, it flustered like a breath
   Wandering the rooms to find summation;
Settled, if poked it wouldn’t move, instead would shrink
      As longing for the pupa’s sheath,
   All struggles, feeding, breeding, at cessation.
      Two days in windows, crept on chairs,
   It lasted, then, one morning’s clouded chill,
   Was found, brittle in death’s last habitation,
         A dropped speck on the floor,
         Swept up and then no more.

      Well, autumn-winter’s plangent airs,
      Tranquil, but lessing heat to nil,
   Mediate mind’s puzzled divagation:
All, no? are like that fly, though some be wheat, some tares,
      Less dozy but a’quest to fill
   With knowing life’s closed room, its oscitation;
      And at man’s end, despite the spun
   Bewail of obsequies with drums and shawm,
   Must not his corpse like any fly that’s swat
         Be tidied off, that days,
         Unfussed, pursue their ways?

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© December 2021

"Time is Merciless"

This is obviously a bit of persiflage. For a more substantial lyric treatment see my poem "Time" written in August 1980 and posted here on 12 December 2012.

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Time is merciless,
Time is flear:
Lose a minute?
Lose a year!

Slow it crawls,
Slow and then –
Spinning spalls! –
There’s no more “when.”

All must suffer,
All must fall;
Saint or huffer,
Waits the pall!

Works and days,
Loves and loathes,
Each one frays
Like old clothes.

“Mercy, mercy!”
Screams the slave:
Strait, per se,
Time digs his grave.

Coldness, blackness,
Life now ceased,
Mind is trackless,
All is least.

One day space,
Time too, will die:
Physics’ base
Prised like ply.

Till that point
See it sheer –
Time is merciless,
Time is flear.

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© November 2021

Lollai, Little Child

This is poem 82 from a wonderful little anthology, “A Selection of Religious Lyrics,” edited by Douglas Gray, in Oxford University Press’s Clarendon Medieval and Tudor Series (1975). Written in Middle English, I have put it into modern English with a handful of changes/ "improvements" to enhance readability.

   The poems in this anthology are mainly not literary masterpieces; they derive from the faith of "ordinary" people or, often, the priests and friars who wrote them for use in preaching to unlettered congregations. They reveal how medieval society was completely saturated in the life and language of the Christian faith and, therefore, how disastrously far Western Europe has fallen into the intellectual barbarism of "secularism," i.e. social Marxism. But now there is a new swamping faith knocking at the door - Islam, which will deliver the coup de grace to the unfaithful, child-aborting snowflakes who constitute what is left of Western "civilization."

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Lollai, lollai, my little child, why weep so sore?
You needs must weep; it was prepared before
Ever to live in sorrow, and sigh for evermore,
As your elders did before, while still alive they were.
   Lollai, little child, lollai, lulloo,
   In an unknown world trapped are you.

Beasts and birds, the fishes in the flood,
And everything alive that’s made of bone and blood,
When they come into the world, they do themselves some good –
All but the wretched brats of Adam’s brood.
   Lollai, little child, by care are you fore-met,
   You are lost in this world’s wildness that’s before you set.

Child, if it chances you shall thrive in plenty,
Remember you were fostered at your mother’s knee;
Ever have in your heart’s-mind thought of these three –
Whence you came, what you are, and what shall come of thee.
   Lollai, little child, lollai, lollai,
   With sorrow you came into this world, with sorrow you’ll wend away.

Nor should you trust this world, it’s your foul foe,
The rich it makes poor, the poor rich also,
It turns woe to weal, and then weal to woe,
Trust not any man in this world while it turns so.
   Lollai, little child, your foot is in the wheel,
   You know not whether it turns to woe or weal.

Oh child, you are a pilgrim wicked-born,
You wander this false world, looking before.
Death shall come with a blast out of a sombre horn
And cast down Adam’s kin, as he was cast before.
   Lollai, little child, your woe was caused by Adam,
   In Paradise-land through the wickedness of Satan.

Child, you’re not a pilgrim but a foreign guest,
Your days are reckoned, journeys all imprest;
And whether you wend north, or whether east,
Death shall waylay you with sadness in your breast.
   Lollai, little child, this woe has Adam wrought,
   When he ate of the apple which Eve him brought.

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Put into modern English © November 2021

"Ah, Ah, Ah"

This poem derives from Jeremias 1:6 - "And I said: Ah, ah, ah, Lord God: behold I cannot speak, for I am a child." It also refers to David Jones's "I said, Ah! what shall I write?" in his "The Sleeping Lord and Other Fragments" (Faber 1974). David Jones is the Welshman in stanza 5.

   I was impressed to learn from Douglas Gray's "A Selection of Religious Lyrics" (see my introduction to the following post of "Lollai, Little Child") that in the medieval age "there was a traditional belief that men when born cried 'A!', the first letter of Adam's name," i.e. in recognition of the disaster of Original Sin into which they had now arrived.

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“Ah, ah,” the new-born cried,
   “Adam, you have done me ill:
Safe was I in the squeezing womb;
   Now, in the air I chill.”

An apple’s bite brought psyche’s woe,
   Edginess in the self’s deep;
Pigs and swill are the crème of life:
   The dumbstruck children weep.

“Ah, ah,” the prophet said,
   “Words begrudge, but God-touched I
Waste and strike down the bellied cits –
   Their idols and their scry.”

But few there are face truth with will:
   Exile’s trek, task-master’s whip,
Bloody those who “coud’na fash”
   Begging for bite and sip.

“Ah, ah,” the Welshman wrote,
   God’s seven lamps gone flicking-faint;
“Nozzles pump and glass refracts,
   But purpose, form, are taint.”

The Lost in Action being lost
   Crassness fevers each man’s glance:
Turn, turn, but where, to what end?
   A dice! It falls askance.

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© November 2021

Season's Change

Here's a link to "In a Summer Garden," which, on reflection, has very little to do with the theme of "Season's Change," but what the hell... It was written in August 1980 and posted on 4 June 2012. (By the way, in the final stanza the rhythm requires that the Greek word Agápe be pronounced Agapé. Not having any Greek I am confused because the Oxford English Dictionary - before the wokeist luvvies got hold of it - gives the latter pronunciation.)

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      The seasons change,
      The body aches,
And there’s no joy in ale and cakes;
      The great estrange
      From warmth to cold
Shivers the flesh like shoes un-soled:
   Hallows’ Eve for some
   Comes with deaths and wakes.

      Plans neatly plumb,
      Ambitions great,
For one who lived beyond the gate
      Collapsed to crumb;
      And fates and loves
Now ripped and stained like floor-dropped gloves
   Fester in remorse,
   Tapping sorrow’s drum.

      Thoughts become coarse
      And limbs are crick,
Eyes wander, guilty, with a tic;
      Like frost on gorse
      Sins' razors cut,
Selves parlay but can only “but”:
   Wary, bodies limp –
   Judged, no longer trick.

      And grits are skimp,
      The urbs decays,
Its self-myth stripped to un-gemmed clays,
      Grey-veined and crimp;
      Exhaustion’s moan
Finals what now will be ungrown:
   City walls unkept
   Shadow thief and pimp.

      Now Time has crept
      To winter’s brim:
Will riddling Birth or roisters’ whim –
      A foot which stepped
      Through crusted snow –
Scuffle a path that men might know
   Warmth, spring’s flaring hum;
   Truth, that’s nature’s limn?

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© October 2021

"Autonomy"

From famine to surfeit. Here's a much fuller treatment on this theme, called "Urbi et Orbi," written in December 1979 and posted on 11 December 2011.

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   Christ Cross-ly cauterized the world then Rose:
His challenge opened Heaven’s gates: we so-and-sos,
   Now choiced, should dash to Him upon our toes;
Instead we game the odds then freeze in hell-gate’s snows.

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© August 2021

Three Ages

In a very early poem, "Four Answers Above," written sometime in 1973-76, I broadly covered (oh dear, I've split an infinitive) the same theme albeit from a much gloomier point of view. And I was only in my twenties! I posted it on 23 December 2013; it is linked here.

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Even though the young have all the luck,
      Their wits, their strength,
Sheer stamina that goes to any length
   To gain an edge, to earn a buck,
      They still end up stuck.

Come midlife and there’s little left to suck
      And see: there’s bills,
Alimony and redundant skills:
   You may try a final dodge or duck,
      But you still end up stuck.

Of age I’m speechless: you survive the ruck
      And climb age’s heights
But find mere sickness, frailty and spites:
   Death will giggle, its hand will pluck –
      And you’ll know you are stuck.

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© August 2021