I can’t remember why I loved,
Or why I played the game,
The days were long, the nights were hot,
The yearning like a flame,
Then there she was, before me,
Our eyes like threads entwined,
As we passed on forest path,
It seemed we were one mind,
So followed her through sunlit glades,
By shadowed wooded streams,
Unsure of her reality,
While wondering of my dreams,
She had dark hair and sad blue eyes,
She wore a crimson dress,
And said to me, on parting,
You must not this, confess.”
clouds are splashed across a turquoise sky,
like gestures of a transformed world,
-a world to us unknown-
or spectral bands by ghostly hands,
heralding a new dawned age,
beyond the age of man,
and once we’re gone,
then who will care,
it cannot be our gods,
for they are frail and changing things,
born of desperate minds,
the universe grown conscious,
but of itself afraid,
that became a force of nature,
but now the force is spent;
Philosophy has failed us,
the Enlightenment was slain,
and now, on the near horizon,
darker clouds appear,
from which there flash the warnings,
with thunderous cannon shots,
that shake the world’s foundations,
long crumbling into dust.
Behold, she walks the room as though a queen,
Who rules alone where death has been,
Silent as the scented air,
That curls around her greying hair,
Fingers bare and intertwined,
Her eyes aflame, her face now lined,
For yesterday they sent her word,
Her sons had died or so they’d heard,
In wars she could not understand,
The reasons why, the marching band,
Or why the crowds called out for more,
Until the din became a roar,
And off they marched while singing songs,
To right the world and all its wrongs,
So were told the young and bold,
For so it goes from times of old,
And then in through an open door,
Like a broken wave upon a shore,
Comes a man she barely knows,
Transfigured by a world of woes,
Who moved towards her in a daze,
Aging with each change of gaze,
And raised his head from off his chest,
He really tried to do his best,
But sorrow is a heavy weight,
And always come when it’s too late,
Who said with slow and feeble breath,
We were foolish, we were proud,
We listened to that howling crowd,
Now all we have is emptiness,
Please, let’s sit and share our tears,
For missing sons, the wasted years,
For what else is left but you, and I,
A world destroyed, and all the rest, oblivion.
In northern climes when winter comes
And heads bow before the wind,
Happy times can spring to mind,
Like visions in a dream,
Of kisses in a car’s back seat,
On a gentle summer’s night
Hands moving in the dark
Entwining eyes and limbs,
Of toboggans packed with arms and legs,
Racing wildly down the snow,
Of donkeys walking on the beach,
And Punch and Judy shows,
When friends were yours forever,
Though they be so very few,
When love was possibility;
And revolution in the air,
For death was then unknown to us,
Despite the daily news,
We never gave much thought to that,
Were content to play the game.
We never taste a perfect wine,
Nor live for long in happiness,
The path we walk is thorny flint,
We walk alone there, side by side,
The sun awakes the flower’s bloom,
The rain, the sleeping seeds,
But sometimes in my dreams I hear
Faint whispers of the sea,
Which bore our ship on heaving waves,
Through storm and diamond ice,
Through fears and through misgivings,
The old world to the new,
Which appeared to us in glitter,
That first night in New York,
When a taxi man drove us round
And a black man eased our pain
On the journey north by clicking rail,
To a land that lay in snow,
Where new troubles borne of old,
To regrets gave birth anew.
We never taste a perfect wine,
Nor live for long in happiness,
The path we walk is thorny flint,
We walk alone there, side by side.
The soldier had a puzzled look,
His gun had jammed, so read a book,
That told him all he thought he knew,
While bullets flew just past his head,
Of knights and kings, and all they slew,
And wondered then if it was true,
The things they said about the dead,
But then there came the feared command,
To make their prayers for one more stand,
For peace at last without regrets,
At which they cursed and cried,
Fumbling with their bayonets,
They owed the slain too many debts,
The sea of blood was wide.
They didn’t know the enemy, the reason they were there,
Some said this and some said that and some just didn’t care,
For living wasn’t easy but graves they gave you free,
So, ready for the killing, but trembling as he stood,
Wondered where the gods were, oh, why they didn’t see,
The shattered earth and corpses, from mountain to the sea,
And what in us is worth a damn, is any bloody good.
November month is cold and grey,
A time for books, for films, and tea,
When loneliness walks in the door,
And sits with sadness in the gloom,
When trees shed tears that fall as leaves,
And clouds in mourning gather round,
As mouldy men in dusty rooms,
Count their days in dividends.
Spread deep beneath these veiling thoughts
Twists the tangled vine of I,
Rooted in the darkest depths,
Where saints and monsters lie,
All tangled with each other, even as I die,
Whose roots are sunk in ancient times,
When first we sat before the flame
And talked in wonder of the world,
Of our sorrows and our shame,
And so began our futile quest for gods to share the blame,
That led us, as though blinded,
up that shrouded, misty peak
where Illusion’s understanding,
made mad those who dared to speak,
with spells and incantations, the truths we all did seek,
We stare into a vast unknown,
we’re a million years too late,
have come no further than the caves,
though Lucretius tried to set us straight,
on our origins and fate,
of the riddle of the universe,
that with us became aware,
of existence as a solitude
the very gods can’t bear,
and so invented us, we say, their loneliness to share.
But, my time has run, the lights are dimmed,
I take position on the stage,
to play at last the denouement,
some say was written by a sage,
who stained with tears his each and every page.
She sits in silence still,
A form, a question, a will,
Dreaming in the warm quiet,
Of burning lips and hot,
Sweet words,
Feeling her heart speak softly,
Seeing the music flow,
Through her long dark fingers,
Into the white open page,
For all to see,
Making the music,
Her heart always sings,
In Africa, alone,
With the moaning wind,
Only stars for friends,
And distant howling
Of savage dogs,
Far in the night,
Deep in the unknown,
A reality unforgiving, uncaring,
Hungry for the day, for the light,
Which never comes.
There are no empty cities, silent as tombs, not yet.
There are no atomic missiles falling from the sky.
It’s a rainy, spring day, the air heavy with blossom.
The greening grass glistens and birds sing their songs.
Cars pass by, planes drift overhead, though fewer than before,
There’s no reason to fear, not in this small town,
That’s never suffered from tornado or war, but there is time.
There was time in The Bahamas, Puerto Rico too, plenty of time,
Then it hit, in the night, they heard the winds howl, saw the waters rise,
Clutched at babies torn from their arms by violent seas,
They could not take it in, at first. It was hard to take in.
Everyone loved them, the beaches and palms, their friendly ways,
The waters were azure, lapping gold sands, places pristine,
Then it was gone, blown into rubble, flooded two fathoms deep,
The trees stripped clean, boats shattered, bodies rotting in the heat.
They had prayers and hopes, lived decently, if poor.
But none of it helped, when it hit,
These were people like any others, did what others do,
Worked when they could, thought of finer things,
They’d heard of the change, but then that’s life,
So some said, making fun of the threat,
Because they did not understand or didn’t want to,
It wasn’t enough to save them, when the lights went out,
When the sky and the sea became one.
There are buds on the trees, soft clouds in the sky,
There are whales still diving deep in the sea, there is time,
But the fires raged the summer long, wherever summer is,
Burned down forests, and towns, the animals and insects,
Billions they say, exterminated, extirpated, erased, nowhere to flee,
And people too, though most were lucky to come out with their clothes,
They too thought things were ok, ignored the warnings, the signs,
The wise ones who knew and spoke but were silenced or mocked,
Or worse just ignored, people just didn’t want to know,
And when it happened looked for others to blame.
People are like that, for they thought they had time,
Freud have mercy on us, forgive us our minds,
There was time in New York, until three buildings came down.
Then their armies Hurrahed! and their new wars began,
It could have been stopped, but nothing was done,
Protests were peaceful, and so were ignored,
One country fell, then another, and more,
They claimed it was peace, as Hitler had done, and the people believed,
They had to, to accept it, to cheer it, went along to get along,
They claimed it was just, for the good of mankind, to make us feel good,
But everyone knew, who wanted to know, what the truth was.
There was time on the farms ‘til the rain stopped coming,
Or never stopped when it fell, ‘til the heat dried the soil,
And stunted the crops, made life living hell,
That air-conditioned nightmare Miller wrote of so well,
But there was time for some to claim it was all a charade
Nothing to be worried about, claim it was man made
Could be undone at will, it was all a big game,
But the floods and the winds and the storms didn’t listen.
The Barrier Reef died, the oceans became poison,
The great forests died, the bees disappeared, fireflies vanished,
But they thought there was time.
There was time at Chernobyl, at Fukushima, Japan,
When they exploded the bombs that foretold our doom,
There was some time for loving but more time for hate,
For it’s easy to hate, to give the stiff-armed salute,
When ignorance rises like air from a swamp,
When it’s all about me, and who cares about them,
There was time to improve, but the enlightened were killed,
Or pushed to the side, all of us guilty, with something to hide.
For life cares no more about us than the gods we devised,
Then Nature struck back with another strong blow,
Still there was time, time for the blaming, your fault, not mine,
‘There is time,’ they all shout, but we’ve surrendered it all,
We’ve wasted the Earth, we’ve wasted ourselves.
‘Christ have mercy on us.’
“Freud have mercy on us,”
“Marx have mercy on us.”
“Life have mercy on us.”
There is no mercy for us.
