Do you see
The shimmered movement of trees far distant
Against a sky of palest grey
Washed in its hue
Inchoate yet grand in scale
All gentled for the bird
To land and leave and come once more
Or the child to climb and cry
Wet bark to feel
Look again
If you have not seen
The light refracted on your pane
Hard frosts and rains laid out
To mark our present time
A Herald’s shout, we are alive
We may still feel each breath
Taken and received
Here is my hand
Look into my eyes
Let nothing come between
The knowing and this feeling
Give intensity a chance
Unbridled passion a useful home
I’ll not deny it’s not for long
But this I have known
It is enough
The seeds are sown
Down where the marshes turn to mud
Down where the cherry blossom newly bud
There will you find what Virginia sought
There will you find what Hector bought
A tale more human for its telling
The trees in the Amazon they are felling.
It was not faith that brought me here
Nor burning love, nor fear
For I have seen fresh cut flowers droop
In scented rooms of yesteryear
The tall and vaulted walls of glass
Made airless by the whims of those
That led their desiccated lives alone
Untouched by centuries that passed
Recruiting hope instead of meaning
Uncertain proofs confused with wilful ignorance
A sop to meanness and a rank indifference
All set to rules of precedent and a slow decay
Fat, thin, white and grey
Their honour made of cant and privilege
While good men wept their tears
For women folk made idle with neglect
Their masters’ bloated mediocrity
An insult to a newborn’s intellect
Come now, throw off these shackles
Ignore the siren call of greed’s fake duty
Listen no longer to the hangman’s creed
Turn your faces to the sun
Step forward boldly into unknown places
Where no man serves another
And your labours can set you free.
I remember a river bed
The mud dried ribs bereft of dew
The banks emptied and desolate
Their sands all pitted and barren
Save the desiccated stumps of bracken
And the heat and the dust collecting
Upon their lifeless limbs
Their roots revealed and bare
I remember the long descent of sky
The grass field
The vast expanse of bleach and yellow
Lost to the horizon of faded cloud
All shimmering and refracted
In air dried to a scented stillness
The smell of arid dust
The touch of the untouched
I remember your voice
As you turned to me and said
How long do we have?
We should go back
What is there here to see?
Why did we come?
Do you know the way?
I’m tired now and the sun is unforgiving
Take me home
I want to go home
So we turned and found the path
Returned with all that should have been said
Unsaid
And took the highway back to the city
Where our lives went on
And soon enough you were gone.
Too Far, Too Late
Can you no longer feel
The first uneasy warmth of early dawn
Upon your fresh, untested, new-virtued face
Or the slow stuttering glow of a wasted sun
Ceding to a darkness filled with stealth
That came so gently to us
With its fast descending dusk
To compass all in cloak of black
Mere marks, lost shadows upon our skin
An endless record of the passing time and place
Or harbinger of dread
For winds that howl and rap
Cold calling rhyme upon these panes of glass
It is a death rattle and a dying sigh
Forgotten heroes forever slain
Their weeping loved ones scattered
To the open plain
In wild disorder and perpetual flight
Crying their last laments with bitter tears
Here did they stand
And here did they fall
Too far, too late the day is lost
And we must sleep unknown
For Pity’s sake
They fought for all mankind
To find salvation and redress
But it was too far, too late
To come again
And meet with quietness and with strength
The poisoned barbs and arrows of dissent
Entangled cruel twists of fate
For these and countless others
Have I mourned
The bells have rung, the songs all sung
It was too far, too late.
There will come a time
When we will choose
To turn to face the first few rays of sun
That creep upon a headland
Broad cut upon an ocean
Strong shadows on a beach
Where we are known to walk
Through shallow foam and sinking sand
Here shall we find
An easy rhythm unfixed by others
Sufficient to ourselves
Here shall we breathe
And taste dried salt upon our lips
Not from tears and sweat
Or fear, or guilt, or obligation
Such things must pass
And cede their place
To grass reeded dunes
Where your taste can linger long
And we are watched by seabirds
Calling witness to our love
Stretched out upon the strand
Dead to that passing world
Yet born again alive
To us as one
A lovers hand, a light caress
The only traces left
Upon the windswept land.
There is a silence in rapture
A stillness hard to find
For ecstasy is its own master
And comes not to command
But yields its dying calm
Only at fair meeting of the spirit
Or with entangled corpus
Each has its beauty
Its own hard fought resolution
Unpremeditated, dissolving, satisfying
Seeping through the skin of passion
To settle the imagination and such thoughts
As may take us from this material world
Into the realm of golden glow
Of settled bliss, of purpose reconciled
This is what humanity seeks
Whatever life may bring
Such is the power of Love
That we as mortals suffer to hope
Until we can hope no more
And the light is dimmed again
Somewhere on the road to Paradise.
She wears a little black dress
White blouse tucked in tight
Belted and high booted
She turns and smiles and waits
Fabulous
And I mean it
The evening will fly tonight
And all will be mighty fine
I will feel good about myself
And what we have will be more than enough
Contentment will reign
Even the buses will run on time
And then the weekend before us
Stretched to a slide of idleness and possibility
Until, until, until
The new week comes
Then will the underground hum
And I am inside myself again
Facing my own version of the past
Trying to make the best of it
And the early start
And more suspension
Until it all starts over again
And the memory prompts a return.
Come with me to the river’s edge
Where the willows weep
And the rushes sleep in wavy innocence
For meadows of wild red flower
Where courting songbirds sing
Of England’s Past a disappearing thing
See thick olive water seep its way
O’erlooked by God’s own church
With arrowed spire built so long ago
Flanked by splendour and display
The Great House with its sloping tended lawns
Its cracked and mossy terrace
Lined by noble columns of some creeping rose
Still sentinel proud for its curtsied village
Unchanged for a thousand years and more
Does your heart not yearn for this
For its beauty or its shadow
For temperance and fair gentleness
The quiet word
That knew its place for duty’s sake
With stiff unyielding lip across a generation
And then another
No fuss allowed just calm endurance
And another’s kiss perhaps
Such fruits we eat until they are no more
Stolen in the orchards of such times
We call them memories
But now are judged as passing crimes.
Jl Rawlinson & Co
Jl Rawlinson & Co Ermin Farm Cricklade Road Cirencester GL75PN GB
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