POEM 214

Children!
Your eyes lend I
The vision dispossessed of me
See past
The pixilated frontages of people's best intentions
And steer by  their lust for an instant's gratification
The emperor is impatient yet
My coliseum is nowhere near completion

You must wait patiently for your  entertainment
When every second column I type
Receives the thumbs down of deletion
For I  have drunk in the desert's  darkness
Parched by prayer
Ground my teeth
Upon this  brittle dirt and sand
Kissed the  Tempter's hand
Sacrificed His own son for
Immortality
Blinded in Gaza
Scorned by even the serpent
Too tired to repent
My sins breed beneath this scarred sky
Children your eyes lend I
For my time and the light are spent

FIVE YEARS AGO

FIVE YEARS AGO

Part I

That glorious summer

Owned only by we and

To wend down the winding

High-thicketed  lanes

Past clattering mills  and

The honey bee droning

We would lay under shade of willow and

Thorn as the sad sweet of

Rosemary caressed the air...


At shy ancient inns we boasted our love

And explored every castle and village nearby and

We found Roman roads barely  traced on the map

And museums as small as grocers' shop fronts

We braved every nettle and every wasp sting

And every flash shower that summer did bring

Embrace we in rain

And shelter in we

Far firmer far stronger than any oak tree

The signs we divined

Across ancient lay lines

And slept us content under their spell

And found long-lost henges exiled at chart's edges

Concealed within creeper and silent warped shade

And gazed we to heaven in parallel union

To stare at the ceaseless

Blue crease-less of skies

And chart the sun's apex high-nooned in the shimmer

Of honeycombed days dripping slowly with ease.

Part II

LATE in the autumn

At Tintagel most fitting

Like Isolde and Tristan

Upon the high cliff top

The sun's slow decline  to

A scarred charcoal line

Its terminal rays sad setting the distance

Drawing an end to the day and our time.

The warmth of the summer left too far behind us

The weakness of will and the skin's soft corruption

Worn down to the bone and then turning to stone

Holding the fossil that had once been your hand

To the churn of the shingle and the waves' wanton crashing

Crushing the tired last trace of the day

The chill of the sea-mist

All ceasing of colour

Replaced by a shroud of a permanent grey.

S. Evans

Collection Day

The further you go away
The clearer you become
The vagueness has found form
And the scales with which  I  weighed you up
Have fallen  from my eyes
For you were too much to take in at once
The day you just arrived

Just arrived at a station in my life
On a whistle-stop tour
From who knows where
With a flurry, in a hurry
And your typical fan-fare

Your presence was  an essence of glittering stars
An elegance of  comets' tails
And crazy carnivals and  bursting balloons and popcorn popping
All bouncing brilliance and leap- frog a hopping
An exotic bossanova  amid ticker-tape showers
And vivid red and orange splashes and vaudeville falls
Whiz-bangs and cheers to pummel a child's senses from the stalls
And a dance routine choreographed by a demon  from some Hellish halls
That left me drunk on your rumba and restless for your rhythm

Amid the  high dives loop the loops
Conundrums and high jinx
You'd turn my well laid picnic blanket life
Into a trampoline to
Scatter and spill
Everything with your chatter and
Misplaced clatter 

Always the mad jack in the box 
That really wound me up

On the days when it was raining
(Which were few and far between)
You were always the  upside down
And inside out umbrella
While all others fled the scene
Seeking shelter
You went helter skelter
Soaking up the tear-drops running down my face

And special cards you'd send me just to celebrate a Tuesday
Your spidery writing that scurried off the page in eight diverse directions
Every day you'd present a puzzle box you'd challenge me open
We had a language in our eyes far  better than words had ever spoken

You'd chalk numbers on my skin and

Hopscotch all over me
Gave me the giggles,
Made my skin all tingly
Scratched that itch
Only you knew how to flick my switch

I thought you were the constant in a world of change
When in fact you were the inconstant that left me
Bruised and breathless
Deliriously shattered
Painfully happy
You tore up my world and threw away the map
An all day ticket to ride on rails that only you could build
As you tilt my world from mundane to mishap
Left my stomach sick with laughter
Walking unsteadily after the fun fair ride

You were a course served at a restaurant I never had the chance to finish

Before it was whisked away and another placed before me
Yet the flavour I still savour
And the hunger pangs my heart

And now you've gone
To who knows where

I've plenty of time to check off the to do list
That somehow went amiss
When you were around
I've plenty of time to fill the time
Now that you're terribly missed.

I find myself making cups of tea for two
I ever hardly drink
And pace my tiny kitchenette
Then pour them down the sink

Last Monday on my bookshelf I sorted
My books by genre and then by author
And then by ascending and descending size order
And then counted them all 1, 2, 3...

On Tuesday I lay under the duvet until three
And on Wednesday  colour coded all the cutlery
And assigned a pair of socks for every day of the week
On Thursday I 
Walked to the library the quickest way I could find
And returned home by the longest route
On Friday I researched the best dog food even though I don't own one
And watched the TV even though it wasn't switched on
Saturday saw me  walk along the river bank
And count every flower I encountered and created names for them all
And sit beneath the willows and 
Wait for leaves to fall
On Sunday I read all  the supplements
On Monday I threw them in
The heavy blue bin

Tuesday is bin day
Hip skip hooray
A time of national celebration in the kingdom of my living room
From behind  the thick dark blinds
I watch the truck arrive
The hydraulics heave a profound sigh
Load and churn and  empty all
Digest,  release, allow to fall
So heavily
Emptied and abandoned
As the laden truck rolls on 

That truck always ignores me

For here I always stay 

Amid the litter and the debris

From the fallout

Awaiting our collection day 

(c) Stephen Evans 2016

A tree grows by our gate.

A tree grows by our gate.

In winter It’s a black skeleton.

In spring It’s a  onfire.

In summer It’s a green galaxy.

In autumn It’s golden rain.

A tree glows by our gate.

David Hill

There's No Escape

There’s no escape, there’s no escape, there’s no escape, there’s no escape

These Atlantic breakers, will break and break, these Atlantic breakers, will break and break,

There’s no escape, there’s no escape, there’s no escape, there’s no escape

There’s no escape route out for you and me to take,

There’s no escape route out for you and me to take,

There’s no escape, there’s no escape,

When we first shared that kiss we made our first mistake,

We broke this small town’s rules, heading for an earthquake

There’s no escape, there’s no escape,

Now we must lie together and wait and wait

Now we must lie together and wait and wait and wait

Waiting for the sun to set

Waiting for more hearts to break

There’s no escape, there’s no escape, there’s no escape, there’s no escape

These Atlantic breakers, will break and break, these Atlantic breakers, will break and break and break

There’s no escape, there’s no escape, there’s no escape, there’s no escape

© Stephen Evans

THE ICE KING

'The Ice King' from Canada

Demille, A. B. "The Ice King." In A River of Stories, compiled by Alice Curry, 142-143. London: Commonwealth Education Trust Books, 2011.

"Where the world is grey and lone

Sits the Ice King on his throne –

Passionless, austere, afar,

Underneath the Polar Star.

Over all his splendid plains

An eternal stillness reigns.

Silent creatures of the North,

White and strange and fierce, steal forth:

Soft-foot beasts from frozen lair,

Noiseless birds that wing the air,

Souls of seamen dead, who lie

Stark beneath the pale north sky;

Shapes to living eye unknown,

Wild and shy, come round the throne

Where the Ice King sits in view

To receive their homage due.

But the Ice King’s quiet eyes,

Calm, implacable, and wise,

Gaze beyond the silent throng,

With a steadfast look and long,

Down to where the summer streams

Murmur in their golden dreams;

Where the sky is rich and deep,

Where warm stars bring down warm sleep,

Where the days are, every one,

Clad with warmth and crowned with sun.

And the longing gods may feel

Stirs within his heart of steel,

And he yearns far forth to go

From his land of ice and snow.

But forever, grey and lone,

Sits the Ice King on his throne –

Passionless, austere, afar,

Underneath the Polar Star."

I THOUGHT YOU WOULD FIND IT RIDICULOUS

I thought you would find it ridiculous
As others do so too
The way I go on and on and on and on to use
One thousand million billion zillion trillion words when
Only one or two need do
So I packed away my big heavy thoughts 
Compacted and crushed them into noughts
Until there remained
Three words true
That say quite simply
I Love You

(c) Stephen Evans 2016

Photograph, The Guardian.

The Guardian reports, "Geoffrey Hill, a poet regularly hailed as the greatest in the English language, died suddenly on 30 June at the age of 84".  

Hill was a supremely gifted poet and essayist.  Despite living for many years in the USA, he belonged to a long tradition of "English" poets, writing of England, its history and conventions; often framing these poems within his own experiences, many of childhood, having grown up in Bromsgrove, in the Midlands.   However, European history was not beyond his remit.  

His popularity suffered due a minsconception that his poems were inaccessable when in fact they were unpatronising ; respecting the audience's intelligence to use their own readings and skills of inference rather than hand out 'meaning' on a plate.  He was also accused of being earnest as cerebral as if these were flaws when in fact several readings of his poems revealed gentle self-mockery, self-effacement, humour, irony and joy for life. 

Below is one of Hill's better known poems. This choice seems fitting ,given the events of the last decade, wherein to  decry the horror and pain, runs the danger of petering to a tweeness and cliche where one senses a difficulty in expressing such outcry without sounding trite amid 'so many routine cries'.  This is one of the themes Hill explores in the poem, the dates given being that of the timeline of a Jewish girl, deported to a Concentration Camp.

Stephen

September Song

Related Poem Content Details

BY GEOFFREY HILL

born 19.6.32—deported 24.9.42

Undesirable you may have been, untouchable 

you were not. Not forgotten 

or passed over at the proper time. 

As estimated, you died. Things marched, 

sufficient, to that end. 

Just so much Zyklon and leather, patented 

terror, so many routine cries. 

(I have made 

an elegy for myself it 

is true) 

September fattens on vines. Roses 

flake from the wall. The smoke 

of harmless fires drifts to my eyes. 

This is plenty. This is more than enough. 

VOX POPPING IN WYTHENSHAWE CIVIC CENTRE YESTERDAY

Vox pop on the meaning of heritage.  Met so many lovely people passionate about history and heritage. A big thank you to John McCormack for filming and lightening-fast post-production.

BUXTON LIBRARY

Off to Buxton library today to finalise the second draft of my book. Probably unmarketable but it's been fun to write all the same.   Wish me luck!