Poetry 11

A Poem? Brain, brain, Gone away, Please come back Another day. Sometime next week Would be nice. In time to write Of men and mice An opus bright All readers to delight... (And other things – sigh - whatever).

Only People White candles, The Lord’s Prayer, Communion wafers Signify God. Black candles, The Lord’s Prayer backwards, Broken communion wafers Signify Satan But conjured up only in the mind Of a people needing The assurance and security To empower them In a ritualistic way. The brain is a dynamo, Producing energy in Measurable quantities. Many brains concentrated On the same thought Can magnify that power To influence external Dynamics and create A miracle! Or a corporate will, A National cohesiveness For good or evil. It could be called prayer, But in the end it is Only people. Good people, Evil people, Confused people.

The Wind And then I saw the wind, Rolling and rollicking it came. Billowing cheeks and pur-sed lips Blowing cobwebs from the brain. Trees in humble obeisance bowed. Grass and flowers lay flat. Sighing and soughing it came. Playing tricks with this and that. "I'll huff and I'll puff," said the wind, "And I'll blow your house down." But the isobars moved away slowly And the wind passed by with a frown. "I'll be back!" the wind whistled, As over its shoulder it glared, But the High that followed the Low Left the wind empty and unprepared.

Urban Pastoral Sightless. Sooty windows high In the people battery farms. Look down with empty eye At all the trees with open wounds, Set in concrete tombs, Pointing broken fingers to the sky. In the drizzle of the dawn Coughs asthmatically forlorn A rusty, patched-up car That lurches out to meet The rain swept tarmac street, Where the road to nowhere goes. And in the shadow of an alley A rusty banger lurks, Its battered shell defiled. Abandoned sans its works, But with half a tank of petrol To incinerate a child.

This Island This green and pleasant land Prescotted with traveller’s camps, Green belt estates to meet mythical targets, Landfill sites of buried toxic waste, Polluted streams and rivers with Industrial effluent. With global warming even The Thames Barrier is obsolete. Wither now this vanishing land?

Say When say is said And said is done, What’s left to say? Except well done.

Insects Two hundred million insects To each one of us! And we’re in charge? There’s a spider watching me From the top of my PC. SPLAT! 199,999,999 to go. We’re winning!

Me & Hitler
In 1943 I was at a school in Small Heath, Birmingham, sandwiched between two great factories; the BSA and Singer, both then given over to munitions and normally a twenty-minute trolley-bus ride from my home in Sheldon. On this one day the buses were not running, gossip was there had been a big raid during the night with the BSA as the target. It was with a light heart that I set out to walk to a school that could not possibly be there anymore (childish glee can sometimes be very cruel and unthinking). A vast vista of summer months without school made the long walk seem like a stroll down a lane.
Stepping over hosepipes, past fire-engines and the smouldering ruins of the Singer factory only endorsed my dreams of freedom from the restrictions of school. In the distance beyond the Singer works could be seen the smoke columns from the BSA. Arriving at what I fondly imagined to be the ruins of my school I was dismayed beyond belief to find it not only intact, but not even one pane of glass so much as cracked! This suddenly became personal between the Luftwaffe and me; I was convinced that Hitler himself had ordered his bombers to avoid hitting the school just to spite me. I have never forgiven him for that. Years later, when I started work in the advertising department of the BSA at the age of 14, I learnt the true extent of that raid. Later still, with a little time adjustment, I penned the following poem:
	In the plating shop at the BSA, Where men were feared to tread. The turbanned, rollered women worked Who filled us all with dread. Such tales we'd heard, of mystic rites, Of balls being blacked and awful sights Of peni into bottles fed. Then hosepipes littered the Coventry Road, From last night's German Raid. The BSA laid starkly low by death's sour scyth'ed blade. Five hundred souls lie buried there to this very day, And in the silent reach of night, Or so the watchmen say, You can hear the clank of a capstan crank And the shrilling drills at play. And if you listen very hard you'll hear the peal Of a young man's squeal As the women have him away.

Requiem for a Dying World

"The Earth and Nature will obey its own laws, let us learn what those laws are and learn to live with them instead of arrogantly trying to control them." Is this the end of living... or the beginning of survival? Download "Requiem for a Dying World" in Adobe Acrobat PDF format

Mr Brock

13 April 2000... 7.35am If nothing else happens today I've still had a fantastic experience: Being a creature of habit I drove to fetch the morning paper at 6.30am. Turning into the drive on my return I caught sight of something humping out of Coral & Des's garden (at the top of the drive). At first I thought it was a large cat or small dog, but when it stopped and turned to look at me I was stunned to find it was a very large Badger!

It turned and humped down the drive at a fast rate of knots and I followed in the car slowly. At that point I realised that it must be terrified at being pursued by this glowing eyed monster and promptly switched off the lights. Amazingly it slowed down. It crossed the grass at the entrance to our drive and disappeared through the hedge into our orchard. Hell! I thought, it's got its sett in our orchard! I drove past the orchard and couldn't see it. I figured it had gone to ground. I parked the car and walked towards the house. Then I saw it again trying to get through the gate. I stopped and so did the Badger. He then climbed onto the metal cellar doors and peered at me over the low ivy-clad wall. I talked to it in what I hoped was a low, soothing voice. Having peered into the stair-well of the cellar and decided it was too risky he obviously considered me the lesser threat and emerged slowly. Now seemingly reassured he ambled across the path and into the border alongside the wall. He followed the wall to the bottom of the garden, crossed the lawn and re-entered the orchard. Last I saw was Mr. Brock humping along the hedge on the field side and not being in too much of a hurry. Believe me, it made my day.

Additional Information: If you are interested in the the conservation and welfare of badgers and the protection of their setts and habitats then please visit The Badger Trust.

Dun-sur-Meuse

Just across the field that we’re parked in there’s a huge tent which holds, apart from the fattest lady I’ve ever seen, several other people, three magnificent alsatians, an obscure sort of black and white dog and a litter of alsatian pups. Judging from their condition and obedience (the dogs... idiot!) they are show dogs and the people breeders. I’m telling you this 'cos a fluffy little thing that passes for a dog, from another tent, went bouncing across the field towards the alsatian’s tent full of confidence and curiosity. The three alsatians simply stood up and barked. You’ve never seen a dog lose its curiosity so fast in all your life - it was going into reverse almost before it could turn around. It went into it’s own tent so fast it must have gone clean through the other side or straight up the tent pole - anyway, it hasn’t been seen since.

The motorhome is parked under two enormous willow trees in a lovely, shady spot. On the trees are some birds I’ve never seen before, some sort of tree-creeper 'cos they zip up and down the bark as if they were on elastic, sometimes travelling upside down on the branches to feed off something in the bark itself. They look a little like sparrows, but with more flecks of white. Just tuned in to the world service to find out what’s happening on the ferry front... what could be more English than sitting in a field, under a willow tree, listening to John Arlot! It’s a little difficult to equate with the eglise St.Marianne directly in my line of vision. What my sketch doesn’t show and should really if I wasn’t so lazy, is that this church is on top of a hill, the highest point around.

Apropos absolutely nothing at all, the bridge in the town was built by the American Fifth Division as a memorial to those who lost their lives establishing a bridgehead across the Meuse in WW11. Just as in WW1, Dun-sur-Meuse got hammered again in WW11 and the fact that the church of St.Marianne still stands is a tribute to absolutely no one at all. The fact that anything still stands in this part of the world is perhaps a tribute to man’s tenacity rather more than his common sense.

The church of St.Marianne at Dun-sur-Meuse

Met the fat lady with the alsation puppies, they’re great (the pups... fools!) She really is gianormous, if she fell on you there’d only be a strawberry jam stain to mark the spot. They all come from Dijon and they do breed alsations - see, told’y so.

Gosh, but it’s a burden being so clever. Whoops! a wasp. You know fag packets carry the warning ‘smoking can damage your health’? Well, in the wasp’s case it’s positively fatal co’s Maggie’s killed ‘undreds wiv ‘er little fag packet; she’s just about the deadliest killing machine around with her Gallagher’s Silk Cut patent wasp crusher. A bit worrying actually co’s she does it with such evident enjoyment - must remember not to hang around the windows.

To re-cap a moment; I’ve just worked out why, probably, I didn’t like the cathedral at Lausanne as much as I might have expected to...I think it was because it was so clean.

Architecturally it’s magnificent, but in their obsession with cleanliness they have sand-blasted the surfaces and removed not only the patina of age, but also the 800 years of worship that was imprinted into the stone. I believe, you see, that everything that happens is absorbed into the fabric of our surroundings, the stones, the walls etc. Which could explain why some houses are warm, friendly and welcoming, because they have absorbed only largely happy experiences, just as others are cold, hostile and unfriendly for the opposite reasons. Ultimately a church has an atmosphere of sanctity and peace because of the centuries of worship that is imprinted into its walls. And this despite the peccadilloes and transgressions of the clergy and their particular hypocrisy - it’s the worship of the people that has been taken in and which, in turn, is given out. In Lausanne they have scoured this out of the stone and the building is left just that, a building, its aura sand-blasted away.

You’re never going to believe this, but the people in the tent next door have brought their hens with them! I’ve heard of liking fresh eggs, but this is ridiculous. Alright, so the people with the alsations have got a bale of straw, that’s no reason to bring the whole bloody farmyard!

The bridge ("Le pont de Jambes") and castle at Namur

Homeward bound... Ever had that feeling ‘it’s Thursday so, it must have been Belgium’? Yesterday was a WOW! of a day: left Dun-sur-Meuse (about forty kilometres from the Belgium border) at 8am, crossed into Belgium at 9am, had a look around Buollion - beautiful town with a magnificent castle, cashed some money and then hit the road again. Dinat (fabulous place), Namur (even more so), skirted Brussels, Ghent and into Ostend at 4.15pm. Drove on to ferry at 5.15pm, arrived in England 9.30pm. Back home, after fish & chips, via what felt like 200 miles of the South Circular Road, at 3.15 am! Three countries and the English Channel in nineteen hours... bloody ‘ell!