Evening Song
Now the evening sun has set,
time to leave empty rooms, and yet,
as last light strains between the trees,
my mind is bathed in memories
of times long gone, yet still so real,
precious moments I brightly feel.
O, what happy days I have known
in this old house, in this our home.
Sparks of time I’ll aye remember,
quenched in sunset’s dying embers.
But yonder, see! A blue horizon.
It’s early morn, the sun is rising.
In the east a soft light has grown
on our new house, on this our home.
By Any Other Name
Now the school of semantics is fully enrolled
we begin to believe the lies we’re being sold.
‘Proportional response’, ‘Collateral damage’.
‘It’s a situation we feel we can manage.’
Politicians, as ever, so sensible,
queue up to defend the indefensible.
The Israelis freely act without constraint.
The Americans continue to urge restraint.
Schools, housing, hospitals, all are destroyed
yet, still, euphemistic terms are employed.
Artillery posts now even have trouble
finding a building to reduce to rubble.
And as Gaza withers, festers and rots
the diplomats tie themselves up in knots.
Not a ‘ceasefire’, a ‘humanitarian pause’.
Treating the symptoms, not the underlying cause.
But Isreal miscalculated and crossed a red line,
in denying the idea of a Palestine.
For an idea does not so easily die;
all the dead children of Gaza so testify.
How can the fighting now ever cease?
There’s not the faintest prospect of peace.
By conducting such a senseless war,
they’ve only ensured centuries more.
You can justify anything, if you try hard enough
but, deep down, do we realise, it’s all so much guff.
So don’t pretend, as you kill, wound and maim,
it’s not murder; by any other name.
Only the Rain
So how are you?
Nice to see you again.
“I know your face
but just can’t place the name.”
That sound you can hear?
It’s only the rain.
And how have we been?
“Oh much the same.
The pills they give you
help dull the pain.”
I’m sorry I’m late.
I missed the first train.
“Whoever you are
I’m glad that you came.
But that sound gets louder.
It beats in my brain.”
Don’t worry now. Sleep.
It’s only the rain.”
Triangles Eternal
The night is iron ore, the sky as black as flint,
and stars, like sparks of silver, innocently glint;
time, itself, mysteriously transforms,
its vital essence tamed by these strange forms.
Beneath an opal moon where, like lava flowing,
the desert sands ripple, orange embers glowing.
Triangles eternal-shapes cut out of the night-
each like a prism absorbing a beam of light
that inculcates unseen sinews of stone,
down a deep shaft that threads the inner cone,
until, slowly, revealing a once secret room,
an ancient burial chamber, a pharoah’s tomb.
Perhaps, like Tutankhamun, his face a mask of solid gold.
To imagine, conceive of? Yet to actually behold?
Bold amulets and jewels, all red, blue and green.
A chaos of colour; how they glitter and gleam!
Or his chariots, his magnificent treasure;
a moment so precious would be beyond measure!
Now the light’s dimmer, quietly leaks away,
throwing a dark shroud over the place he still lay.
The beam retreats along the shaft to now return
to a dark sky where a few stars still faintly burn.
Soon the sands grow brighter, the sky a sapphire blue,
and, as if all the myths were suddenly come true!
A golden sun rises, a new day dawns;
and the pyramids now are burnished bronze!
Early One Morning
Now it is dawn and the new sun
tears through the sinews of night;
as the dissolving grey heralds the day,
where waves on the sea sparkle bright.
On the horizon, as the sun is rising,
a pale ship emerges, ghost-like,
on a sea, so serene, as if in a dream,
the deep silence concealing its might.
On the soft sands there a man stands,
a lone silhouette, now come into sight;
and from sea to sky a seagull flies,
a lonesome cry of white.
Shadows swirl, in an unreal world,
bathed in an emphatic light.
Not Merely Monuments
As dawn reveals Luxor I watch ancient temples rise
and, strangely, do I feel I am watched by other eyes.
This is not a dead land, these not merely monuments
to an heroic age, whose being is somehow lent
a ghostly presence by these structures in the sand.
These are living stones – ageing – yes; yet still they stand
against the desert storms, across the centuries.
The thrusting columns, tombs, an enigmatic frieze;
they entrance by their very impossibility.
that once ‘thought’ could conceive of, then find ability
to construct such massive stones defies belief.
Perhaps, as we turn away, it’s with relief
that we now settle back to more familiar things.
For we feel ill at ease in the valley of the kings.
Reluctantly, we realize what they underline;
that this truly was a far more remarkable time.
That our nuclear age, our rockets to the moon
just cannot compare with Tutankhamun’s tomb.
