Conscience tells me
not to be silent.
When poetry is duty
is it still a poem?
But in these times,
being human
gives everyone the duty
the imperative
to speak against
all the kinds of destruction
by which
we are taking
ourselves
into silence.
A Quadrille written for Shhhhhhh.......Quiet, Please! at dVerse.
(Quadrille: 44 words excluding title – which in this instance must include some form of the word 'silent'.)
Listening to the thin squeak
of my radio turned low
playing non-stop jazz
all day and night, but not
to disturb the neighbours …
I fill my dark with
other people’s dreams.
I read, too – stories that all
end happily, they are all alike.
Afterwards, I forget them.
I see me small, on a vast lawn – a smooth green lawn surrounded by bushes, some of them berry bushes, others flowers. There are two huge weeping willows further down the yard, one on either side of the vegetable garden past the end of the lawn, beyond the wooden trellis summer-house.
I am all alone. The two-storey back of the house looms large and flat. My mother, upstairs, sometimes looks out the distant kitchen window to check on me. Her face is tiny, far away and pale, ghost-like.
Yet I don’t feel lonely. All around me the garden throbs with life. Insects are drawn to the flowers, small birds to the berries. The willow leaves, on their long dangling fronds that sweep the ground, rustle and toss, lightly and gently, in intermittent breeze.
I talk in my mind to clouds, to birds, to insects, to berries … to the rising trunks and curtaining fronds of both the soft green willows. I talk to the listeners under the ground and the watchers behind the sky.
When they reply, it is not as if to a small child. They answer all my questions, calmly. I feel rather than hear their answers. I feel, too, their assurance of my understanding.
My young mother, enclosed in the house, does, I think (I think in hindsight) feel fearfully alone … lonely …
Written for Poets and Storytellers United, Friday Writings #219.
The world is burning, but
in a day or two the fires will be out.
They’re being water-bombed right now.
The houses and paddocks
and the poor, trapped stock
will all be destroyed. But the fire
will be out. Only the blackened earth
will map its dimensions
for a while.
Some will leave and some
will stay to rebuild. The same
as they do when it’s water wrecking
home, livelihood, landscape – when
the big floods thunder, battering our walls,
drowning whole towns, obliterating the land.
Turn up the aircon, these days
when Summers get longer, hotter.
They’ll figure out something before …
The world is burning, but
it’s over there in Europe, it’s
over there in the Middle East. Not here.
Turn off the news! Don’t watch!
All that maiming and starving, I know
you can’t bear, and the cities of bombed rubble.
It’s over there, it’s all over there.
It’s all over, there … The world is burning, but
go to sleep; there is nothing you can do.
Written for Poets and Storytellers United at Friday Writings #218.
16.
Young me wanted the Pied Piper
to come one night to our town,
play sweetest notes on his magic flute
and call us all away – we children
who longed to escape the adult world.
What lands would he lead us to, dancing?
What fairytale surprises had always awaited
down past the end of the lane, out and away
across the fields and into the far forest?
I knew I would never come dancing back.
17.
The Seventh Seal
ends – or begins?
Death leads a line
of following figures
stretching raggedly
along the hilly horizon:
black silhouettes
against white sky.
They are holding hands.
They appear to be dancing.
18.
When I was a little kid, dancing
was what I did for joy. I didn’t
even need music. I twirled and
jumped and threw my arms up,
and went round and round and
kicked my legs and spun on my
tiptoes, and of course there was
always delicious squealing. Oh,
when I was little, I knew nothing
at all about dancing, I simply did.
19.
She calls to me, my tiny cat,
insistently, with loud and
strident voice. I pick her up,
I rock her in my arms. She purrs.
Her small paws flex,
ecstatic. I dance with her
around and around the room.
Oh, I croon, the things we do!
The things we do, the things we do,
the things we do for love.
20.
What happens when the dancing stops?
Ring-a-ring-a-rosy, all fall down?
‘Thank you,’ politely and go separate ways?
Or, shall this be a new romance?
After the ball, do those likely lads
straighten their uniforms and march off to war?
(That has been known to happen. Think Waterloo.)
Or do we wind down quietly in the old church hall
while the musos pack up their tired instruments,
and then all toddle home to a nice, calm bed?
See also Poems 1-5, Poems 6-10, and Poems 11-15.
The whole sequence is now available as a free ebook. To access it (and others) first go here.
The Seventh Seal: an Ingmar Bergman movie, 1957.
(third set of five 10-line poems, of a sequence of 20 on the theme of dance)
11.
Then there was the time –
how old was I? 19? 20? –
when I worked part-time,
evenings and weekends,
as a cinema usherette
for the filmed Swan Lake
with Nureyev and Fonteyn
(that ‘magical partnership’ the press
said, truthfully). Magic and beauty
repeated, for me, every night.
12.
Dancing
around the subject of dancing,
I find the tempo and
gesticulations vary
according to the main
thrust of the desired
direction, the ultimate end.
This of course depends
on mood, purpose, stamina –
and most of all the random!
13.
The journey from birth to grave,
is that a dance, do you think?
Or is it a slow, plodding march,
or maybe a crawl?
I like to think it’s a dance,
even when the limbs deteriorate.
It could be a dance with a gentle,
lengthy rhythm, or perhaps
only very tiny steps. So long as
one still keeps going, it’s a progress.
14.
I can’t be holding light
between my clumsy hands!
They are an old woman’s hands
(obviously, I being an old woman).
Light wants to dance, and does dance
out of my hands and across the gaps
between people; between me and
other people. Watch it flicker and leap!
The dance of light then dips low: a ballerina
gracefully saluting her enthralled audience.
15.
I am hungry. I am ardent.
I fling my arms. I am fierce.
I dance by stamping on the ground.
I dance by lifting high my knees
and my busy, flashing heels.
Oh, this is a ferocious dance!
We have built it together, we
who refuse to go quietly into a
respectable ageing. Let us make
fools of ourselves, let us win!
See also Poems 1-5, Poems 6-10 and Poems 16-20.
The whole sequence is now available as a free ebook. To access it (and others) first go here.
Sharing this (off prompt) with Poets and Storytellers United for Friday Writings #226.
