Resilience

I love Spring. Not too hot, not too cold, it brings hope, beauty and the Sun, which in turn gives us some much needed Vitamin D after months of harsh and gloomy weather. The air itself is fresher and it is all I can do sometimes to restrain myself and not make a complete spectacle by standing and enjoying the weather and taking in a big, deep, over dramatic breath.  Although, if there's no-one around, I do that anyway. I feel happier, and my smile is wider for it.

Believe it or not, one of the best places to appreciate Spring is in a Graveyard or Crematorium. On my visits to Carleton Crematorium it is absolutely stunning, so a while ago now I penned a poem about it.  Over time, I have re-visited that same poem and edited and expanded upon it.  It now sounds like this:


My Tranquil Haven
 
A warm embrace from the Sun up above,
Bringing life to nature abound,
Flowers stretching, shaking off Winters Cold,
A rainbow sea all around.
 
Purples and Pinks, Whites and Reds,
Yellows, Oranges and Blues,
Offerings marking affection and respect,
Differing plants in all manner of hues.

Tree's standing sentinel offer a welcome shade,
Diffusing and dappling the Sun,
Cascading catkins veil and bow low,
Cherry Blossom petals dance, not to be outdone. 

The verdant grass and leaves whisper softly,
Caressed by a tender breeze,
Birds aloft sing their sweetest of songs,
The World seemingly at ease.

New life burgeoning above the earth,
Below, our ancestors, in natural shroud, 
In harmony together, just like our love,  
I recall fondly, it was emblazoned so proud. 

So calm and serene, a place to reflect
To remember someone so dear
Tranquillity reigns in the Cemetery
I visit without any fear.



I realise that some may find that a little morbid, but it wasn't intended that way at all. I'm sure it will perhaps change again before I am completely happy with it.

Any-hoo, thanks for reading. x

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How many apples?

How many apples?

It took one apple,

To open our eyes

And gaze upon the naked body

Ashamed we run and hide

It took one apple

To say good bye

Leaving Eden to the dying faith

Of the lost listening to the lie.

It took one apple

To understand

The Agony of giving life

To a world obsessed with land.

I took one apple

To see the need

For the work required

So the people could feed.

How many apples will it take

For the same to happen again?

How many chances will we get

To stop the outcome being the same?

Open your eyes

See the pain

Feel the cold

Of the falling rain

Understand the shadows

Gaze upon the lies

From governments to peddlers of faith

Let no one be denied.

With closed minds we watch

As the guide leaves the chapel

I cry tears of hope fading

How many apples?

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By Any Other Name

Hope Mirrlees' poem, My Soul Was a Princess, was first published last year, in a posthumous collection, some 33 years after her death.  Although her most famous poem, Paris: A Poem, is in the modernist style, this piece is more lyrical, more personal.  It seems to cross between the narrative and the lyrical.  Were it not for the first two words, this could be a description lifted from fairytale or fantasy, as in Mirrlees novel, Lud-in-the-Mist.  Instead, the soul is personified in a manner which psychologists would, no doubt, find fascinating.  The perceived author's historical soul becomes a character from another world (I'll leave it to you to work out the number of narrative levels between writer and reader) which smacks of emotions repressed, perhaps embarrassing to divulge.

The drab, unfulfilled tone of longing is sustained throughout the verse through sound and imagery.  The assonant, open-mouthed 'Oh' is engaged from the second stressed vowel in 'soul'.  On line 4 it reappears with 'no hope' only to reemerge on line 10 in 'ghosts of long dead woes', culminating in the final, forceful molossus, 'one red rose'.  And the molossus is used to break up the rhythm and create emphasis in a poem with an abundance of unstressed, or invisible, sounds which add a ghostly whisper to the spoken words.  On line 8 in particular, the phrase 'gray, chill, yearning' forces the reader to slow down, to dwell on the image of the desolate palace, the longing soul. 

The palette which comprises the bulk of the poem is greyscale.  A white moon is followed by silver and pearls.  There is 'no hope of noon'.  Her garments are like 'shrouds' - another ghastly apparition - and violet, which seems a cold, hard colour.  Her fate and her face are both 'wan', her eyes grey, her skin like milk.  Her hair is fabulously captured as 'a pinion of night' so that you can imagine a great, dark swathe of black hair sweeping down towards the ground like a raven's wing. 

What action there is harks back to the theme of the ghastly or demised.  The princess 'dwelt in state', the word dwell being akin to lingering, suggestive of a long, dull passage of time.  A body 'resting in state' is also called to mind which further emphasises the dormant nature of the character.  On line 9 we are told that she 'sat and wept' and by line 12, when she seems to come to life, the double-meaning of the verb 'cry' is not lost on the reader. 

The repetition and layering which creates a scene of oppressive drabness is finally broken by a single, uncluttered image - that of the 'one red rose'.  A powerful symbol of love which stretches back to the classical Greek era, this red bloom is sufficient to sweep away the entire scene which preceded it. Finally, the extended metaphor is clear.  This is what she was yearning for, something bright and full of life; of promise and passion.  The focus of the reader is left on that expectation of fulfilment.  The grey, empty days in the palace seem reasonable as they fade into the background while the 'one red rose' blazes, temptingly, outside the window.  And ultimately this is what gets us through the winter isn't it?  The long, dark nights stretch out before us and the air begins to nip.  But we can withstand winter's woes because we know there's a red rose waiting to draw breath, if we can only withstand the chill a little longer. 

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A Coventry Snow Storm

I haven't written a poem since I quit smoking 10 days ago. I have lost the ability to concentrate. I have felt restless rather than inspired. However, I decided to challenge myself to write a poem for this week's post. I decided it was time to force my mind to focus. I decided to prove to myself that I can write - and that I can write without the aid of cigarettes... It was a challenge, hence the lateness of this post.

Coventry Blizzard, 1990

During the night it fell at steady rate. Large flakes racing down

through street light shine, through the searching full-beam lights

of a lone motorist travelling home on white tarmac roads;

his tyres pressing a snow leopard print along the length of the street,

creating two shaky lines of imperfection

which nature quickly filled and smoothed.

By morning, cars had been transformed into cotton wool hills,

phone lines draped down wooden poles and slithered across the ground.

Communication severed; a city left to wait and thaw in silence.

We missed school; built a snowman in the front garden,

gave him two stone eyes and twiggy arms. Finger-carved a smile on his face, 

placed one of dad’s silk ties around his neck.

For the rest of the day I sat in the bay window, watching. Thinking

I could bring him to life with nothing more than hope

and the power of my own mind.

At lunchtime I ate jam sandwiches, drank warm blackcurrant squash.

Kept my gaze fixed on the snowman’s stone stare,

waiting to see a blink, anything to prove him real.

But I saw nothing, nothing except two little girls in t-shirts and jeans.

Like a modern Dickensian scene they struggled

with a pushchair through the snow;

a sack of potatoes where a baby would normally sit.

The children’s lips were the colour of winter’s first frost, their skin

ghostly like an early morning December mist,

and as I sat in the window, the snowman slowly shrunk.

Thinking. Hoping. Wishing for something else. 

Thank you for reading,
Lar

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