“Thomas’s methods as a teenager, bogged in masturbatory claustrophobia, desperately seeking in language the fulfilment of clandestine sexual needs …. those methods were suited to the phallocentric, percussive, short-circuited poetry proper to his situation then, but they were not what he needed later as a sexually mature, world-scarred and world-skilled outsider at the literary centre.…
When Sorrows Come(For Fer) ¨When sorrows come they come not as single spies but in battalions¨ (Shakespeare, Hamlet.)When sorrows comeThey do not always flowLike light in water,Or the blood in the river of our hearts,But losing the moon’s pull,Well up, motionless, at the sedged-rimOut of our reach,In the slow bent bow that isBeyond the swift…
Reflections(For Rolf on his 60th. Birthday)I grow old thinking in pools slow refractions of the past Narcissus-like cursed by Nemesis for pridehaunted by Echo Ovid, Metamorphosiseslike an old songthat wont stop going roundand round in my headTall and tan Boy from Ipanema and young and handsomeAhh! when he walks to the seaDreaming how Lorca seesthe…
The Road to Emmaus(after Luke 24 v.13) “For Christ plays in ten thousand places,Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not hisTo the Father through the features of men’s faces.’Gerard Manley Hopkins, from “As kingfisher’s catch fire”. Why go to Emmauswhy go on such a disturbing dayfull of that sense of loss and idle talesEmmaus…
“Therefore the moon, the governess of floods, Pale in her anger, washes all the air, That rheumatic diseases do abound. And thorough this distemperature we see The seasons alter…the spring, the summer, The childing autumn, angry winter, change Their wonted liveries; and the mazed world, By their increase, now knows not which is which. And…
Song for Joe Nora had not been dead long when her cottagewas burned downHer net curtains at the small windows stillthe sacred heart of Jesus on the walllooking downThe charred reed fell but the walls stillwithstood the wind somewhatThe fireplace and the chimney tower remainedwith ash and beech growing from out the roofThe heart on…
Atlantic Depression (A riff on Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18) “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?… Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May” (Sonnet 18, William Shakespeare.) Hawthorns show white May buds just opening in our eyes we try the walk before the threatened gale you anxious to make photos with your phone…
William’s reply to my first blog with this title inspired me to say a little more about my approach to Yoga and Meditation. This is a very personal point of view and probably diverges from strict Yoga teachings. Meditation too, for me, has to be almost tailor made to the individual, as Sister Ishpriya says,…
More Than Imagining I Try To Be When I imagine the lakeand the fields and the treesand the murderous foxesand dead hensand the proud fatallywounded cockereland the snowdrops hiddenunder the Bay TreeI swim in the dead dry lakea fish now on dry stonethe walls of the smalldead-end roadsurrounding me walkingno hedgerows just rockand nettle roots…
From The Poetry Garden 3 Here is the third visit to the Poetry Garden. My friend Matthew in San Francisco has a series of YouTube presentatations made out in the Wilderness, near the Yuba River, I think, in the Sierras of California, called The Rheomode Series a YouTube playlist. One of my poems here is…
The Hug of Gaia 