DUNBLANE
'The Guardian' was full of doubts
About the use of the word ‘evil’
To describe the actions of the man
Who’d murdered sixteen children. 'Devil'
Was another word unpopular with
Liberal humanist intellectuals, as these terms allow
Society to forfeit responsibility;
And powerful,supernatural words mask shallow
Political postures. Words are only words.
Words take years to change anything at all,
Changes which come too late
For those who will remain small.
'Evil is too abstract a concept to use
'They' say; 'It’s passing the buck. The powers above
Must bring about changes. Society must change.'
If they are unable to define evil,
What is their understanding of love?
ETERNITY (A Dream)
They were the last to leave
Though the film was still rolling,
The old couple sat at the front,
She, over-dressed and drunk, could not believe
What the passage of the years, the bells tolling,
Had done to her figure and face. ‘Don’t!’
She cried, as her husband tried to make her stand
And go. She sprawled, out of place on the pale grey plush,
In her silver lurex dress, and her hair was a match
For the silver threads of the fabric
And those on the silver screen.
'That was me,' she sighed, and tried to smile
That special smile, the one that made him sick
With love, so many years ago, when he’d been
Her beau, but she couldn’t quite pull it off while
He looked at her from his distant height,
From the privileged position of being upright.’Darling,
That is me up there, in all my youth and glory.’
He, stiff in grey tweed and a goatee beard, in spite
Of all, still felt a surge of love and pride. Sparing
Her feelings, he managed a smile and stroked the hoary
Head. Now, the theatre was empty and bright.
‘We must go’ he said, ‘time’s disappearing.’
But she clung and cried ‘No, we have eternity, eternity.’
IMAGINATION (Top Withens III)
You felt the presence of foreboding,
I saw only glory,
Only sunshine on the moor,
On the heather soon to bloom.
In the distance
You saw a ruin cast a shadow.
I felt the heat
Of a sun long-missed
And the coolness of the beck
Running over my fingers.
You conjured clouds
And wished chaos on our heads.
I felt bathed
And damply purified
In blue,
In sweat,
In silence.
Summer comes even here,
Chasing ancient ghosts
Away
Burning them up
And blowing away, for a time,
A memory
A pain
A family.
Through the heat-haze
She comes
In crinoline and clogs,
Bonnet and shawl.
Always she brings the storm.
Always.
NATURE’S BOUNTY
It rears back, twisting, contorting.
Its efforts are ineffectual.
The wasp scurries out of reach, searching
For a soft spot; her laying, instinctual.
Inserted, the eggs float free in the liquid interior.
The Giant Hawk Moth caterpillar eats,
Oblivious to its enforced surrogacy; its exterior,
Untroubled, not disfigured. It now completes
A cycle. Once hatched, the wasp larvae
Squeeze a hormone trigger,
Bringing into play
A sequence of events. The host grows bigger
In response to this coded message;
But will never pupate, never mature.
The larvae soon manage
To devour all the host’s fatty deposits. Nature
Supplies, supplies in abundance.
The host becomes huge; it gorges
But is ever hungry. Internal surveillance
Keeps mammoth jaws cutting. It forges
Through leaf after leaf.
Now is the time of the wasps.
They secrete another substance. A brief
Moment later, the Giant Hawk Moth caterpillar clasps
A branch, and shudders, paralysed.
The larvae burrow through the soft flesh.
Metamorphosis must be realised.
They spin their candy-floss cocoon in the fresh
Air which is alien to them but will
Soon be their empire. The host dies.
The larvae polyp its lumpen form until
It disappears under its new guise.
PAYING
The helicopters are hypnotic
As they craze into a spin,
Plunging like a spent narcotic
In a plume of cotton gin.
Mackeral sky bleeds parachutes,
White silk cells of retribution;
Troopers, drilled in absolutes
Change decision to solution.
Blood, bodies, bullets, bones
Are scattered, scorched and torn.
Bombs drop. A chopper drones.
Somewhere, out of shot, a babe is born.
PELICAN CROSSING
Why does the blind man
Sit and cry
Alone in the back of the police car?
Why oh why?
Minutes before, he stood his ground
In front of the traffic.
People stood around,
Watching. It was pathetic
And stomach-churning.
Why was he standing there?
I asked myself, wondering.
Did he lose his nerve? I dare
Say it was worse than that.
A kind girl with a warm smile
Gave his arm a friendly pat
But he would not move; and all the while
He stood there, in his dark blue
Parka with its fur-trimmed hood,
He shook his white stick at the world, yet strangely he kept
smiling through
The drizzle. It did no good,
But a driver jumped from his wagon
And joined the girl. I couldn’t watch.
I headed home through the rain, on
Towards the town hail, dark clouds a match
For my mood. That’s when it passed me,
The police car, going oh-so-slow
With the blind man weeping gently
With his head bent low,
Wiping each eye with the back of his hand.
The car didn’t turn to the station but headed
Uphill. Not what he’d planned?
I watched as it threaded
Its way up-town.
Why oh why
Did the blind man cry?
Why oh why?
He cried.
POEM
And the wallpaper roses are mouldy;
I turn to them, from you
And I’m seventeen and I’m married
And old, and borrowed and blue.
The pier at the West End is flattened
And blackened and buried in sand.
In the gale, you hold your bride tighter
Till her body carries your brand.
And the pennies are lost in the high tide
But those with detectors still wait,
And I watch their avarice, you by my side,
I watch in the rain till it’s late.
And the slot machines lie broken and spilled,
All the silver, the bronze and the gold;
And each wave is a grave of a gambler killed
In the surf that is shallow and cold.
And the factory machines are revolving,
Spinning and weaving their thread;
And the dust is a colloid of neon
And the floor is the colour of lead.
And the humming has turned to a whining;
The animal has to be fed.
And I’m seventeen and I’m married,
And cold in a strange, hard bed.
And the roses are opening and closing
In the twilight curtained room
And they’re spreading their spores to foreign shores
In the sparkling, wavering gloom,
And drift on a breath that’s been held too long,
Dusting the mirror with grey perfume.
And the door handle turns very slowly
As you ease yourself into the room.
In the darkness you move with your shadow
And pretend you don’t know I’m awake;
And the spores drift along to a rosy dawn
That the clouds have forbidden to break.
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