In all our sanctuaries we sit at risk

Month: August 2018

  • Lying to a Sovereign People is a crime of High Treason.

    Posted:

      A few days ago, my partner pointed her rather basic smart phone in the direction of my aging mug and held the phone there, with amazing steadiness, while I talked at it for the next three minutes. I argued that, if a holder of public office, or applicant for public office, or candidate for…

  • A Larger Size of Time

    Posted:

    (written for Sylvia, aged 90)   Does the moment ever shrink, as if walls are closing in, or skyline flattening   to some endless level of empty sea ? As hour by hour the years accumulate it might be thought that the high   moments of your life must lose altitude, intensity, freshness. But I…

  • Parrot Addenda

    Posted:

    Since the Summer of 2018, I have been writing a series of stanzas in rhyme royal, mostly on the subject of Brexit. Each has been written as a separate item, rather than as part of a longer poem. They were produced in response to, and often very soon after, various events and announcements that occurred…

  • In Despite of White Horses

    Posted:

    Who is Mr Corbyn ? Mr Corbyn is a mist, a mild man standing on a platform made of our storm, carrying our projections. How to disentangle the yearnings of the young audience and the nightmares of the old one, from this slight, ageing man on the platform ? He has a life time behind…

  • The Crier Frets

    Posted:

    They keep coming, still in Rhyme Royal. Once it was the parrot who begged liberty to speak. But now he’s become the town crier, in a cage, caught in a storm. Today’s stanza was brought to mind by a good piece by Matthew d’Ancona. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/aug/05/networked-far-right-tommy-robinson  It was featured in The Guardian, today.… continue reading

  • …And Smash the Butterfly

    Posted:

    Is this latest little necklace of words in the Rhyme Royal verse-form only a portrait of Mr Trump ?… continue reading

  • Paradise Destroy

    Posted:

    “Humankind cannot bear very much Reality” is a quote from the poem “Four Quartets” by TS Eliot. If humanity is ever to be buried in a graveyard, once our work is done, this quote will be writ large on our gravestone.… continue reading