Category: General
-
What is this world? What asketh men to have ?
Posted:
There was once a teacher whose words had unusual power. Crowds gathered wherever he spoke. But somehow and at the same time, his mere presence seemed to threaten all order and decorum in the city. With wonderful persuasiveness, he seemed to be calling a whole way of life into question. He was advocating change, astonishing…
-
Who’s to Blame for our Condition ? Who can we Accuse ?
Posted:
Shall we blame Foreigners ? Oh yes, let’s. It’s all those Eurocrats and Asylum Seekers. Those Ukranians. Those Poles. Those Australians. Those “ethnics.” Foreigners are all liars and criminals. Well, let’s pretend they are, anyway. It’s comforting to feel under siege. It makes you surer of your ground. And shall we blame Poor People too…
-
Wrestling with my Shadow
Posted:
My shadow dogs my path. It dwarfs me, this daemon, this desolate god. Could I live shadow-free ? Would I fly ? What would be left of me ? Here are some more thoughts on the shadow : First Sightings I can say this with real pride : no one but…
-
I and Thou and Charlie
Posted:
In the early 1990’s, I wrote a series of poems called “I hyphen Thou”. The poems explored the image of the hyphen and were suggested by a book by the philosopher/theologian Martin Buber called “I and Thou.” The idea of the hyphen is an old favourite of mine. In fact I run a small charity…
-
The Space Between
Posted:
All that matters of me resides outside my skin. Here I am dross an eye-lid’s flicker but where we meet and what we make there shall never leave the Earth. We have to make precious the space between us. It is humanity’s last hope. Our medium is diamonds if only we will shape them. …
-
Let the bird of paradise speak loud from his cage
Posted:
I want to recite to camera a long poem, originally by John Skelton. And I want to do so from the top of the Tyndale Monument, a tall tower on a hill near Bristol. William Tyndale and Skelton both lived in the reign of Henry VIIIth but they have more than that in common. The…
-
The sky is cloudy, the coast is nothing clear. Is there anything we should be doing ?
Posted:
I was contacted recently by a friend and colleague now retired. She was an NHS mental health worker, who gave her all for years flat out, feelingly and wisely. Now she paces and grieves. Here is a slightly abridged version of what she wrote : “I have met with several ex-colleagues recently. On Saturday I…
-
Time for leaving, time for anything
Posted:
I am about to move house and to start a new life in a city still strange to me. Among all the many moments I have to give to packing and managing the move, I have found a few spare to write this. But snatching at moments seems an image for us all, in our…