Let’s recall the film “High Noon,” that great Western. The outlaw and his hoodlum cronies are riding into town. They want revenge on the sheriff, the keeper of the law. The sheriff scours the town looking for support, a posse of townspeople who will help him defend their community from the outlaws. The townspeople know… Continue reading High Noon this Easter
Category skills of love
Rome Burning
I run a charity called “Hyphen-21”. The charity holds and manages funding for a project which publishes bilingual poem-posters. Since the Spring of 2017, this project has been called “Poems for …the wall” (before that it was called “Poems for…). Since it first began in 1997, “Poems for…the wall” has been funded by the UK… Continue reading Rome Burning
BALLAD OF REFUGE by David Punter
I come in fear. The wheels, the stuttering engine,
By road or wave; the endless killing payments.
Bit by bit, my mind returns to rubble.
You come in fear. The hunched back, failed bravado,
They make me squirm. You have no place here, brother;
Get back, for you… Continue reading BALLAD OF REFUGE by David Punter
HATRED : A SESTINA by Robert Friend
Hatred
is wanting
to hurt
and its fulfillment
dancing
on someone’s grave.
Because the insult was grave,
I must repay hatred with hatred,
abandon all pleasure: the dancing,
the flirting, the wallowing wantings
of every day. How drab their fulfillment
The Brain’s a Tunnel
Owl sculpture by Dorothy Love… Continue reading The Brain's a Tunnel
Naming the Beast of the Year
This beast has our country’s contours
written all over it.
It has leapt from out of the ruins
of the city, those hollow squares,
and from the great labrynth below ground
where the thread got tangled,
and from the wi-fi and the wires
through which we… Continue reading Naming the Beast of the Year
The late David Jenkins, Bishop of Durham
Following the death of David Jenkins on September 4th, I want to bear witness in my own small way to his great stature as a man and true priest.
The first obituaries I read gave prominence to his Virgin Birth and Resurrection “denials.” And of course, in his time, he was called “The Red… Continue reading The late David Jenkins, Bishop of Durham
Can Liberal Democracy Survive our Tumult ?
Can liberal democracy survive our tumultuous, bewildering, frightening, dangerous times ? Can it surmount them ? Can it direct the flailing social forces at work towards positive solutions, a viable human future ?
As things stand, it seems not to be coping at all. It is surely in great danger of allowing and even… Continue reading Can Liberal Democracy Survive our Tumult ?
Three Poems post-Brexit
Last Stand
The hyphen between
I and Thou
is our last stand
and foothold.
There’s nowhere else
to retreat to. No set answer
no fixed place. Centuries back
the desert fathers came here
and left strange word behind
Riding the Hyphen between I and Thou
With our present tumult and travails in mind, I have remembered a series of poems I wrote in the mid-nineties called “I Hyphen Thou.” I thought they might be relevant then, but they seem even more so now. Below are two short extracts.
The idea of the hyphen is based on a book called… Continue reading Riding the Hyphen between I and Thou