In all our sanctuaries we sit at risk

Category: The brain

  • How to Speak in Times of Clamour

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    A long time ago, I went away to Greece and spent three months there alone in a hut, facing the rock pictured above. By now, I had lived a youth and much of an adulthood and this was a time for reflection, in case I could make some sense of all that living, never to…

  • What a Funny Time to say Goodbye to the Chaos Maistro

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    So now, suddenly, it’s off with his head, the maestro, that shiny hate-filled spear-head of Brexit. He conducted his own removals, exiting through the front door of course, in full view of the cameras, delivering insult to the last. Not so long ago, a raucous parrot I know, a “bird of paradise” who insists on…

  • Two Poems for the Autumn

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  • The Beast Outside the Citadel

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  • West of Caritas

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    “The Conversion of Saul” by Michelangelo, Pauline Chapel fresco, Vatican City.   This “I” we each inherit, made spine of the world, axis, pole, look-out from the world’s helm gazing on the universe, gazing on you, gazing on death…   “Mummy,” I said, seven or eight years old, “I have decided that I am God.”…

  • A Sentence Called Humanity

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  • Counting

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    This poem seems to follow on a bit from the previous one uploaded here. But whereas I wrote “I Insist my Ribs…” over three years ago, “Counting” has been written in the last few days. I have a vague idea of what was in my mind as I wrote this latest poem. And looking at…

  • Trace a Fraught Frontier

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    Where’s the fraught frontier between Mercia and East Anglia ? Guards were stationed here gazing out from within. And within was somewhere to die for. And without was someone to kill. I explored it once, that fraught frontier, now footpath between nettles. It was sunday and Cambridge families were out walking there after a good…