In School

A smell of fresh ink

and I instantly think

of warm days in school:

Those dim leaden skies,

that buzz of small flies;

I hear children’s yells in school.

A harsh bell rings out,

an eager loud shout

and dinner ends in school.

“Now turn to page Four.”

- But Euclid I abhor!

But this is life, in school.

A quick glance to my right

- Yes, she’s still there all right.

But she sees me not, in school.

If I had that new bike

perhaps me she’d like:

But I’m just weak weed, in school.

It’s biology now

and our determined vow

is not to snigger in school.

But with “womb”and “sperm”

It’s not like “The Worm”!

(And some girls still blush in school.)

And then the bell rings

and my tired hand sings:

No more writing in school!

And then out we pour;

A big crush at the door

and we swear – which we don’t do in school.

And as on the loud bus we go

we slander teachers we know

and swop our adventures in school:

“We had fun with those cows

I had my hand down her blouse!”

Yes, there’s lots of excitement in school.

But now there’s homework for me

Instead of TV

For I must hand it over in school.

Then it’s out we go;

Follow females we know

and forget all our troubles in school.

But it all slips away

with a new-minted day

and it’s back to the textbooks in school.

Cornflakes and a fuss;

Chase after the bus

and then dodge all those prefects in school.

Yes, it all sweeps back like a wave

as I wander on to my grave.

The tumult, the joy in school.

And as I work amidst grime

I remember the time

when the world was clean – in school

Lament For Urien Rheged

Where the waves like clawing creatures
paw the northern shore
Urien of Rheged
strode through heathen gore.

From the walls of beetling Alclud,
from their rampart heights,
Cymry armed and bloody
came thick as stellar lights.

With spears fang-sharp and bitter
as hearts of angry men
the swords of the North tribes
made harsh harp notes in the glen.

Back fell the flaxen Sea-Wolves,
back from the reddened land
till the thunder of the ocean
rolled on the bloody sand.

On Metcaut’s crumbling rock fields
they smelled the stench of death;
loud and fast and shallow
came their hunted breath.

But there his doom was dealt out
by Britons cursed and low –
The shield of the Northmen
fell to a Cymric foe!

O Urien – our bright one!
Our shelter and our shield
A death from your kinsman!
- To no other would you yield!

Dark and cold the North Land
Gone the friendly fires;
None but Godless Saxons
Shall stoke our funeral pyres.

On Visiting Jodrell Bank

A steel eye stares up at the sky

seeing the radio colours never seen by men;

Glimpsing through the smoke-like nebulae

what we can but visualise as peaks on graphs.

You can see them: you can probe the farthest depths

beyond those whirlpool galaxies,

beyond the far coruscant quasars

to where time and space curve back on themselves

like the sleeping Norse World-Serpent.

But you cannot see what I look on now:

My love, dampened with this summer shower,

her hair wind-blown to a silken fan;

and lips moist as they meet mine own.

The Captive Eagle

Bright were the skies in which I rode

on winds that in cold torrents flowed.

Close to the sun was my abode.

Dark were the skies that I controlled

save when the lightning’s flames unrolled,

and the fearsome thunder tolled.

But now my world is bounded by bars

and wingless things throw me dead meat.

I who broke the mists beneath my claws

and brooked no rival in the cold skies.

Grandeur was in my sharp-eyed view

Icy cirrus plains or tumbling clouds of rain.

None soared above me in the stormy air

None could meet my imperious gaze.

I matched thunderbolts in righteous rage,

snatched the kid from its grieving dam.

Challenged the sun and mocked the moon

That crawled like sheep in my wind-torn sky.

Narrow this world like an apish womb,

its light to me is a fetid gloom

that haunts a foully smelling tomb.

When can I die – when, oh when?

This straitened world will choke no more,

my spirit will fling wide this door.

and tread the azure steps again.

The Fossil Fern

Lift it gently, it was green once.

Honour it, it had the same life as you.

Once it was tall and strong 

lifting viridian fronds

against the adolescent sky

of a chaotic juvenile world,

still bright and hot with newness

from the celestial forges.

It lived once, as you do now,

and it died and fell, as you shall soon,

and gained this lithic immortality

-       —As well may you.

And from under whose feet

will you look upwards,

a faint ghost stamped in stone,

a lost memory from an abyss of ages?

Whose eyes will you meet

under a senile, reddening sun?

The Wind From The Sun

THE WIND

The wind from the sun buffets the worlds.

It streams over the lavas of Caloris;

It presses fiery fingers into Cytherean storms.

Here, over Peary Land its shimmering curtains

Dance in the dark when the great bears

And the Great Bear shiver in the night.

Into Imbrium’s dust it throws its ions,

Sweeping on to bombard defenceless Tharsis

And the unplumbed Valley of the Mariner.

About The King it places twin circlets

And around His aged father too.

The wind is fading now as it sweeps

Past the far Frost Giants and across

The dim Styx and its Ferryman.

At last, in the silent darkness

The wind flutters and dies; fades and falls.

But there in the depths of endless night

For a moment it meets other winds

And listens lovingly to their tales.