APERÇUS
Existential
Hymn
If you know where you stand,
the floorboards take care of themselves.
If you know where you sit,
you are able to face the south.
If you know where to look,
you don’t have to tidy the shelves.
If you know where you walk,
you can always find a way out.
If you’re
going too far,
further is to complete the circle.
If you know that
you sleep,
it is certain you’re not dead then.
If you
aren’t able to keep
an eye on yourself nobody else will.
If you know where
you are,
and who, well then, what’s the problem.
The
General Shortage of Time
If you’re reading this
I’d be surprised.
The entire world is up to its eyes.
Everybody is at their wits’ ends.
What with the family and our friends,
the blasted job, and finding green time
for ourselves. Life’s an assembly line
cut so fine we hang on by a thread
until it snaps and then we are dead.
What can you do? So much to be done.
The race for time is the common run.
Newsreal
‘Showing dead bodies on
television
is beyond the comprehension
of anybody with an ounce of
humanity in their souls.’
Tony
Blair,
April 2003
They have no repect for the dead.
We who killed them seek to forget
the necessary victims and shred
evidence of their life and death.
Augustus
Young,
April 2003
Mé
chant
I’ve never been a soulmate
of poets who feel they must write
heart-to-hearts that celebrate
the ordinary things in life.
Such as tumours of the brain
that killed the wife. You detail
that her last word was ‘champagne’.
Her sense of humour didn’t fail.
There’s
nothing ordinary
about life except the things
you would prefer not to be
entertaining. When the phone rings
you don’t
have to answer it.
And when the heavens open,
if you don’t have an umbrella,
Tant pis, give up and
get wet.
On
Wearing Your Own Pyjamas
Nobody has prepared you
for the pleasure
of getting back into your own pyjamas
after a lapsus in a hospital gown.
And you feel better. There is a balm on you
when you put them on after a steaming bath.
What’s said about illness is
you’re not yourself.
That’s how you feel. And it is true the softness
of one’s own down is absent. You have been plucked.
The rawness is a nakedness false warmths
make shameful. Goose pimples at least are your own.
Now clothed in the habitual you can face
life in your accustomed skin. And what’s threadbare
is worn, but not wasted. The self falls asleep
and wakes up from bad dreams which didn’t happen.
Even
in Dark Times
Even in dark times there are splendours.
Between the pain and the cry, a star.
Between the ship and scrap yard, tenders
ease the last voyage across the bar.
Between the door and the floor, enters
light from elsewhere. It doesn’t need a key.
Even in dark times there are splendours.
A light thought isn’t just a jeu d’esprit.
A sun shower that’s laced with a
rainbow
has its silver lining when you pass
between the drops and the light they throw.
There’s even light when you break a glass.
Everything to something else renders.
Even in dark times there are splendours.
What
Keeps Man Alive
From
Brecht’s Diedreigroschenoper
Our
mission is not to purge
mankind of the seven deadly sins.
Pork chops first, then morals.
Get the food right. Then the preaching begins.
Proper helpings are what’s
wanted. So it’s necessary to forestall
expectations that there will be
enough to go round for all.
But that is not what keeps
mankind alive. One must face the facts.
Mankind keeps himself alive by
performing bestial acts.
Millions of people are tortured
every day, starved, silenced, oppressed.
What keeps mankind alive is
keeping its humanity repressed.