THE LIVING PAST 

Family Crest
Fulminis Instar
(like lightning)
 
In sunshine I smile.
When it rains, I cry.
On a cloudy day
I’m prone to pining
for the silver lining.
Alas when it snows
I’m the last murk-rose
falling on its thorns.
However, in a storm
I’m completely my own
self, shouting what I like
about what I hate.
Still as I can’t wait
my thunder will come
before the lightning,
and conducts the strike
so, it earths my groan 
and there’s no harm done.  
 
The Living Past
 
Who cares about my great-grand-uncle in Limoges,
the parish priest there during penal days? I suppose
it must have been a strange life so far from the land,
hearing confessions that he didn't quite understand,
baptising and marrying his adopted flock,
and seeing them into the ground, faith like a rock.
His displacement won't figure in the archives.
All that is certain is that he had many lives
protected from distortion by the copperplate
script of the copy clerk marking the name and date.
History repeats itself till it's lost in the mists
of time, a Balzac novel that does not exist
save in the fancy of an ancestor. The
truth is, in a small way, my ancestors are me.  
 
Measuring Up and Down
 
My father could jump his height -
five foot ten.
I could long-jump three times mine –
five foot nine.
 
But my father could take flight
to a plane
where ideas could divine
what is right.
.
While my flatfoot leap of faith
lands in line
with the earth, can’t even gain 
the upright.
 
My father didn’t hesitate.
With a blithe
spirit, straddled heaven’s gate.
I remain
 
stuck in sand. Still, I await
the sublime’s
global-tilt to elongate
what’s on high.
 
Thus, the sky,
on the horizontal plain
allows me jump my own height
with a flight
 
that is side-ways. And It's right.  
 
SUR LE TARD (with the years)
 
‘Be Good’
 
At my age, it’s easy to be a saint.
The foot has been taken off the throttle.
The only temptation is the bottle.
But consumption is down. So, I’ve gained
a halo to save my hair from chemo.
 
Moreover, my back has begun to throb
and I feel the wings of an angel grow.
Soon off my feet, I’ll get on with the job
of making the most of being virtuous.
Taking flight will get me out of the house.
 
I’ll flap above the terrestrial mob
who will see me, not as a mean old grouse,
but as a heavenly drone flying low
with an ‘’I am good’’ pendant in tow. 
 
Faking Dreams   
                                                                         
In old age my dreams are like the rushes
of a film that would be panned if released.
It’s black and white to spare my blushes.
On waking up my star is not best pleased.
 
In the cutting room I play the reel with
me, in close-up, on the sound track, mouthing
exactly what I think without shrouding.
the brutal truth. Hell breaks loose. I’m in it. 
 
So, I’m editing the film to make it fit
for the box-office hit of what other
people want to hear. I’m a hypocrite.
Though this would be approved by my mother.
She always said the right thing for peace-sake.
I rewind the dream to shoot a remake.   
   
Eternal Advice
 
I don’t trust him. We’re friends.
Brecht
 
Friends tell you in no uncertain terms
‘What you must do…What you must do...’.
Each Job’s Comforter has a view
different. Some hard-line, some soft soap you
with bubbles while Rome burns.
And if you submit, out of ennui,
the advice taken gives poor returns.
And you end up carrying the donkey.
 
What’s easily given, taken is naught
but a recipe for a life’s that’s fraught
with disappointments. Recipients gain
one way or another, an ‘as I told you’
or a sharp, ‘who are you to complain’.
Don’t listen to them. What you must do…
 
Exit Management
 
Achieving the Inevitable (After Montaigne)
 
All my life I’ve been a macabre dancer,                                              
a fleshed skeleton. And now I know it
is to be my fate, time for spiritual growth.
 
Tumors are stubborn, the monstrous off-spring
of bad blood and the weak flesh that will bring
the body to a sorry state, sooner
than later. I was a baby boomer
who never thought that the good life would end.
 
Now the inevitable is around the bend
I bank on it like old world investors
counting on the gold standard of ancestors
for Futures. It’s said, to exit living
in a good-humor, all is forgiven. 
  
Casser Ma Pipe
 
My front teeth are seventy-four years old.
Not wasted but worn, so they feel the cold.
Their eruption moved me onto solid food
They cured my infant lisp and in a bad mood
gave edge to a snarl. I’ve whistled a blade
of grass with them, or with two fingers splayed
a raspberry. Once in a rugby scrum, I tried
to bite off a hooker’s nose. It was me that cried
when sent off and dropped for the next game.
 
They can still bite into nuts without pain.
My dentist says they’ll see me out. I wonder
is that the lightening before the thunder -
I’ll die before my check-up. I choke on
my pipe. If it slips my life will be broken.
 
Being or Nothingness
 
‘Dead? That’s not possible’ (the society sister in ‘Sullivan’s Travels’)
 
‘Enter into a relation with the unknowable and it becomes familiar’ (Soren Kierkegaard)
 
My entry into life was caesarean.
The battle of birth was won by a knife.
My exit ought to be a peace amen,
natural as being born should be. So, I’ve
hopes my precious ego won’t be erased.
Not from nothing for nothing we were made.
The work of the prime mover be praised:
creation of life can only be an aubade
to a daybreak with a sun that doesn’t sink, 
but rises to the stars. The world is graced
by rounded horizons with no brink,
and returns so nothing is left to waste.
Could this be wishful thinking as I’m faced
with the abyss of being a mere time-blink?
 
Nothing Next?
 
On Being Cezanne
 
Walking your dog, other dog-owners talk to you.
Talking to your mobile phone, if smart, it echoes.
 
Old man on the bench looking into the distance…
 
The cafes are full of happy laughing eaters.
And, being so packed, you only hear the band outside.
 
Old man on the bench looking into the distance…
 
While not existing for others makes you immortal,
only existing for yourself means there’s nothing next.  
 
An ambulance with a siren is approaching.
It passes, so it’s not for him. Is he relieved?
 
Old man on the bench looking into the distance…
 
It’s important to overlook the horizon.
Beyond the port to the open sea. See beyond… 
  
Old man on the bench looking into the distance…
 
He knows that the revellers will be old one day,
accidents avoided. The dogs will die, the phones too.
 
Old man on the bench looking into the distance…
 
If you think you’ve seen it all, there’s nothing beyond.
Better to be blind so you can imagine things.
 
Old man on the bench looking into the distance…
 
He closes his eyes. The beyond is a close-up.
And the near shrinks to size as the far grows larger.
 
Old man on the bench looking into the distance…
 
The colours change into one another. Then white.
All his life he reached out to what can now be grasped.
 
The beyond embracing the old man is transparent.