Just before Communion was dispensed
My mother pointed out the woman
Dressed in grey plumes and quills and sheen
Of looks, as Tara Palmer-Tomkinson.
So. You may need reminding.
(No, you won’t, the kind who don’t
Say they know who she is, they
Know her well enough to disapprove).
A line of royalty and others too,
A career and some adverts and a face
That is attractive, very, save its cause.
But Tara, of the Irish hill, at Hampshire makes her home.
“No reason to get excited” – eyes mock-averted,
We bowed, as at prayer or twinging from the Host,
A good-attendance-ful of Lancelots shunned the Grail,
To let the city clothes and home girl sit at ease.
Beside me and behind me sisters knelt
Who dressed to match her and had conserved strength,
Who laughed with me at wombs and veiled flesh,
And at the vicar’s aphrodisiac.
I didn’t laugh with them about the blow
Caught in her drooping feathers. For she
Sang lowly, she looked down and did not take
A blessing from Rev. Parnell-Hopkinson.
Friday, 28 December 2007
My Place
Why scorn my city?
Well then, whip me, but stop that deigning;
Your speech was framed for fitter errantry
Your heart to sooner break such tenantry
To tropes and troubles and to angled squares.
Don’t blame my birthplace if you shift like that;
I shouldn’t blame at all. Raise up that brow
Now – if you choose, know that that edge
That tires on plate will best dissever silk
And bear in mind your best rational ilk
Your kind that rallies in each jibe I’ve eyed.
Enough, to me be silent,
And yet my city, ground, is duller than
A grind, but when enjoyed, don’t you
Remember how you shine or shone in it?
Brightly but not the first, nor most deserving.
The mind and hand here bowed itself unswerving.
Here scholars dropped their tracts for many a cause
Ill-fortuned and unfunded and believed.
Can’t you see Empress Matilda, arm in arm
With shortie Charles? It doesn’t snow too often
Because this city’s memory’s in slush,
Shall we then hear one sleetflake’s anecdote?
Sixty odd years back a boy was due
To pick up one of Jowett’s awards. In Poland
Look at that palamino’s unmetalproof flank.
So Grandpa never went the way I followed,
Stayed at the great subcontinental jewel,
Married his artist cousin, and kept up his Greek.
The chosen ghosts, the great who stayed behind -
No wonder it feels odd, our yellow town,
Demands its homage, and revenges hurt.
Concede it that, and drink at least its health.
When it can’t yield, then I want to throw
A trenchcoat over melting gutter snow.
Well then, whip me, but stop that deigning;
Your speech was framed for fitter errantry
Your heart to sooner break such tenantry
To tropes and troubles and to angled squares.
Don’t blame my birthplace if you shift like that;
I shouldn’t blame at all. Raise up that brow
Now – if you choose, know that that edge
That tires on plate will best dissever silk
And bear in mind your best rational ilk
Your kind that rallies in each jibe I’ve eyed.
Enough, to me be silent,
And yet my city, ground, is duller than
A grind, but when enjoyed, don’t you
Remember how you shine or shone in it?
Brightly but not the first, nor most deserving.
The mind and hand here bowed itself unswerving.
Here scholars dropped their tracts for many a cause
Ill-fortuned and unfunded and believed.
Can’t you see Empress Matilda, arm in arm
With shortie Charles? It doesn’t snow too often
Because this city’s memory’s in slush,
Shall we then hear one sleetflake’s anecdote?
Sixty odd years back a boy was due
To pick up one of Jowett’s awards. In Poland
Look at that palamino’s unmetalproof flank.
So Grandpa never went the way I followed,
Stayed at the great subcontinental jewel,
Married his artist cousin, and kept up his Greek.
The chosen ghosts, the great who stayed behind -
No wonder it feels odd, our yellow town,
Demands its homage, and revenges hurt.
Concede it that, and drink at least its health.
When it can’t yield, then I want to throw
A trenchcoat over melting gutter snow.
The judgement of Paris
(The first part and a half of the next one written ages ago. The rest recent.)
1
Oenone’s lyre is northern and stained;
And shunned by all others of Ida’s nymphs.
Picture eleven knots’ silent disdain!
If they could, those roots would be drinking Parnassus;
But moves are not done now. If Pan propositioned
Some Idan fair, she’d accept his slather and cling.
The reeds sink into bog, there is ever less peat
And the nymph-pines fear prices.
The human palette looks for wrongness. So
Midas could not flatter Apollo; what
Did that deserve? Harsh glory lies with taste
And makes strange bastards roll about with men.
I don’t walk in hills by choice, and in mountains
I don’t walk at all. Three hundred feet and rainfall
Is good enough for wishing-wells.
Bring me a well and that grating sound
That calls out agility! Then I shall run,
I shall skip, I will gall the Spanish goats.
He whom the Gods favour is wrong.
2
No one ever remembers to shoot the messenger now.
This is a shame, as the fault often lies with the messenger.
If he’s first on the scene, suspicions may not be misplaced;
And if he is not, he is late.
He was cold and he was male, he believed in reason’s sway;
His voice could play in barrios and echo night and day;
The kind I hate on sight, that makes my craw recoil
Because I see efficiency to ravage and despoil.
His tune made a triad of beauts want to dance
And me want to sort out the sheep from goats.
Stay boyo he said, there’s work to be done
I know you don’t know about hand’s turns
But, mate, you soon will. Take a look.
Plug your eye in, we need it in heaven.
He whom the Gods utilise is strong.
3
Statistically this one – just lovely is
N’t she, all the numbers are going
For her. The magazines like her?
The magazines are her! They worship
With votive speculation her each hair.
Enough, I thought, of you, crass errand boy.
For all that he’s been bribed elsewhere I know,
And that “statistically” does her no gloire.
Gloire she should have, gloire she could doubtless make.
Stick to the subject. Auburn was this queen,
Red, you would say, but that you meant no harm
And feared to touch too near a regal spleen.
Yes, what a look! But that’s what you expect.
I didn’t like listening to what she extended,
Power I’d drop or money I’d burn.
Remember how Juno’s pin-up Jason ended,
Medea then mast. Remember or learn.
Not that I’d question the cloudy king’s taste.
4
They’ll make her, number two, proffer abstract truth
The occultist wisdom, some rational sway.
She had to suborn me, but she did more
In tangibility’s way.
Baby, if you want wisdom, she sighed,
Think about what you have. Do reflect
On your plush Idan bower
Nymph Oenone’s dower
The grey homeland eyes that deflect
Any buffets and shadows. I cried.
God the other two cats didn’t relish my tears,
In each of my eyes a bust they rubbed,
They squeezed my hands, under a divine guise
That I might be squeezing theirs.
She just said think about her – and wasn’t it
Her lyre, that got you where you are?
What if the prince your brother deems her only
Workaday? She made you work as hard
As you now play; and while you lie beside her
That dart can never come. Come what may, think.
5
And so I thought, as number three twirled,
And gripped me and commenced my purification
At her domain’s first shrine – and I kept on thinking,
When she shed her last pretences and fell down
And spewed out tableaux – Helen, she, and I,
And Clytemnestra to be factored in,
And craned over my neck again and clutched
And felt that apple I kept always close,
And began to adminster –
I thought, and decided, and took the tongue
Coiled, from my throat, and gave it to Minerva,
Duessa.
I thought, and saw, and knew, and called for Oenone,
As for a mother. But leaning on the brawn
Of the neglected messenger, she went.
Oenone, now I’ve lost my tongue for you
Thank Heaven that I have your lyre’s use -
It’s a quiet span and lonely and still very long,
At Ida’s slope, sorting the goats from sheep.
1
Oenone’s lyre is northern and stained;
And shunned by all others of Ida’s nymphs.
Picture eleven knots’ silent disdain!
If they could, those roots would be drinking Parnassus;
But moves are not done now. If Pan propositioned
Some Idan fair, she’d accept his slather and cling.
The reeds sink into bog, there is ever less peat
And the nymph-pines fear prices.
The human palette looks for wrongness. So
Midas could not flatter Apollo; what
Did that deserve? Harsh glory lies with taste
And makes strange bastards roll about with men.
I don’t walk in hills by choice, and in mountains
I don’t walk at all. Three hundred feet and rainfall
Is good enough for wishing-wells.
Bring me a well and that grating sound
That calls out agility! Then I shall run,
I shall skip, I will gall the Spanish goats.
He whom the Gods favour is wrong.
2
No one ever remembers to shoot the messenger now.
This is a shame, as the fault often lies with the messenger.
If he’s first on the scene, suspicions may not be misplaced;
And if he is not, he is late.
He was cold and he was male, he believed in reason’s sway;
His voice could play in barrios and echo night and day;
The kind I hate on sight, that makes my craw recoil
Because I see efficiency to ravage and despoil.
His tune made a triad of beauts want to dance
And me want to sort out the sheep from goats.
Stay boyo he said, there’s work to be done
I know you don’t know about hand’s turns
But, mate, you soon will. Take a look.
Plug your eye in, we need it in heaven.
He whom the Gods utilise is strong.
3
Statistically this one – just lovely is
N’t she, all the numbers are going
For her. The magazines like her?
The magazines are her! They worship
With votive speculation her each hair.
Enough, I thought, of you, crass errand boy.
For all that he’s been bribed elsewhere I know,
And that “statistically” does her no gloire.
Gloire she should have, gloire she could doubtless make.
Stick to the subject. Auburn was this queen,
Red, you would say, but that you meant no harm
And feared to touch too near a regal spleen.
Yes, what a look! But that’s what you expect.
I didn’t like listening to what she extended,
Power I’d drop or money I’d burn.
Remember how Juno’s pin-up Jason ended,
Medea then mast. Remember or learn.
Not that I’d question the cloudy king’s taste.
4
They’ll make her, number two, proffer abstract truth
The occultist wisdom, some rational sway.
She had to suborn me, but she did more
In tangibility’s way.
Baby, if you want wisdom, she sighed,
Think about what you have. Do reflect
On your plush Idan bower
Nymph Oenone’s dower
The grey homeland eyes that deflect
Any buffets and shadows. I cried.
God the other two cats didn’t relish my tears,
In each of my eyes a bust they rubbed,
They squeezed my hands, under a divine guise
That I might be squeezing theirs.
She just said think about her – and wasn’t it
Her lyre, that got you where you are?
What if the prince your brother deems her only
Workaday? She made you work as hard
As you now play; and while you lie beside her
That dart can never come. Come what may, think.
5
And so I thought, as number three twirled,
And gripped me and commenced my purification
At her domain’s first shrine – and I kept on thinking,
When she shed her last pretences and fell down
And spewed out tableaux – Helen, she, and I,
And Clytemnestra to be factored in,
And craned over my neck again and clutched
And felt that apple I kept always close,
And began to adminster –
I thought, and decided, and took the tongue
Coiled, from my throat, and gave it to Minerva,
Duessa.
I thought, and saw, and knew, and called for Oenone,
As for a mother. But leaning on the brawn
Of the neglected messenger, she went.
Oenone, now I’ve lost my tongue for you
Thank Heaven that I have your lyre’s use -
It’s a quiet span and lonely and still very long,
At Ida’s slope, sorting the goats from sheep.
Monday, 17 December 2007
A Lyric Born of Idleness
(I found this on an old CD
Of documents and accretions
And if you will forgive the slang
That invidious Windsorian twang
Then read and see how I spent all
Of five years that I coldly loved. -MD)
O muse! Mistress all-perfect, thou
Crimson, white-streaked transparent one
O vessel of the Coke that flows
From Parnassus (Ohio) speed my song.
Perhaps ‘twas too much piety to thee
O Cola-Queen, that robbed away my sleep
And left me rolling in the duvet blue-
With beigish stripes-upon the Sunday’s morn
Yet not in Sleep’s caress. Frustrated then,
I staggered early from the creased couch
Each aggravating fold crafted by me,
And stumbled down the scarlet corridor.
My feet, and not my head, compelled my trunk,
I found myself before a paint-white door,
And black and white that spread across the floor-
M’Dame’s grave Mail dwells on Tory drugs.
(My Telegraph preferred to laugh it off
Etonians will ever be Etonians.)
I turn sharp left, and, slipperless, regret
My progress on a bathroom’s dampened ground
Not yet restored from E Block’s aqueous fights.
A host of visions flow into my mind-
Forgotten face-wash turns to Dorney Lake
And Dorney Lake-no limits!-Oceania
Consumes the generosity of Henry.
From scaffold on the back of real Chapel
To where faux-Chapel basks beyond Keates Lane
Poseidon has no mercy! The waves roll!
Under the sea the swimmers might be said
To have the edge by training and practise
But Classicists I’d say have mental stores
From reading Horace in his second Ode
The one that tells of deer sinking down
Not so unlike large-satcheled F Block hordes;
Of seals barking, sleek, dappled, urbane
Like English masters on a favourite theme.
And think of all the flotsam drifting by,
From School Office cometh the Tardy Book
Itself, a grimoire with a gruesome tale
That hydrogen dioxide will leave pulp.
My rambling soul is rallied by my sole
Which slips upon a chilly, clinging puddle
Sending me on my face. It’s back to Earth,
And all that’s most relentless there entailed.
Optative verbs take Barbarossa on,
Vocabolario, Gaskell, and this tripe
I grind out when I’m putting off real work.
There’s reams and yards of it-indeed, a gig.
There halts my revelation: friends, adieu,
A better, Mailless world I wish on you.
Of documents and accretions
And if you will forgive the slang
That invidious Windsorian twang
Then read and see how I spent all
Of five years that I coldly loved. -MD)
O muse! Mistress all-perfect, thou
Crimson, white-streaked transparent one
O vessel of the Coke that flows
From Parnassus (Ohio) speed my song.
Perhaps ‘twas too much piety to thee
O Cola-Queen, that robbed away my sleep
And left me rolling in the duvet blue-
With beigish stripes-upon the Sunday’s morn
Yet not in Sleep’s caress. Frustrated then,
I staggered early from the creased couch
Each aggravating fold crafted by me,
And stumbled down the scarlet corridor.
My feet, and not my head, compelled my trunk,
I found myself before a paint-white door,
And black and white that spread across the floor-
M’Dame’s grave Mail dwells on Tory drugs.
(My Telegraph preferred to laugh it off
Etonians will ever be Etonians.)
I turn sharp left, and, slipperless, regret
My progress on a bathroom’s dampened ground
Not yet restored from E Block’s aqueous fights.
A host of visions flow into my mind-
Forgotten face-wash turns to Dorney Lake
And Dorney Lake-no limits!-Oceania
Consumes the generosity of Henry.
From scaffold on the back of real Chapel
To where faux-Chapel basks beyond Keates Lane
Poseidon has no mercy! The waves roll!
Under the sea the swimmers might be said
To have the edge by training and practise
But Classicists I’d say have mental stores
From reading Horace in his second Ode
The one that tells of deer sinking down
Not so unlike large-satcheled F Block hordes;
Of seals barking, sleek, dappled, urbane
Like English masters on a favourite theme.
And think of all the flotsam drifting by,
From School Office cometh the Tardy Book
Itself, a grimoire with a gruesome tale
That hydrogen dioxide will leave pulp.
My rambling soul is rallied by my sole
Which slips upon a chilly, clinging puddle
Sending me on my face. It’s back to Earth,
And all that’s most relentless there entailed.
Optative verbs take Barbarossa on,
Vocabolario, Gaskell, and this tripe
I grind out when I’m putting off real work.
There’s reams and yards of it-indeed, a gig.
There halts my revelation: friends, adieu,
A better, Mailless world I wish on you.
Sunday, 16 December 2007
The Silver Jubilee of the Reign of Silence
You sit before the untalkative screen
(So do I, but too talkative)
Byrhtnoth plucks an endless shaft
From his interminable shield
Somewhere in the glossary
I sit before my too talkative screen
And try to spur you to talk indeed
To make a day have happened
Instead of a temporal picnic
To prize a burnished degree
From a course where thought mires
Over wireless wires
The saucepan hangs and the dolphin enquires
How's Fife? How's life? God Save the Queen.
(Added in line with the addressee's preferences)
extempore
of course
loooove
desolate
boredboredbored
(So do I, but too talkative)
Byrhtnoth plucks an endless shaft
From his interminable shield
Somewhere in the glossary
I sit before my too talkative screen
And try to spur you to talk indeed
To make a day have happened
Instead of a temporal picnic
To prize a burnished degree
From a course where thought mires
Over wireless wires
The saucepan hangs and the dolphin enquires
How's Fife? How's life? God Save the Queen.
(Added in line with the addressee's preferences)
extempore
of course
loooove
desolate
boredboredbored
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