Dog Days by Steve Rudd

No man steps into the same river twice – Heraclitus of Ephesus

Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend, and inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read anyway – Groucho Marx

Dog Days: I

Going back, to places we were happy, once
The fields, bare, along the roadside, en route
All flat, mown, sere, this late in harvest,
As summer piles a year’s confected clouds
On top of distant hills, improbable
Sky-meringues, floating islands of sunset fantasies

Fifteen months since we came here, and yet
Still the potholes, in the rutted roads
Down byways here, where few, if any, come
Are bad as ever, moonscape lakes
To break and crack unwary axles

But, finally, we’re here, and I quarter off
By eye, the lumpy Mull of Kintyre
Across the horizon; the red can buoy
At Carradale, the lighthouse, Island Davaar

Wind-waves twinkle out in the Sound, flash points of light
Jewels, tempting as ever; she says she’ll walk
Along the beach for driftwood, for a fire,
But on her own: we both acknowledge
But do not say, that there should be a dog
Yes there should be a dog

How can we carry on, curating our life’s museum,
Her erstwhile stewards, and her being out of sight
Yet always somewhere just round every corner?
Are we doing it to prove that she’s still here, somehow?
Or we can do it anyway? Or both?

Going back to places where happiness, that
Fleeting concatenation of atoms
Welcomed us and opened our hearts to gladness
Such as it was?

What will it take? I’m scared to think,
To admit without the final missing pieces
Lost when Heraclitus upset the puzzle
The jigsaw stays forever unresolved.



Dog Days: II

Like Bede’s sparrow, time’s arrow,
We fly from dark to dark.
Dark to light, warmth – gone to dark
A fleeting spark

Dark for us, was winter littered with bricks and broken glass
And work, of course, treadmills of arguments, and pissing rain
Ice-cold; the never-ending fights
Endless, pointless, as the monochrome street-lights
And waking to the sound of car-alarms

All that’s behind us now, here, on Kilbrannan’s shore;
It all awaits us, still, again how soon, when we get home
How soon shall autumn over-reach itself and tumble
Decay to darkness as before, leaves despairing clutching hands
Struck down by rain?

But now, on this far-distant North-West shore
The sun beats on my page
Fusing ink to paper in one word:

Heat

- Already dry, almost as soon as written

The sound of the waves; the lap and swish and soothe of the waves
And the shush of the waves, the sun on the waves, the smell
Of ropes and tar, ozone and seaweed, of the waves

The waves to carry her back from Carradale
To Dougarie, to me, sadly alone and waiting,
The bees busy on the wind-nodding cowslips

But no dog asleep in the long, soft, aromatic grass;
Instead, the heat’s translated her to ashes
Atoms of ashes, and the seagulls wheeling above
Cry “weep, weep”.



Dog Days: III

These waves are not the same waves
That lulled and lapped us last time
When she was still with us; those waves now break
Long gone from here, on Bermuda’s shore
Or crash rocks on Tierra Del Fuego, those waves
Are gone, long gone, says Heraclitus

Those atoms have moved on, we cannot see
them now; her atoms also
Could be all around us, never-known

All we can do is hope her quickness
Is the lapping of these waters, the
Start of the birds; her dignity the grace of clouds
Her anima the gulls along the shoreline
Keening our grief still; where two herons stand, disputing
Like Pythagoras and Heraclitus, each contending about souls
And where each other’s atoms are, right now.

Meanwhile, in heat, some other atoms have become massed
To cowslips and marram grass
Burnet, sorrel, milfoil ragwort, whin,
But these are today’s plants, not yesterday’s

And even the Mull of Kintyre is vanished by the clouds
And reappears, with Ireland smudged behind it, but
These days are not those days, insists Heraclitus
Grave as ever, even though they look the same
Sound the same, and feel the same – no dog.

I am getting pissed off with Heraclitus, to be honest;
Nobody likes being told uncomfortable truths
No doubt he’s right, but God, the man’s a pain!
Reminding me, as if I didn’t know
I’m not that person now
Nor will I be again.

Household Gods by Steve Rudd

And in whatever houses a cat has died by a natural death, all those who dwell in this house shave their eyebrows only, but those in whose houses a dog has died shave their whole body and also their head. The cats when they are dead are carried away to sacred buildings in the City of Bubastis, where after being embalmed they are buried - Herodotus

Somehow, we’ve acquired a statuette of Bast,
Egyptian cat-goddess, at some point in the past
This bric-a-brac that lumbers
And infests our house produced her;
A manifestation, bronze, she sits in the hearth
Uneasy alongside the firedogs
With a bland, impersonal gaze

Somehow, and also in the past, of course
We acquired four real cats,
Real cats, for real, for better or for worse
Real cats familiar with witches’ curse
And invocations;
For midnight duvet invasions,
For yowling for food and
For sleeping curled up in a tight
Yin-yang ball, by the fire,
On a bed in the hearth.

The Egyptians, so I’ve heard
Would have worshipped them;
And when the owner died, he too went in
The same tomb, mummified,
In the Temple at Per-Bast
And why not? Look in any English church
The chainmail knights’ feet, pointing forever
Towards Jerusalem, are resting on a bratchet.

Worshipped in Egypt, cats; gods of the house
Foe of the mouse, the rat the snake
Guardians of grain in times of plague, ague and ache,
Allowed to eat from the plates of humans,
Milk to drink, (that much, at least was true of ours,
Sometimes, before we’d finished…) and I think
Maybe we also worshipped them, but
In our own inadequate way

Bast was their guardian, throughout,
The Lady of Cats - when the last one ailed
We lit incense, smoke from the joss stick
Hung round Bast’s statuette, veiled her,
As we prayed to every deity we knew,
But this time the Nile refused to flood,
There were no miracles in the bulrushes, and
The Red Sea stayed unparted, all spells failed.

So go, and bring me Cassia and Cinnamon,
Juniper Berries, Oil of Cedar, Myrrh and Henna,
Raise her a garden-cairn, a pyramid;
Bring me Nile-water to wash me and console me
Bring me incense of Dittany of Crete,
And soap that I may shave my eyebrows off,

While I’ll still miss her whiskered kiss, old puss,
Purring companionship, look down to find my ink
Blurred by the tears that rain on the papyrus
My grief wrought with this metaphor of Bast
Ringing on the dull anvil of my brain

Moments by Steve Rudd

Sometimes there are moments,

Like this one in the car park

An afternoon of eternity

Seems fixed in the moving of a cloud

Over the rooflines of town;

Or in that plane that droned across the sky

The morning of Aunt Sadie’s funeral.



Why should they etch themselves

Acid-deep onto the retina of memory

When all those other days

Days we’d looked forward to,

Anticipated, long and eager,

Passed flat, anticlimactic, unremembered,

And finally unrecorded?



Is it because, I wonder,

What some might call God

(but only when pissed, or sad, or both)

Bids us to remember in this way only

Things it deems important;

Sunsets, or the movement of waves

Across the bay; these transitory clouds,

The sway of the branches all around;



Moments in eternal stasis

Leaves, alternate green and gold

In lux aeternam

Even though the trees themselves

Will die in time to compost?



A holy juxtaposition

Sears like a branding,

A momentary hiss of painful joy, then

Leaves white clouds, towering in summer sky:

I will remember this, although I don’t know why.

New Poetry Title from The King's England Press

We are pleased to announce the publication of the latest
collection of poems by Steve Rudd

ALBION is available from The King's England Press directly at www.kingsengland.com at £7.95 (print edition, 9 in x 6 in, pbk., 59pp,
ISBN 978 1 872438 65 8)

Or, if you prefer, there is an e-pub edition available from Lulu Inc at £3.99

Steve Rudd was born in Hull, East Yorkshire, in 1955, completely naked, unable to walk, talk, or fend for himself. His chief poetic claim to fame is that he once served Philip Larkin in a bookshop. Unfortunately for both parties at the time, he mistook the great man for Eric Morecambe.

He lives in West Yorkshire with a wife, a cat, and a variable number of dogs, but not necessarily in that order. His hobbies include annoying people, lying under the table with an empty can of Special Brew (which is, in itself, a form of prayer) thinking about Abraham Lincoln’s hat, and having staring contests with the linoleum.

In common with many other misguided adolescents, he began writing poetry while still at school. Fortunately for mankind, all of this early work has been lost.

Albion is his third poetry collection, and, like the other two, will probably appeal most strongly to people who have a table with one leg 0.33cm shorter than the other three.

In 2010 he was seriously ill and spent six months in hospital. Almost dying has had such a positive effect on his literary career that he is thinking of doing it more often in future.

Mirth’s Prime Ministers by Deborah Tyler-Bennett

Defunct barrel-organ’s crinkle-crankle,
thought forgotten, risen,
derelict theatre’s doves. Re-peopling
the past, until sensed orange-peel,
motley stalls, phosphor, as management’s
meagre boys go touting custom.

An old book’s picture conjures
and you’re seated in Row B with others
waiting a worn-out clown’s benediction –

Grimaldi’s final song.

Leant from his chair, hands raised,
paint’s walnut-wrinkly masquerade,
smile wide as Chaplin’s shoe.

Unspoken chorus: ‘Never Joey’s like again’
scarlet-spangle-spangle, blurring tinsel,
hands pressed to lips when all’s concluding.


Like Mum’s visit to George Robey’s last hurrah,
brought forward on a chair for curtain-calls,
twinkling as the orchestra came forward
afraid to miss him.
Hands’ blessing over in thrown dazzle-dust -
from an Empire’s picked-clean crab shell, flighty doves.






George Cruickshank illustrated the great clown Joseph Grimaldi’s ‘Last Song’ in 1839, George Robey, ‘The Prime Minister of Mirth,’ died in 1954 after several farewell tours.

Edwr and The Hart by Steve Rudd has been voted poem of the week at www.Poetryvoices.com

Free short story by Steve Rudd

Free short story for "liking" my writer's page!

Yes - it's shameless self promotion time again!

Because I need to drive up the number of "likes" on my Steve Rudd author page,

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Steve-Rudd/221481391210989

I'm now offering a limited edition of a one-off free pamphlet of my short story entry for the 2012 Sunday Times Short Story Competition, "Sunday Girl", which runs to a massive 16 pages in hard copy, and is also available in e-pub format.

Simply like the page and then send me an email or FB PM saying whether you'd like the hard copy version or the e-pub file. [Data protection small print: this data is purely gathered for the purposes of this exercise and will not be used to bombard you ceaselessly with garbage and witterings.] This offer will run til 1st July 2012, or until I reach 100 followers, whichever is the sooner.

If you've already "liked" and you want one, ask your OH or a friend to like me!

STEVE

A slow week at poetry voices!

Of The Many Stags by Steve Rudd

All poems start with a lump in the throat

Said Robert Frost; well, the lump I’d speak, my lump,

Is a lump of rock, in Clyde water, fourteen hazy miles clear

Of the blue coast of Ayrshire; a granite knot

That binds up my best memories in a bundle.

A slice of my life, on screen now,

One-sixtieth of a second, Lamlash Bay, me and the dog

Two thousand five, and Holy Isle

Seven years ago, now digitized

Sleeps blurred in heat behind me, the horizon.

Mountains with Gaelic names, high scree

Where no man treads, stones, chambered tombs,

Contours the long-forgotten lines of territory

Atlantic rain soft-blurs epitaphs

On lonely graves of nameless sailors;

Sandy shores, Kildonan and Kilmory

Blackwaterfoot, bucket, spade,

Seals, otters, Basking Sharks,

And lighting driftwood fires on pebble beaches,

And pods of porpoises, Kilbrannan Sound,

All still exist in stasis, beyond my reach;

Somewhere between the sunset, and Kintyre

The ferry-boat is always halfway to Clanaoig;

The Calley Isles is coming from Ardrossan

The sun is always setting on Goatfell, Glen Chalmadale,

Last day of holidays, as I stand on Brodick Promenade

Waiting the Calmac boat’s return, the lump in my throat

Is Arran, being my poem, once again.

The World's Longest Poem

See more on this project

We've now converted the 1215 lines of the existing poem and we will now be adding all of the contributions which have come flooding in during the last few weeks, as Gez Walsh travels the length and breadth of the UK and, indeed, beyond, performing and appearing in schools and libraries and at festivals. If you've recently sent us something, watch out for it appearing in the next couple of weeks or so!

WHAT'S IT ALL ABOUT?
Famous Potty Poet, Gez Walsh, is hoping to add the title "Guinness World Record Holder” to his many accomplishments. He’s aiming to produce the world’s longest collaborative poem!

There have been many famous long poems in literary history, of course, from the Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh to Anglo-Saxon sagas such as Beowulf, through Medieval poems such as The Canterbury Tales, via Paradise Lost and Wordsworth’s Prelude …

All of which are very tough acts to follow: Gez is unfazed by this, but he needs the help of all you unsung poets out there:

"What makes my idea different is that it will be a collaborative effort,” he says. "People still think of poetry as essentially a solitary activity, with the lonely poet sitting up in his attic, sighing about his lost love. Nothing could be further from the truth! -We're going back to the original roots of poetry, when people would gather round the campfire and swop epic tales of heroes, villains, monsters, myth and magic.

One other important difference between Gez's poem and its epic predecessors is that it will be created online and this is another factor, says Gez, which will promote co-operation and inclusivity. Gez believes the internet can be liberating. "The internet is the modern equivalent of gathering round the campfire to tell tales and stories. It's just that now, the camp fire is a global one, and everyone is welcome. As long as people stick to the basic structure and any rhythm or rhyme scheme that is going on - or invent their own," says Gez, "they can take the poem where they like, subject to the normal standards of taste and decency and some basic legal considerations - which, in Potty Poetry, are set pretty low!" What else would you expect from the poet laureate of flatulence?

Torch Song by Steve Rudd

On the day of the royal wedding (29th April 2011) and on the day before, the police arrested dozens of people pre-emptively. People who had not committed any crimes were arrested, often handcuffed, and detained in police cells.  – News Report

I’d like to race in the ‘Lympics
But I’m guessing I must stay put
Because I’m in a wheelchair -
I have no athlete’s foot

I’d like to jump in the ‘Lympics
I’d wear my new pullover
If I thought there was the slightest chance
Of meeting “Fee-up-and-over”

I’d like to dive in the ‘Lympics
But it could be a pain
Cos’ I’d have to be para-plegic
And I don’t even own a ‘plane!

I’d like to swim in the ‘Lympics
Ambitions, I sure gottem:
But sadly, metal does not float,
And I’d end up on the bottom!

I’d like to compete in the ‘Lympics
Despite all the problems and bugs
And every day I’d strain, and train,
By taking a cocktail of drugs!

But I rather think that the ‘Lympics
Are a bit of a waste of space
Until and unless we disableds
Can rejoin the human race

Cause it seems to me at the moment
That patriotism is rife
But it don’t extend to the ill and the poor
Who are struggling with everyday life

It’s OK to cheer on our athletes
It’s OK to wave at the Queen
But it might get you arrested
To say that great wealth is obscene

‘Cause some in this land are speeding ahead
Without any handicap
While the rest of us are left plodding behind
And bearing their burdens through crap

I’ve had my fill of the ‘Lympics
Let alone the para-sequel
I don’t know why we should celebrate
When things are so unequal

So here’s an idea for the ‘Lympics,
For you would-be torchbearers to learn;
Use it to set fire to Parliament,
And then watch the buggers burn.

Patience by Steve Rudd

Those that tend fires require

A special form of patience

Watching through the window, winter-long

While the rain streaks; patience of a saint

Then, after bare grey days, at last

Catkins on branches unfurl daily until

The stumbling bee finally arrives

Late and cold like the spring at last

And the badger comes at night, or dusk

Rooting up the garden, from dark woods behind;

With patience to stay wakeful, and the stamina

You may glimpse its fleeting stripes by moonlight

Patience can make time pass quick or slow

Reconciling, days go by, like a pack of cards

Being shuffled and cut, and shuffled again

Jokers are always wild, spread out the deck

Red queen on black king; as pastimes go

It’s right up there with watching drying paint

Or having faith that things will ever change

Carry your cards, clock in, clock out, clock off

Have patience, they say; spring is coming -

It will come; it always does, sit tight

And tend your fire, and cultivate your garden

Long green spring evenings, now it’s light

But I was always better at starting fires

Than tending them, never saw the point

Of patience as a virttue (or a vice)

It’s not as if there’s ever any option…

Just sit there, and be a little patient

Tending your fire, not getting rash, taking your meds

In case your ever-coursing arteries harden

One day, if you’re patient, things may better!

One day, a lifetime’s end away from now.

Watch and learn, boy, watch and learn;

Life is what happens while you’re being patient.

Invisible Mending by Steve Rudd

Getting dressed, in chill before-dawn dark
One of those dull cold mornings, cursing,
I put my foot straight through a trouser turnup:

Now, my pants hang, sag, sadly over shoe,
Adding to my general dereliction -
A stitch in time was needed, ah yes

If only we knew, with perfect hindsight
The point where we should have stuck
The needle in, to intervene, to save

The need for later pins and needles
Pain jabbing – only a stitch, they say,
And you’ll soon run it off

A stitch in time saves nine; nine tailors makes a man,
Stitching surrounds us daily, like tapestry -
All of those needles, always waiting

Needles, sharp, fine, or hollow, hunting for a thread
But even caught in time, I do not think
There’s such a thing as invisible mending –

You rip what you sew; Euripides, Eumenides,
Your gentle “hem” is always ignored,
And life sharpens its needles, day by day

On worries worn as flat as rune-stones
Or pebbles in my shoe, the one that I stuck through
The web of cloth I tore by clumsiness

And so eventually, with the sense of an ending,
You’re forced to hunt the thimble, do your best
(In olden days, they’d sew you in a vest

each winter, underneath pincushion clouds)
Patches on patches, and hope your stitches hold,
Your needle swinging always to mag north

Follow it blindly on the rocks
And you may find they sew you into sailcloth,
The last stitch through your nose

I should watch where I put my feet
And tread more carefully: it’s always easier
To have a care, than try and mend a tear

Friends Reunited by Steve Rudd

Now that I’m pushing sixty, I spend time,

Much more time than I used to, looking back

Instead of forwards. Back, over my shoulder,

Down the hill of years, stand long-demolished pubs

Where we sank our first illicit pints, in streets, levelled now,

Where we had rare, exotic snogs at bus-stops,

Or, more often, disappointed, caught the last train home.

Was that even me, those years ago?

I’m not looking for my lost youth,

I know exactly where he is, he’s prisoner

Inside flat planes of photographs,

Black and white, I know him all too well

Awkward and gawky, John Lennon glasses,

Flares and tennis shoes, back in the days

Before they got called `trainers’.

Places like this don’t help: my past’s online

As if I was already history’s exhibit. Why am I here?

Because my old school friend (now lives in Wales!)

Sent me a “link” to click on, and up pops

This photo, taken 1967; both the message

And the medium of transmission, wireless through air,

Would have seemed witchcraft to us, way back then.

Boothferry Playing Fields, yeah, there we are,

Boys and girls both, fixed in our best blue uniforms,

Like specimens in a museum diorama;

Staring out into a future that became unravelled,

Lots of different lives, shorter for some than others,

Blank pages, still to be written, tangled skeins

Ravelling and unravelling again, blood in new veins,

New names to be grafted onto vacant branches

Of the budding family tree.

Their eyes ask what I want of them, especially the girls,

With their prim white kneesocks; that’s easy answered!

I want the same thing now I wanted then, but more so!

Though `now’ would be more difficult, for me, `now’ would involve

Me ironing out my wrinkles, standing up (a miracle!)

And shrugging off the rucksack of the decades

That I carry, back-bending baggage,

 – and for them, much harder still,

Changing back their names, forsaking kids and husbands,

Or rising from the pages of the dead,

Pulling on tight jeans, frizzing their hair, getting stoned again,

Wearing beads and headbands and

Coming through my screen, their virgin presence

Filling the room with the sudden scent of patchouli

- Filling my life with what might once have been.

Moonlit House by Deborah Tyler-Bennett

where a known ghost walks.  Barbara Villiers,
Merry Monarch’s mistress, pacing blue lit halls
Lamenting beauty drained to dropsy.
Bulking figure breaking night quiet,
lamenting her lustrous skin,
doll eyes snuggled in sourdough flesh
recalling face and hands
once gleamed softly as freshwater pearls,
crying her past, as Hawkers
cry wares.  Now looks exist
only anecdotally.
She’s spectre,
to amuse, or drag in tourists,
dropsied shadow, sobbing yesterday,
presence catching the throat.

Drunk Back-packer startled by floured
features at a window, by cheeks pocked as gibbous moons.
She fades, hears her whisper …’Lord, save us’.

Ghost pacing, drained, breaking her flesh and softly crying,
now only spectre, or shadow presence,
startled by us.

From her most recent collection, Revudeville, (King's England Press, £7.95)

Red Kites over Loch Ken by Steve Rudd

Have they been wheeling and waiting for me, how long,
Over these bare February branches,
skeletons they will neither roost in
Nor pick at, wood-bones for which they have no use?

Waiting all the while the silver water slides as rustled silk
Right to left, under the old viaduct at Parton?
Driven by massive air
That I can only guess at, from Greenland, arctic, God knows where,
They circle now; the world is stilled, only the kites revolve
In their great arcs of prey-seeking.

What strange concatenation of events
Has brought me here to see them, how could they know
I would be brought within the ambit of their circling?
Did they know the tide was out at Carrick, and the wind
Too strong, too blustering, there, to launch?

When all of us could just as well be elsewhere, yet
They still achieve their stasis in the frame of my eyes;
Was I recovered from the clutch of darkness, from the pull
Of an even wilder, darker shore than Galloway’s, for this vision?
Just to see the red kites wheel in the glint of February sunlight
Burnishing the loch beneath them, the rippling surface
Silver out of grey, some alchemy of light unknown to me.

I have a sense this moment is important
But, like so many others in my life, no inkling why,
No sense of wide significance, except their dark magnificence
Up there means something I don’t know yet:
All I know is the moment when, above bare February branches,
Crisscrossing sky in black patterns like veins, the kites
Rose over shores, hovering, huge, majestic; here
Soar red kites in the cold sky.

And I am watching them, and watching water; maybe
Spring will come back after all – there have been other signs, now I think on it,
And here am I, today, watching the red kites over Loch Ken,
And, for once, not drowning, but waving.

Little Song by Deborah Tyler-Bennett

For Lydia Dwight (Daughter of John Dwight, 
Founder of the Fulham Pottery)
Died 1674,  Aged Six

Dead, Lydia Dwight, Fulham’s salt daughter -
Shining in Stoneware, blitzed bells are pealing,
toll her hands’ herbal, milky glaze sealing
her cosseted form.  All but breezed laughter
is captured, cerements, cooling water.

Dead, Lydia Dwight, child beyond feeling,
domed Snow White, rippled light’s stealing
over baby fists, dappling blooms brought her,
careful carved, hand held for posterity –

Anemones wilt, Tulips, Ox-eyes,
Rosemary, Lilies, bleached Love-lies-bleeding.
Lydia’s laced-tight, calm austerity
makes stilled clappers of city bells rise:

Hymning:  ‘Dead!  Fulham’s daughter’. 
Tongues pleading.


from her most recent collection, Revudeville, (King's England Press, 2011, £7.95)

Like Clockwork by Steve Rudd

The only things that matter in life

Are time, and suffering, says my friend Maisie,

Herself a philospoher, with two degrees,

One in philosophy, so she should know.

And time is fascinating, she says; odd choice of word,

Personally, I used to have no time for time,

It passed me by like a river flowing round a stone,

Until I got my new clock; new to me, that is

Though half a century of time has uncoiled

From its mainspring, up til now.

What is this stuff, time? No-one knows, says Maisie,

And true, I do know little of clocks, time’s messengers,

Though I know lots on suffering,

Having made copious notes,

Sometimes referred to as “poems”.

Suffering always goes hand-in-hand with clocks;

Sometimes, time ekes it out in gobbets,

And other times, clusters of sufferings.

My new clock ticks them off, one by one,

Within its wooden walls, its cheery face meanwhile

Round and rubicund, like an old friend.

Its chimes cathedral me through the day

And through the long canonical hours of night

Prime, terce, compline, it’s my own Abbey,

Ding-donging its echoes of gothic arches,

Stained glass, stone cloisters, mechanical

Heraldic quarter-boys, Jack Blandifers,

And the Garden of Wiccamical Prebends

(“Keep Off The Grass!”)

Part-astrolabe, part-orrery, its moving parts inside

Its polished case regulate my every task,

Hands quarter off my days, cogs circulating

Like planets in a system, a universe

Of wheels with teeth, and chains,

A lever-arm, a rack, even a snail

Are caught up in mechanical suffering.

And so I let it count my seconds, tick each day away:

In truth, I have no option – tradesmen call,

Or couriers with deliveries, “before twelve”, it marks them all,

Opticians due at three, I’m marking time,

I’m killing time, or time is killing me, and suffering runs on

Like the brown Ganges round a rock, and every tick

While the church clock stands at ten to three

While there’s honey still for tea, each seven seconds,

A baby dies in India, like clockwork.

Do hands sweep over faces to catch hot tears,

Or is that time’s pursuit, not suffering? Or both?

There’s one born every minute, so they say,

But maybe God needs winding up a bit,

On his bad days, when he says “suffer, little children”,

And really means it.

Time will bring suffering to an end,

Or vice versa, therefore do not seek to send

For whom the clock chimes: it chimes for me.

A Walney Island Skylark by Steve Rudd

Exulting in the high miles of sun

Stacked above the dunes, upward, upward

“All aboard, all aboard”, it twitters,

While, on the sea, the bright sun glitters,

Plunge, swash, backwash, of its longshore drift:

Even the wind turbines

On the horizon haze-line

Have an improbable Mediterranean feel

Like painted scenery against the sky

In a Venetian opera.

Finished for now, song-exhausted

It flutters back to ground

Somewhere among the waving grass

Ruffled by the wind like a green sea,

Alongside the blue sea,

Where the whoosh of the wind

beats the myriad seed heads to a shimmer of silver,

Or momentary flash of burnished brass.

It drops to the cool embrace of earth;

Somewhere among the scrubland, in the sand

In the cool green gloom of gorse and grundsel

Lies its fragile offering, a plaited plate of grass

Containing precious eggs, dull speckled jewels,

Or polished cloudy pebbles, each encasing next summer’s song

Of sun, within the yellow essence of their yolks.

A Dog's Life by Steve Rudd

A DOG’S LIFE

I. M. Tiggy, 1996-2011

My forebear, Thomas Thornhill, shepherd, would have known,

Sitting up alone at night is better with a dog

To keep you company: Victoria wore the crown

When he sat in his hut, out on the Wolds,

Dark blanketing the woods, in winter fog,

At lambing-time, there to protect the folds.

Or with the winter moon, bright as a florin

Showing behind the tracery of the trees

Frosting the grass with silver:

And, as I always told my dog,

Whenever she would listen, not often, I admit,

Her less-domesticated cousins, wolves

Would always seek the opportunists’ entrance:

The gate left careless open.

My thoughts themselves are wolves, out there tonight,

Out in the dark, with wild eyes gleaming bright;

My sheep are purely theoretical, and now

Alas, so is my dog: alas, at last.

I feel her loss, keen as a wolf-moon-howl!

Ah, nevermore she’ll frolic on sands, flat,

At Kildonan, or on Kilbrannan’s shore!

The miles she travelled with us, hills she climbed,

The sticks and frisbees fetched,

The seas she crossed, and now the last shore left

And in the moonlit sky, the dog-star twinkling.

Ironically, she was scared of sheep,

Their bleating spooked her,

Stupid mutt: I loved her, and that’s that;

No poem will bring her back, and any monument’s

Inadequate: so now we learn to sleep

Without her weight upon the bed

Without her twitching, dreaming, now, her

Memories are the pictures that we keep.

Tom Thornhill’s voice comes echoing down the years:

‘Get another one, lad! can’t work without a dog!’

Is all his rough, no-nonsense speech, says - wool, warp, weft,

I sort of know his meaning – it’s not ill, but …

Spring might come,

Silvering the grass with frost,

And it will find me lone, and lonely, still,

On this bare mountain outcrop in my head, bereft,

Still wishing I could stroke behind her ears

Once more;

Still waiting for another dog,

To come and rescue me.

Limestone Landscape, Littondale, by J. D. Taylor

This is a landscape where the walls have taken over, or so it seems.
Down here is a wall farm. They grow best in the light, whitening
like the bones of those who made them. Some chequered penance.
In hard winters, in false springs, lambs are fed to the walls.
Men come flat-capped and scowl at their own wool hardness.
Nothing to a wall their ancestors made for the keeping in of.
What is kept in? The years. The bouldering losses, friable crags
for yet more walls. Put in a gate and eventually it falls.
Like a bronze age brooch to pin a cloak the gate goes down.
Sheep repeat themselves without progression within walls.
The walls hold down pasture the weather would tear off.
Strung out buddhas on a crumbling cosmos, their weight is their weight,
the undeflected gestures, carrion stare of stone.
Barrack-squared, the occupation is efficient. Time runs on time.
Authority is earthed. What is above ground is wired.
It may not look live but it presides. The walls were made,
had themselves compiled painstakingly, a lexis of restraint,
a dialect of the tribe who nipped fingers and calloused
hands that once loved wives. Walls used backs to vault up scarps,
backs long since asleep after all the sheep are counted in.
Yet men come to hang fresh gates and whistle lithe dogs through arcs.
Sheep are bowled along tuning up in piecemeal union.
New bad weather arrives breathless with intelligence in its gauntlet.
The walls were not always here. Tell them it will not always be this way
- if you dare. You can't even rest against one in comfort.
And they leak the wind. When it rains they sweat and dewdrop.
They have not changed since they were rushed up and stiled.
A crag can sing, a wire keen, but a wall cannot mutter.
They expressed a purpose for a while. They were a kind of dress.
We walk through them, warm and confused in our integral cells,
where the quick light blazes and the blood glows, skin deep.
We are still here, ready and able to serve man, woman, sheep or stone.
Yes, able to descend even to the servitude of broken rock.
A wall cannot give. It just is: tool, passage, solution, endeavour.
Very satisfying it is to push one over, but we mustn't.

Welcome

Welcome to Bard Mousse, the official poetry blog of The King's England Press, featuring work by Deborah Tyler-Bennett, Steve Rudd, J. D. Taylor, and maybe others ...