This is me performing at our lovely Poets’ Corner Folkestone event this week. If you would like to know more about what we do, you can find out on Facebook, where we are Poets’ Corner Folkestone, or get in touch with us by email- folkestonepoetscorner@gmail.com
These are the pieces I read.
SPRING WIND
Even before spring we had been warned-
Not to go outdoors unless we must-
“The winds will storm the city like a war
No one will hear you speak against its roar.
The winds are fit to bust.
Stay calm, stay safe, stay warm.”
This is my chanson de gestes, the song of my deeds.
While the wind blew like truth
At the trees, I dressed as in widow’s weeds
To mourn, with the wind as my muse,
To tell on my prayer beads
Where the wind’s destruction leads.
And even when the solstice of my heart
Felt the chill
Even when they warned that war might start,
The sun stand still,
The wind, not-visible, not-speaking, blew to impart
The news you don’t see on the weather chart.
Even then I refused to give up hope.
I watched the wind wrestle the trees.
Some stood, some of the weak ones dropped.
They used to tell me speech was free
But now they have stopped.
They will not listen until all the trees are lopped.
————————————–
What the Prophet Said
His name began with a ‘J’, so we called him Jay.
He told us we had sinned and must repent.
He was seriously insane.
He told us that wearing the sackcloth of virtue
And blackening our brows with the ash of belief
Were the marks of Satan.
He was accusing all of us,
Everyone but himself.
You had to laugh.
He told us our city was a sink, a sewer,
A seething pot, a den of robbers.
He told us that our rulers and our wise men were corrupt,
Denounced with venom our houses of prayer.
There was no talking to him
He had fire in his eyes
He sang strange songs that had no music in them
He told us everything we had learned is wrong
Only he knew the truth.
It was no longer a laughing matter.
We rode him out of town in the end.
He was upsetting our kids, and that was the final straw.
He was lucky we didn’t string him up.
They say he has moved to another place
And is scaring the beejesus out of them.
But maybe he’s out in the wilderness, alone,
Saying what he has to say.
I still think about old Jay.
It nags away, the thought
I might catch up with him one day.
—————————-
This Is A Work Of Spectacular Pointlessness
So many things have happened since I saw you last-
Largesse of spring has happily returned-
Traveller’s Joy, Meadowsweet, and, best of all,
Bluebells ring out new beginnings.
Bringing also an end; as in our last school year,
When, yearning to put away childish things,
There came to us the happy thought
That soon we would never again have to open Chaucer,
Had survived…The War of the Spanish Succession,
Celebrate too the end of the wearing of uniforms.
Following the timetable of arrivals and departures
We urged on ourselves adulthood-
Happiness, hope, liberty; life-long friendships.
It’s a melancholy business, revisiting the past,
Trying to sort the remembered from the real.
You popped into my head out of nowhere
Wearing the only togs I’d ever seen you in,
Still 18, your face bright as a spring flower,
Ordinarily beautiful; and not someone I knew,
Not then or since. Still, I hope you had a good one,
Once you got out of that uniform.
If I knew where you lived, I’d send you daffodils.
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