Another couple of poems, to bring this group nearly to an end. Amazing how fast time goes when you’re trying to keep on top of the garden (and build shelves, cupboards, steps etc etc,) yet how slowly the same time crawls when you’re waiting for a payment into your bank account to at least paper over the yawning abyss therein….
“In the First Month” I can guarantee is from 1980, “She Has Stood Here….” I’m not so sure about – wouldn’t even recognise it as one of mine if it wasn’t for the Richard/Blondin bit at the end, which feels like me, and I know I was kind of taken up with that story when I heard it somewhere around middle school (History, they called it). Back then Richard The Lion Heart seemed a bit of a hero, rather than just another mismanager of the people’s wealth; and I guess I must have identified with stupid faithful Blondie – reminds me somehow of little amenable Britain tagging along whatever criminal nonsense big bruv USA gets up to…. Despite this (happily) the poems are off on a different tack altogether.
8. In the First Month
Your lucid eyes are clenched
Against compassion. Quickly I fall from complacence
Through helplessness and quicken to (measured) fury against
Your fury. But suddenly she comes; she is all
Enveloping you.
I watch it happening, appalled, as
You soften back, I name you traitor, ruthlessly
To leave me stranded on the high bank of anger
While you return safely, helpless
Complacent, glutted, drowsy, sleeping.
I think if I could understand you and have
That maternal monstrous compassion, even
When swords become ploughshares and enemies embrace
Over their dead comrades, in the end I might
Also understand the world’s rage.
9. She Has Stood Here….
She has stood here in this path
And in every step you take
You echo her way, her will.
She is a dark enchantress
To one such as you, surrounded
With stone walls of enchantment.
What have you done that is your own?
One thing, only one:
Released me from that night of stone,
Flinging her back against the wall,
Opening a chink of light
Where I flew out to a world of colour.
I will not willingly go back
Into that echoing prison
Even to save you, love.
Now she has made you take
This enchanter as
Your champion, this dark knight
Because of whom you believe
I have imprisoned you
(Because she holds you slave
And I am free). I cannot fight.
I am winged but armless.
The woman’s power has quenched the light.
I can only sing under the prison walls
As Blondin did for Richard
To win him home from his wild crusade.
AnnaScott
charlesashton
Coldhome 