‘The Far Side Of The River'

 

Evening settles silently

Over The Severn, spreading itself

Across the pastel shaded far bank

Waterside water-coloured woodland

Of The Forest of Dean, cleanly outlined

Against the darkening skies that sit

On top of the landscape, like cloud icing.

 

This is not the majestic mountainside

Of Breconshire's Pen-y-Fan

Or The Sugarloaf where my old Lama

Geshe Damcho scaled to meditate

In the foothills of tall cloud peaks

This in-between terrain

An interstitial place. A negative space.

 

Its very lack of drama adds drama

To the topography into which it bleeds.

It reads to the Poet's hungry eye

As somewhere forgettable

No Heathcliff haunted Moor

No Cathy Ernshaw’s sobbing pillow

Wet with tears of cruel disappointment.

 

This is not a place where Bards

Imagine magic metamorphoses

Of silver trout transformed

Into willowy wild women

To lead the world 'a merry dance'

No this is low-land unremembered hills

Overlooked by Housman.

 

There is no 'air that kills' here

Rather an estuarine miasma

That maims the spirit..

The place I see every day

On the far side of the river

Is remarkable by quite how

Mauve and magnolia it is.

 

This feels to be embarrassed soil

Uriah Heap humility, root deep

And taking great pains

To cause no quickening pulse

No rapid intake of breath.

Far from it. Heaven forbid.

This northern shoreline of the river

 

Romans Legions named it 'Sabrina'

But she is no siren or seductress

More a faithful wife overlooked

For the strumpet streams

And coquettish cataracts

That spring from granite

And seduce the imagination.

 

Sabrina flows, and idly dawdles

A mother figure, not a flighty harlot

A river that rolls uncomplaining

Down to the sea, then joins an ocean

Never asking for its own satisfaction

Never ever feeling primal passion.

Unclimactic. Devoted. Unfulfilled.

 

‘Silver Apples Of The Moon

Golden Apples Of The Sun’

I met him one fine, high day

Along the way. Upon the path

Of passing Life. In Ireland

Of course, for where else

Would himself be, but besides

The deep, dark Lake at Innisfree ?

And we spoke for a little while

Though he was no more there

In flesh and blood than I.

We simply were two Poets

Meeting inside an Idea

And that was all it needed

For me to share the moment

When he went into a hazel wood

And made a fishing pole and line

To cast a hopeful silken thread

And reel in a little, silver trout.

 

All well and good and anyway

In tales like this the mystery

Is in the vagueness of memory

But I think I recall, well enough

How he gathered up dry twigs

To cook and eat the glistening thing

And how in the twinkling of an eye

Magic happened in pure plain sight

And the silver creature transformed

From captured fish into a female form

And became a darting, darling girl.

With blossom in her flaxen hair.

He and I caught each other’s eye

In silent wonderment, wondering

What we had just witnessed

In the lush green lakeside grass

As the glass surface of the lake

Mirrored clouds back into the sky.

 

In a moment of metamorphosis

All we three stood, unspeaking

Lost for words though he and I

Lived by cunning similes, 

Yet in that moment of transformation

Words deserted us and we were dumb

To sing the singular Mystery of it all.

The girl smiled at each of us in turn

And tossing her fair tousled hair

Ran off to who knows where

Neither of us could try to guess

Where she had disappeared

And yet we both understood

In that elongated moment

That henceforth, and for evermore

Our paths through Life, rhyme and Time

Would be a literal, literary odyssey

To see if we could find her again.

 

I don’t know if Yeats succeeded

Or down which twisting lanes

He tracked her in his pursuit.

I only know that she was elusive

As any slippery fish who desires

Not to be toasted upon a fire

But to break free and be another

Not just a meal, but rather feel

The freedom of the human form

To live and love. To give herself

To others and to take them in

Deep inside  her where they might

Leave their longing seed

To fertilise and fill her womb

With a changeling child

Best of both nymph and man.

A silver apple of the moon

A golden apple of the sun.

---------------------------

‘The Song Of The Wandering Aengus’ (1899)

W.B.Yeats

 

I went out to the hazel wood,

Because a fire was in my head,

And cut and peeled a hazel wand,

And hooked a berry to a thread;

And when white moths were on the wing,

And moth-like stars were flickering out,

I dropped the berry in a stream

And caught a little silver trout.

 

When I had laid it on the floor

I went to blow the fire a-flame,

But something rustled on the floor,

And someone called me by my name:

It had become a glimmering girl

With apple blossom in her hair

Who called me by my name and ran

And faded through the brightening air.

 

Though I am old with wandering

Through hollow lands and hilly lands,

I will find out where she has gone,

And kiss her lips and take her hands;

And walk among long dappled grass,

And pluck till time and times are done,

The silver apples of the moon,

The golden apples of the sun.

 

 

'An Anthem For Frozen Minneapolis’

What do you do
When you don’t know
What to do anymore ?
How do you react ?
How do you act,
When a masked man
Breaks down your door ?
Who is listening to you
When you cry out for help ?
Who on Earth can you trust
When trust is broken and you are told
To turn a ‘blind eye’ to the insanity of it all ?
How can whistles and chanting defeat
Masked men, with badges, out on the street ?
Somehow they can, if truth be told.
And sometimes ‘Truth’ somehow is heard.
Somehow the boldness of ordinary hearts
Will start a movement that’s unstoppable.
‘Man’s inhumanity to Man’ sadly isn’t new
Human cruelty is literally biblically old.
‘Intolerance’ is an ancient monument
That shames us all. Each and every race.
But Time will tell and History will teach
That those who preach such hatred
Will, in time, themselves be strangled
By the paroxysms of their twisted souls
And fade away, unmourned, and reviled
To the sound of the holy ‘Resistance’
And the words of a Springsteen song
An ‘Anthem’ for frozen Minneapolis.

 

‘The Fourth Horseman’ - New York City.

 

The Book of Revelations 6 : 8

‘And I looked, and behold a pale horse:

And his name that sat on him was Death’

 

The White Horse Tavern

Still exists. Going strong

In Greenwich Village

A local Bar and place

Of Poetic Pilgrimage

By those in search of

Of different Spirits

The ghost of Dylan Thomas

Whose startled portrait

Hangs upon the New York Wall

Ignored by most, these distant days

Adored by Trippers doing the Tour

And rubber-necking his dog-days

When he prayed all was well

But knowing that he was a Liar

To everyone. Himself included

 

Stopping off en route to Hollywood

Dylan was. This time out.

Hollywood where Igor Stravinsky

Waited to accommodate him in California

Where they might make music together

The planned Opera

All about The End of The World

For Dylan that really had happened

In truth. He was a dead man walking

Talking posh BBC Home Service English

(No hint of Cymraeg slipping in)

As he boomed bombastic verses

And sang ancient primal songs

Of Christ and web-footed cockle women

Bright God  and dark Cormorants flocking.

This was the hero of his own sad tale.

 

And was this place a home from home  ?

Not really. Unlike the tidy Pubs

In the suburbs of lovely ugly Swansea

The White Horse was impure Americana

As was The Chelsea Hotel

Where  he slept  and kept his mistress

Liz Reitell waiting for a fumble

As he tumbled into their wrecked bed

After a day out that often stretched

From noon to midnight and beyond.

They say that in the dark hallways

Of The Chelsea, Dylan still recites 

His timeless verse, as ectoplasm.

Or is that just a tale for trippers

Shepherded by a Guide who knows

The answer to all questions, except ‘Why ?’

 

That question would defeat

Even The Bard of No 5 Cwmdonkin Drive.

By the time he arrived that night

For the apocryphal, apocalyptic

Downing of all those whiskies

Dylan had already ‘checked in’

To a different ‘pied a terre’

For his final nights on Earth

Before he ‘sailed out to die’

As the brass plaque attests

On the wall of Hotel Chelsea

Where so many of the literati

Hung out in bohemian boredom

And Leonard Cohen laid back

To think of ‘Canada’ as Janis Joplin

Busied herself as his oral muse.

 

That night you did not wend your way

Like some Merry Prankster, home to Liz

Who like all your woman was expected

To wait patiently and uncomplaining.

That night it was not ‘Shank’s Pony’

That bore you away from The White Horse

No triumphal ‘Chariot of Fire’ either

But rather a FDNY ambulance

To St Vincent’s Hospital on The East Side

To ‘rest in state’ like a corpse in rehearsal

Four days in a diabetic coma

(Aided and abetted by the booze)

It ended not in a bang but a whimper

Going ‘gently’  … after all.

 

‘ The Green Remembered Hills ’

To open up the window

And permit the countryside

To enter. To politely ask

For it to wipe its rustic feet

Then let itself in, to sit around

Belt unbuckled, tummy out

Sighing in the Summer sunshine.

 

I try to embrace the green horizon

Enfold the sheer infinity of it all

Inside my casual, caring ‘cwtch’

My loving hold enfolds fields

And forests in a caring clutch.

Like a parent not playing favourites

I love all things. Great things and small things.

 

But what of the sky ? Why should I leave

It outside and lonely if I garner in

And gather up the countryside ?

The green remembered hills

The streams and dream-tossed flowers

This is the hour of embracing everything

The time when all separation ceases.

 

Roger Stennett

22-5-26

 

'Quietly Inspecting Him'

 

One sunny Spring afternoon

In Grantchester, before the War.

Rupert Brooke sat in The Vicarage garden

Studying ‘The Birds’ and contemplating

‘Cloud Cuckoo Land’ and whether

Song Larks and Linnets

Ever could really have fashioned

A city amongst the drifting clouds

When one cloud, drifting along

Through the endless skies

Over flat Cambridgeshire

Interposed and interjected itself

Between Heaven’s beneficent rays

And the flowing locks down below

Of ‘ The Handsomest Man in England’

And whether, in that brief intermission

A coldness fell upon Rupert below ?

Gods’s glow, interrupted for a second

As if a Seabird had swooped too low

Over a rocky promontory upon Skyros

Where in years, still yet unborn

Rupert would be laid to rest.

Not footsteps treading over his grave

But flapping wings and salty screeching.

 

I wonder whether, given the choice

The boys from ‘The Shires’ would have chosen

Which way their days would have been taken away ?

Bomb or bullet ? Shredding shrapnel

That flayed flesh off the bone

Or fiery Mustard Gas that spiced up

The fetid air above ‘ No Man’s Land”

And made it piquant and so deadly !

A Sniper’s solitary bullet

With their middle name upon it

Or a Howitzer shell that atomised

And sprinkled you into bloody mud ?

A solitary Mosquito sting. Which was the quickest

For the soon-to-be dead ?

Which one would put you out

Of your misery, once and for ever more.

Certainly preferable to hanging on the wire

Like dirty washing no one wanted to collect.

But none of that was even thought about

The day that the camera captured you

Studying Classics in a classic garden

Contemplating crumpets soon to be toasted

And roasted upon a Varsity toasting fork

Honey drops dripping and droppjng.

Butter melting like golden snow

 

Today was but a cloudy “prescience”

A fleeting withdrawal of God’s Grace

His sunbeam face hidden only briefly

His beatific smile just a cloudy frown

Only briefly felt upon the ground below

But it was enough for Rupert’s eye to blink

And recognise some changing weather.

Upon the church spire the cock shifted

And on the dreamy river Cam flowing

At the garden’s edge, the Mayfly’ wings

Beat temporarily out of sequence.

A shiver strolled across the grass

Rupert caught his breath, not knowing why.

‘Death’ quietly was inspecting him

Like a house-buyer contemplating

And no-one knew, least of all The Poet

Why the peaceful sunlight sighed

And stammered. Then, all was well again.

Though now we know that Fate had taken

A black and white snap for ‘The Scytheman’

And made a ‘Diary entry’ for a future day

Far away from these Fenland clouds rolling

Above King’s Chapel, snagging upon its Spires..

 

Roger Stennett

 5-5-26

 

 

‘Goodnight Sweet Prince’

( For my ‘Chum’, Phillip Manikum)

 

There were no ‘Fat Ladies’ singing

Just family gathered in a gaggle

Some weeping, gathered round

Your imported Hospice bed upstairs

Stone silent. What little breath

You had left could be

Measured by the tea-spoonful.

 

I came as fast as I could

I hurried from a train and found

The only taxi to take me to your side

To read to you, one last time,

‘Seven Ages’. The poem I’d written

For your 80th Birthday‘bash’

Now become our shared last words.

 

Delivered ‘live’ to your dying ears

As your family silently wept at every

Spoken, broken, syllable of mine.

Declaimed, not timidly whispered .

This was now our shared song

Of leaving. The final act

The curtain down … Finale.

 

A long life, well lived

An Actor’s final lines.

Science says the last sense

That leaves us, as we cast off

Our mortal incarnation

Is ‘hearing’ . Cruel  fate

Already had blinded you

 

You were like ‘Gloucester’

In the tragedy ‘King Lear’

High above ‘Beachy Head’

But never did I ever hear

One single word of self-pity

Leave your lips.

No ‘woe is me’

 

Just mellifluous tones

Sometimes lubricated

By a decent bottle of ‘Red’

A standing order

From your Vintner.

You might have been

Their very best customer

 

We clocked up

Almost half a century

At ‘the crease’ together

No fair weather partnership

But rather a double act

Batting with old time sincerity .

Determined to do our ‘bit’

 

You acted in plays of mine

‘Scouting for Boys’ the zenith

Of your master craftsmanship

You toured it far and wide

Our joint dramatic creation

That sad, but resilient, Boy Scout

Defending his threatened heritage.

 

Caring about a world disappearing.

Under the burden of bitter change

Sadly never ever for the better .

Now that you’ve made your exit

Into ‘the wings’ who will i have

To share the singing of sad songs ?

 Who will raise their voice with mine ?

 

We go far back, to a tender time

Before my beloved son Sam was born

You even shared a TV screen

With my beloved father, Stan.

We two have what The Cops call ‘form’

We drank vintage Port together

In the World Wine Festival each year.

 

And followed it up by a ‘snifter’

In Renato’s , next to The Bristol Old Vic

Where you so often trod the boards

And exercised your thespian craft.

You drove me to The magistrates court

To say well rehearsed ‘Mea Culpas’

For speeding in the early hours

 

And sometimes I toured with you 

Stage managing our creation

‘Phillip Meadows’ as he paddled

His own canoe, holed beneath

The Baden Powell water line

Who now is left for me to tease

As I practise my gallows humour ?

 

‘Answer came there none’

Most others have already

‘Shuffled off this mortal coil.’

Progressively and long since.

You were my ‘chum’

In Welsh Grammar School parlance

That is as good as it gets.

 

I don’t have ‘friends’ .

Long since that species

Died off in my young life

But still ‘chums’ remained

And last night took one more.

I read my poem to you

As the watching world wept

 

I said ‘Goodnight Sweet Prince’

So my very final words to you

Weren’t mine, but Shakespeare’s.

Fitting though, I thought.

“Goodnight sweet Prince

And flights of Angels

Sing thee to thy rest”

 

I am the ‘Horatio’ to your ‘Hamlet’

Five minutes after my soliloquy

You died. The candle snuffed

The spotlight extinguished

So what am I to do now ?

A shapeless Friday in mid March

I will try to do what I do best

 

Try to find a way to understand

‘Reality’ through crafted words

‘Truth’ through transcendent poetry

I process my emotions

Through metrically orders lines

And give thanks for your kindness ‘chum’

In all our moments of caring sharing

 

And every glass we lifted

To toast and ‘roast’ a world

Consumed in confusion

We grappled like ‘Trenchermen’

Taking the ‘pee’. ‘Two Gentlemen’

Mercilessly never sparing.

Dedicated to our own ‘truth’

 

Now it’s just down to me

‘To sing sad songs

Upon the death of kings ‘

And to wish you a happy flight

To a ‘First Night’ upon a new stage

With old chums there of your very own.

A new world premiere… God Bless you.

 

'Afraid To Make Too Many Wishes'

(Written in 2022)

 

Sunken eyes darken

Perhaps seeing times to come.

Looking forward into a future

Unborn, but maybe hinted.

Echoes of sounds, not yet made,

Memories of moments not yet lived.

Metropolitan railings frame him

Soon they will disappear, as well,

Ostensibly to make bombs and tanks

 But bogus really. Proper Propaganda.

Just like the ‘morale raising’ stuff

You toiled over, under cover of a hangover.

Burberry scarf, thrown on like caution

Bottle green shirt. Knitted knotted tie,

 Getting by on extraordinarily little sleep

 ‘Liquid libations’ instead of real food,

Who do you have, these Soho days

To cut off your eggshell top

Like your Welsh ‘Mam’ did, Dylan ?

A pointless Birthday greeting to you

A picture not seen by me before.

Slipped through the net.

 Like a rogue mackerel

Hiding in a harbour of salty seas

But held fast, for one grainy instant.

A ‘shutter snap’ that caught you,

'Birthday Boy’, red handed

And perhaps a little embarrassed.

Afraid to make too many wishes.