My poetry from days of yore....

I have run a thread like this elsewhere, so in effect, mainly cut and paste. With various results.....😀

Here we go:-

I gave up writing poetry many years ago. I began to enjoy the poetry of various poets and my own efforts seemed not quite up to the mark. Sad in a way. Self expression is good whatever the standard. I think now that beauty and insight can be found in the works of others, however "poor" at a certain level of judgement.

Anyway, I'll use this thread to post various poems written in my twenties. Maybe with a few intros and biographical details.

The first was my only "success" in recognition terms. I entered it in a local competition and it was chosen as one of the top ten and read out at the prize giving ceremony. I remember how it was read, seriously and even pompously, while I myself saw it as light and even satirical. Such is life!

It is called "Before Bacon (An Ode to Despair)". Nothing to do with pigs, the "bacon" refers to one of the precursors of "modern thought", Roger Bacon. I was going through my existentialist phase, Jean Paul Sartre [i]et al,[/i] the "absurdity" of the world and such. Fortunately just a phase. I was moving onto the so called Copernican Revolution, the shift of earth and man from the centre to the periphery and all its subsequent angst....😀

Well, here it is.....

[i]Oh! I wish I'd been born before Bacon
When the sun still moved in the sky,
When hope was in more than a daydream
And beauty in more than the eye.

When the Great Chain of Being had God at the top
And Old Nic down below in his lair,
When people were burnt for love of their souls
And not just because they were there.

Back in those days before Auschwitz
When there was still trust to betray,
Before Symbol and Myth became Number
And the Cross became DNA.

Oh! I wish I'd been born before Bacon
When Saints trod the Pilgrim's Path,
When people still jumped at a bump in the night
And not at a bump in a graph.

When Crusades were fought for Truths believed
And Faith was the Devils hammer,
Nothingness only the clay God used,
The Absurd a Bishop's stammer!

When Man was seen as something more
Than atoms swirling in air,
Before the face of the Risen Christ
Became the face of despair.

Yes, I wish I'd been born before Bacon
Though there's not much to choose in the end;
But I might have had serfs and a castle
And I might have had Christ as a friend.[/i]

Tariki

We had relatives down in a small village near the coast. We would walk our then young daughter around a park. Often we would see a mother and her teenage son walking across the grass, I think between the village shop and their home. A bit ungainly, the young lad was a downs child. He was always holding his mum's hand. We mentioned to our relatives once that we had not seen the couple for a while and were told that the mother had died and that the young boy could not really understand. He kept asking where his mum had gone.

Anyway, at the time I wrote this....

[i]he did not understand where his mum had gone
his mind was childlike and fed upon
small things and the living of day to day
more than on what the religions say
that death came through Adam eating the apple
and suchlike - his mind just could not grapple
with justifications for evil and such
he could not be expected to worry much
and never did - just smiled as he walked
beside his mum and talked
to her - because only she could understand
the awkward shaking of his hand
and everything he had to say
and all he needed in each day

O Christ, it hurts to dwell upon
his simple question - where's mum gone?[/i]

Once I spent time at a sports club for the physically handicapped and when first there there were three downs youngsters. To begin with you see the obvious similarities of their features but in time they became what they were, unique individuals with their own names. It really is a blessing. The beauty of difference.