If I Were A Bell

If I were a bell I'd ring
If I were a bird I'd sing
If I were a candle I'd burn
If I were a table I'd turn
When I am a plant I'll grow
When I am a train I'll go
When I am a record I'll play
When I am a speaker I'll say:
Because I'm a pen I'll write
Because I'm a lantern I'll light
Because I'm a bird I'll sing
And If I were a bell I'd ring

i posted this a while ago, but it is never more appropriate than now

glimpse

"I wrote this poem for you"

I wrote this poem for you
It is not so clever as a witty joke
Not so useful as a box of chocolates
Not so elegant as a blade of grass
Nevertheless, it is all I have to offer
Take it, keep it, play with it
Show it to your friends

what do you wish for

Collage

Shall I compare thee to a summers day?
That is the question.
And how shall I presume?
Well,
We shall find out.

No coward soul am I;
But would it have been worth it, after all,
When the present has latched its postern against the past
To find some way incomparably light and deft
To say,
This is the body of Christ.
But weave, weave the sunlight in your hair.

I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright
But O O O how sweet that Shakespearean rag
I have been one acquainted with the night
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance
But I being poor, have only my dreams
Which is most feeble.

I have outwalked the furthest city light
Till, with a sudden sharp hot stink of fox,
How the mighty are fallen in the midst of battle

War is Peace
Which waves in every raven tress
But in the lamplight, downed with soft brown hair!
Freedom is Slavery
But I was young and foolish,
That little tent of blue, which prisoners call the sky
and now am full of tears.
Ignorance is strength

Gathering wood in vacant lots
Signifying nothing.

While reading The Waste Land, it occured to me that you could make a whole poem out of bits of other poems. This i did.

millions of years

make yourself at home

not black and white, in case you were wondering

Suffice to say -

Suffice to say –
The meeting was fruitful
All important matters were discussed
Evidence was considered
Conclusions were drawn from said evidence
Participants were found to be in agreement.

Suffice to say –
If I loved you once I love you no longer
I cannot afford to waste more time
It is a long time since we were happy
Are you still happy?

Suffice to say –
Our world is ruled by men we will never meet
Even they are the tools of great forces
Forces no man can hope to contend with.

Suffice to say –
Even as I write this line, I hesitate
And yet you know where it must lead.

Suffice to say –
You exist and nothing more.

Cascades

life is short

Australian Cantos

I

Each light I see represents several lives
One to turn it on, one to install it, make it, sell it, conceive it…

The car rolling past disturbs the night
What justification do you have to interrupt it’s repose?

Walker below me, what is your story? Why do you now run?
Do you like poetry?

Even the waves beat solemnly in my hearing.
Where is the nearest soul that swims in cold waves?

The house to my right has many windows not lighted.
What manner of man sleeps in those rooms tonight?

The tiny moving dot above me is filled with people
Each one of them is far from home, but none as far as I.

II

At last the ferry rolls in, so strange in the blackness
Humming mechanically it cuts the waters most unnaturally
It too is full of expectant souls
All of which have come here to fulfil some purpose
And I will never know what that purpose is.
Is there one soul there as lonely as mine?
Does no one look out the window and think:
In all those lights, of which I am but one, so immeasurably insignificant,
Is there one soul as lonely as mine?
And gazing into the stars, so inconceivably far away,
Does one creature look back at me, and sigh, and stop writing

III

The sky is clouded to-night.
I have been sitting here since the last ferry left until the new one arrived
And watched the lights before, and the darkness too.
But I have failed in my simple ambition.
I have been unable to feel my own insignificance.

An uncommon ambition, I concede.
Intellectually it is so obvious as to be blinding.
That I should be so caught up in myself,
So assured of my own significance
Scares me deeply.

The stars have become visible
But as I am no closer to grasping them
I am no closer to grasping
How far away they are.

IV

The ferry glides over the water like a spectre
And yet it hums, and pounds its engines
Its lights illuminate brief stretches of water.
Soon it is just a collection of lights flying over the waters.
Slicing through the water strangely,
Unnaturally fast it takes itself away from me.
Alone in this harbour it disturbs the nights silence
Soon it is gone, and I am alone again.

Tues, 11th April 2006 (ish)
not quite sure why this should be one combined poem, but i did write it all in one sitting. Probably needs more polish, but I dont want to overwork it.

Violence

Pax

love at first sight

I do not believe in love at first sight
Pure hope alone can sustain that belief.
Such notions gather credit at midnight
But by morning we return to unbelief.
The face is such poor evidence;
Beauty does not live in faces, and yet
So strongly we wish for coincidence
That we burden ourselves with heavy regret.
Why should the universe grant us warning
In a single glace, a shadow’s motion,
An entirely stranger kind of seeing.
An entirely singular emotion.
I do not believe in love at first sight
But if I believed in love I would love you.

almost a proper sonnet. Alternative final line:
'But if I beleived then I would love you.'