Cold grass sways their necks,
indifferent to the season,
to the lost Canterbury tales,
too short to be told
more than once
a long, unsteady night.
The dying drums of war,
Bleeding, bleeding…
The reckoning of days.
The hollow eye.
The bird high above the barren froth.
Grass in crystal silence,
calling no more.
Families and trees, all gone.
Fathers long before us,
waiting their turn to fill the gap.
A breath-gifted passersby.
The sun, a sea of salt.
Seeping through weeping autumn
in gales and gusts,
with weird tools of dark mystery
he hears bells of sunken ships
calling out in a mist
that might be called memory
if there was a book of codes.
Unholy thrusts of pain
spears the infants holy hope
of ever joining joy’s
magical master switch
with its true ascendance
into a clear cerulean forever.
Speak you blue blooded tongue
of all that matters;
speak of all things unsaid,
unheard of amongst beasts,
hovering in halls as yet
unmeasured by children’s eyes.
Leaves of jaded age fold
as they should and must
but soaked soil
knows no other direction
than downward,
they finally spell your name.
Thus he knows
that in between
what goes on
and what really happens
there are eyes
that cry to get closer.
Driven one night by the broken toll
bellowing chimney sweeps might allow
he forges insanity into the dark sword
cold nights insist upon.
Unpromised by tomorrow
his ragged scarecrow fingers beckon.
Seven mortally wounded winds
fall short again at midnight.
Where once milky skin
embraced bare dreams and more
a scarred breath flows anxiously,
lifting a fleeting gull at sea.
He has but bruised remains
and eyes that see falling leaves.
Earth’s black, wasted bowl
has a tender longing to fall.
So sleep all dreams
that no longer haunt his days,
sleep gives no more hope
than a sullen mound.
He dares the wind that crawls like a stricken bird
over grassy hills in gloomy desperation,
a wind that hollers in the late of the night
with hideous sighs behind a see-through glass:
“Leave me here to time’s device
to the sound of seashells and more;
let gentle perish be my hollow mass
and sand all my broken feet shall know.”
Measuring all dark hills
the horizon can commence
the boy purges the passing
with one poignant word.
With a bird’s eye the boy dreams,
leaping at wind’s revision
from trees that take his breath
and gives it back.
Memories of old England
moves through woods
laid bare to November’s gaze.
A frozen sea of naked hills
dares the thought to wander
deep into steep hidden vales
of long lost summers.
Clean white water
once ran transparent
under these soft stones,
feathery ferns called for
a viridian indulgence;
hidden birds ripped
green soporific shadows.
Clear chlorophyll rolled like dark thunder.
Cold rain dared the boy to depart
with an ominous sigh
just before awake regained its say.
“I am that boy, that cheerful figure
that still lingers at dawn.
Only I can relate to
the memory that finally
means nothing
in the great swirling sea
of the distance travelled.
In a newspaper from 1942:
To all dead soldiers
melting beneath the sleepy grass
of cold November
to all disjointed bones of battle
sinking through the soil
of long forgotten fields of fighting
to the soaring pain of conflict
and all the sizzling blood
that flowed in furious intent…
Why?