Melancholy – a prelude

Above ground we are all Mariupol
Tulips remaining in bud
Nervous to unfold vivid colours of Spring
Clinging to the past
In hope of what?

Above ground a million Covid masks
Squelched into the mud
Trailing from bins
Forgotten in jacket pockets:
Yesterday’s news

Today’s news, a jumble of images
A glossary of sadness:
Oligarchy, Donbas, Slava Ukraini,
Thermobaric bombs
An A-Z, or just unjust Z.

Below ground. How are you?
It’s in the winter that spring is planned
That invisible quiet hinterland
Of the human heart
Where the seeds of heaven fall

Where melancholy gives way
Where winter loosens its grip
Where…those that go out in tears
Bearing seeds for harvest
Will come home rejoicing.

1054 and all that…

Surely you mean 1066
Hastings and one-eyed Harold
The Conqueror and Norman arches?
One Sunday in October
Dawn quiet disturbed
And weary autumnal soil
Running blood red:
All over by tea.

Another Sunday
Twelve years before
Split East from West
Constantinople from Rome
Communion wafers suffering schism
No longer handed one to the other
You can still hear the painful cries:
The tearing of the map

No more so than in besieged Kiiv
Or battered Mariupol.
Turning our tears to
Higher ground
The wounds to heal,
Turning our tears
To Higher ground
Our wounds to heal

Revolution

Press Lord, press me under
Under, under your grace
Wrench me free
Free from regulations that fail to regulate
From striving that fails to check self and sin

‘We are born free, yet everywhere
We are in chains’
I’m not so sure Jean-Jacques
‘For freedom, Christ has set us free’
Paul, for this, my unending applause

The Pharisee chained no longer to law
Out of his depth in grace
Feet off the bottom grace
Nothing, no more, depending on him:
Swimming in unexpected love

‘Freely you have received
Freely, freely give’ you say
No charge, it’s all in the offering
Press Lord, press me under
Under, under your grace

Jonah’s 3rd Day

I remember the past
But cannot tame its power
When coins had names:
A tanner, half-crown, and a shilling
When ten-bob notes were brown
Coal was black and coke was grey

An age of miracle and wonder
Rolling Rs, blowing gum bubbles
As big as your head,
Waggling ears and wood-pigeon coos,
And smiling girls perfecting handstands
With long straight hair

Early mornings full of swirling fog
The sound of cars sawing
Choke in and choke out
Of ice inside the windows and
Fighting for the three-bar-fire
Winter school in shorts

And family secrets
Dying with the pipe-smoke in the lounge
My hero demoted to decay
The strong so weak
Wretched mourning over the empty chair
And the failure of truth to hide

Making my way detached
From anyone who could know
The questions no-one had words to answer.
No-one I knew anyway
Until I, in the pub,
Spilt my beer – and my words:

‘Christ!’
And she said:
‘Why did you say that?’
That was the prodigal son
Coming to his senses
That was Jonah’s third day
The light guiding me home
O! I remember the past
But cannot tame its power

‘Christ!’ I say now
Kneeling with tears of joy

Steadfast

A poem for Ukraine inspired after walking past Antony Gormley’s one hundred iron statues on Crosby beach, unmoved, facing the wild waves and gale-force wind off the Irish Sea.

***

Who ignited this fire you must not see
Behind my sad stern eyes?
Impassive and unflinching I stand
Tight with resolve: 
I shall not be moved

Pack me in your ice floes 
From the east and from the north
And I will melt you
I may look cold as steel or as a statue of stone
Yet, you will find, I am too hot to touch

A day is coming when I will bend once more
When I will shed a tear
When I will again export wheat and rum and light
When my flames will brighten the night sky
And I will walk in Another Place

Keeping it simple

Jesus went out of the house and sat by the sea

No publicity

Just sat on a beach

I like that

Mary left the kitchen, put down her knives

And sat at his feet

No fuss, no words

I like that

I need that

To keep it simple

---

Psalm 30

Eyes closing, I drift in time and watch my
Father counting rusty nails one by one
And dear Mother the gallons of water
Clear and cool in the hand-hewn cistern
But this morning I look down
And count my ribs in unceasing pain

I heave in air from the midday heavens
And remember the scripted and dark night:
Messiah bird caught in a fowlers net.
I, brought down to tears in a garden
And rough, soldier hands, wear a
Crown of thorns for the world to see

My friend, Iscariot, Judas, I see
His eyes in every skull gazing at me
Abandoned by God and man, darkness comes
To hold me between Heaven and Earth
To pour out the nothingness
I have, my blood and final breaths

The seed, I said, must fall into the ground
And now I am falling, falling so deep
Absent from Heaven I descend into Hell
I am weakness now, spent, beyond life
But it’s my aloneness that’s died.
In the cool of the dawn, the stone rolls…

…away! I breathe the stale tomb air in thanks
The angels and I sing songs and we dance
Then stop: the scent of spices makes us hide.
Like children disguised, we dig the rich earth
Leaking joy. Knowing the women can
Only hold a little, I say, ‘Mary!’