Similar Posts
The life of a ‘minor poet’, an amateur,
and long before that:a lifetime’s love of poetry;and one’s personal contribution,after 25 years, let’s say, might bea ‘slim volume’ of verse,distillation of that lifetime,printed elegantly at one’ s own expensein 200 copies, maybe,a few sent to literary journalsfor, perhaps, a few lines of review; andsome letters of appreciative responsefrom friends to whom one sent the…
Please
to Chris Higginson’s‘Zimbabwe’ pleafor yourpoetic sympathy.The prizeis in the international currencyof the heart
Oh dear it’s haircut day
she comes round to the houseand cuts what’s left up there foralmost next to nothing, these daysshe’s a bright cookie butno conversationalistso I attempt to make pleasant small talkfor both our benefits I like to thinkbut if I say something she disagrees withlike who sells the best fish around hereor immigrationshe corrects me with such…
Too young to know the horrors of a war I’ve fought,
but old enough to have lived through;boys but one year older than myselflived and fought and died; and younger, some,who fought in Malaya, Kenya, Korea, to the death…Slit trenches in Hyde Park were the first photos in 1938,apart from the official ones to stir our patriotism;then cycling home from town as radios in every housespread…
and sad, perhaps;
visited for the first time in their lifeby sadness; pure sadness,without friend or enemy,just sad; sadness which does not tellof its parents, or of where it came from,or of where it might be going;or of how long it might stay before it goes..yes, sadness like that.
Dactyls – according to encyclopaedic wise men –
are now comical – ‘only used humorously’… And yet, readat a funeral pace, in solemnity, toll out the dead…(with acknowledgements to M.G. and the Princeton Encyclopaedia of Poetry…)