HERE SHE COMES

When walking,
Your beauty is a fresh May skyscape,
All cloudroll and blue yonder.

And I am a high flying kite.

When you smile,
Your beauty is a rising sunscape,
All birdsong and horizon,

And I am a spire full of praise.

In loving,
Your beauty is a noontide seascape,
All swelling and sundazzle,

And I am a galleon set sail.

In repose,
Your beauty is a new June landscape,
All blossom and moonshadow,

And I am the dew on your rose.

Here in church,
Your beauty is a Christmas snowscape,
Drifting down the August aisle,

And I am your right-hand man,
With a gold ring shining on your left;
Henceforward,
Into all our future, I shall escape,


(1998)


Many church buildings are beautiful; the Church as an historical institution and pillar of the establishment is not. Was it hypocritical to marry in church (I’ve done so twice)? Possibly – I saw it more as a compromise, I think. There would have been too many disappointed relations. The symbolism of the rings is meaningful though, and a sense of ritual is also important to me. Hatches, matches and dispatches etc.

Not that this is a poem about the church (incidentally, the organist at our wedding must have been the only one in the land who wasn’t note-perfect on ‘The Wedding March’…).

No, this poem is about Lisa and the metaphors are an attempt to convey what a beautiful person she is. I wrote this for her on the occasion of our wedding on the 1st August 1998.

Most people’s wedding pictures can seem rather dull in retrospect and ours are no exception so rather than a shot from the day I’m including one of my favourite pictures of Lise which I took a few Christmases ago.

GONDOLA

We swing out
From high, narrow shadows,
Smiling and serenaded
Through shimmering reflections
Of peeling paint and plaster,
Afloat on splashing backwaters,

Into sunburst panorama
Of sky and Grand Canal,
Whilst pealing bell-towers
Announce our presence
In an epiphany of time and space,
Bridging history and this hour.

Our grinning gondolier
Sings out, con brio,
‘Rialto! Ri-al-to!’
With sweeping gesture;
As, to others before, did his father
And his father before.


(2008)


On our first stay in Venice, we contented ourselves with a ride on a vaporetto up the Grand Canal – which was a quick, cheap and sensible thing to do. It was wonderful too, (as is everything in Venice). On our second time, though, we decided to indulge ourselves with a gondola – and it was every bit as magical as I try to convey above.
The gondoliers aren’t just ‘O Sole Mio’ merchants either – at least, ours wasn’t; he regaled us with a selection from Ennio Morricone!

We almost literally bumped into Neil Finn of Crowded House on a bridge near our hotel. I wanted to say hello and tell him how much we loved what was then his latest record (‘Everyone Is Here’ by The Finn Brothers) but we were lugging our bags at the start of our return journey and he was stood on the crest of the bridge, gazing around and taking it all in, so we just carried on our way.

WHATEVER

OK now, guys -
You don’t mind me, like, referring
To you all as ‘guys’, do you, guys -
Even though some of us are female
And none of us are sort of like American?
And when I ask if you’re alright and things like that
And you say you’re good and it’s so not a problem,
I’ll know that you’re basically just fine
And not actually declaring your, like, moral status
Or anything like that, know what I mean?
And yes, guys, I’ll know what you mean too.
And I’m like, cool with this now – we’re all cool, yeah?
This is so absolutely not a problem, is it, guys?

Right then, guys, hey, it’s all good, no worries,
Because, you know, at the end of the day,
We’re all sort of like - in this together?
And we’re on a journey and stuff like that?
Even though we’re going kind of like – nowhere?

Right, OK, listen, you have a nice day now, guys,
Because, hey, at the end of the day, it’s like
We so totally have nothing better to say.
Do you know what I mean?
Do I know what I mean?
OhMyGod!
End of.


(2010)

Lise and I both loathe conversational tics and threadbare clichés. These days, it seems like the spiralling babble above actually passes for cool chat. It reminds me of ‘duckspeak’ - the distilled form of ‘Newspeak’ in Orwell’s great satirical novel, ‘I984’. (You can, perhaps, hear the modern form of this corrosive prattle in TV’s ‘Big Brother’…).

Of course, we’re all susceptible to this kind of thing - no matter how hard we try to avoid it. Myself, I can’t seem to shake off ‘like, y’know’ at the end of too many sentences when I’m in the middle of a good natter. It might have come from my Mother because I think my brother and sisters all fall prey to it as well. Oh well, not to worry, or should that be - no worries?

The picture is a nod in the direction of that famous painting 'The Scream' by Edvard Munch. Lisa took it on the bridge at Abbey Park yesterday.

FROM ABOVE

As the G-force takes hold, lurches and lifts us from the land,
I know a critical point has passed and let go your hand.
You start to read but, as ever, I crane at the window,
Awed to see so much in so small a space so far below:
The miniature world before it dissolves into cloud-haze -
The churches, towns and hills and the woodland and waterways,
And I am humbled with wonder at such infrastructure
Wrought on the sprawl of land, the order of agriculture,
The charting of seas and skies, the power of invention,
Which, from above, seems entwined with nature’s evolution.

A crimson band of sunset girdles the horizon’s glow
Between high, blue heaven above and deep, black cloud below.
The feeling is of floating in limbo between it all,
As evening sifts into nightfall and then into landfall,
And our aeroplane descends through tonight’s rare clarity.
Coastlines twinkle now and the bejewelled urban circuitry
Defines itself in the eye, whilst the vacuum in our ears
Quickens the pulse and the mind is clenched by echoing fears
When the wheels hit the runway to rush, then slow to a stand,
And we kiss and smile at the intense, white grip of each hand.


(2010)


A few flights in the making, this one. Unusually, I’d developed a number of single words - rather than phrases – which eventually suggested the beginnings of a rhyme-scheme. The long lines distance the resulting couplets and hopefully make the structure of the poem an effective one.

Completed after a wonderfully clear return-flight from Dubrovnik. We’re not sufficiently ‘frequent fliers’ to be blasé about the experience, hence the ritual of holding hands.