THE BACK OF BEYOND

The force of faith and the crystal of truth
May shatter before they are called the same:
Neither belief nor science can tender proof
Of a world created in a god’s name.
Art, music, architecture, charity:
Even these may never forgive so much
Torture, hatred, war and stupidity;
Should we then clutch at what we cannot touch?
Back through space, on a journey in reverse
Through a void before bibles and theories,
To the gate of an expanding universe
At the beginning and end of all stories:
Then may we see past the what, when, where and how,
And solve the mystery of why - there and now.



(2009)


This sonnet is probably a belated response to reading ‘The God Delusion’ by Richard Dawkins a couple of years before. The book provides a very persuasive argument for atheism, but, after finishing it, I realized that my own position was still best describedas being agnostic.

The picture was taken in Koversada, Croatia a few years ago.

AUDIAL

AUDIAL

There’s no sound

Quite

Like the sound

Of a late afternoon breeze

In gold, autumnal trees,

As we walk

Through waves of leaves

By some quiet riverside;

Unless

It’s the sound

On a still day

Of the shoreline’s whispering reach

On a long, golden beach,

As the day leaves and waves

Whilst we walk

At some hushed eventide.

(2010)

This came to me the other day when I was wandering along beside the River Soar taking pictures of the autumn. If I had to come up with my favourite ambient sounds then it would be these.

AUTUMN SONNET

All outside is green and russet and gold.
In late sunlight, the leaves curl and glitter
Against the clouds’ bustle and sky’s blue cold.
In our garden, they dance like bright litter
With wind-chimes pealing wood, steel and seashells.
Much as we bid this rainbow season stay,
We heed a bell that Man, not Nature, knells:
Time thus will turn back on itself today.
Soon the darkness will account for the hours
And night fall on the brink of a decade
Held in the world’s hand like fading flowers,
Long before a New Year can be remade.
Tomorrow, beyond our bedroom curtain,
Through a mist of voile, this much is certain.



(2009)


Third in ‘ The Seasons: A Sonnet Sequence’. The Autumn of 2009 in the UK was a fabulously colourful one and this poem came to me one bright Sunday morning when I was gazing out over the back gardens of the houses where we live and vaguely wondering about the effects of climate-change.

The picture was taken on Abbey Park.

QUOTIDIAN

Dawn

Dissolves

Into dew

Resolves

Into day

But soon

The noon

Is gone

Burnt down

To a husk

Of dusk

Tonight

Tomorrow

Creeps

In

And tomorrow

And tomorrow

Round

And around

Circle the crows

And the shadows

Over the wheat field

And who knows

Where the time goes

Only that it does

Somehow because

Time knows

That it must

Return to dust

(1998)

We’d been to the funeral of my Aunt Laura and it started me thinking about how the uncertainties of life and death all take place within the predictable mystery of time.

‘Wheat Field with Crows’ was apparently Van Gogh’s last painting and, even before I knew that, I’d found it a profoundly haunting image.