For too long unheeded, it’s time

to note their virtues: the way

they grip and take the strain;

their down-to-earth precision.

Gearing up doggedly, with only

occasional jolts and judders,

the odd involuntary moan,

they are truly fit for purpose,

when there’s work to do.

Tight-lipped and stubborn,

their staying power outlasts

newfangled knowingness,

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It’s always grounded in the two-four beat

of boot soles tramping across a field,

the plod of units across terrain

a general stakes his name on.

Holding the line, the kettle pounds

its rhythms of mutual fear. Embellished

with fifes, the snares are brash,

their prattle false as speeches

on recruitment day. Add some chimes

and majorettes, high-stepping,

winso...

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Its lack of reaction has made it unique,

that and the way it can magnetize fools:

forty-niners, Midas, the futures mob –

so gung-ho, yet always dazzled by it,

like urchins dreaming of gilded pavements.

Locked in a vault, it validates paper.

It's what the rich cling to when the bubble

bursts, smiling at the rest of us, our mouths

agape, who wonder why what's left

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‘The difficulty, then, is how far we are ourselves

the objects of our senses.’

David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature

Like a flimsy thread my vanity

clings to, it seems that as far

as logic’s concerned what I call

my self’s a phantom and no more

a part of me than skin, hair

or toenails are, shed by the strangers

they started out with.

So where is the screen ...

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after David Hockney

Through tangled centuries of ownership

and rights these trees have always survived.

Each one in its turn reduced to a stump,

they came back stronger, earning their keep.

The harsher the husbandry, the sturdier

they grew, for what do we know

that’s more dependable              

than roots, bole, and branches?

Retaining the vigour of ...

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