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Flotsam

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Working late on a Sunday drear

The sky is flat like German beer

Iron-grey, black Russian in patches

Blown away by Dostoyevsky's flashes, 

Desperate remedies appear in the mirror,

Look in the pool. Look in the heart of you.

What do I see? A foolish old man looking

At me. The clip and clop of horses 

Times ong gone and passed

Lost in the scramble for money. The chimera that will never last.

Double-entendre of greed and fear as the slant-eyed gobeen man draws near

To the magic of the greensward and the patterning of the stars,

To the vestiges of druid-law deep within the heart

Times of mourning and times of dread -

Risen from the sea, 

Glimmering with mortality,

But no less dead. 

Words fade and fail like coals on a blustery winter's night. 

🌷(1)

◄ A May-time

Oxbow lake ►

Comments

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John Marks

Sat 2nd Jun 2018 13:24

To some extent Brian. But many of us 'see' without 'perceiving' what it is we truly see. On the other hand, sometimes we are cursed by seeing too clearly and/or we see what others don't - people like William Blake and his visions - such people used to locked up for being mad:

Sailing to Byzantium
BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS


That is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees,
—Those dying generations—at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.

<Deleted User> (18980)

Fri 1st Jun 2018 17:11

John - it's the blind leading the blind then?

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John Marks

Fri 1st Jun 2018 17:02

Thank you David and Brian. I like the sound of 'gobeen' - connotations of goblins on the snot green sea and the two verbs: 'go' answered by the cocky, leery 'been'. I haven't much idea what it's about either - Ireland is there, as are the sea, witchcraft, paganism and most of all the greensward. Our green inheritance which we are vandalising acre by acre for motorways, industrial estates, houses people dont wanna live in etc. Was it Anglican old TS who wrote that "poetry communicates before it is understood." I agree with him.

Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.
But to what purpose
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves
I do not know.

TS Eliot, Burnt Norton, The Four Quartets

<Deleted User> (18980)

Fri 1st Jun 2018 14:37

I haven't a clue what it's all about and don't have the time or patience to try to de-cipher it...but it is fascinating and I like it. Well done Jonjo!

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