Where is love?

Amended again 6th August

To the north waves in barley, 

Mirror shadows heading deep 
Into Megdale, across grass

Pollen holding fast, against the air.

Tenuous life, ploughed into furrows

is committed. Deferring to the soil.

While on the barley fetching breeze
Scents, lost souls, machinery faults

Catch the larks and buzzards
Spiriting them free of my passing.
High above this private enclave
Cupped by low hills: enthusiasm

No longer mumbles in the barns. 
The light fading over common land, 
In common with all lands, warms
The heart before the chill begins.

Amended work in progress, 16th July:

To the north waves in the barley, 

Mirror shadows heading deep 
Down into Megdale. 'cross grass

Pollen held by nothing but air.

Tenuous life, ploughed into furrows

is committed. Caught-up in soil.

While on the barley fetching breeze
Scents, lost souls, machinery faults

And ......

So where is love in all this?



To the north barley waves ascend.

Where is love? Southerly shadows

Climb. Grass pollen, not yet ready

To fly. Cattle low behind the hedge.

The sun has moved across the sky.

Where is love? Elsewhere? Barely.

Hidden high above the heavy sun?

Likely not. Ploughed into furrows

Caught up in chalk soil. Committed.

Carried in the barley furling breeze.

I have rediscovered my blog!

It has been so long since I've posted, and I think I had forgotten my scribblings were still out there in the ether.

So I have a commitment to myself: I shall write more. If only for me. If only for you if you visit. I like the idea of putting down in words thing that may now last for an eternity. The universe could one day be full of thoughts left on servers. No claim to quality, no attempt at perfection, just some honesty and a bit of fun for me. And hopefully you.

Today I'm working form home. Working on some policy and procedure stuff for a new transport company. Happy to have the work, nothing earth shattering but it's good to be part of establishing something that will be used and hopefully enjoyed by its customers and employees.

In my office listening to Beach Boys Pet Sounds at the moment. Earlier Crosby Stills Nash & Young, next thinking of some classical choir from Harry Christopher and The Sixteen - Barber, Poulenc, Stravinsky and others.

Have (after many years of shilly shallying) got into digitised music: ripping CDs to FLAC files. Combining an old laptop as a music server, with a NAS drive for back-up, a fab little 24 bit DAC (available from http://epiphany-acoustics.co.uk/ if you are interested), played back through two vintage Sony STR 5800 receivers (one driving bass, the other treble), bi-amped into a pair of 14 year old Monitor Audio Silver 8i speakers. Wonderful sound-stage, separation of instruments and voices is so good. Tight bass with a warm mid and top. Really really satisfying. I've had the speakers from new and the Lenovo laptop was redundant model from 2008 or so). the rest cost me circa £400 and was put together from Ebay (the two receivers), Epiphany Acoustics (DAC), and speaker cable from a local supplier. IMHO I would struggle to do better without spending a fortune. I shall post some pictures at some point.

Office listening is a bit more mundane - Focusrite DAC I use for recording into powered nEar 05 monitors - OK but not stunning - and I want stunning. I have bought a half dozen or so vintage Sony amps and receivers and plan to get another DAC and use that to drive one of them into some new speakers. That's for another day and time though.....

Canary Wharf

A newly lucid awareness

Of beauty and youth

Falls in with my aching

Steps, as I pass by.

Happenstance denied
That that isn’t lost to me

While here in abundance

Exquisite and poised

That that is drifts on.

And I slip further out

To the margin

To the waiting

To what will be done.

Rework of 'A New Year's Funeral' - is it better?

The stumbling fool carries his prayer book

Confident up over the chipped stone step,

Torn pages doling comfort,

Smothering grief as required by His love.

Quoting custom, mumbling winter’s return,

Losing his way among the stones and psalms,

A young things’ modern elegy,

Covers with a veil maddening incompetence,

But he calls right the snow that will chill buried bones,

And cause the church cat to put off its hunting,

Measuring the days in life filled sleep,

Until it’s over.

20 Feb 2012

New Year Funeral

The stumbling fool carries his prayer book

Confidently over the chipped stone step,

From broken pages ministered comfort

Falls on grief as required by contract.

His supervisory over-sight, fails

Far from the coal-face, lets indolent words

Scatter careless thoughts, dumps soil by the road.

Mawkish young things in modern tears praised him

Placing a veil over others’ silence.

The fool said custom foretold fair and bright,

And while most unspecified words are false,

Winter has returned to chill buried bones

And the churchyard cat has put off hunting.

Of yesterday’s tomorrow, what remains?

Retrospective

Before a drunken night

He’d gone to the docks

Astray, in a landscape lost.

Beerily ferile together,

Gone the stilted indifference

Of earlier retrospectives

No longer sterile and alien.

The small together they share

Is intimate and isolated.

She, thin and profane,

Has gamine eyes,

Is fuckable.

Thomas

Thomas decided to begin his life at fourteen, what was before was forgotten and what followed he derived from an idea. Thomas was reviled at school for the wilful and indulgent way in which he set himself apart.

The idea that nature was pure and that as part of it he embodied purity became him. He reasoned the natural must be correct, whatever its end, however brutal its means. In the idea the prevailing landscape of brutality is demonstrably true and therefore he concluded sufficient. 

On this morning the soap he lathers across his body does not purify but it is necessary, as is the hard bristle brush and the scalding water. Red skin and the singing cuts on his hands and neck howl as he scrubs harder with a bullying efficiency, he punishes his body zealously, directing the shower full against his skin. His corona has a graze that is raw.

Thomas has never sworn, even though he can be angry and vengeful, Thomas has never loved though he can be tender. Thomas is lithe and well worked, superficially attractive, attractive to queers mostly and angry about their interest in him. There have been women but mostly there has been just him. Thomas is a harsh man, quick to judge but funny, he has had some success.

Drying himself in the squalor of the bathroom doesn’t matter but only one dirty towel does, he wishes he’d looked for a clean one before he’d got in but it’s too cold to wander wet back out now to see if anything had been washed and dried. And anyhow, he’s not one to want to expose himself unnecessarily and he'd long learnt that aftermath is no place to linger. His clothes are damp and cling unhelpfully when he pulls them on, light blue herringbone cotton collared shirt, three buttons at the top undone, the rest left in haste where they were before he’d ripped it off, trousers a little crumpled but of good wool, orange leather brogues over cashmere socks bought from an on-line discount store.

A stream of profanity crashes into him as he steps out of the bathroom, closing the panelled Victorian door and tousling his hair into something that resembles grooming. He keeps it short now as he often forgets to carry a comb. He likes to leave the fabric of things tidy, to maintain balance, the girl and the room are a mess of morning after disgust and resentment, despite her pleading there was no way he’d budge and help her.

Thomas picks up the phone and dials a number he’s dialled before, hands the handset to her, presses his fingers to his slightly pursed lips and turns away. The flat door is heavy and with an old Yale lock it sounds final as it slams shut behind him.