Homesick on The Ridgeway

Tags

dustceawing, eawl-leet, hill-fort, holloways, Hran-rad, inosculation, invasion, Norsemen, petrichor, The Ridgeway

Who were these invaders?

Photo by Candia Dixon-Stuart

 

 

Haunting the holloways, harrowed by hooves;

feeling our footfall fragment the flint.

Scanning the canopy’s inosculation,

we glybe through glossamer and squint in the glisk.

Dustsceawung is unavoidable:

dreams flit into smeause, like mice through a crack;

dilemmas dissolve through smoot holes.

Preoccupation is piffling to us.

We head for a hill-fort; spy on a settlement,

among the shadowtracks and shivelights

at the selvedge fray of a sown field.

After a shower, a pungent petrichor

permeates nostrils and a landskein

looms over the horizon, like smoke from their huts.

Soon it will be wolf-light; eawl-leet softens

and Heimweh’s heft hirples our hearts,

so we summon the sun wane

on the suthering tide, where we tied our ships.

May a spanging breeze freeze the salt in our beards!

Helmsmen, we long for the Hran-rad and home.

Hannah More (1745-1833)

Tags

anti-slavery, bas bleu, Belmont, Blagdon, Clapham set, Cowslip Green, Fishponds, Hannah More, Mendip Hills, nervous breakdown, philanthropist, religious tracts, Tyntesfield, Walpole

Hannah More by Pickersgill

A quennet for a woman who made a fortune with her pen:

 

fourth daughter   Gloucestershire born   Mendip Hills

poetic landscape

religious tracts   pastoral plays   Sunday education

nervous collapse

‘strange affair’    Bleeding Rock   jilted female

small annuity

bas bleu

Blagdon cottage

Clapham Sect

petticoat bishop

Cowslip Green

anti-slavery

bold philanthropist

strange plays   female education    pastoral landscape

religious rock.

 

 

Komorebi

Tags

Impressionism, komorebi, nystagmus, parasols, pixels, Pointillist

Wikimedia- Madame Monet and her son

Another leftover poem from my series a couple of years ago.

Komorebi is

a word for dappled light seen

under, or through trees.

The Impressionists caught it

in flickering strokes,

or in Pointillist pixels.

Women’s parasols

shielded them from nystagmus.

Wide-brimmed hats stilled the dancing

tones’ fluctuations.

Yet the bare-headed shimmer

and they scintillate

with the mirage of brief youth

and half-realisation.

Pointless Things

Tags

concrete operational, fascinators, list poem, pet hates, Pillow Book, Sei Shonagon, trout pout

I think I wrote this poem based on an entry in The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon,

which was a list of ugly things. I tried to bring it up to date with pet hates of the

20th and 21st century.

Juxtaposing hair

which is unkempt with fine clothes;

a fascinator

on a helmet-like mullet;

hand-made paper spoiled

by spidery handwriting;

low-cut brides kneeling

in front of praying vicars;

presenting logic to the

concrete operational,

who try to pretend

that they understand;

a trout-pout selfie taken

by a narcissist – tramp-stamped,

and no Spring chicken either.

 

 

 

Integrity

Tags

fourteen lines, graciousness, honour, integrity, Japanese poetry, visiting friends

About two years ago I was experimenting with using Japanese poetic

frameworks and was trying to paraphrase and utilise poetry from the Tale

of Genji etc, but attempting to re-phrase the little cameos in my own words. 

This poem seems to have been left out, so I offer it to you now.

Sometimes you visit,

unexpectedly, a friend

and you stumble on

evidence of graciousness.

No show is put on:

it is their habitual

way of doing things.

It reflects nobility.

Even if you were to spy

on them, you would find

they’d behave in the same way.

they’re true to themselves,

whether they are being watched,

or not.  It’s integrity.

Ultimate Neighbour Feud

Tags

Avaris, hippos, Hyksos, neighbour dispute, revanchism, Seqenenre, Thebes

Photo by Diego Delso

Extreme revanchism row with neighbours:

no statutory nuisance laws back then;

no one issued an abatement notice.

He was ‘the Brave’ – at war with the Hyksos.

It’s amazing what lack of sleep can do.

They just snapped over his noisy hippos.

A desire to cull turned to lust to kill.

We’ve all been maddened by a noisy pool.

The disturbance carried on the night air,

travelling from Thebes, up to Avaris.

Then his younger son captured their city,

almost twenty years into his own reign.

A little bit of poolside decorum

may have prevented an execution.

Users of swimming pools should roar quietly,

to avoid the fate of Seqenenre.

Bach and the Bumble Bee

Tags

Bach, Baroque, clerestory, Sarabande, Scordatura

Male Bumble Bee Photo by Sffubs (Wikimedia Commons)

Scordatura is

an alternative tuning.

In the Sarabande,

Bach’s audience is showered

with Baroque pollen

and hears cello strings vibrate

in harmony with

the frequency of a bee.

The musician’s taut thighs grip;

ground the instrument.

Way up in the clerestory,

there’s a resonance

which might have provoked a hum

from the composer himself.

Brahms and the B52s

Tags

acciatura, Allegro non troppo, B52, Baghdad, Boneyard, Brahms, Cello sonata, Dragon Eyes, Gansbacher, Lechlade-on-Thames, sonic boom, Stratofortress, Ukraine, Wiegenleid

The concert was a couple of years ago, but planes are flying over

as we read of Ukraine being a focus of global interest yet again…

Photo by Candia Dixon-Stuart

Two equal partners: piano and cello

bemuse the bat-stilled, fusty atmosphere.

Birdsong, muffled bells quietly interrupt;

counterpoint the sonata’s elegance.

Grace notes, acciatura mesmerise.

I follow an elbow’s flamboyant flash,

the audience transfixed on numbing pews.

The Allegro non troppo fades away.

Mercifully, no one claps before the

Allegretto quasi Menuetto begins.

Brahms played this piano accompaniment,

so intensely, that Gansbacher complained

his cello contribution was effaced.

There is no remonstration possible

as stained windows darken and behemoths,

such as extinguished the lights of Baghdad,

ravage pale skies over Lechlade-on-Thames:

Operation Rolling Thunder, Cold War,

Desert Fox raise apocalyptic heads.

Bikini Atoll, The Vietnam War,

Syria, Kosovo, Afghanistan.

Professional musicians persevere,

as Sarajevo’s lone cellist once played.

And we carry on listening – trying

to sublimate the Stratofortress engines,

sensing we are under the Dragon Eyes,

as they loiter over the leaded roof.

Their performances lead to a Boneyard.

Brahms lovers sense there are no smart bombs,

nor are there conventional munitions.

The faint music from calm spheres in deep space

is a Wiegenleid above sonic booms

and communicates the power of peace.

Georgia O’Keeffe

Tags

adobe, Badlands, Bear Lake, Cerro Pedernel, Cezanne, Cottonwood trees, Georgia O'Keeffe, Ghost Ranch, Mont St Victoire, morning-glory, Stieglitz, Thoreau

Photograph by Alfred Stieglitz, 1918 (Wikipedia)

 

 

If I paint Ghost Ranch enough, then God

will give it to me.  Well, that was the pact.

I loved The Black Place; those brooding Badlands

and that sun with its tonal harmony.

I strove to get to the heart of all things,

for, as Thoreau once said, Nature will bear

the closest inspection.  So, I observed:

repeatedly, intensely, like Cezanne,

with his ever-changing Mont St Victoire.

I would portray Death’s bleached beauty; a cloud;

Bear Lake; Canna leaves; winter Cottonwoods;

a blue Morning Glory; arroyas’ curves.

I would prick out river beds from airplanes –

some would say from a divine perspective.

My adobe wall shut distractions out.

Every day I would draw cool well water

from my own depths; would mix it with pigment,

till horizons narrowed through declining

vision.  Cerro Pedernel retreated

and my skylight became a small white dot,

an oculus to stars’ proximity.

Rokeby Venus

Tags

Baedeker, National Gallery, protest, quennet, Rokeby Venus, Suffragettes

Rokeby Venus: National Gallery, UK

 

unsuccessful MP   beautiful paradigm   refused breakfast

backward glance

ageing face   gawping men   mirror image

five slashes

almond-eyed Madonna   broad-shouldered detectives   opened newspaper

pretend sketching

broken glass

slippery parquet

thrown Baedeker

crowd’s fury

cooling-off room

six month sentence

force-fed

newspaper image   backward paradigm   ageing men

broad-shouldered Madonna