Life in Poetry

By Colin Kirk

These poems, written from 1955 to 2014, are a reflection on the period by someone who lived through it and, of course, aged in the process. Various world tragedies knocked the poetry out of him a time or two.

He says: Somewhere between 1955 and 2000 humanity
took a further seriously wrong turning. The twenty-fi rst
century started in farce that gave unlimited power to
people intent on mass murder. We let it happen.

Poetry was once the great harbinger of understanding
and poets were once listened to because they had
something important to say.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris UK
• Release date: Sep 11, 2014
• ISBN: 9781499086430

Colin Kirk

Colin Kirk has published poetry, classical history and philosophy. This is the umpteenth rewriting of his first novel. www.colinkirkworks.com

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Copyright © 2014, by Colin Kirk.

ISBN:      Softcover      978-1-4990-8642-3

                eBook         978-1-4990-8643-0

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Rev. date: 08/21/2014

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CONTENTS

EXPLANATION

DEDICATION

PROLOGUE

PROLOGUE

HITLER’S VICTORY

ON AWAKENING FROM CHILDHOOD

SONG OF THE FIRST SUMMER

SYCAMORE TREE

INVITATIONS AND WARNINGS

OUT OF THE FORMS AND FACES

MIRAGE

FIRST LOVE

LATE ORPHIC LAMENT

ARTHUR RIMBAUD

A NIGHT AT SACRE-CŒUR

FENCING

EXPLORING BLOW WELLS

THE WILLOW BANK

THE BLOW WELLS AT BARTON

AS YOU’VE ASKED I’LL TELL YOU

SOLOMON’S SONG OF SONGS AS

      SUNG IN THE SWINGING SIXTIES

METAMORPHOSIS

TWO POETS: GRAVES AND CAMPBELL

CANAL

Lorca’s CASIDA: ON BRANCHES

INTERLUDE

WHERE THERE NO MORE THE SORROW

NO MORE THE MOON HER MAGIC MAKES

TIME IS THE DEATH OF DEAREST LOVE

EXCURSION

NICE TO SEE YOU IN THE CITY

LIKE SO MANY JOLLY PARTIES

CITY SNOW for Father Waldo Judd

DÉJÀ VU

JOSEPH BENEDICT LABRE:

PATRON SAINT OF DROP OUTS

DEATH OF COLD

APHRODITE MELANOS

THAT’S MY STORY

UNCERTAINTIES

CLUBBING

THE SHOCK OF JEALOUSY

Sappho: fragment 31

THE CASTALIAN SPRING AND THE PYTHON’S CAVE

PERSONAL POSSESSION

IN DENIAL

WAITING

OPUS 58

HAVE A NICE DAY

DICHOTOMY OF TIME

THE VIETNAM WAR

AND OTHER ATROCITIES

FIVE POEMS FOR OSIP

ASPHYXIA

OLAF

NEW GODS OF WAR

AN AUTUMN DAY

GROUND ZERO MINUS ZERO

THE FIRST REPORT

OUR HERO

COUNTER REVOLUTION

STEPPING STONES

KILL THIS DAY

August 21 1968

PRIMARY CONTACTS

DECOMPOSITION

BRAIN DEAD

January 16 1969

INTERVAL

REVIVAL

ESCAPE

REFLECTIONS IN PICARDY

SHARING A COMB

HIS NAME

AFTER WHAT HAS GONE BEFORE

THE SEEING AND THE SEEN

BETRAYAL

FORMS OF DEATH

WORDLESS PASSION

PENNY FOR ’EM

AFTERTHOUGHT

FLYING

FLYING

UNTITLED AS FOUND

LONE ROOK

PRAISED BE OUR LORDS

HE IS DEAD

KINDRED SPIRIT

THE GREAT GOD PAN IS DEAD

THE POTTER

HUMAN HEROS

MONT SAINT-MICHEL

RECOVERY

SHIVA DANCING

YOU VIBRATE A CHORD IN ME

HERO UNKNOWN UNTO DEATH

CONFUSION REIGNS

I DON’T EVER WANT TO SAY GOODBYE TO YOU

ROOTLESS WANDERING

TO REACH THE SUN

UNSPOKEN QUESTION ON HER DOORSTEP

THE LEDA POEMS

BUKHARA AND SAMARKAND

HAFIZ: Three poems on

finding the right girl

PURIFICATION

SCHIZ OID

ENLIGHTENMENT

GAMBLING WITH GOD

MONUMENT VALLEY RAIN GODS’

PRIESTS’ PRAYER

FINSBURY PARK

SONG TO SING TO WHINGING POMS

ECLIPSES

STUFF AND NONSENSE

MISSING PERSON

RENEWAL

BACK HOME

ANNUAL EVENT

EASTER MORNING

TEMPLE MOUNT JERUSALEM

INTRODUCTION TO THE ORPHIC MYSTERIES

MODERN MYSTERY RELIGION

HOW TO WIN BY SWIMMING

AGAINST THE FLOW

VIXEN

IT’S A MAN’S WORLD

Morrocco

PAY BACK AFRICA

REMEMBER CHAZ VIVIAN

From Shelley’s

TO THE MEN OF ENGLAND

DRUMMER HODGE

FACES OF POLAND

THOUGHTS ON MORALITY

FUNDAMENTAL DIALECTIC

FAMILY PORTRAIT WAWEL CASTLE

THE BIRDS ARE BACK AT BIRKENAU

BUT INSIDE - KAZIMIERZ DOLNY UNDER SNOW

SONG OF THE SUN

THE BIRDS OF MARIENBURG

THE SUN’S SPACE

THE SUN’S LIFE

TORTURERS IN A DEMOCRACY

DISINTEGRATION

TIME AND AGAIN

DEVOLUTION

ZEBBIE

HELOISE AND ABELARD

WHERE ERR I ROME?

TELEVISION AT OLYMPIA

CAN’T WORK IT OUT

FORTIETH ANNIVERSARY DREAMS:

July 2009

INVERSE RATIOS

WHO HAS TURNED US AROUND LIKE THIS?

LEADERSHIP

TERROR

ALL HAIL

HOLY GRAILS

THE TREE HAS IT

MILLENNIUM

BIRD LIFE

CALLIOPE’S FAMILIAR

HIRONDELLES

LE COLOMBIER

WINDOWS OF TRANSPARENCY

RARE BIRDS

WREN

SILENCE

PASS IT ON

ADVICE SPOKEN BY PYTHAGORAS

DEATH OF A CHICKEN

WHAT IS TRUTH?

OWN TRUTH

LOVE IS

NO NEED TO ASK

VIGIL OF SAINT VALENTINE

A FITTING MEMORIAL

PERFECTION

known as DARK DOVES

DEATH IS A CHOICE

RENEWAL INTERRUPTUS

A TALL ORDER

GO NOW TO CWM CALLAN VALLEY

FINALITY

LIFE STORY

POSTSCRIPT

1.jpg

Playing recorder under canvas: photographed

by David Andrews

EXPLANATION

These poems cover the period 1938 to 2014. They are a reflection on the period from someone who lived through it and, of course, aged in the process. During that period humanity took further seriously dangerous turnings. The twenty-first century started in farce that gave unlimited power to people intent on mass murder, total population control and who, from their artificially controlled environments, are careless of degradation of the natural environment the rest of us live in. We let it happen.

Poetry was once the great harbinger of understanding and poets were once listened to because they had important things to say.

Nowadays human rights are propagated by multinational corporations and their all invasive media outlets, whilst they make human rights meaningless. Rights make few demands anyway They will not save humanity. It’s human duties, which make demands on us. They could save humanity, if action is taken promptly. Unfortunately we like to have rights, meaningless or not. Duties we prefer to avoid.

There are no heros anymore because it’s easier not to be heroic. There are exceptions. There are no statesmen anymore. There are no exceptions. Now we have armies of bureaucrats instead. They jet around the globe to talk. They claim talk is better than war. An excellent point! But irrelevant now that there is permanent war, required by arms manufacturers and bankers, who manipulate bureaucratic elites by gift of semblance of power and extravagant life styles.

War is waged by governments, on behalf of the multinational corporations they serve. Previously, politicians fought, on behalf of their masters, against the interests of their own citizens. Now the elite are prepared to fight their own citizens with armies of riot police. They are well named: thugs who cause riots. Indeed, the elite not only have their enemies slaughtered abroad, they no longer draw the line at killing their own citizens on homeland and without any legal process or redress.

Traditionally it was believed there was one law for the rich and another for the poor. Of late it has become apparent there is no law at all applicable to the actions of the elite and no legal protection for the poor. Lawyers are massively funded to ensure this situation persists. They’ve kept the paraphernalia of the law but abandoned the constitution and all legal requirements that flow from it. International law and the Geneva Conventions were always something applied to others, noisily, by a compliant media.

We are conditioned to ignore these facts. Soon the whole world will be a fact free zone. For decades we have preferred ignorance and done so at our peril. Now it is apparent we do so at the peril of all humanity. Nature can adjust to any change. In our attempt to control nature she will destroy us, in the interests of the rest of life on Earth.

Our twin planet, the Moon, is dead, beautiful but dead. She rules the night with her beauty and has been praised by poets from the earliest days of human expression. Poets tend to prefer the dark, the mystery of it all, the activities that take place in the night. But it is the Sun that has borne and sustains the solar system. The light and warmth of the Sun is essential to our well being. Without the Sun we cease to exist, everything ceases to exist.

Substantial as Earth’s biosphere appears to us, who live in it and are a part of it, in comparison with the rest of the matter and energy in our galaxy, it is the merest, slightest, fragile covering of one of the smaller planets, the one and only blue green planet. Life here is unique.There may be other life forms elsewhere. If there are they could hardly be more irrelevant to the maintenance of humanity.

If the worry is that extra terrestrials may come and destroy us, don’t give it a second thought, not until we stop being hell bent on destroying ourselves. Worry about that! It’s something we can do something about.

Experiences that trigger poetry don’t always achieve that end. Yet, they were intended to. Impetus to record what should have come out as poetry but doesn’t remains. What were once known as essays but as articles these days, happen instead.

The ones here are stories about sacred and profane experiences. In times past they would have been told at the fireside, with music playing, followed by singing and dancing. You just get the stories here.

Poetry is personal, written unwillingly, for reasons unknown to the poet, rarely offered to the muse. Even then there’s no guarantee it’s offered to the right muse, poets are deceptive. The Great God Pan is dead.

DEDICATION

I admit to serial muses.

Although the time scales of influence of each is

different, weeks to decades.

They are listed chronologically.

The poems are not in strict chronological order.

Muses can influence in their absence, as well as

their presence, both before meeting in the flesh

and even after death.

Liz

Isabel

Bob

Andrew

to whose blessed memory this volume is dedicated.

He was not a muse in his lifetime.

We were too busy flying gliders and playing tennis.

His grandfather told him: bullykin shows.

Andrew brought me back to life and then he died.

David

Jill

LIFE IN POETRY

page%2018%20Map.jpg

Map of Lincolnshire (detail) by Thomas Kitchin, 1794

LINDSEY IN THE COUNTY OF LINCOLN

Two great rivers: the Ouse that meanders south from Yorkshire and the Trent from central England, flow together into the Humber, a tidal estuary through extensive mud flats down to the North Sea. This is the northern boundary of Lindsey, with the North Sea as the eastern one. Hull, a major east coast port, is on the north bank of the Humber in the East Riding of Yorkshire. Sunk island has now sunk completely and Spurn head is now an island. It is an ever changing coast line.

Lindsey is a somewhat obscure part of England, inhabited by Friesians, who preferred to be left alone and always hated state interference. Henry VIII, England’s greatest tyrant called it the most boorish county of our realm. This outburst was his response to what was called the Pilgrimage of Grace, an uprising against the king’s land grab in the name of religious regeneration.

PROLOGUE

PROLOGUE

I was conceived midsummer’s day,

al fresco, where blue harebells grow.

There, far below, Ouse and Trent flow

together and Humber glides away.

I was born mid March beside Old Clee

with ancient gravestones collapsed near by

and mine sweepers beyond the pier

where Humber flows into the sea.

Nazis blitzkrieged Sudetenland

a foretaste of the world to come.

Mass murder as my life begun

in a world I fail to understand.

23 June 2013

HITLER’S VICTORY

Memory is an unreliable source of information. Incidents that impinge to the extent of permanent record are usually very personal, can have lasted no more than seconds during years of forgotten activity. Moments of heightened awareness, experienced briefly, can last a lifetime.

Incidents remembered are recalled out of context, with none of the explanatory data that justifies them. Often an incident is transposed into an appropriate but false setting, as the mind tries to justify the memory’s continued existence.

Memories are implanted in each of the senses but poetic recall is mainly aural, olfactory or visual. The following two are mainly visual but sounds and smells of childhood persist too.

Both earliest memories can be dated precisely: my second birthday and the other very shortly afterwards. Then nothing for some years.

In war time Britain anything and everything was treasured. There was little to be had. Second birthdays are effectively first ones anyway. There are no recollections at two of the previous birthday, no expectations.

At eight o’clock in the morning a just two year old was sent to respond to a knock at the door. Ron Ellis, the first full name I knew, as a result of this incident, opened the door a crack.

Look after this for me until lunchtime will you?

He thrust forward a little puppy and was gone.

The sheer joy of the first, very own friend, is immeasurable. The mounting dread as lunchtime approached likewise. On our door step all morning were a little boy and an animal, who wanted to play with each other for all time. Ron Ellis reappeared, the puppy was proffered with tearful reluctance.

Keep it if you like. Your Dad says you can.

Mind blowing!

She was female. Immediately named Peggy, the only other girl’s name in my vocabulary apart from my sister’s. Her friend was called Peggy.

At home the little terrier became an inseparable adjunct, always there, tail wagging, until she died.

This sad event happened a few days before home was left behind for good at age eighteen.

At the old town end of Edinburgh’s Waverley Bridge was the city’s most famous memorial. It was to a dog, loyal unto death, called Greyfriars Bobby. He was a replica in bronze of my little dog. Every day, for four years, I choked back lost childhood.

My mother was adverse to cats. Since I left home I have preferred cats to dogs. Lost treasures are irreplaceable.

The other early memory could not be more different from the first. These two very early memories, I have since found out, were only four days apart.

Our house was out on the Lincolnshire marshes, at the edge of the most northerly village in the county, with the River Humber as the northern and eastern boundaries of the parish. Across the Humber was the city and port of Hull.

All along the east coast of England the Air Department of the War Office had requisitioned farm land to convert into aerodromes. A small field separated the local aerodrome from my bedroom window. At night my bedroom was lit up more than at midday, by the search light housed just the other side the barbed wire.

We had essential basic furniture only in a half empty house. The front room had double doors from outside. It had been empty for years. It proved possible to get the parts for an Anderson shelter into this room and put together in there.

Anderson shelters were like sheet steel tables about a yard off the ground. The idea was to shelter under the table top for protection should the house collapsed in an air raid. It was a community shelter, folk from across the road and up the street used it too, very crowded.

Air raids were a relatively new phenomenon, world wide, but had been the subject of media hype throughout the thirties, until the idea terrified everyone. The ancient town centre of Rotterdam was destroyed by aerial bombardment of a civilian population in 1940. Hence issue of Anderson shelters in vulnerable areas in England.

Late one night, sirens suddenly droned out. Awakened by noise, brilliant lights and pandaemonium inside and outside the house, the window beckoned. Search lights moved across the night sky in great arcs, criss crossed each other.

The view from this east facing window was at an angle to the action and the view was obscured by the gable end of the workshop. From the north facing window of the empty bed room next door the view would be better. Indeed, that window was full of amazing spectacles in glorious technicolour.

Hull city, the other side the Humber, usually a dull line on the horizon, was a blaze of flame from one end to the other. Bright yellows, reds and oranges reflected from a river usually muddy brown. Colours never seen before leapt into the sky, darted across the surface of the river. The sights, noises, smells, everything was totally different.

Shouting and screaming, there were folk on the stairs. Manhandled roughly, an excited two year old was bundled down to the safety of the shelter. Anderson shelters worked. A neighbour’s house, our side the river, was bombed that night and they all survived. Hundreds didn’t. One of the worst air raids of the War destroyed the centre of the city of Hull, the old docks, miles of river frontage warehouses and worst the homes of thousands of families like ours, family members and all.

In the build up to Operation Barbarossa, Hitler’s ferocious onslaught on Stalin’s Russia, the city of Hull, the nearest English port to Leningrad, was destroyed. For most practical purposes it was completely destroyed but that didn’t stop further bombing over the next two years. Nothing on the scale of the first large attack, which was not publicised during the news black out of the period.

It is now known that after London, Hull was the most heavily bombed city in Britain. Not least because bombardiers, with ammunitions left after onslaughts on Midland and Northern cities, dropped their left over bombs on Hull, before heading out to sea and back to base. The Humber estuary was the most visible feature of the east coast from the night sky.

Hitler’s methods were reciprocated bomb for bomb, firestorm for firestorm, flying bomb for flying bomb until the Allies forged ahead of him with further unnecessary brutality. The civilian populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were atomic bombed to radioactive destruction that took its toll for decades.

Since then, increment by increment the western elite have adopted Hitler’s values, methods, financial chicanery, immorality, his thirst for power, his unremitting evil until his victory is now absolute. And we, bribed, cowed and constrained, keep them in power.

Hull was the first city in the world almost totally destroyed by aerial bombardment. 95% of Hull’s houses were destroyed or damaged. Over 300 bombers dropped heavy munitions from nine at night until four in the morning. This took place in March 1941.

News blackout was the reverse of the media coverage of the Guernica disaster that occurred four years earlier in April 1937. Newsreels with the King and Queen’s visit to areas of devastation in sympathy with folk made homeless could be shown only in local cinemas. Kings rarely visited Hull since the citizens refused entry to Charles I, three hundred years earlier. On this occasion they let one in, as they did his father during World War I, after a lone Zeppelin raid no one had thought possible.

Hitler’s over 300 purpose built bombers that dropped thousands of tons of bombs on Hull, to prevent its use as a supply base to Russia, were a product of experiments that started in Madrid and Barcelona six years earlier. At Hull 58,000 families lost their homes. At Leningrad 2,000,000 people were buried in mass graves.

Hitler’s Victory cost the lives of about

27 million Slavs

6 million Poles

6 million Jews

1 million Roma

in attempt to clear Europe of non Aryans, although what an Aryan is remains unclear.

In the process 7 million Germans died

       and over 1 million allied service personnel and civilians, mainly from the British Empire throughout the war and the United States at its conclusion, not far off 50 million people in total.

Factional media hype since the war has skewed these figures in popular imagination. Holocaust applies to them all. They are all appalling.

This all happened before I started school. It used to be difficult to find out the truth of what happened in the distant past. Recent history is more difficult to find out about. Now its impossible to find out the truth of what happened yesterday.

Media studies teach appropriate presentation of information that multinational corporations and their paid political cronies deem it useful to them to have divulged to us. The prime purpose after all is to advertise, to sell, to make money. A little misinformation to divert attention from what is really going adds zest to the mix.

There are exceptional people working in the media. See http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/jeta-xharra-wins-dr-busek-seemo-award

Sadly they are a tiny minority.

ON AWAKENING

FROM CHILDHOOD

SONG OF THE FIRST SUMMER

sing

      singing

            birds summer the sunlit song

                     piping

                                          bubbling birds high flying

                                    melody the marshes

                                                         music

flying the sun skywards

                                          swallows

                                  free wheeling the air ways

                                     screech

skylarks

      hang

            melody motionless stop

                                          drop

                                                stone to the hay

fields fall

black flash white flash leaping wagtails

                                          bobbing the river

                                          stones

                                          leap

cheeping sparrows tumble the hedgerows

                     fall

                           fly

                                    feather chase away in flocks

blue green    orange

                                    the lone kingfisher

dip darting the river

                     flash

                                       miracle out of sight

green and golden the summer melodies

                                    hang

                     haunting the twilight silent ear

SYCAMORE TREE

Grey glass box without sides, nor box shaped,

full of extraneous matter, for sake of atmosphere,

to fill the surrounding space.

There must be ground for it grow from, air

for it to grow into. Some foreground, a back cloth

but concentrate on the sycamore tree

and there is nothing besides.

This is not a botanical study but a vision

of a thing seen in the whole, for itself alone.

Words can not capture it, except to say:

Sycamore Tree.

To concentrate on its bole, branches,

twigs, leaves either builds up or dissects it.

Visions are not like that.

Sycamore tree.

Symbolic? Symbolic of what?

The telling would kill it.

Sycamore tree.

INVITATIONS AND WARNINGS

This is the title of the first book of poetry by Henry Treece, published in 1942. He published two more: The Black Seasons 1945 and The Haunted Garden 1947. From the age of eleven to eighteen we were lucky enough to be taught English Grammar and Literature by Henry Treece. At least that’s ostensibly what he was teaching us.

He taught us about life from a rich experience in the RAF during the war and around post war London pubs as poet and novelist, which he still was. He knew English poets, musicians, artists of the day. He was an inspiring teacher and subsequently friend. He taught us to think for ourselves, which used to be the purpose of education. Later on his invitations were always welcome, as were his welcomes, if one turned up without warning.

The invitation I didn’t get was to my granddad’s funeral. I was said to be too young to pay my last respects to the then love of my life. After that loss I found it almost impossible to commit to love again. Offer of sight of him laid out in his coffin was declined. I