'MY LOVE IS LIKE ALL LOVELY THINGS' - A REVIEW

 
BLOSSOMS FROM THE BEYOND:

A REVIEW OF C. CAUNTER'S
 ‘MY LOVE IS LIKE ALL LOVELY THINGS: 
SELECTED POEMS OF E. E. BRADFORD’ 

BY BARRY VAN-ASTEN
 
 
 

The new Arcadian Dreams publication of ‘My Love is like all Lovely Things: Selected Poems of E. E. Bradford’ (2023) by C. Caunter is a refreshingly welcome volume on the subject of Uranian poetry by the Reverend Bradford which for those who do not know of his work or his life is a delightful introduction. The author temptingly casts the first stone by flagrant flattery, crediting my piece on Bradford – ‘Desire and Divinity: A Brief Biographical Sketch of Reverend Edwin Emmanuel Bradford (1860-1944) [p. 301], an honour which of course shall have no influence upon my review of the volume. My first encounter with Reverend Bradford was reading his volume of poetry ‘The Romance of Youth and Other Poems’ (1920) which I have to admit initially disliking, in fact, I condemned it as ‘dull and insipid’ for my concerns at the time  were chiefly the decadent nineties, those aesthetic, tender Uranian hyacinths of Oxford, cooling their hands ‘in the grey twilight of Gothic things’, but then I came to his first volume of poems – ‘Sonnets Songs and Ballads’ of 1908 and was pleasantly surprised and transformed. There has been a tendency to overlook Bradford and his poetry for those who dwell more upon the classical elements shrouded in Greek mythology, (Bradford opposes the excessive pagan impulses of classical mythology) but Bradford’s poetry, often in its simple ballad style, has some marvellous roses blooming among the garden weeds. The author, C. Caunter, wisely chooses to open the volume with Bradford’s poems, selecting from the twelve published volumes from 1908-1930 before setting his own place at the table in the form of his biographical essay – ‘Eyes Lit with the Light of Other Skies’ which offers some surprising glimpses into the life of Reverend Bradford, such as the fact that he ‘had the village boys dig a swimming pool next to the vicarage [at Nordelph in Norfolk where he was vicar at Holy Trinity from 1909] and pile the excavated soil to resemble small mountains to remind him of Switzerland’ [p. 256] and insights into his friendship with fellow Uranian poet and curate, Samuel Elsworth Cottam (1863-1943) whose volume of verse, ‘Cameos of Boyhood and Other Poems’ (1930) shared similar sentiments to Bradford. The author presents a fascinating and detailed biographical piece on Edwin Emanuel Bradford, born in Torquay on 21^st August 1860 and educated there at Castle School and his friendship with a boy named ‘Jack’ who ignited his tender feelings towards the homoerotic nature within him and an Irish boy whose kiss created a ‘flame / of passion pure that knows no shame’ and ‘showed love full-grown’, in other words, his true sexual identity had been revealed to him which would drive his passions into adulthood; in fact, he called upon these images which shaped his young life and seemed to haunt him, longingly, throughout several poems. Tragically, at the age of thirteen in 1873, two explosive events occur: his mother, Maria, died of liver disease and his father, Edwin Greenslade Bradford, grief-stricken and in mental decline, fearing the fate of the asylum which sent his own father James to the grave, took his own life the following May of 1874 by cutting his throat with a bread knife and so at the age of just thirteen young Edwin had lost both his parents. In 1881 at the age of 21 he enters Exeter College, Oxford to study Theology and meets there the 17 year old Lancashire born Samuel Elsworth Cottam, with whom he may or may not have had a physical romantic attachment for by now, the Anglo-Catholic Bradford had accepted his innate sexuality and his attraction towards boyhood, framed within his Christian theological ideals of love as the author rightly suggests, he ‘saw beauty on earth as an expression of the divine; the celebration of beauty therefore equalled the celebration of God’ [p. 235]. The poet graduates from Oxford in 1884 with his B.A. degree in Theology [M.A. 1901, B.D. 1904 and D.D. 1912] and takes holy orders the same year he becomes deacon; he is ordained priest the following year and curate two years later in 1887 [St. Saviours, Walthamstow]; throughout this period he has been writing poems and short stories which have found publication in various literary outlets. The next phase of his life is spent in Russia and France, the former from 1887-1889 and the latter from 1890-1899.

Bradford writes beautifully upon the brotherly bond of boyhood, its exuberance and wonder where there is a ‘sense of the glory of things / that is presently lost or defiled’ [‘A Child’s Delight’. p. 76] and he writes almost seductively about the young ‘Adam’ or ‘Apollo’ that he encounters and his poetry is filled by such creatures, beautiful, pure and somewhat innocent, not as yet corrupted by the influence of ‘Eve’ or affected by the disturbances of the exoteric world or wearied by its ‘contaminating breath, / its vulgar mediocrity, / its soulless, humdrum life-in-death’ [‘Joe and Jim’. p. 89]; like Carroll, who had a fascination for the sylph-like, nubile, pre-pubescent innocence of girlhood, Bradford, conjures similar ‘playmates’ in the form of young boys whom he sees as highly honourable, chaste and virtuous and there is a suggestion of adoration that goes beyond the physical, transcending earthly desire which enters spiritual realms infusing his adolescent idols of adulation with a supernatural quality; a celestial manifestation reflecting god’s holy creation where ‘God writes it plainly on his radiant face’ [‘The Purity of Youth’ p. 137] and carries a spark of the divine for he knew ‘that this child of mortal clod / was but a blossom of the Love of God.’ [‘A Little Child’ p. 115]; he even spies upon the angelic form of a boy at prayer through a window, believing he can ‘descry / bright gauzy wings around his shapely shoulders!’ [‘The Boy Ideal’ part IV. p. 166] and transforms his intoxications of boyhood with an ‘otherworldly’ presence where eyes become stars and the ‘slender form was fair / with iridescent colours manifold’ for to Bradford the vision of loveliness ‘seemed not mortal, but a child of light’. [‘A Child of Light’ p. 170] In many ways, Bradford is not unlike that other dreamer and lover of youth, Ralph Chubb (1892-1960), who invoked a Blakesian vision of boyhood, exalted by the beautiful essence of God – the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins saw the same elemental essence of ‘God’s Grandeur’ flourishing in nature and for Bradford, boyhood became his landscape, solemn and substantial, where pastures are filled with the promise of endless possibilities; there, the Parnassian plane where he is merely a pilgrim at the altar of boyhood, is populated by the noble and simple forms of divine beauty before sin deadens the soul and the author, tends to agree with this vision of Bradford’s ecstatic image of youth, with their ‘transient earthly beauty, exemplified by the short-lived splendour of boyhood’ as ‘an emblem of divinity and ideal perfection’. [p. 258] He [Bradford] appears non too flattering to the female form seeing woman as a destructive force which can ruin boyhood – ‘turn away from the wench, with her powder and paint, / and follow the Boy, who is fair as a saint’ [‘The Call’ p. 118], thus we find the dichotomy of the carnal, physical pleasure of lust and the sanctified purity of spiritual love which can often times seem a little vague or ambiguous in the hands of a Uranian poet like Bradford; in the poem ‘Corpus Sanum’ (p. 136) he says: ‘youth’s tender body, clean and rosy-white, / is not that flesh corrupt we have to fight: / its natural appetites are sane and right; / its instincts true.’ Many of his poems contain the notion of an accidental encounter whereby the playfulness of a simple yet knowing look or gentle touch hold untold possibilities of romance, an idealisation of affection which shall surely sustain the mental and spiritual side of the poet without physically manifesting in reality – ‘A few shy looks and smiles: then, by degrees, / perhaps these rise / to shyer kisses: but no honey’d lies / or flatteries’ [‘Boyhood’s Votaries’ p. 94] But let us not forget the true nature of the Uranian poet, prone to such desires beneath the clerical collar which symbolises strong faith and steadfast morals and a cloak of respectability; is it possible that what was born in his imagination remained there, fruiting in solitary, sunless pastures and did not enter the world of physical gratification? Were the chains of Christian devotion and dogma ever broken by desire? A carnivore may observe and admire a beautiful bird (‘as birds in breeding time wear plumage bright’ [‘Lines on Seeing a Child Bathing’ p. 10]) without the desire and compulsion to consume it. I believe there simply must have been instances when passions rose above the flirtatious (perhaps the coded ciphers will open a Pandora’s box of revelations?) – it is a path along which we must tread carefully for the uneducated philistine sees nothing but the stamp of lust in their maniacal, consistency of ignorance and if Bradford’s poem ‘In Quest of Love’ from the volume ‘In Quest of Love and Other Poems’ published in 1914 has elements of autobiography, which the author of the ‘Selected Poems’ believes and which I concur, then we know that Bradford delighted in the sacred beauty of lips touching which like a betrothal, sealed the perfection of love and innocence – ‘for when I hardly dare to kiss your feet / how proud am I to have your lips to kiss!’ [‘Perfect Love’ p. 113] In another poem, Bradford says that the mouth ‘is the hottest place / beneath the sun! / His breath, when we embrace, / brings on a drouth / for kisses: in that case / ten seem as one!’ [‘The Heat of Love’ p. 66]

We know that the poet John Betjeman had a fondness for Bradford’s poetry and that he visited Reverend Bradford at Nordelph on Sunday 8^th December 1935, writing in his diary the following day that the elder poet was: ‘A modernist but likes ritual. Last boy friend called Edmund [? Edward] Monson. Not had a boy friend for 30 years.’ [‘John Betjeman: New Fame, New Love’. Bevis Hillier. John Murray. London. 2002. p. 63] The author mentions John Betjeman’s visit to Nordelph on page 287 correctly saying the Monson relationship, whatever its true nature was, must have occurred around 1905 or thereabouts, but I was surprised that this was not followed up further for I have found and believe the object of Bradford’s affection to have been an Eton boy named Edmund St John Debonnaire John Monson, born in Monte Video, Uruguay on 9^th September 1883 who attended Eton School from September 1896- July 1899 during a time when the Reverend John James Hornby and Francis Warre-Cornish presided over the institution, [‘The Eton Register, being a continuation of Stapplton’s Eton School Lists, 1893-1899. Private printing. Spottiswoode & Co, Ltd. Eton. 1901] Edmund, who later became a British diplomat and ambassador to several countries and inherited the title of Baronet, was the second born son of Sir Edmund John Monson (1834-1909), diplomat and 1^st Baronet who married Eleanor Catherine Mary Munro (1858-1919, whom he met in Uruguay) on 6^th July 1881; Edmund’s older brother, Maxwell William Edmund John Monson (21^st September 1882-11^th January 1936) was also at Eton during this time (he later served in France in 1914 at the outbreak of war with the Intelligence Corps as a 2^nd Lieutenant, reaching the rank of Captain and transferring to the Royal Army Service Corps). Monson’s father was a diplomat at the British Embassy in Paris from October 1896 till the end of 1904 (Bradford was an assistant curate at St George’s church, Rue Auguste Vacquerie, Paris from 1890-1899) and his son, young Edmund was at Eton around the time Bradford was curate at St John’s parish church, Eton – 1899-1905. Just before Edmund’s 17^th birthday (Bradford was approaching 39 years old), he leaves Eton School and as for the ‘relationship’ ending, Edmund followed his father into the British Diplomatic Service in 1906 and travelled to far off places – ‘Constantinople, Tokyo, Paris and Teheran’ [‘An Arabian Diary’. Sir Gilbert Falkingham Clayton (1875-1929). University of California Press, Berkeley. 1969. p. 339 – Clayton also mentions Monson staying at the Residency Hotel, Cairo and leaving for ‘Jerusalem today; (Thursday 3^rd December 1925)] he has been the consul at Teheran and has been appointed Minister at Bogota’ p. 164] Later he becomes Minister to Colombia in 1926, Mexico 1929-34, Baltic States 1934-37, Sweden 1938-39 (see also ‘Sources in British Political History, 1900-1951’, volume 2. Chris Cook. Macmillan Press, London. 1975) – he became 3^rd Baronet in 1936 and was Knighted KCMG in the 1938 New Year Honours List; the baronetcy was granted residence at the 17^th century Thatched House Lodge, Richmond Park, Surrey by King Edward VII in 1905 after Sir Edward Monson senior retired. Edmund St John Monson died aged 85 on 16^th April 1969 [the Monson Baronetcy passed to his younger brother, Sir George Louis Esme John Monson (28^th October 1888-21^st November 1969), 4^th Baronet after whose death the title became extinct as none of the three brothers – Maxwell, Edmund or George had children]. There is no real substantial evidence for any acquaintance between Bradford and Edmund Monson except of course the word of Betjeman whom we have no reason to doubt but whether or not there was anything but a passing fancy we cannot say and we can never really know the nature of the intimacy for the spiritual and the sensual are not so easily detached and I believe it would be wrong to impose modern ideals of society and attitudes to sex upon Bradford’s time, a time of public school peculiarities and as we all know, sodomy is and has always been as English as roast beef! Between 1905 and 1909 Bradford was curate of Christ Church, Upwell in Norfolk before he became Vicar of Holy Trinity Church in Nordelph, Norfolk.

The author serves a fine dish indeed and asks how his ‘open, unapologetic boy-love poetry’ was received so favourably in its time and why his platonic sense of affections between man and boy was popular, saying that ‘even if one wanted to argue that the times were more naïve… it cannot be maintained that gullible, chaste interpretations were what allowed his poetry to receive an overwhelmingly positive press across mainstream publications’ [p. 281]. The author gives us much to think about! Was Bradford’s passion for boyhood a desire to remain always thirteen years old, an age when he lost both his parents – ‘had I not better be / always a boy?’ [‘The True Aristocracy’. Chapter XXX: Peter Pan. 1923, quoted on page 196] and was there an element of self-denial, of an ardent heart forever aching in a wilderness where his finer feelings flourish? – ‘I thought of him all day, / and I dreamed of him all night’ [‘When I Went a-Walking’ p. 98] His convictions remained strong and his belief in God and boyhood were unwavering. He died at Nordelph vicarage on 7^th February 1944 aged 83.

The author, C. Caunter has caused me to re-evaluate Bradford and re-consider the ‘provocative’ nature of his poetry and affections a little closer but one thing is clear and that is the author has written a scholarly and beautiful tribute to the good reverend which is a wonderful addition to any collection and which no doubt will sit alongside the timeless immortals of d’Arch Smith’s ‘Love in Earnest’ (1970) and Symons’s ‘The Quest for Corvo’ (1934) et al. and I am sure Bradford would not complain of such fine company for ‘how dull this world would be / without youth’s sweet romance and poetry!’ [‘On Sunday Night’ from ‘The New Chivalry and Other Poems’ (1918), XVIII, quoted on page 147].

THE POETRY COLLECTIONS: A MODERN ANTINOUS

A MODERN ANTINOUS

BY BARRY VAN-ASTEN

2018

Time beats its tender fists and strains towards the last gasp – death! There comes the inevitable moment when one lingers upon the physical destruction of the self whom one has known always; the final glance upon the tangible evidence that we have been and that we were, with little expectation of knowing that we shall still be. Like passing wisps of thought which cannot contain more than the mere glimmer of the brain’s intentions and desires, we wander aimless through corporeal shadows avoiding that which can hurt us and that which can kill us, yet so frail and suggestive is the internal flesh of man that we are forever at the game’s table throwing the dice as to whether we live or die. I have learnt not to be afraid of death, in fact, I welcome the great adventure (after the duration of a long and fulfilling life of course) and the only response is to accept the inevitable end and meet it head on with dignity if one can! Aeschylus had the great hairless dome of his head broken by a dropped tortoise which killed him as he sat in the sun (an eagle dropped it after mistaking his bald head for a rock!); the great tragedian Sophocles danced with merriment in his youth in processions before settling to the role of general in middle age (another kind of death); Dante conjured the beautiful vision of Hell yet in reality he was a violent political schemer unlike the image we draw of him in our mind ; Shakespeare, dear Shakespeare, wrote all he had to say when he had reached his full competence – he planted his poetic wand which grew into a mulberry tree and he drowned his book in the flowing reeds of the Avon. Dr Johnson was one who enjoyed to stretch his legs and while doing so would have his talk out; St Oscar Wilde publicly led himself to his own destruction and thus like Christ to his own martyrdom while Virginia Woolf merely filled her pockets with stones and took her last quiet walk to the river; Auden underwent some ‘vision of Agape’ and was a man of monastic routine until he sank during the hour of depression; Hopkins shall forever be associated with his immortal ‘dead letters’ and Larkin’s fear of death was also a desire for oblivion! Nothing changes after the point of death in the world, the almond tree shall still bloom and rooks will gather and fly over the newly-turned furrows in the field; the owl shall still hoot in strips of woodland where a gentle stream meanders; hedgerows shall be lost and meadows shall be built upon…when the remembered becomes the forgotten and the moss covers the stone, wearied by wind and rain until even the stone one day is gone.

When I have left this shell of flesh take the measure of my face and with my ashes, mix them in the mould of my death mask and clothe it in bronze; without ceremony, throw it into the millpond at Sarehole, that I may haunt its banks and hollows and wend among the stumps. If this last wish is not honoured – I shall curse thee all the same!

Barry Van-Asten. Northampton. May 2018.

THE UNKNOWN GOD

A DEDICATION

O moon of desire – I am come
To bathe in thy light; to dream,
Naked by night and to nature, numb,
Sleepless in the void, serene!
To sigh with sensual delight and run
Through midnight’s eternal stream
Where the passions of the soul are one
And God’s beauty, vast, is seen!

Lioness, you pour your love as such
Upon my silver, glistening frame;
My heart lies frozen to your touch
And my lips chant still your name –
Each moment remembered is as much
As my heart can bear to blame!

And so we have reached beyond words,
For what have I woven with runes?
I am far from the notion of identity now
And from the dull confines of my tomb –
I shall love you always – I love you!

I have found love in unusual ways;
I feared the folds of her sex, and now
With passions in my deliberate days
Where such are the ways of love, I know
That the unforeseen path we have trod
Leads beyond realms of perfection, to show
We are but earthworms of an unknown God,
Capable of great things, of love and art, although
We fall in ruin and destroy ourselves,
Completely! – I love you!

A EULOGY UPON THE DEATH OF ROMANCE

They said falling in love would be painless –
Some numb beast in the brain,
Distorting dimensions of dreaming
To dull the senses of pain!

A whirlwind romance, they called it,
But the heart is deplorable now;
Love sought a serenade of perfection,
More than the heart would allow!

They said love’s just pure emotion;
A tissue of tournament tears,
Devoid of intellect – love is
A carousel of shameful fears;

A torturous sadness of longing –
The heart hangs heavy with time;
An enchantment of song was left muted
To whither away in its prime!

A dreadful departure of passion;
A vacuum void of cold kisses;
The perfumed pretence of not knowing
Why this arena of soft caresses

Remained flowerless, diminished,
With sweet words blunt and dull;
The dim rush of longing sensation
Was heart-breakingly beautiful!

Sunlight was always my cradle
And moonlight was always my bed;
Romance went out with the old year –
Romance is decidedly dead!

A PROMISED LOVE

She was born of a new understanding
Which meant love stood second in line;
Her demanding neurosis commanding
The singular essence – a sign,
Resonates with shock and is sending
An impulse through traumatised brain –
Decision defining; now she is finding
Her way into the world again!
But love’s swift thoughts, resounding,
Echoes purposeless all the same –
A heart of self-loathing is pounding
For a promised love that never came!

THE AGITATED HEART

Veronica, do you recall
When the sun was starting to set,
I sat with you in the park
And your knickers were awfully wet?

The summer was endless and youth
Was tirelessly filled with regret;
A moments release – how I knew
That your knickers were terribly wet!

But idle, the thoughts that consumed me;
This passion inside would not let
My brain see anything more than
Your knickers exceedingly wet!

Did you find it a difficult thing
For lips of misfortune, that met
With the flush of naivety on them,
And your knickers so wonderfully wet?

What symptom of something was struck
By mere faith in this mystery? Yet,
My spirit and cunning mind turned to
Your knickers so dreadfully wet!

We were too young for more than exploring;
Too young for my keen mind to get
A notion of anything more than
Your knickers blissfully wet.

WHEN I’M SAD

When I’m sad, I see your face
And my heart grows with discontent;
You throw that familiar glance on me
And I am equally searching too,
When I’m sad, and in this place!

When I’m sad, I hear the wind
Tearing through my soul again
Like a scorned woman wailing
For her demon-lovers’ kiss…
When I’m sad, I think of this, and

When I’m sad, I dream of you
With the light, soft upon your face:
Can things more complex yet unfulfilled
Return to the world, sick with night?
When I’m sad, and wanting you…

When I’m sad, I watch the rain
Hammer shells upon my heart;
I hear soft words said, fall away
In distant realms that fade with time…
When I’m sad, and here again!

When I’m sad, I see your eyes
And see myself as you see me –
The birth of beauty in your soul
Knows no love entirely!
When I’m sad, something dies!

When I’m sad, I see in you
A world unknown and strange to me;
Your lips move in rhythms of love
But I cannot comprehend words now
When I’m sad, and wanting you!

AN APPARITION MAKES AN APPEARANCE LIVE ON AIR

I am making an oath here and now
For all the world to see
That when I expire and pass on
With no more breath left in me

I shall return again and come back,
Come back to this world and be
An apparition, breaking the laws
To make paranormal history!

And I’ll take a trip down to London,
On a Friday, just after tea,
To give proof of life after death
Live on air at the BBC!

I shall gather a great store of energy –
Plugged into electricity;
I shall shape myself into substance
And discharge your battery!

I’ll tell you if God is a ‘thing’ or an ‘it’
Or if God is an he or a she;
But if there’s no God I will tell you
Live on air at the BBC!

Is there celestial retribution
Or in death are all souls free?
Does damnation exist for the wicked?
Are the wretched punished with devilry?

Do spirits sleep? I will tell you!
Do spirits dream? We shall see,
For all shall be revealed
Live on air at the BBC!

Does an army of dark shadows uphold
Eternal laws of the dead? Are we
Here once and then gone or re-born –
I shall reveal it live on TV!

And I’ll persuade others to join me:
My mother, my brother and me,
My father and Elvis and Plato
In the news room at the BBC!

St Paul, John Lennon and Mozart,
Poll Pot and Mohammed Ali;
Cezanne, Confucius and Churchill,
Mata Hari, Gandhi and me!

And all those taken by Cancer,
Influenza, Aids and T.B.
Shall show themselves to the cameras
For every sceptic to see!

All those took by disaster;
All those took by the sea,
Shall rise and all sit together
In the canteen at the BBC!

There will be interviews in magazines
And chat-show appearances… we
Shall give positive proof to the living –
Bach, Rasputin and me!

But you must not contact the living;
It is forbidden and plain to see
That too much knowledge is dangerous
Especially at the BBC!

A MODERN ANTINOUS

Thy maiden lips hushed; thy haunted world of song
Are fortunes wayward – truth be strong,
For I hath loved thee ere as long
In my heart aloft… your soft mouth savoured among
The oft’ crescent lips – spirit take ease
Where wild interventions strike release;
Thy throng at midnight, sweet, doth please
This ache of love that in me will not cease!

This, the death-mask of our salvation –
Thy crimson lips parted, aghast –
Let love’s joy salve this celebration
As hearts are gilt by passions, cast
‘Neath the desirous light of an orchid moon –
Soft, thy curls and lashes sweep
Through my every thought of you, too soon
Turns wakeful hours into sleep!

Swift in passion of my changeful mood –
I recoil in sweet surrender upon the fringe of love,
Masterful and slender – I burn with ecstasy, drawn
From kisses soft and tender, by your touch that sweeps
Idle fancy from my flesh to live as gods, immortal –
See these ghost-lips pressed to your silent nature
And at the outward measure of sin, rise again
To fall upon the naked brilliance of your beauty!

In the blink of eternity, I am driven
Into the arms of delicate love;
Consumed by this unrestrained craving;
Bound by guilt and constrained by passion.
My limitless expression of devotion blooms
In the endless curves and angles that I worship,
Swallowed by the overwhelming notion of love –
We have made a marriage bed our lasting salvation!

BELTANE EVE
TO THE ‘SLEEPING LADY’

MARGARET MARY FRANCES ELIZABETH LEVESON-GOWER nee COMPTON (1815-1858)
                                                                                                          
In dark recess and nook, I wait,
By curtain folds, by dim delight –
Thy features press’d upon me great,
Yet moved by something more than this
Didst I fearless trespass in the night
That held me tender, to your kiss.

By cold embrace, securely met,
Thy visage found, sweet and serene,
Was softened by pale moonlight, yet
Thy chill flesh still refused to yield –
Thine eyes un-op’ed upon the scene
Of love’s madness ravishingly sealed.

My Lady, shapely contours show to me
Flesh mortal, more than marble stone;
Lips stricken by sighing sensuality…
Let my body, naked, warm thy touch –
Thy dress folds tumble and are gone
And our lips meet and the night is such

A dark caress that feeds the mind;
Neither guilt nor shame, this passion shows
O marble maiden, mine spirit, kind
And in hunger for thee – truth is told:
The harmony in my heart that grows
With my lusts that increaseth, ever bold!

Those restless shadows of yesteryears;
The sombre mood of darkness dismissed,
And my love tempered to thy tears
This Beltane eve! Thou didst adore
The enchantment and intoxication – we kissed
At the fall of funereal finery ‘pon the floor!

In our sacred tryst, her arched throat lay
Soft to pressing lips and eyes didst shine
As lashes, long curled lovingly away…
Rose and orchid, perfume the sepulchral bed,
Yet death’s aroma hung strange upon the shrine:
Still she wears the fragrance of the dead!

Her long hair braided – a memory of youth
Unfurls before me and I feel her breath
Whisper sweet words of purity and truth;
Her beauty revealed from beyond the tomb –
Her slender nakedness, wrapt in death
Before me opened in radiant bloom!

And as the sun broke on our faces –
Love in sadness was our rue;
I had loved thee in thy tender places;
My lips danced strange to thy delight
That kissed ecstatic each part of you!
But awoke I damned to the saddened sight

Of thee once more as stone! – Farewell!
Thine eyes still closed in weary sleep
And thy lips locked – they shalt not tell
Of the beautiful passion invoked last night,
For they will of secrets and promises, keep –
Farewell marbled Lady of delight!

[Monday 1^st May 2017. Church of St. Mary Magdalene, Castle Ashby, Northamptonshire]

BEFORE ALL UNIVERSAL REALMS – AN OATH

I remember a sad day, releasing
Your soft beauty from my embrace
That touched through the fragrant summer –
Touched lightly, yet was binding –
I confess I loved your natural acceptance
And your endless questionings!
Although destiny forced us to part,
Through life’s trials and tribulations
Think kind words in thoughts, and love;
Kind words that shall uphold your honour
And vanquish torment to give ease:
My thoughts shall flow in endless ribbons –
Thoughts that offer you protection;
Thoughts that give you strength;
Thoughts that warm the cold night’s chill
And gives you guidance during doubt!
Thoughts that always bring you comfort;
Thoughts that make you laugh when sad…
My love is darkened by deep regret
And shall remain beyond life’s confines
Always calling out to you from
My self-made arena of death:
I love you! I love you! I love you!

UPON THE DEATH OF HYACINTHUS

I swell with reason and demands
And sink to the sinister song of immortality;
A truth directs me which overwhelms
And leaves me breathless at its side!
What guiding light propels me straight
Into tortured realms, through storm and strife
And decision and mental pain?
From revelations and the body’s ache
Determined by this splendour to another?
This half-world portrays a dim light cast
Into the dimensions of blossoming love –
It leaves me wretched – this burden of doubt
Stretches through sinews and muscles and brain
To bathe in the joyless waters of sleep!
Come, with your blessed beauty once more
And release me from this anguish; sing
Painful words that I adore, words of substance still
That sooth the heart, quickened by un-broken kisses;
A heart that beats only with irresistible love for you!

GIFTS FROM A GHOST

In the gentle, un-born up reaches of sleep –
Seven summers sweet upon her fair brow;
In regions drear and deep, calm of heart, forlorn,
I weep and tears show lips most kissable and complete.

Drowning in dreaming – her eyes, spun of twilight,
Burn bold and blood through chill veins, flow
To dance strange by night beneath sleepless skies
With hair hung low to moon, stars and maidenhood.

Viewed from afar, she came, as love and beauty manifest
In a form fair and true… my heart felt need to confess;
My crescent lips gently pressed by silhouettes of shame,
Desirable in silk-woven dress with a joy in all you do.

Child, immerse me and command my thoughts which oppose
And assail my heart; may grace and compassion stir me…
A bracelet and a white rose – you will understand!
I lightly touched her skin to see the ghost of my love depart.

And a veil was raised by hands of girlhood, drawn
To an overwhelming ecstasy; a realisation of passion, pure –
From darkened depths before dawn – sensuality praised
Love unfurled which I adore, unwearied now by eternity.

Her soft lashes curled and her radiant gaze
In the lonely night spoke of opportunities lost;
Of time which I cannot erase! I awoke into a world
Where gifts of a ghost bathed my dark soul with light!

Fishguard. 2^nd April 2017.

A WARWICKSHIRE BOYHOOD

 And I heard the lonely pipe of Pan
Echo over the haunted lawns of Edgbaston!

No, I am not ashamed
Of anything that I have done
Such as trying to blow up the Methodist Church
As an eight year old in the Brigade
With a home-made battery-bomb!

Or attempting to break into the crypt
Like a few late vampires, led
By an overwhelming desire to
Escape the horrors of living
And seek the sanctuary of the dead!

When very young I put my thumb
In the hinge of a phone box door;
Some woman closed the door on me
And half my thumb was hanging off
As my mother gave the woman what for!

At the hospital I recall seeing gold fish
After having my thumb sewn back on:
It never really worked properly again
And looks more like a flat toe than a thumb!
Lucky it was saved as I’d hate to have it gone!

Quiet, shy but sometimes loud (not often)
And on occasions I would stand my ground
With grim determination… and I only read
Encyclopaedias (stories were such a bore)
As facts were more useful I found!

And as a result I knew all the answers
To questions asked of us in class,
But I would refrain from answering
In quiet satisfaction: who wants to be known
As a young brash know-it-all ass?

Romantic and always day-dreaming –
I admired beauty and pretty girls’ faces,
And legs and all things sensual to sight
For I was always lost in admiration
Glimpsing loveliness in beautiful places!

In seventies suburban Birmingham
The man next door lived with a man;
Such a big thing then same-sex couples!
He rode a shiny moped
Like an engined watering can!

And I remember my first tomato
At the Silver Jubilee;
The street party of seventy-seven –
I didn’t like it and cared little
For that tomato or the monarchy!

And I crudely learnt the facts of life
From some vulgar young boy at school!
Most bullies could be soothed with laughter
I learnt and if not I could run at great speed
If I failed in playing the fool!

At the ‘Dog and Partridge’s’ bowling green
I threw a stone (or glass) which hit a boy
And he bled and ran for his daddy
And as his dad confronted my dad I was sorry
Because I almost blinded his eye!

My mother fed us raw black pudding
And sometimes a raw sausage or two
To suck the sausage meat out of the skin!
I don’t think she knew the pudding should be cooked
Or that bread and dripping isn’t that good for you!

At my Aunt and Uncle’s I was shown
Guitar chords played on my wrists
Fingered by a man known as ‘Shaky’;
And a woman known as ‘cabbage face’
Was often there who had epileptic fits!

It was a cold and strange haunted house
That terrified us with fear:
‘A head rolls down the garden path’
My Aunt said, ‘and thumps the back door:
A girl was decapitated near here!’

My first cinema film was ‘Superman’
In nineteen-seventy-eight
At King’s Heath with my dad and brother!
I remember stealing shiny buttons from the uniformed
Fire Station Guy, before Bonfire Night!

I acquired an unnatural fear of light bulbs
Believing Jesus lived inside the light;
He caused the world’s illumination
And saw through my thoughts and sins
Into the wickedness of my young delight!

And I liked to take pebbles from graves as
Eerie mementoes – coloured glass and stones,
And I kept a dead fish in a tin in a drawer
With bodily fluids, hair and nails and
An assortment of animal bones!

Two doors down from us lived a woman
Who glared and stared and muttered and swore
At all the passers by – we called her ‘Mad Molly’;
She would race down the street with her handbag
And threaten schoolchildren at her door!

From her garden she would throw apples at us
And spy on us through cracks in the fence;
Her gaze could stop you stone dead as she looked
From a bedroom window: I feared that old witch
In all my young trembling innocence!

As we walked to my Aunt’s in Acock’s Green
Past the church in the High Street, fear struck
My heart as I looked up to the figure of Christ
Who in blessing looked down on this sinner and saw
Sins multiplying in me – a boy who forsook

Notions of Christian redemption, obsessed with death
And flesh and all things dark and damned –
I dreamt of desire and the Devil
And all things born of wicked ways that
My young mind attempted to understand!

Each morning we walked to the Junior School
With a large long-haired woman in toe:
‘Tattooed Ilene’ and her two daughters!
In winter she wore bright red socks over shoes!
I decided that she had to go!

So I crushed some poisonous berries that grew
Untouched by the birds at the back of the shed
And I ground them into a paste into which I added
An assortment of unusual and nasty things
With murder in mind – I wanted her dead!

In the garden I would sacrifice worms
To the God of all things, I recall,
With my dark pagan mind and intention
To damn Christ and honour Lord Satan –
I was only eight after all!

But if I could erase one day
I know what day it would be;
A day that brought great heartache and pain:
It was Monday the fourth of April
Nineteen-eighty-three!

Don’t ask me for I will not say
What occurred or what troubled me,
It is enough to know I died inside
And the empty ache has cast long shadows
To strangely shape my history!

And with artistic appreciation
I learnt how to smoke in eighty-four;
With delicate appreciation, I
Sought beauty and turned from ugliness
And yielded softly to adore

The sweet perfection of the human form
Where always there had been such doubt;
The gentle assumptions and the ways
That led me to wonder what the hell
This thing called ‘love’ was all about!

PRIAPUS

I am not of earth,
But a hideous sorcery!

Deep-rooted, I confess –
I am brain-washed by your nakedness!
Silent, in your whirlwind of desire –
My soul, a beacon flame of fire…
The parallel lines of your submission;
Your human instinct leaves me cold –
Drown me in your liquid passion;
Slay me with your lips of old!

This awakening finds me still
Half-haunted and somewhat beautiful;
Content and almost twice as bold –
My rigid heart leaves tales untold!
The mental wound of affection sleeps
To the timeless echo that compels
My heart to horrors – wisdom weeps
To the sensual release, that love foretells!

But days of dreaming conjures doom –
This rough wind blows a ghostly bloom
That I should so far in life, amend
My woes and troubles to an end!
The soul defends each choice, now made
And sees its holy quest pursued
By some dread phantom, in the shade
Discourse on logic’s favoured mood!

What meaning is this vague existence
When my mind meets only vain resistance
With the heart? – Am I strong?
Why do words not find my tongue?
What sick oracle bids me release?
Condemned – too late to pray
And give these latent sorrows ease
That they should find another way!

I harken to the brain, and yield;
I loose my sword and drop my shield
Where sorrow’s regret was sown aslant
To which passions firm and adamant
Tremble in beauty… yet, not I
Am revealed in this naked truth –
On earth we are too soon to die
And not realise passions of our youth!

AT FROEBEL COLLEGE

The refined Surrey air was new to our souls
That had been anointed to the northern clime;
I saw you like some great burning sun of fire
Bursting through Old Court and I knew

I had to know you and know your name,
To celebrate the union of spirits, drawn
As Piscean and Taurean minds sometimes do
To each other as complementary signs,
Yet my element clouds yours; you muddy mine!

We drank red wine till it poured from our eyes
In the Lulham Building, nineteen-twenty-five;
And near to you in the calligraphy room,
It tore my heart in two again
To see the impossibility of love!

Like a prowling tiger in a killing jar,
Slowly choking on the truth –
Your flame was bright and still burning,
Yet the candle of my youth was out
And no shadows lingered.

And now I no longer look upon
The purity of creation… I see
A young life turned away for ever
Where dreams are long and far from me!

The rain comes down like slanted steel:
Come into this world, oh please come again!
While the sun is setting for the last time
Over hearts and bones that will be dust
I shall remember everything!

SONNET

I have poured all my life’s love upon the mountainside,
That the temple’s wind should fan my mind this way;
My journey has been dark with no light upon the tide;
My shadow shifting silently from the lone night to the day…
And you in your soft honoured gaze all and more than this:
The parted perfection and sweet aroma of your youth unfolds to me
Your sanctity, your beauty, your blossom-blown forgiven kiss –
I was blinded in a wilderness and now am blessed to see!
My child, I have sworn, not from your side to stray
Nor hunger for the kiss of Hell in any known abyss…
The elements have formed this world, and in this world I pray
That this love divine between our souls shall never go amiss:
I have sought you in the pain of life, and our spirits now are set
To course this cursed earth of ours with no heartache or regret!

HEART SONG

He came to me in the morning;
He came to me in the night –
His hair was gay with roses
And his lips were my delight.

Eyes, like idols of amethyst
Drawn from the cadence of time;
Of orchids and intoxication
Where I savoured his sweetness sublime!

And his song erupted in moonlight
As he ached with such beauty that wove
Thoughts of romantic seduction
And soft lips engaged in love.

A kiss of larkspur, enticing
My crushed soul unto his shrine –
His body danced with the music
And his spirit danced with the wine!

Through long hours of enchantment, calling
His name into the dark void,
With the dull world’s mantle about us,
Bathed in beauty and burning inside,

For the song that he sang was like witchcraft
Wandering spell-wise through the night,
And his hair was gay with roses
And his lips were my delight.

MADLY AS EVER

That I should in no way know
The interpretation of your song
Or surrender, speechless to your
Vague passions; I am drawn to
Dreams of Lucifer…dreams that
Tore me from the night long ago
In my super-human tendency
And search for strong desire.
But what weakness disturbs me;
This idea that penetrates my feeble
And oft’ fragmented frame! Magister,
I kiss your inky fingers and your breast;
Release the splendour and the sorrow
From your syrup-infused sensual lips;
I re-discover and magnify a thousand times
The restless ache of your perfection
Which has attracted me all along as my
Heart transcends the passionate stream
Of silence and the radiant realm of sleep!
And the heat exchanged between us
Was the warmth of alchemy, distilled
In the heart’s chambers and caressed
Strange into its natural extension – Love!
I come from a time of understanding,
You said, as I assimilated your thoughts;
I framed the faded features of your face
And re-drew again those curves and lines
To thunder through your sweet oblivion.
On your strong shoulders with the aroma
Of old books locked in your hair, I whispered
Soft and long and lovingly in your ear –
Madly as ever I shall love you, I said,
Lifelong with all of my heart and being;
I shall sup at the fount of our passion
And rejoice in the glories of your song!

DAEMON

O what is this feeling within me
Which surrenders to the night;
To tremble in shadows and stillness,
Perspiring in moonlight?

To say I have a tendency towards death
Would be a grave understatement;
I linger for one no longer
In this earth-bound realm!
But the consequences of intention
In youth, the surrendered soul
Solemnised in twilight,
Was offered and accepted by
Our Father of Chaos – the Devil!
Aloud, some blasphemous incantation
Translated from the Basque language
Announced my diabolic intention
Freely with no thought of love!

A GARLAND OF ORCHIDS

I motioned towards your unique perspective
In the gabled gloom of Cwm Gloyne;
Through dark-stumped woodland and quarry
Towards the green growth upon stone graves
Standing like chiselled satellites, detachments
Of solitude and introspection, observers of
Mankind only drawn by significance, patterns
Of numbers and dates in the overgrown protection
Of the Church of St. Brynach; exquisite with night-
Sided brilliance, its magnificent interior locked in
Darkness – onwards through meadow and wood…
At Waunbayvil, glimpsing into the lodge, peering
Into the cool space of lavender, linen and books –
I buried body parts; collarbone and ribs!
And I am substance of stars, consumed by
Secrets and sexual alignments of song where
Death has been an ever-present and silent
Companion! Pantygroes – Treicert, here I left
Finger nails and masses of hair and then struck
Upon the road to Nevern! At Tre-Fach I parted
With skull in the dark wilderness that slept
As I fumbled over thumb and forefinger
To the damp remains of the Castle where
With kind resignation I left my weary brain
Before crawling on to Nevern Bridge and the
Church where I disposed of my heart at the
Foot of the Bleeding Yew which pulsed
And oozed sticky blood of martyrs!

GOLDFISH IN MY GARDEN

What sunbeam resurrection will come
Hastened by the scent of lavender and lemon balm,
Willed by ceremony and sun, called forth
Beneath the tinkle of tubular chimes;
Beneath the bending boughs laden with apples
In my garden! Flake of gold, slither of steel,
Tarnished beneath a fresh scattering of snow
Awaiting the thaw and the snowdrops that
Signal the arrival of spring – time turns,
Through bluebell, daffodil and allium
Beneath a symphony of birdsong and wing-flap
Resting in the shade of wild strawberries;
Earth-fish, resisting the power of attraction
And the strong odourful hook that lures
From lovage, fennel and mint, rising
Through looming white and purple foxglove,
Talismanic stains of sun which reflect
Your majestic strength and aquatic will
To climb where passion flower and jasmine climb;
To rise from under limb and stone, where
Goldfish in my garden, I come to take you home!

A MARTIAN ENQUIRES OF LOVE

O what is this thing called love
That you humans talk about;
What is this longing for affection?
What is this strange internal compulsion
Towards a certain oneness in mankind?

Why conjure elements of doubt
To dent your queer, small imaginations;
Why put so much importance on sex;
Upon the impossible passions that linger
In the rudiments of your own imperfections?

I have observed your foolish ways with each other;
Your abnormal strains of erotic surrender, and
Find no logical answer in your yearnings to be
Chained by emotions to another of your species
Until death and its mystery succumbs all love!

Like Martian and Venutian, millennia ago
In the Great Solar Exodus, our convergence,
Drawn to the nebulae of Orion… You will
Develop in outer-space through inter-stellar
Travel and missions of peaceful encounters!

I shall report back to my world that you
Are not ready for our initial contact, you
Are too obsessed, too fixated with matters
That glorifies the procreative faculty,
The dark orifice of reproduction and others;
I shall postpone the proposed revealing
For another thousand of your earth years
When perhaps you have outgrown
These cumbersome obsessions!

MOMENTS IN STONE
In memory of my father

PART ONE

The curtains shook with thunder
And the moon lost its gold-green sorrow
To smile over countless years
Where someone had withered away!

A place of indecision where pale light
Filtered soft upon a sphinx by night
Where three hearts lost and still losing
As they remembered eyes that crackle!

Windows are questions, unanswered
Like a sailboat caught in a torrent,
Sweeping over its fate; sometimes
A sweet child knowing – fuchsia-weeping

In the wind where he brought me opal dreams
On a riverside’s walk through overgrown nettle
That flowered like the dark journeys within him;
No longer standing in the shadows!

He stood there with features so familiar
In an old black and white photograph
On a beach with the sea crashing behind him
Where the sun had found its source;

Secrets lost to a fading tide… I never said
Words within that were forced inwards.
I held your hand and took the measure
Of your corpse in recline – a Gulliver

To my Liliputian hands that touched
Your toes, your smooth clean-shaven cheek;
One eye was left open, a-peep, yet
There was no glow of life within!

PART TWO

The rooms were cold and empty;
A noise declares your presence there
In some ghostly echo, where
The sombre month of August

Sees nothing but transparency, waiting
Yet searching uncovers a past remembered.
And the haunt-filled garden where bones
Lie buried… silence after tears!

Soon the autumn leaves shall fall, and
Long have I waited for words that won’t come!
How everything trembled to oblivion on
That dread July morning!

On glass panels I shouted, and in summer mist
Which gathered around the remaining buds I
Wept – I am not waiting anymore; this fool
Has awoken from some strange dream where
Love entered through the back door, now
The past is passing.

It was a gala year for the word
And although I quit the printed press,
Bound by time and bound by life,
I was lost in all of this!

PART THREE

I have taken myself a keepsake:
Two small wooden dice, black and worn
By years of pocket-history and warm grips –
‘Blind man’s dice’ Uncle Reg called them!

The windows stare out blank as if they knew
He had suddenly gone away; the sun beat
In its retreat but came back twice as strong!
Eyes that radiate vaporous love won’t
Know the fear of those left afraid –
How the pale moon shone that ghastly night
On three hearts that had lost inside!

How the glass seems different somehow,
Wet with rain where sun should be…
On the stair where that first encounter
Took me on and beyond myself;
Left reflected in the glass his look of life
And in me was left no-one!
August had come, but like no other

Behind the woods the night had fallen
Upon two children that ran and ran;
The molten sun had sunk down low
Leaving its bright-trailed afterglow
To linger in tearful eyes!

And he would come in from the cold
In his brown, ale-filled suit, with
His mac draped over his arm and
His trouser turn-ups full of seeds
That he had collected while walking.

Silently knowing, in automaton stance,
He would aim his roving eye; pushing
Along some master plan, under his
Shovelled grin!

Inside the house, falling away, rooms
Have found their own level of decay;
As I walked where your shadow walked too,
Over the lawns with evening breath,
There was no answer to be found,
Just rooms looked out into the night.

In unsettled chambers, moments fleeting,
Sighing over days long gone and a life
Full of great things and no meaning to anyone!
On walls and floors are deep impressions,
Dark corners, bricked-up childhood haunts.

What silent mass has come to stay;
Wandered from its frightened stones
To the house where all things lay like
Fragile panes of glass where the sun
Will never find its frail way in again!
No God will push between the cracks
Into the darkened hall, where we
Await his coming back to us!

PART FOUR

There in the doorway with his witch-like eyes
Splitting the still and vacant air of the
Immovable mask of night with his fear
And searching stare in the blackness
Pushing past, the bewildered, trembling mass;
Cried out in his pain a disturbing groan
Then turned to climb the stair once more!

In his room, lavender has come to stay;
It comes and goes, always each year
At the same time, it was a former occupant
Who filled the bedroom with flowers!

On the window, I seemed cold, and
Flying past was ravens, their gloomy
Black shapes struck the gold and
Suddenly summer seemed much sadder!

Faces stretched from Tillingham Street,
Ghosts and phantoms of earth-bound times
And poor June won’t rest in Turner Street,
A little sister won’t come to his side!
Hand in hand, a photograph caught
Two lovers locked, two lovers wed:
Claire and her son Nigel were there
In a room, by a door in Tillingham Street!
A love overwhelming, button-holed and smiling,
Facing the future, two souls just wed –
Ring on his finger and the ghosts lay dead!
What were they thinking? What had been said
In that room in Tillingham Street?

PART FIVE

Along remembered streets
Where he would walk
We took the long slow drive to the Hall,
Up the path between the stones as
The sun poured over the gallant dead;
Someone wept to see time and lives
So harrowingly and lovingly complete!

From behind the wind blew
Along the grooves and rusting rails;
In the oaks – a universe
Was summoned to the grave;
Among the stones that celebrate
Life and death that comes to pass,
Distinguished plots of ancestry
Solemn to the touch!

There in his silence I glimpsed Stan Owen
Through an open window, reading
Some prayer or rite or cheap novel
As the blue azure sky above said farewell!

There stood Canon Owen on the steps
And outstretched hands grasped for meaning!

And a red curtain, a parting veil accepted
Canon Owen’s gift to an ever-hungry God!
Out slowly walked the sombre mass, down
The steps blinking in the sunshine – flowers,
Grass, birdsong and all things living who
Watched from a safe distance the conclusion
And termination of all we know!

IN THE FELLOWS GARDEN
ST JOHN’S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE
Sunday 13^th April 2003

At your invite or summons, I earnestly came;
The midday sun shone upon your sweet brow:
An olive-skinned visage like a God of antiquity
Pouring over the accumulations of academia,
As you stepped from your bike to greet me;
We walked to Emmanuel College where you study;
Drifted through common room to dining room
In some wild search of associates who were
Harder to capture than ghosts I recall.
At Market Street we stopped for coffee and talked:
Gossip, reminiscences of your homeland, of
Alaska, Montreal and Quebec; your studies
And thoughts on English Literature; I was
Consumed by feverish talk and perplexed
By the weird notion of our spirits’ calling:
Just nine days since that first encounter in London;
Your six-and-twenty years to my fast approaching
Four-and-thirty! And refreshed with alcohol, we
Tiptoe like phantoms through Goneville and Trinity
To the River where we hired a punt and spent
A pleasant afternoon on the water and
Laughed hideously in some waterside public house;
Re-fuelled on beer, I was drunk in charge of a punt
As I took you and your undergraduate friends back
To Trinity!

Alone at last, we went to St John’s College and
Entered the beautiful Chapel before paying homage to
Clare College and the magnificent Chapel of King’s College;
We crossed the Bridge of Sighs towards St John’s,
Through the gate into the Fellow’s Garden;
You lay on your back like some haunted Sardonyx,
Your eyes cast upon me in the space of words;
Time eased slowly into dreamt conclusions which
Like open wounds told me only that there was
Something erotic in death and nothing else; no
Love great or small in the field of the living; no
Consequence to make the distance small!
Back to Emmanuel College we parted gently and
A friendship so fiendishly fatal fell, towards
A disaster of reflected romance and a memory
Of a beautiful day on the River and in the
Fellow’s Garden of St John’s College, Cambridge.

THAT LOVE

That love should overwhelm the soul;
That love should give and take;
That love should make two halves a whole;
That love should never break!

That love supporting one another;
That love, safe and protective;
That love sings gentle to a lover –
That love is mine to give!

That love wild and passionate;
That love soft and pure;
That love rare and delicate –
That love is evermore!

That love sees you as you are;
That love shares in distress;
That love, loves you near and far;
That love, not love you less!

SOME ODDITY

At the grave of an unknown murdered man

Dry of spittle, skeletal shift;
Words are wood – God my shoe,
Gum-resin haunt – I love you!
Absent of thought – night only knows
The silent language that I chew;
Faces like toothache – remember me!
Dumb to decoration, architectural clay,
Strangers, stuffed-dust of witless dribble
All day over tea and sweet cake; swept away
They hear nothing but the shovelling of scones
And gasps of gossip, unaware that nearby
Beneath tree-bough in full sun and drab,
Unknown, nudging macabre memory
Into the church –for God’s sake remember me!
Fuck I am dumb – no sound now…
Sixth of November nineteen-thirty-six
Is all I recall, flecks through rot, resist
Like all things of magnitude to be forgot.
Metal box secret and murderer’s hands,
The terrible hands of Alfred Rouse –
Nameless, there was no one, no one
To see me from the world, buried alone,
A ghost unknown, remember – remember me!
Chance encounter and the guilt of sex;
Taste of man, wretched with alcohol,
Worm-walled, sperm cold and Bedford hung!

[Church of St Edmund King& Martyr. Hardingstone. Northampton. 9^th September 2017]

CROP CIRCLES

In a room of locked boxes, the key
Was not hidden from view;
There was anticipation, I recall
To see her again as eyes met
And love turned ferociously into hate
Which dissolved into pity; it was
The transference of pain!
And she lived by the sea in a dark house
Where a female friend came to visit;
I saw her seated at a white table and I
Wanted to kiss away the pain – I spoke
In hushed tones of insignificance
And the lion roar that issued from her mouth
Indicating serene yet purposefully that
The ferocious roar was the image of me.

Curious, how Henge, circle and monolith
Are eternal words of undiscovered worth
Like a call and response in the corn!
A serenade and song of copulation;
A sonnet of sensual intercourse:
Youth-song dawns in imagination,
The circle of regret entwines…
Fucking to the sound of muscle –
Once more the yoni-flower unfurled.

AT THE GRAVE OF SWINBURNE

Mood-entwined, lipped-love,
Leg-long of misery, shrouded
In a fold of sheets, foreboding
The curved alignment of your frame:
Death’s sentence is ‘valour’!
The mirth and mock of scandal uplifted
Obliteration of Christian sham sentiment –
Pagan Priest, your sorcery is strong,
Stronger than any supposed word of God
That offers redemption and benediction;
Beneath moss stone and seed pods,
‘Dull subterrene reverberations
Shake him when storms make mountains
Of their plains.’

Moon-song and memory – the hour is past,
And here I extrude, I weaken
In a lily-dance of supposed romance –
This spurt of lust shall be our last!
Moaning beneath the ‘waking constellations’,
Here, Hardy stood and sat, brooding;
His dark-lidded countenance fell
Upon the stone which rendered
The great man’s silence into sound
And dissolved, offended by the fact
A cross had been placed upon the stone!
Betjeman’s furrowed brow here too
Pondered and considered the strange
Delights of tasting lesbian stew…
The aquiline nose of Edith Sitwell
Poked at the grave as she poured
A jug of milk and offered her wreath
Of bay leaves and placed red roses
And honeycomb upon the stone.
How many countless dreamers have
Encountered the songster’s ghost in
This expansive grove of graves, where
‘The daylight gleam declines
Upon the capes and chines.’

[St Boniface Church, Bonchurch. Isle of Wight.13^th September 2017]

MY AUNT’S COFFEE TABLE

As I sat in my rigid posture
Upon the little wooden coffee table
Which stood like some Buddhist altar
In my Dragon asana
Turned to the window with
Toes bent inwards, I thought:
I am looking in from out
In a sea of furnishings
Looming like icebergs
Upon the floral carpet
A phone call spelt out your disaster
And the vision I received
Was complex in its nature
And I recalled how in my youth
I slept on dead woman’s pillows
Infused with turmoil and dread
Dormant and detached by tincture
Of haunted dreams in brain-slumber
And I remembered laughter
Attached to frail-thin woman
That succumbed to cancer
Her mouth, dry of spittle
Harbouring Death’s rattle
That took her that November
In the year of ninety-three!
And the clock stopped and started
The night before she went
As I recalled two hours
Simply vanished in thin air
Like evaporated water…
On the twentieth she past
At two in the afternoon!
We inherited my Aunt’s coffee table
Long and low and glass-topped
Which meant I could not sit on it!
I slept on dead woman’s pillows
And drank from a dead woman’s table!

INCUBUS

Through nightly visitations of lubricated lust –
Bind me to your runic netherworld, torn between
Sensual suspension and the dark matter arising
From your seductive accumulation of infernal dust!

Lilu, father of Gilgamesh; Ardat Lili, strange you lie
As Lilitu and Irdu Lili, to summon forth the seed of man
In the Mesopotamian and the Sumerian; according to
Thomas Aquinas, nightmare of cerebral ejaculation, to sigh

Beneath a beating breast of unimaginable strength, Thou art
Damnation’s desire in the darkness that hides earthly fear
To thy cursive lips and to thy wounds of sensual incarnation
That passion forces from the sombre chambers of my heart.

Manoeuvre me in sleep’s weird sense of meaning that yields
A space, an intermission where hearts that beat in dull rhythm
Transcend physical contemplations… Incubo, here I surrender
To the absolute horror and ecstasy that thou with wickedness wields!

THE UNSEEN

Why do I look at the world
And see only its outward theme;
Surely there are things beyond
This wild Khubla-Khanic dream?

What phantoms pierce through the fabric
Of our reality and clay?
Why is love always born at midnight
And stone-cold dead by midday?

What shapes and forms lie hidden
From un-seeing eyesight and mind?
I am aware of caprice and sensation
And the physical limitations, that’s blind,

When the spirit is near; do we know
The interaction and the serene
Envelopment of worlds that are touching
Yet must remain unseen?

There is motion, molecules and matter:
Positive momentum, negativity…
A dimension alive with division
As different as ‘He’ is to ‘She’!

We may run through the Halls of Val Halla
And the temples of Greece and of Rome;
We can walk in the footsteps of greatness
Which forever leads us home;

But why are we so wired by emotions
And the fruit of imagination’s ideas;
Why are we so full of repression,
Of guilt of hatred and fears?

And of ghost notes disappearing
Into an unforgiving light –
O why is beauty born in
The middle of the night?

These frontiers of perception
Are awkward, nothing’s clear;
No tangible form of appearance
And no sound to hold my ear!

Will death reveal these secrets
And fulfil all that has been
Born between margins of darkness
And the light of the unseen?

OUR MYTHOLOGY

Did Dante once gaze into those eyes
And whisper – fabled heart, release
Those careless words of love, this night
That love may give our sweet souls peace?

And lips kissed by warm springs, with grace
Where the flame of Apollo’s followers slept,
Delighted by the echo of youths’ song
Down by the low streams where love had wept!

Would this sensual life of sorrow and sighing
Have beauty to create over death, and bring
The swift sting upon lips of love, this night,
When no sweeter lips than ours shall sing?

Beloved, words cannot express the love
That haunts my heart, and keeps it so
Rich of wonder and new beginnings,
Shielded together at the dawn of tomorrow!

And our mythology, that which we make,
Like history carved into our hearts and sleep,
Shall consume the flame of our love, this night,
And the legend of our passion, we shall keep!

TO AN UNNAMED EDITOR OF AN UNMENTIONABLE REVIEW

Is this what you wanted?
Words and metaphors that suit you best!
Are you so afraid of the rhyme which seems
Incorrectly dressed? See, your little foot stamp
And your dirty finger-nailed fingers snap,
My line is altered to please you – I don’t think so
You fumbling arse! You dumb-lick spew –
You half-wit moron that cows may chew!
I could go on and my spleen would fill
Fit to bursting with overspill,
A hundred houses with great delight
And endless curses through the night;
A hundred drawing-rooms in town
Where of course you sit with simple crown
Of fat leeches, engorged that fall to earth:
Some you digest with stealth and mirth!
Upon the ground where you slug-wise move
With your arrogant, slimy, push and shove;
Upon the ground they fall and you squash
To plaster in meaningless toss and slosh
In your ‘oh so lovely’ poetry review:
With my cold eye in magic – I curse you:
May your neck rot and your head fall off!
May your lungs rupture when you cough!
May your tongue swell to twice the size!
May magpies eat away your eyes!
Should your bones dissolve and then you find
You have no front and no behind!
May your brain explode when you sneeze!
May you succumb to every sort of disease!
May your cells give up the ghost within
And blisters terrorise your skin!
I curse you as your slumbering brain
Poetically gurgles down the drain! *

* The initial anger that fuelled this poem has since subsided to a more manageable murderous hatred!

BAPHOMET

Swift were his soft lips upon me;
Cold were his trembling pale hands;
There was joy in dark reflected beauty
That with pain and suffering understands

The simple desire and the pleasure
That manifests in the heart within
A body born of fire, that’s truly pure
Of passion and deftly made to sin!

In your simple yet elegant apartment
To correct with the curve of the whip!
Neither knew nor cared what your heart meant
Or what fathom of fate loosed its grip

For in some strange ‘non-feeling’ momentum
Where my mind and mood was revealed –
Behind soft leather, your body crushed and dumb
To the aroma and incantations that yield,

Crux-Rosa, I was numb to the nucleus;
The feast forsaken in the vibrant night
As I summoned the great staff of Priapus
And a bruised disgrace was our delight!

MY MOTHER’S ASHES

Mother, you lie beneath a small wooden windmill
In a little courtyard in Cole Valley;
That windmill used to stand on the window sill,
It has now long rotted away… and you used to say
That your mother was a strong woman in a circus!
‘My hair went white over night!’ you said, after
You woke up next to your mother’s dead body,
Cold and rigid, the shock seemed to steel your colour!
As a young woman you rode a Vespa and cleaned
The Cadillacs at Lincoln Street Motors in Brum!
Like the colour of your hair I never met your teeth,
They were all taken out before I was born, and
You lost the sight in one eye… yet, you were strong,
You were of a different era, the war had shaped you
And life was hard then! You battled on with one lung
And I remember the cries of pain when your floating rib
Dug into you like a stiletto blade, twisting from side to side!
I remember how you almost choked to death and dad had to
Put his fingers into your mouth to remove some morsel of food:
‘These damn false teeth make it hard to eat!’ In the end, perhaps
For more than your last decade, you were attached by pipe to a
Cylinder of oxygen, a pipe that led you around the living room only!
Time hung heavy for there was no release as the room became a tomb!
You held on after dad went but I recall you saying ‘I want to die, I
Want to join your dad again!’ It hurt but you remained, still strong
And intent on staying for my brother and I!
Not only my mother in this life but also in a previous life for you were
There with me during the first world conflict where I was torn by barbed
Wire and shrapnel which blew away my left side as blood filled my lungs;
Stretchered from the Somme, you said when I am your mother next time
It is I who shall go first and you will be left to live your life to the full!
I have her wedding ring and her magnifying glass as keepsakes…
Around the wooden windmill your ash had come to the surface and I put
My fingers into the soil to touch you once again as tears came to my eyes!

A KISS REMEMBERED

This ring of servitude, these sinful obscenities,
Rooted in exquisite satisfaction of seductive song;
By the moist touch of this late neural pleasure –
Incantations of desire are the incantations of the damned!

Some unseen power that had slumbered awoke;
An ancient contempt that ridiculed the logical expression
Of insatiate lust stirred by movement and words;
By a story of sadness surmounted by sexual touch;

By our hands that caressed and drew invisible symbols
Upon the skin, marks of invocation that penetrate
The soul within, a musical notation played in dreams
Where sleep forgives our entrance into the body again;

By pleasure unyielding but the song was half-sung;
The mouth was wide open and as tongue touched tongue
Our heart’s light touched also, in breath and sweet spittle
And the moaning of whispered words that rose in our throats!

DELIVERANCE AT TWILIGHT
SONNETS OF THE HEART

What simple curve of lips reveal in their sadness, struck by divine measure,
Sing with wondrous motion, in the rapture of twilight, glistening and folding
Upon each passionate word, words that are charmed, caressed and idly sweep
Through soft chambers of my heart’s regret; to remain as tokens which keep
Your fatal form drawn to my eyes, desperately in their kindness, holding
Their gaze upon limbs made for adoration and youth’s sweet pleasure?
A repetition of sadness, stirs in our splendour; an accomplished want of desire
That your love’s light may leave me, breathless, bedazzled, broken and beat
With my half-world madness, mayhem and unquestionable nonsense incomplete!
And by a certain secret magic, sung only in whispers, yield to the flame of love’s fire
To sit with the silent sorrows, that fade and return, born of idle ways cupped in leisure,
And die, with death’s determined dance, swift on thee, purposefully enfolding;
Summoned from the sweet surroundings of joyous, limitless, sensual sleep
To remain forever restless and by midnight’s magical wonder, turn and weep!

Speak soft now, my love, for words are few in their folly yet strangely bold
And with rapid misconception and by shadowed corners, from whispers grow
Into misshapen ogres of sacerdotal shame and regret, revealing in their guilt
A body wracked by nature and tortured in its prime that from phantoms built
All the horrors and dreadful vengeance of menace that others fear to show:
Our love is ringed by ruin and the essence of our passion, shall be foretold…
But the flirtation and beautiful birth of love that in us crowned with joy anew,
Manifested like a crashing wave that rushed through our sanguine hearts and sang
In the sweet language of poets that moved the immortal spirit aloft to idly hang
In the loose curls of your hair to kiss your neck and frame your fair features that drew
My inmost admiration that strange and sensuously advanced by limb and lyre of old,
Where the splendour of love driven by the magnitude of stars above us will show
The lament of love and the monstrous pain of the beloved, shaken by solitude, tilt
Towards the acceptance of human desire and its passion where love is as thou wilt!

Be patient my mind in turmoil and let these far-reaching wings of love soar
Far above the comprehension and compulsion that stirs thoughts to shame
Where the intrinsic thrill of that encounter extinguishes transient sorrow,
Uplifted by the weird wonder of my own desire into the realms of tomorrow;
Here I stand forlorn and call into nothing to penetrate beyond the sacred name:
I love you beyond all worldly measure and beyond all monumental score!
In the depths of reason and your magnificence I am compounded by delight
And your naked beauty compels my heart to heights in sleep’s soft embrace.
I burn with insatiate lusts that caress the wild beauty and kiss your soft face;
Your magical essence haunts me through the dark and distinguished night
I am lost in tranquil elements of despair that invoke fury and damnation, for
By ordeals of dark restraint I am becalmed by your touch, and no blame
Is ours as we evoke madness and tender love in curve and crease and hollow
As my senseless and sensual hunger turns towards the one light it shall follow!

Wake and feel these lips of love that have surrendered to you, pressed
With all their loving tenderness, soft against your beautiful young face;
I have watched you through sleep and watched long hours pass and swell
Into the melodious margins of the dawn; I have heard your heart truly tell
In sonorous rhythms that through your sweet dreams had grown apace,
Where my reckless hand touched you gently and my eager lips caressed
The infinite wonder of your body; my mouth fell upon your flesh in prayer
And dissolved in the ecstasy and the rapture as I sought your lips to kiss –
This pain born in the heart has transcended all earthly embrace; this bliss
That looks upon you in wild intoxication, looks long and deep upon love, fair
To find the enduring gift of sensuality; a delicate obsession rewarded and blessed
By day and by night, interlocked in the glorious beauty of each others’ grace;
Transfixed by our world, our universe, where love between us surrendered and fell
To an indescribable sorcery, delivered by desirable looks and words spoken in spell!

Is this not a time of grief more than moments in a marriage of misunderstanding love?
I have spent wasteful hours in acts of tragedy and all that the amorous heart may do;
Moon of opportunity, I draw you to me and this savage blasphemy sings in lechery,
Sprung from inconceivable lusts of the midnight craft with incantations of witchery!
These solemn, melancholy delights of romance devour me and I find my soul in you
Touched by love’s shadow that like a stain of ecstasy has not the power to move
The embers of dissatisfaction in the sequence of our sex that stupidly, purposely creeps
Onwards into awkward flesh where the universe speaks and the boom within your breast
Thunders through my priestly mind; divine kisses burn upon your sacred body blessed
And by some strange and supernatural light I see your sweet soul in turmoil sleeps
And my fingers long to touch your soft composure which mesmerised will prove
That sinful in my sorcery there is a significance that will find me true:
I was faithful to the footfalls that wandered through your eternal memory
And careful of your ways that shamed me often to the story of life’s mystery!

Still with the thought of you in mind I caress this simplicity, and how I ache
And tread gently with fearless footsteps into the silken-lipped rose of dawn,
Delirious, where each whispered secret calls softly of its desire and of its ways;
A desire that has shaken me beyond I know not what to shake my nights and days
And release this fiend of instinct, this hollow devil that now parades, new-born,
Fearing for all the world in the heat of adolescence – come, my heart shall break!
Should I surrender to that which compels me into the pastures and the forests to go?
Should I ravish my soul with nature and succumb to senseless urges that stream
Through my brain as if becalmed by beauty’s lustre formed in boyhood’s dream?
The path divides and indecisions are the sufferings and the sorrows that show
All too well that my heart is hell, sick with the purple essence of disgrace – break
And leave me now, cast before the wild, empty caresses, hungry and forlorn
At the intoxication of strong embraces… How swiftly my tortured heart strays
Into realms of purity and love and forgiveness, outshone by indifference and praise!

And upon the jubilant reins of love, all passion was drowned in the liquid fear
Of misery, out-monstered by the attraction of the moon, brave and violent and bold,
Deserting the soul where lurks a strange fetish, evoked where once was concealed
To erupt and pierce the mind and in time gather strength upon the body and yield;
Forcing its way through every anxiety to create a prerequisite of pleasure and hold
The kiss of corruption, or is it some illumination or enlightenment, now dear!
See this lust wickedly wed to the heart in some dreamy decay, amused
And all the trembling touches lie like cold hands as if bitter embraces of the dead,
Firm in our understanding, where love was so easily born and between us brought to bed:
A belief in what we shall become with all the remnants of our being, no longer confused,
With hearts beating in unison, drawn to deathly damnation and our eyes clear:
In earnest we gather the wounds of our abstracted love about us and graciously fold
Our souls to each other, in the shade of everlasting passion as delicate as the budding rose
Which opens to the call of summer and its beautiful fragrance, as love, sweetly grows!

Whither this witchcraft, would I not worship you wisely and give love idle wings
And by the gift of constant pleasure, remain to touch the timeless tincture of sleep
Where our bodies breathe in the ecstasy of belonging and exhale the warrior air,
Bound by some pagan principles of passion that clings to our flesh, elegant and rare!
Our fortunes, figured and with the awakening of love, the heart shall strangely weep
In the solemn radiance and splendour of romance to echo through chambers and sings!
Ah, but this matter of intimacy, this question of seduction, longed for and crowned
By madness, hastened darkly by the broken heart that rejoices in the haunted brain
That speaks of fiery spells which conjure damnation and hideous thoughts, to strain
At the senseless destruction of logic where all understanding is cast out and drowned
In the terrible sorrow of wanting you and possessing you and the awfulness of all things
Which the noble breast, in all its anticipation and acceptance of truth, refuses to keep:
I am tormented by the tender vision of your beautiful face, perfect in form and fair
And all my affection, drawn in wild rapture, that my heart shall love without despair!

CAMPING IN OXFORDSHIRE

In Wootton, a remote part of Oxfordshire
The tent was erected one Friday in May
In a clearing next to woodland; two pheasants
In their curiosity welcomed the pegged-temple!
The next morning I woke and greeted the Sun:
‘Hail unto Thee who art Ra in thy rising!’
And the Great God of the sky-boat passed
Through the heart of the living and the dreams
Of the dead; his lips upon the phallus of time!
It is magick in its ravishment and ecstasy, I said,
Those dead lips of time… I dedicate my life to Thee!

Pro mou Iugges
Opiso mou Teletarcai
Epi dexia synoceis
Eparistera daimones
Flegei gar peri mou o asthr ton pente
Kai en thi sthlhi
O asthr ton ex esthke.

The Oxford Regatta, underway beneath a blazing sun
Those maiden-filled boats racing towards shaped destiny…
Pale-bronzing, Isis unveiled, with long slender legs taut
And their muscular beauty radiant with thought:
I hear their footfalls in the exquisite margins of sex!
We passed through cuckoo-haunted woods,
From Oxford, through Iffley to Abingdon…Ra,
How art thou mighty and terrible; thy lips…

That night, lightening and thunder filled the sky;
Cobalt and silver, it seemed to rumble down the aeons
Until it was banished by an invisible wand, a wand of
Silence which prevented the floods; dead lips of time…

Next morning, the greeting of Great Ra and Ahathoor –
The sun, straining for murder, onwards we marched
Through Clifton Hampden, Benson and Wallingford!
And I felt I carried centuries when greeted by swan-soft
Nymphs of the River, their cool limbs long and shaped
For dancing, towards the bright lights of Oxford! I tire,
And dream of a beautiful space in which to release
The songs that have echoed through regions of sleep!

I awoke to the Dawn Chorus; pheasants circled the tent
And were saying in hushed tones: ‘That Ritual! That Ritual!’ –
I had requested by invitation the sad and dreamless dead to
Gather round me in the glade as I performed my sacrament!
While the wood pigeons answered solemnly and continuously:
‘It’s dirty, you know! It’s dirty, you know! It’s dirty, you know!’

THE DEATH OF CUPID

Composed at the tomb of Oscar Wilde, Paris.

Roses were his reminiscence

In curious thought I had defined
The rigorous contours of my mind;
And struck by awesome love, revealed,
Found beauty like a casket sealed.

For love had brought me down, amiss
And wrought with sadness, soft her kiss
That swept with sweetness through my soul
Where blasphemy destroyed the whole

Damned illusion that love may bring
Upon the heart of innocence and sing;
Sing with the words of reproach and regret
And the torment of passion to idly set

The stone of suffering and shame, now tied
To the spirit that once soared and in soaring died.
Come close and whisper that love reached its end
And that I am no longer lover or even your friend!

I
An Oath

Of bad romance, he is the giver;
He measures misery with his bow
And takes an arrow from his quiver
And where it strikes foul love shall grow!

A hundred-thousand hearts were broke;
A hundred-million tears were cried
As misplaced arrows in hearts, awoke
Love’s mistrust, which unrequited, died!

And the pain of romance and love, sent those
Of weak mind and heart into arms of despair
For Cupid’s restless bow and arrows
Sent many a heart to its grave without care!

As one who has suffered at his fat fingers;
As one who removed arrows by the score –
An oath I took to find where he lingers
And tear out his terrible heart, I swore!

So for years I had followed Cupid’s foul trail;
Followed the heartache and the distrust –
The winged-cherub laughed to see love fail
And see each heart turn into dust!

II
The Pursuit

Danube and Marne – I followed his shame;
Ancre, Seine and Somme:
Un architect l’amour – he came
From dark retreat and devildom!

He seemed content where waters’ flow:
Thames, Severn, Avon and Trent;
On wings of unstoppable strength, he’d go
And curse mortals with his devilment!

I found him once in a churchyard by night;
Saw his brazen and violent brow cast
Over some stone as the airy young sprite
Wrought awful scenes from a dreadful past;

Why does this lowly fiend tread; I said,
His plump posterior, unadorned, in mock, met
The silent stones through the avenues of the dead
And the shades of senseless death and regret;

And I spat my fury and longed for destruction;
I cursed his foul features and damned him anew.
In silence I stalked him till anger’s eruption
Saw the devil escape on swift wings from my view!

III
The Capture in the Garden of Unbounded Delight where the Murder Occurs

There lay fair Cupid, soft, young and sweet
Asleep amongst the garden marrows;
I jumped upon him with both feet
And snatched his quiver full of arrows!

And in each hand I took a dart
And plunged them deep into his eyes –
I gutted him and ate his heart
To the joyous sound of his demise!

It tasted of love’s misery,
‘twas bitter, hard and cold;
There was no beauty there to see
In that fat infant, bold.

His swan-soft buttocks were stained red;
His features fair were crushed askew;
I have you now, my sweet, I said
As I plundered his intestinal stew!

I wore his lungs just like a vest
And laughed so much to see
His chubby corpse once full of zest
As dead as dead can be!

IV
The Courtroom and the Evidence of Sgt Braithewaite.

‘PC ‘Odkins and I found the scene and saw
The murder victim, dead a while:
A slaughtered infant, naked! I swore,
My first impression was paedophile!’

‘A large fat baby with a bow,
Golden curls framed his toothless smile;
His stomach contents were all on show:
To me it suggested paedophile!’

‘Brain and marrow flesh were mixed;
Arrows pinned him to the soil
Like a crucified child or butterfly, fixed,
And still my thought was – paedophile!’

‘His bow was thrust in sunless orifice
Which seemed really quite profound!
And a trio of quivering arrows, thrice
Pinned the poor child to the ground!’

‘I found the accused’ the Sergeant said
‘A smellin’ roses and thrusting a marrow
Into the mouth of the child that was dead
And poking his bloody corpse with an arrow!’

The courtroom grind was sombre slow
As it demanded its flesh by the pound;
The wheels of justice, unstoppable, go
Round and round and round!

‘We bashed him up in the cells a bit’
Said Sergeant Braithewaite with a smile:
‘He fell unconscious after a fit
Because we thought he was a paedophile!’

‘Good and hot he got it in the cells;
We spent much trouble and much toil:
We knocked seven shades and seven bells
Just in case he was a paedophile!’

A row of heart-broken jurors sat
Lovelorn, with tears in their eyes,
For they each cursed Cupid and all knew that
Justice prevailed for a fat child’s demise!

And he’ll no more let loose his arrows
Upon unsuspected hearts, again,
For he lay dead amongst the marrows,
Hunted to an end and mercilessly slain!

V
The Funeral of Cupid.

The corpulent corpse was laid upon
A bed of thyme on a golden bier;
No words of sorrow or love, not one
Was spoken, no-one shed a tear!

The mourners gathered to gaze on Cupid
Beneath his pall of spiders’ silk;
They cheered and danced, the scene was stupid
With drinking nettle and thistle’s milk!

Through the darkness the procession rolled
Lit soft by the glow-worms’ glow –
A fat child who would never grow old
Was buried with his bow!

Damsons, medlars, gooseberries and marrows
Upon the grave, heaped high –
No stone memorial, just his arrows
Point upwards to the sky!

VI
Retribution

There were no simple words to say:
My immeasurable act of human hope
Saw Cupid’s spiteful ingenuity, lay
Powerless in the grave – a rope,

Around my neck flaunts my disgrace,
Stamped by a meaningless tragedy
And tears of false shame stain my face
For a world so ruined by love, to see

That I had done a wondrous thing
In putting an end to Cupid’s reign;
The hideous horror of his arrow’s sting
Was unkindness to human heart and brain!

For love seems always dead or dying,
It never gives the soul release
And leaves the lover always sighing
For Love’s heartbroken hurt to cease.

Bound hand and foot and led to the gallows,
I prepared myself for death with a prayer:
I had settled a score of love’s damned arrows
Into a pretty boy’s face so fair,

And that I had done a beautiful thing
There was no doubt in me,
For killing poor Cupid they said I would swing
And be damned for eternity.

His kist lips were soft, sage and mellow,
Surrendered to soothing of song and delight;
His poisoned addiction was love’s wild arrow
Loosed upon loneliness in the cold heart of night!

Love blossomed and in truth was joy,
The heart assailed – poor Cupid dead –
To discover that love is just a lie:
I was spared the rope and made Bishop instead!

Yes, I had done a marvelous thing,
With no morsel of regret –
Be you pauper or poet, scholar or King:
You are forever in my debt!