26 September- Happy Birthday Grandpa

To a Descendant Reading My Poems

Looking for me?
I posed for posterity.
I used words to cover my tracks.
Did my sincerity
sufficiently conceal my truth?

Can you deduce what I was then
from idiosyncratic verses
and a few ambiguous titles?
Can you deduce what I am now
from what you have deduced from then?

Is that too much like sifting ancient light
to find a long-gone distant star?

Then, I was X (I marked my spot)
modified by youth and age and vanity
and love and suffering and indifference.
Now, I am X modified by my purposes,
as you are Y trapped in your own contexts.

Where X equals pure Me,

and Y equals pure You,

there is nothing stands between us,
only time.

Archives

This is the first non poetry post of this blog.

It has been my intention to include posts besides poetry. To share stories, memories, pictures and thoughts about the work. In the first couple of months I have been allowing the poems to speak for themselves. At first I was posting a poem every day. This has waned somewhat. Partly because I have been busy doing other things. Partly because I was beginning to run out of poetry! Not because there isn't a lot more where that came from, but because I have been working from the few books I have had in my possession.

However, at the weekend, all that changed. My Uncle  - also William Oliphant (son of poet!) brought me two enormous boxes of my Grandfather's archives that have been in his loft. It was always my Uncle's intention to do something with them but I think he is quite happy for me to do this for the family. As was Grandpa' style I am now in possession of numerous folders, carefully arranged into topics. I am very, very excited.

Before The Holocaust

So society puts a small boy with ambition
In charge of a button marker DANGER,
And knowing that he is a smart politician
Goes back to its trough and its manger.

But a small boy plays games, adopts roles and acts parts
And, as boys do, grows up tall and broad,
Plays with diamonds and spades and with clubs and with hearts
And has been been known to play God.

And sometimes a role or a part doesn't suit,
And here are the visions that linger:
The petulant stamp of a petulant foot
And the petulant thrust of a finger.

Word Game

The pure white sheet of unclothed thought
has, pencilled in its margins
in lexicographite,
those squiggles that are lexicognomens
of lexigognoscenti
who roget through the saurian lists,
more synonym than sinning,
arriving, where the fowler's usage leads,
at an abusage of partridges.

A Confusion of Dead Friends

All my friends are dead.
No, no that's badly put.
I don't mean all my friends
are dead, I mean
I don't mean all the friends
I had are dead,
have died, I mean,
I mean my friends
are dead, were dead
before they were
my friends.

I'm sorry to confuse you,
but they'll know
what I mean,
I think.

Fleas on Fleas

I am a watcher, so I watch.
Not a surveillant, I do not
make out reports or even check
the name of HE WHO IS THE ONE
I watch. I watch, therefore I am.

HE WHO IS WATCHED has recently
shown signs of secret interest
in one he sees across a street
or at a window. Now, it seems,
THE WATCHED a watcher has become.

And not infrequently I turn
to see a shadow disappear.