Two Trees

Two trees in the garden,
rowan side by side with oak.

They have grown together,
roots inextricably twined,
branches so interlaced
the proper season seems to produce

the berried oak,
the acorned rowan,

the shield each other from the wind
and share the rain. At a lost limb
the phantom fingers of the amputee
still feel the itch of the other's
shivering proximity.

His rising sap inflames
her bright capillaries.

She sheds her crimson benison
around his feet. He feeds her acorns.

Each brings the other to perfection-
perfect spirit of tree
which occupies the space of both,
oakrowan, rowanoak.

Forgiveness

A curtain corner raised,
I witnessed Jews,
enlightened since their passage
through the Auschwitz ovens,
rescuing former camp guards
from the stinking pits
remorse had dug for them.

I bring it to your attention
you bombers, you famine makers,
you adjusters of populations.
These children you kill
might learn, by this light,
a love which, brought to bear,
could drive you screaming mad.

Flu

The small sad noise within my bed, I found,

Was breath exhaled against the chest's congestion,

Like a baby wailing in the distant darkness;

Baby-wail among the great cetaceans

Playing, flying, gliding the Arctic deeps,

Laying the grids of their geographies,

Suckling their calves upon the wing, and singing.

Some of the predators above, who probe

The heaving waters with their tracking ears,

Think it a sad song. They should know, who are

Of the virus that has made this teardrop earth

The saddest jewel in the galaxy.

And I, back to my sullen sheets, back to

The feral, viral homunculus fastened,

Battening on my back,

And the baby weeping in the my breast. 

Over The Top

His serial-numbered shell

Took out the whole platoon,

Bayonets and pipes and kilts and all.

The stifled battle-cry,

Vaguely Gaelic, burning

With the aftertaste of rum,

Voiced the ancient barbarity

Regimentally nurtured

In the 'Ladies From Hell.'

The shrieking axe bit deep,

Hacked the post-death sentience

To a sliver of awareness.

The clenched discarnate soul

Focused a consciousness

Frozen in mid-leap.

A cry of ritual aggression

Silently screaming

Down eternity.

A Confusion of Dead Friends

Since it is Samhain - and our friends are closer than usual

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.

The Magic Door

Step lightly through the magic door to friends,
Nor yet regret the room you are to leave.
Dream more of new beginnings than of ends.

Though going, and your imprint's loss offends,
And you ever reluctant to bereave,
Step lightly through the magic door to friends.

And if the blanket of the past descends,
Seduces you to sorrow and to grieve,
Dream more of new beginnings than of ends.

Those old men cashing wisdom's dividends,
Recalling what a foreguard can achieve,
Step lightly through the magic door to friends.

And, seeing with perception that transcends
The images myopic eyes perceive,
Dream more of new beginnings than of ends.

Consider then, as your last pace impends,
The greetings you are likely to receive.
Step lightly through the magic door to friends,
Dream more of new beginnings than of ends.

Lover's Moon

For National Poetry Day 2012

I thought that, when at last
men walked upon the moon
and radiated back
the arid data stream,
poetic lovers everywhere
would lose love's potent symbol.

In the event, pragmatic men
looked back across the void
to earth and saw
raw poetry.

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.

Hen or Egg

There is an old Chinese proverb
which, loosely translated, says,
"There is an old Scottish proverb
which, loosely translated, says..."

A Better Classa Folk

Lookin back,
oor Jeannie said,
that time
thit ahwis raped,
it seemed ti gie
some comfort
ti ma mammy,
thit it least
ahwis pult
uppa wally close.

A Consolation Of Mountain Men

Those self-same missiles which
will slice a thousand feet
off each of the Munros
will also scythe the climbers
who might mourn them.

Joining

We loved, with our bodies,
For the last time,
Climaxed together,

Lay silently clasped
Within, around each other,
Letting the weld cure.

The new emergent pulse
Was the algebraic sum
Of our two heartbeats,

The slower wave,
Our alpha rhythms
Heterodyning.

We were an engine
Of latent growth,
Of humming potential,

A chrysalis, quiescent,
Waiting the last catalyst
To unfurl the bright wings.

Garthamlock Windaes

Oh aye!
Hiftibi quick wi the planks,
the jiners,
whiniver a hoose faws emty,
ur thur in.

Hale scheme's fulla blin windaes.
Kinna eerie it night,
Planks disnae reflect the moon.

A Course of Action

Something must be done!
Something drastic, something
to assuage the bleak, black guilt
felt for all the whales, the dolphins
flown to their icarus suns,

for all the black babes in Africa
metamorphosed into
matchstick men by fat, white
market forces everywhere,

for all the blistered lungs,
the profitably powdered
living bone, the purple pulp
of the imploding, pulsing flesh
of peasants in three continents.

Something must be done.
Something personal to me,
and enraged symbology,
a protest with posters,
a suicidal leap perhaps
from a ground-floor window.

Walking By

I was a quiet man, not long retired
from a quiet job, and glad to be above
Contention, out of the race
where electronic timers digitise
a micro-second's worth of failure,
and mark your credit rating down.

I was no threat to anyone,
and was astonished when the bottle hit
my head and knocked me out, and when
the jagged stump, thrust at my face,
severed the jugular as I went down
and emptied out my life into the sheugh.

It was a frightened little boy,
machoed by booze to flaunt his adulthood
who flailed and justifed his 18 years.
"Wisnae ma fault" he told the sarge,
"Fur ahwis bevvied oot ma skull,
n this auld bastard jis' walked by."