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.

Finding The Join

If
You can't,
You won't.

But if
you are curious
about what happens
between
twenty-three-sixty
and
treble-oh-oh,

or
what goes into
the crack separating
the last of May
from
the first of June,

then
you are in for
a lifetime of
sideroads and
alleyways
and strange people
and stranger
experiences and

finally,
perhaps after you die,
it will all
become clear and

you
will
understand.

1984

woil

My War So Long Ago

image from the Peace Pledge Union www.ppu.org.uk 

My station built,
So many round me leading
And I not led.

My living spilt,
So many round me bleeding
And I unbled.

My sorrow's quilt,
So many round me crying,
My tears unshed.

My touch of guilt,
So many round me dying
And I not dead.

Are You Listening?

Paying attention
one to another
lights us up
blows the breath of life
up our noses.

Being dead
doesn't mean
we've gone away.
It merely means
we're paying attention
to something else.

Viewpoint

You look along the planes
of your life, backwards
and forwards, seeing
its contours, fitting
the pieces together
in elevation.

See it from above
looking downwards
at the plan, seeing
it all of a piece,
a piece perhaps
in another's jigsaw.