World Poetry Day 2016

Valentine

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.

Meditation

Autumn Tree- Mull
© Judith Murray

I sat
And sought
The tree-ness
Of the tree
And found the tree's
Own search to be
The me-ness
Of the me.

Birthday Tree

Happy Birthday Granny! 

Anniversary

The Poem

From the writer's own typed collection

The Auld Enemy (last of four short poems)

               It's not so much that we

have long memories
as that it is still
happening to us.

For Robin Oliphant 1933 - 2015

Today we say goodbye to Robin Oliphant, Artist (and Grandpa's wee brother) who died on Sunday 8th March at the age of 81.

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.

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.

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.

How About A Poem

Something of beauty
in its sounds,
in its images.

Profound
in its meanings,
in its insights.

Evocative
of deep feeling,
of soul-searching.

A touch of melancholy
for the melancholy man.

Earnest,
concerned,

AND FATALLY FLAWED.

Intent on telling the tales
of the saint who grassed
to the secret police
on his father's politics,

and the angel
in the bar of Heaven,
masturbating.

Forgiveness

I have just returned from a visit to the Nazi death camps at Auschwitz- Birkenau. I blog about it here and include this poem.  
It seems appropriate to post the poem again here too. Jude x






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.

You

You
Cry rivers,
Rage rapids,
Croon the deep dark loch's
Eternal mystery.

You
Move and are
Like a glacier,
inexorable.

I
Am waist-deep
In you,
Heart-deep.

I
Drown gladly
In your discharges.

Funeral In Lewis

We lowered the coffin ourselves into

the grave and threw the cords on top.

Sea-wind, gentle for Lewis, stroked

my face. The poem sounded right

and I consigned John's body to

the raw, cleansing earth and commended

his spirit to the love of our

ancestors. Amen. Nor was that

pretentious. I could have accepted

his saying the same over me.

We did the filling-in ourselves

and left the old grave-keeping man

treading the turfs across the scar,

stooped, deliberate, at home

among the random headstones.

Crossing The Minch, and on that long

car journey south from Ullapool

I thought about the funeral.

I thought it was an honest one.

I think it was an honest one.

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.

Our Love

Not for nothing
did the love that we have known
last all these years.
It is no small thing -
though we be small -
the force that flashed between us
and went on.

Unattenuated by the law
of the inverse square
which gutters light
and is the quenching maw
of the magnetic spectrum,
our little fondnesses
which modulate love's carrier wave
are taken in an instant,
with no reference to velocity,
outwards in quantum leaps
to the very rim of time.

Any lovers anywhere
could tap and live our love
with just a prayer,
a suitable antenna,
and perhaps a flair
for frequency.

No!
It is no small thing,
our love,
our spiralling,
eternal
love.

Remembrance Day

is not

about remembering.

It is being seen

remembering,

which is not the same,

especially when

formality sets in,

and ceremony rates

the display more

important than

the remembering.

I and my dead

remember

mutually

at odd times

and anniversaries,

place a flower

occasionally upon

the heart's mantelpiece

and go about our lives.

This public wallow

is for politicians

and their like,

a hoarding for

advertisement,

lying for gain.

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.

(Happy Birthday Grandpa xxx)

Jump

Logic leads to paradox,
And only intuition
Leaps that wall
Leaving the paradoxes
Strewn about the floor while it
Gulps fresher air.