Alba de Tormes 1975

Alba de Tormes 1975

I saw your relic that they kept 

One sleepy Spanish afternoon

When the sun chased both man and beast

From the torrid streets of Alba. 

The year was nineteen seventy five

And we were twenty five

Young Legionaries of Christ

Herded inside the dark church walls

Dressed in black soutanes 

With shiny hair and shiny shoes

And bright white smiles 

Young innocents of God. 

During our twelve month stay 

In proud and fusty Salamanca 

Whose academic reputation lay baking 

In the scorching heat nearby. 

We gathered round Teresa 

Or what was left of her

We who had hardly seen a female ankle

Were left gazing at her heart. 

But the memory never left

The image that was etched 

The presence of a saint

In a hot and blasted landscape. 

A strange and noble place

Where history seemed to freeze 

And time stood still

Where history turned few pages. 

The black soutanes unchanged

For decades and for centuries 

Til change came sweeping through 

The year that Franco died. 

Ocular Bells

Ocular Bells, Festive Verses.

Poetry, once the preserve of ear
Now is parsed and appears
Neat on a page
So far from stage
Of Virgil or of Shakespeare.

Lines and stanzas
Deaf to ear
But crafted and craftily
It’s clear to art lovers
Far and near.

Let’s close our eyes
And listen to the crest that rises
Falling on ear
Reaching the heart
Touching the spirit.

Let’s listen, not read
With silence for commas
With space for the mind
To wander untethered
Untrammeled by lines.

The rhythm of verse
Should keep a beat with the heart
The sweetness of sound
Keep the senses apart.

Poems once spoken and decried
To families round the fireside
Not silently mouthed in towers
Mid academic bowers.

Bring back the sounds
And shield the pages
Guarding symbols;
For the ages

Hark, the spirit sings
It trings and rings Celestial bells, whispering things
That only spoken words can bring.

Luxury villa row

Luxury Villa Row

In the sleepy street
In the sunbaked silence
No children play
But cameras whirr
To guard the empty villas
Where high walls
Imprison the wealthy ones.

What prison do they fear?
What gaol do the walls foretell?
For money earned in darkened halls
And spun across the world to Tenerife?

Five thousand feet of polished marble
And beds where never laid a head
With pools untroubled for 12 months now
A listless silence undisturbed
Except by maids and cleaning staff
Preparing for the Christmas trip
That may happen or not at all.

And yet the window’s cleaned and grass is cut
With hedges trimmed
Tables polished, not yet turned
The wealthy ghosts have yet to come.

Perhaps a breathless week,
Spent mostly on friends’ yachts
Ordering cristal when ashore
But a hardly a glance
Hardly a look askance
At the villa
At the top of the road
A cul de sac
That leads to nowhere.
 

Three degreees warmer.

Three Degrees Warmer

It’s three o clock in the morning
It’s three degrees warmer at sea
What’s going to become of our world
In under a century?

Two degrees is a figment
There isn’t a chance in hell
That Paris or any Agreement
Will save us from climate Hell.

This makes three hells in one poem
Which doesn’t sound good at all
But then neither does three degrees
And that’s what we’re heading for.

There’s lots of numbers these days
It’s hard to remember them all,
Remember the number that matters
In eighty years time we’ll recall -

Its 3

I only have hope in my pocket

I only have hope in my pocket

I’m happy to hope
It’s the most delicious thing
That things will improve
At the new dawn birds will sing.

I only have hope in my pocket
I have come only to serve
There is no limit to service
For the people we love.

To always remember we can
Improve on what we began
We can’t be sadly submissive
Or leave hope in bed as we rise.

With every new child
There’s a hope
A hope that that God renews
One child can change the world
For every new child can do

Anything.