The guns could be heard in Surrey
North-west blew the wind from the trenches,
the south-easterly fetcher of sounds,
which Sussex and Kent often quenches
before it can reach the North Downs.
It must have blown hot with its hurry.
Its gust bore the battle’s brunt
and the guns could be heard in Surrey
all the way from the Western Front.
And I fancy Leith Hill’s where they uttered:
Surrey’s high listening post
where a clear vista, freshly uncluttered,
climbs all the way down to the coast
and I try to imagine the worry -
a second skin wrapped around men,
for the guns could be heard in Surrey
by anyone listening then.
We know the verses of violence
from Owen and Graves and Sassoon,
but remembrance abides in the silence
to which we have grown so immune.
The men who fell dead in the slurry –
the wind never carried their cries,
but the guns could be heard in Surrey
under silent Surrey skies …
… which for them would have been ordinary:
back then there was none of our noise
and the wind through the south estuary
may have carried the sounds of our boys,
but we would not have heard the furore;
the sacrificed flower of youth.
The guns only told of the glory
leaving poets to tell us the truth.
And they wrote with a colour and candour
the government would not allow.
Their attempt to expose propaganda
was as vain as it still is now.
Too stark was their vocabulary;
too raw for the big guns to chew;
there were young guns and blushes to bury
We must never forget what was true.
They are no longer here to remind us.
We wish them farewell and Godspeed
but 11/11 should bind us
in thought and in love and in deed
and in working for war’s final flurry,
the last soldier ever to shoot,
and for guns evermore heard in Surrey
to be only the guns of salute.
Wings
All the chickens on the roof
watch a penguin in the sky
give the doubting gazers proof
that a flightless bird can fly;
and an ostrich in the highest
of the branches on a tree
(and who once had been the shyest),
chirrups proudly, “Look at me!”
And the eagles and the swallows
pace the pasture far below
with the jealousy that follows
admiration, like a crow.
And, behold, you are the emu,
flying effortlessly now!
To their thinking, it will seem you
haven’t ever not known how!
And the dull peacocks admire you
and the colours of your flight.
Let the rising moon inspire you
forward, onward into night!
Sing the song that will embolden!
Drink the draught of air that fills!
Till the new sun and its golden
treacle, trickles down the hills.
And one day, when you are older,
this night’s joy will be your song:
of the tail-wind on your shoulder,
pushing, pushing you along.
And ensuing generations,
though they flap their wings in vain,
will migrate throughout the nations
and they’ll sing your song again.
See! The whole world sings together!
Every single creature sings
of the one who dared to feather
at the heavens with his wings.
The Stardrop
I used to pray as I was taught,
head bowed, eyes shut, clasp-handed, still:
the centred self in focused thought
meditating Heaven’s will,
the introverted body framed
around the mind at Heaven aimed.
Then late one night my face was lifted,
fixed upon a distant star,
imploringly, and would have gifted
all that my soul and body are;
the extroverted breast prepared,
for me to spend to have her spared.
But what I saw upon the night
as starlight’s true and ancient glow
was but a raindrop filled with light
from the empty car park’s lamps below,
high on the window where the eye
was fooled by the line-of-sight to sky.
I had been praying not to the high
unfailing stars God strides between,
but to a spot a few feet shy
of where her hand in mine had been;
too slight a thing to bear my plea
to take her pain and give it me.
Lord, do you still love tiny things
as much as every mighty one?
Does hope still have eternal springs
and do they make the rivers run?
Can seas and oceans rise, then rain
one drop upon a window pane?
And useless amber light in waste
on empty midnight parking lots;
that by a raindrop is embraced
and then by one or two more spots
not often worth the words to tell –
do you not live in these as well?
And how can I forget you still?
Knowing your cup would soon be spilt,
“Even so, not as I will,”
you said, in prayer, “but as Thou wilt.”
and my own prayer was in your name,
so how could I not say the same?
Yet I believe my plea was heard.
Its answer I cannot ignore.
Though not the ending we preferred,
no harm can hurt her any more.
I pleaded. God did not decline.
He took her pain and gave me mine.
How many wrong conclusions, wrong
assumptions, errors, wrong decisions
do I rue which now belong
to hindsight’s hundred hopeless visions?
Why was she trusted to my care
when I see stars that are not there?
Yet, Lord, your perfect love can make
an angel from a spirit flown.
One such was mine, now yours, so take
her flawless love unto your own.
And let your waters wash these eyes
to see truth when they scan the skies.
If I had prayed as I was taught,
would God have heard me better yet?
Could any prayer of mine have bought
her life, redeemed from cancer’s threat?
Ah no, not all the prayers there are
can turn a raindrop to a star.
North-west blew the wind from the trenches,
the south-easterly fetcher of sounds,
which Sussex and Kent often quenches
before it can reach the North Downs.
It must have blown hot with its hurry.
Its gust bore the battle’s brunt
and the guns could be heard in Surrey
all the way from the Western Front.
And I fancy Leith Hill’s where they uttered:
Surrey’s high listening post
where a clear vista, freshly uncluttered,
climbs all the way down to the coast
and I try to imagine the worry -
a second skin wrapped around men,
for the guns could be heard in Surrey
by anyone listening then.
We know the verses of violence
from Owen and Graves and Sassoon,
but remembrance abides in the silence
to which we have grown so immune.
The men who fell dead in the slurry –
the wind never carried their cries,
but the guns could be heard in Surrey
under silent Surrey skies …
… which for them would have been ordinary:
back then there was none of our noise
and the wind through the south estuary
may have carried the sounds of our boys,
but we would not have heard the furore;
the sacrificed flower of youth.
The guns only told of the glory
leaving poets to tell us the truth.
And they wrote with a colour and candour
the government would not allow.
Their attempt to expose propaganda
was as vain as it still is now.
Too stark was their vocabulary;
too raw for the big guns to chew;
there were young guns and blushes to bury
We must never forget what was true.
They are no longer here to remind us.
We wish them farewell and Godspeed
but 11/11 should bind us
in thought and in love and in deed
and in working for war’s final flurry,
the last soldier ever to shoot,
and for guns evermore heard in Surrey
to be only the guns of salute.
Wings
All the chickens on the roof
watch a penguin in the sky
give the doubting gazers proof
that a flightless bird can fly;
and an ostrich in the highest
of the branches on a tree
(and who once had been the shyest),
chirrups proudly, “Look at me!”
And the eagles and the swallows
pace the pasture far below
with the jealousy that follows
admiration, like a crow.
And, behold, you are the emu,
flying effortlessly now!
To their thinking, it will seem you
haven’t ever not known how!
And the dull peacocks admire you
and the colours of your flight.
Let the rising moon inspire you
forward, onward into night!
Sing the song that will embolden!
Drink the draught of air that fills!
Till the new sun and its golden
treacle, trickles down the hills.
And one day, when you are older,
this night’s joy will be your song:
of the tail-wind on your shoulder,
pushing, pushing you along.
And ensuing generations,
though they flap their wings in vain,
will migrate throughout the nations
and they’ll sing your song again.
See! The whole world sings together!
Every single creature sings
of the one who dared to feather
at the heavens with his wings.
The Stardrop
I used to pray as I was taught,
head bowed, eyes shut, clasp-handed, still:
the centred self in focused thought
meditating Heaven’s will,
the introverted body framed
around the mind at Heaven aimed.
Then late one night my face was lifted,
fixed upon a distant star,
imploringly, and would have gifted
all that my soul and body are;
the extroverted breast prepared,
for me to spend to have her spared.
But what I saw upon the night
as starlight’s true and ancient glow
was but a raindrop filled with light
from the empty car park’s lamps below,
high on the window where the eye
was fooled by the line-of-sight to sky.
I had been praying not to the high
unfailing stars God strides between,
but to a spot a few feet shy
of where her hand in mine had been;
too slight a thing to bear my plea
to take her pain and give it me.
Lord, do you still love tiny things
as much as every mighty one?
Does hope still have eternal springs
and do they make the rivers run?
Can seas and oceans rise, then rain
one drop upon a window pane?
And useless amber light in waste
on empty midnight parking lots;
that by a raindrop is embraced
and then by one or two more spots
not often worth the words to tell –
do you not live in these as well?
And how can I forget you still?
Knowing your cup would soon be spilt,
“Even so, not as I will,”
you said, in prayer, “but as Thou wilt.”
and my own prayer was in your name,
so how could I not say the same?
Yet I believe my plea was heard.
Its answer I cannot ignore.
Though not the ending we preferred,
no harm can hurt her any more.
I pleaded. God did not decline.
He took her pain and gave me mine.
How many wrong conclusions, wrong
assumptions, errors, wrong decisions
do I rue which now belong
to hindsight’s hundred hopeless visions?
Why was she trusted to my care
when I see stars that are not there?
Yet, Lord, your perfect love can make
an angel from a spirit flown.
One such was mine, now yours, so take
her flawless love unto your own.
And let your waters wash these eyes
to see truth when they scan the skies.
If I had prayed as I was taught,
would God have heard me better yet?
Could any prayer of mine have bought
her life, redeemed from cancer’s threat?
Ah no, not all the prayers there are
can turn a raindrop to a star.