So, what are you? they asked me, and their tone suggested they’d decided my reply would disappoint them in advance. My own reserves of confidence were all-but dry. How to admit the truth? How could I dress my life’s threadbare achievements in a way to make them more respectable; confess exactly what it is I do all day? But I spoke boldly. Poet, I declared: Make of that what you will. For I am proud to tread a path that others have not dared and followed my true calling, not the crowd. By normal measures, surely I have failed; Yet cannot help but think I’ve still prevailed.
Wander as I will, the sonnet is the form I always come back to. Rigorous yet malleable, endlessly fascinating and challenging, and capable of containing so much more than its compact dimensions suggest.
Urban nightmare, everything grinding: Grab Brompton; no obstacle. E-bike emancipates; Slender racers send dreams soaring; Go off-road, downhill – Let tough hardtail, lightweight trail, long-travel lunatic carry you.
Unlock kinetic connections, See endless scenery: Your regular routes, sudden new ways Show secrets: slowly you understand Doubt, thirst, terror, redemption; Never reverting, gathering glories.
Solo outings: silence, emptiness, space Enrich heart-searching. Go out together: rotate leads, share effort Tame each hill. Laugh. Holistic cure, efficacious self-medication. Never regretted. Doing good.
Another attempt at yesterday’s ridiculous each-word-starting-with-the-last-letter-of the-one before-it formula, adding the complication of trying to actually write about something. Good, mind-bending fun for a Friday; wishing everyone a great weekend.
Sit tight. Too often now We exhaust talent, Time, energy, youth Hurrying, gaining glory; Yet troubles still loom, Make everything grow wearisome. Enjoy your rest. Treasure each hour; Respect the earth, Hope every year Reveals something good. Dream mightily. Your road Disappears sometimes, Shadows swell. Let them: Much happens, slowly yet tenaciously, Your reason never realises. So. Observe, engage, endure. Even now, when no obvious step presents, Some elucidation nears. Sit tight. Tomorrow waits.
Lying awake in the middle of the (very hot) night, I had the idea of poem in which each word starts with the last letter of the preceding one running through my fevered mind. It seemed a good idea at the time, but when I sat down and tried to write it, it was much harder than I thought! It’s a very tight constraint: it’s hard to form complete sentences and really only allows for short, pithy statements, giving the resulting piece a rather gnomic feel I’d usually run a mile from. Anyway, it was fun to do, and amazingly almost makes a weird kind of sense (if you don’t look too closely). A suitably daft piece for our crazy weather and times. N.
It looked like summer’s end had come. The days Died younger, leaves curled, fruits hung heavily; The shadows lengthened in the holloways And plough and harrow worked on steadily. Our minds made space for thoughts of times ahead: Of wool and wood; of frost and fire and rain, All warmth stripped from the land, the sky like lead, The Hunter striding through the night again. Too soon, it seems. We hide indoors as heat Engulfs the gasping fields beneath a sun Like molten copper, torching our conceit That all past carelessness may be undone. And so we watch the world burn with our shame. No place to run. And no one else to blame.
I want to be a poet: Nothing more do I desire. The longing burns within me With a fierce and fateful fire. I want to make the verses Everyone can say they’ve read. (And they will still be quoting Even after I am dead).
I want to write collections That win prizes every time; The darling of the critics And the saviour of rhyme. I’d boldly burn the rule-book Put the whole world in a spin. Then sit back and put my feet up As the royalties rolled in.
Far too long now have I waited Let the years go drifting by. No more cowardice or caution: It is time to do or die. I know this is my purpose My life’s sole appointed task. So, please, let me be poet: Or is that too much to ask?
The world is full of people Blessed with useful skills: not me. I have no place in commerce Play no role in industry. So I will be a poet Confident and unafraid When I’ve answered one last question: How the hell do I get paid?
Now comes the season when we lie Along the roadside, heaped up high In cardboard box and plastic crate That passers-by might deem our fate.
A few of us are smooth and firm Untouched by blackspot, wasp or worm; And take our places at the heart Of fruit-bowl, crumble, pie and tart.
But most are doomed to be discarded Brown and rotting, rank, regarded With contempt; no one will taste Their sweetness. All are gone to waste.
One tree gives life and strength to all Yet chance determines where we fall. And if our landing should prove hard What hope for us left bruised and scarred?
The wind blows keenly now and shakes The branches roughly. All it takes Is one untimely storm or frost And every one of us is lost.
Scrambling, rambling Stuttering, muttering Railing and flailing Huffing and puffing. Muddled, befuddled Weary and dreary Bemused and confused Tired and mired. Frustrated, deflated Groping and hoping Dragging and lagging Deleting, repeating.
Yet striving, surviving Vigorous, rigorous. Drafting and grafting. Still fighting. Still writing.
So. Summer reaches out a fiery hand. She takes the crown from Winter’s hoary head And wears it now in splendour, with the sky Her banner raised in triumph, all the green And smiling land her realm. We waited long For this, the greatest glory of her reign.
Those iron months of cold and endless rain When gleeful frosts nipped any careless hand And feet and clothes were never dry – all long Forgotten and forgiven as we head Where ancient stones stand in their sea of green And turn our faces to the dawn-grey sky.
And now light spreads across the eastern sky As Sól gives Arvak and Alsvir full rein. Long slabs of shadow swing across the green Beneath our feet. We reach a hand Towards the gold horizon, let our head Be filled with dreams and wishes held so long.
And who would blame us if we said we long For this to last forever: that the sky Might never turn to ashes overhead; No battlements of clouds raised, dark with rain No flake of snow upon an outstretched hand Or end to this sweet world of lustrous green.
Yet even as we gaze upon the green Soft-shining land where meadow grass grows long Awaiting now the skilled and eager hand That cuts the hay, we glance up at the sky And mourn the dwindling days of Summer’s reign Her slow decline and death that lie ahead.
Then let each leaf and grain and flowerhead Each tree and pasture clothed in gleaming green Be now to us a charm against the rain And storm to come. For it will not be long Before the night returns, reclaims the sky And we are gripped by Winter’s cruel hand.
We cannot stop the rain. What lies ahead Lies in some other hand. Yet hope is green And lingers long, however dark the sky.
I’ve been meaning to write an aestival follow-up to my first sestina, Midwinter for a long time, and finally got round to it yesterday. The sestina is a challenging form that requires a long run-up, hence the 12-year interval, and the fact that even then I’ve posted this a day late! Solstice is, of course, an ancient pagan rite, so I added some standing stones, and borrowed Arvak and Alsvir, the horses who drew the chariot of Sol, the sun goddess, across the sky, from Norse mythology.
If I should die, think only this of me: That there’s a road beyond this world where I May ride forever – healthy, whole and free; A whisper on the wind, one with the sky. A sacred, silken road: no cars are there With all their noise and hazard: I may roam In perfect safety, breathing God’s clean air; And no rain – just the sun to lead me home.
Don’t think on me in sorrow: all is well; And in your sweet remembering of me Give somewhere back the joy the bike has given; Recall and share the tales I used to tell Of beauty, nature, camaraderie, And know my heart’s at peace, in cycling heaven.
The next in my occasional series of famous works rewritten as cycling poems. In these enlightened times, Rupert Brooke is often scornfully dismissed as a sentimental lightweight, and the idealistic, openly patriotic tone of The Soldier now seems hopelessly naive, facile and detached from the realities of life and death in the Great War (Brooke himself died in 1915 en route to the Dardanelles, so avoided the horrors of Gallipoli, the Somme and Ypres). But whatever its literary merits, The Soldier is one of the best-known poems to emerge from those terrible years; and its themes of loss, longing and a desire to reassure those we leave behind us are truly ageless and universal. N.
Gonecycling (again) 