WHAT IS TIME?

Dancing Queen

My pal and I went into a long converted hall
Where the projector spoke in long loving,
The many kisses of youth stolen in back seats
Between eighteen and twenty one

It was yesterday;but my mind arched to the backlog
Of days that crammed the carefree heart
Where love did not have to last forever
Nor sand trickle. We simply adored the sand.

Abba songs filled the place and the anthem of she who dances
Dug the filled in space of time, and in the film
a thousand woman chorused and danced youth regained
With no burning of bra but simple assignation to the power of

Maturity finding the girl so long buried in childbirth and husband.
Everything was so joyous the woman breaking out,
But I felt sad. It is your youth gone, said my pal, and smiled.
Happens to all of us. I applauded the women in the flick of life

And caught my long lost love of a woman now with ripeness
Of apple not crushed between my hands where the quick snog
Interrupted by popcorn, takes again the naive heart
And makes maturity not so fickle a commodity.

I want to run too like a host of women on the Aegean beaches
And shake to Swedish pop but I 'm no weasel to prance a merry dance
If I could find the root to the woman in me I would live
And follow with all my heart the unchained feminist...

On seeing the film "Mamma Mia" in Dunoon,Argyll 27/07/08

Too full the heart that was divided
I find that I am falling in love again
And though you say lets be friends
Your eyes they speak a different commandment.
You still say my love, my heart, my own
And the being friends is only because for reasons called life
We cannot at the moment be lovers
Or at least not as you believe in the proper sense.

Whatever that is.

Yet time will elucidate al things
And bring to the mirror all true feelings
The vision will burst forth from what was its stain
And though lovers seem lost they shall love again

Jamie online...

Strange how cards are dealt to us that play solitaire
And yet last night you returned and we spoke again
The full force of flirtation was there in the strokes
You said you'd met a few now and again in the zoo
Of human contact. But that it meant nothing to you .
Just contacts that come and go beneath the crumpled quilt
You said you wanted to be friends just now but still kept hoping
For something better. I said I was pleased to receive your letter
And we joked about our bodies,our human imperfections.

Love is a strange word when it transmutes to friendship
And the chipping wood that makes us heterosexual in the approved
Haze of the world...two old poofs playing a distant piano
Knew that a friend was better than a lover and makes it so
That love becomes a duster to wipe off the confusion.
Yet beneath all that I still detected a tiny smart
Of something hard to voice from a too loving heart.

The Depressed Lover

They leave me that did love me once
And I to the fenced heart must travel hence
Where all love eemd to offer fruits of chance
Now the quiet lotus on the water deepens
Its root to encompassing earth.
Was it death I loved,or the process of birth
That drew the lovers arms to circumstance?

It is neither birth nor death but the bardo state
Wherein sooner or late wisdom interferes with dissolution
My faith is weak and burned off like sickly grass
And sees not hope, only lack of, little solution.

Oh love if your purpose is then to teach
Take off this longing for his arms to reach
For if certainty all this confusion moves to grant
That I may love not wishing his hand.

Again

Lay your bed spread low tonight
As it was laid before, many a time
When catching dawn's early light
Before change came hence to decline
The fond embrace. I ask now for former
Sighs to rekindle what dust has blown
Too long this, and nothing now sweeter
Than to re-initiate lover mine

When she drooped my flower,she cried
And kissed me hundreds of rains to boot
But tonight and always tonight on the other foot
The shoe I idolised. Where ghosts come inside
Now from the ever blast of the flurry, snow boots
Are needed; the sad affections of a friend not heeded,
Cripple the fancy wherein a disaffection lines love's lies.
But still darling break not one ounce from long ago
Just lift up your bed spread and love me now

When a wife complains of her husband's improvidence...

I am old or so it seems
I do not get my wife's esteem
I do not believe her when she says
I'm no use when the money's spent

I am tired oh so tired
And my spirit lags me behind me
But of this I'll not relate
For I'm sure no one will find me

Such improvidence in a husband
Mismatch for loving wife
No provision is my bond
For a spouse to satisfy

I am tired oh so tired
And my spirit lags behind me
But no words I can inspire
Complaint is all around me

But a deer I can bring down swiftly
With the arching of my weapon
And the salmon in the burn
I will have by grace of heaven

I am tired oh so tired
And my spirit lags behind me
And I try to make it right
But the lassie will not hear me

adapted from the Gaelic of John MacCrae

untitled

Aye sae lang a cheery and aye a greeting so
Bonny bairn of rosy cheek that age has made aglow

The stars that through the night sky do keek at ye
And mak the hert full sair and rigid cold for ye

Still I would keep ye near me in cold blast snowdrift
Still my toodle pip.my dearie ,though the sand sift

Still still ye winsome beggar though to name ye mak a tear
Come try me love, come by me and I'll mak moan nae mair...

lang=long, cheery=optimistic,greeting=weeping,bairn=a child, tear=to rhyme with care, mak=do nae mair=nolonger,keek=to peer,to peep

I have been looking at the use of the word soul mate as i have used it in the past and in some of the ways itis generally understood. There is a glib use of it in magazines and dating agencies to mean that one finds a partner to whom one is attracted and that a relationship ensues where all is hunkydory and endures throughout. while the sense of attraction is accurate,the durability is not necessarily so. One can be soul mates for a moment or a life time;it depends what lessons are to be learned. A soul mate indeed is one who challenges and lead to greater realisation of one's self,and can bring pain thus. When yuo find your soul mate sometimes it is necessary to let them go. Soul mate connection is not always a fine romance but a mirroring between yuorself and the other in which that which was hitherto not consciuosly present wills that it is accepted...

On reading "The Wreck of the Deutschland" again

Oh Christ that haunts our daily blog
Not He, weak hanging, scarce nailed to the tree
He is not half bearded but his feet have trod
Even here within doubt to fruit of epiphany.
I am all weak to his voice that call me across the sea
And crystal fountain to burst. And yet still in me
As I read Hopkins some transcendent murmur comes
From she who cries Christ, and she is a nun, who sailed once
With five other sistered from the town of Bremen.
Cold water was her drowning and she to the gales
Bitterly despised to her powerful crucifix,the ship sailed
To the eye of the inmpending storm.So in such power I could become
One so convicted of Christ that sears me in soul like lighning
And make a new Christianity within the chains of my forgotten opening

The Moor Land

Out on the Moorland beneath the summer sky
About the hillside bold, a skylark high
Has taken wing to sing of this your love,
On this patch of earth all is still, still.

You turn to me ,your fingers pointing thus
To sweet past days and memorable love
To the stream that trickles silently down
And all is peace within your smile.

So shall we too in forgotten hours
View again where Arran’s mountains tower
And soft jewelled islands lie in the deepening blue sea
With unflinching sky and there, far off Dalry!

The Dedication

I do not know if and how I can turn the ragged page
To read again the lines so dear that lived I, one hairs breath.
Only that by my juncture may I translocate such ego rage
To know that I have to him I loved created painful death
That keeps the tongue from issuing forth one word relieving.

And yet in our centre somehow still held, tight in, and believing
My spirit knows of something wiser that manifests his return.
Why the take of the time such impetuosity to burn my books
For loved him I, for his integral part,not that which looked
To gain from physical pleasure a dividend paid but not earned.

We turn the pages to the chapter that spells the name of joy
Wherein is dedicated to his depth the name of Jamieboy.

The Dedication

I do not know if and how I can turn the ragged page
To read again the lines so dear that lived I, one hairs breath.
Only that by my juncture may I translocate such ego rage
To know that I have to him I loved created painful death
That keeps the tongue from issuing forth one word relieving.

And yet in our centre somehow still held, tight in, and believing
My spirit knows of something wiser that manifests his return.
Why the take of the time such impetuosity to burn my books
For loved him I, for his integral part,not that which looked
To gain from physical pleasure a dividend paid but not earned.

We turn the pages to the chapter that spells the name of joy
Wherein is dedicated to his depth the name of Jamieboy.

Adaptation from the Gaelic

Oh love that moves so sweetly
the calves she takes to pass
her feet are gently meeting
the blades upon the grass
her thighs are in the morning
as white as seagull wing
but no pact to bring her to me
of foolish love I sing

not money did I lust for
nor gold did I crave
nor the flow of wines melting
upon my lips to brave
I wanted not silk garment
or satin worn by lords
how strange the love within me
that crosses us like swords

if all the wealth of europe
by grace I should attain
much of the finest bearing in me
gives honour to my name
if dukedom became my fortune
the crown of king for me
I'd cast it back to providence
though you but reject me

what did I do to make it
that you but do spurn me
I would have made your bed love
in husband's constancy
I fell to hearing tales love
of how you chose to be
so plain you turned the lads' eyes
but I, I would not see

and though I hear the harp song
my heart it is not light
my spirit darkens daily
yet I must keep my life
and sorrow breaks my soft back
a fool to melancholy
better I had not loved you
than lie in kirkyard drear

nOTE This is an adaptation of a nineteenth century song by Donald Fraser of Fannich. It was popular in the Kintail region of the Highlands and has been recored by James Campbell at the School of Scottish studies. The comparison of a girl's flesh to the whiteness of a seagull is part of standard rhetoric,which is why i have used it in the adaptation.

little to be said..

Night gathers now-and yet a little light on the horizon
The trees are solid as the ground meets the descending dark
Many's the timnes I've dreamed of moving beyond the long
shadows that creep, surrround,lurk.

And so I shall before I reach the golden time measure
All the love I will regive to him in my dearest treasure
Assured of promise filling as turkish delight
When I conquer and no more fight

the destined path,the beautiful,true, right.

Still loving the Phantom

Oh love rest now that is your ghost
And pick not the violets from the cemetery bed
Pansies that's for remembrance ,a host
Of coloured petals for love still not dead.
All day long by my side the mist of you
Lingers like a pool of something recollect
And with the evening fall of the dew
Still haunts those who take to sleep. Rest
Take residue from the too passionate heart
That did love bearing the drifting apart
And know that better love, ghost, I shall with God's grace
Lift again those flowers,make them stars on your face.

February in Glasgow

The rain turns to sleet
and then uncertain of itself
reverts back to rain.
Already,since waking,I've
been aware of the delicate beauty
of a May morning long gone
too full of drunken larks
beautiful yet uncertain.
All about me ,the youth
of my age splutters to seek
its greenwood paradise;
nothing but you my love
green growth in my dead wood reminds
me of the oak's ageing ring.
But still through the rains
the sodden mirror reflects back
how much I love you
in spite of all this getting wet
in this undergrowth of love.

18/3/95

Having watched those fingers play Schubert
And hearing that extreme sorrow
Sound from the wooden frame
Of the ever present piano
I was for a moment innocent again.
But I do not grieve for it has not left me
Nor can it. Long after arms have stopped
Singing and we ache once more to embrace,
The music goes on, Schubert forever.
In your eyes the Appasssionata long long
After the crotchets stop dancing,
An indelible memory,monumental victory
Mine after parting

No matter how many loves sing to me
Within the piano frames of their bodies
I will remember this night of broken strings
Turned to the moment where you liberated Schubert
At the keyboard and me with my unmusical herat

Riddle of the Preacher

I watched the preacher warm on words
and hwyl churned his open mouth
as to over Jordan did he lead
with exuberant eloquence

And when the fervour died a death
i wondered why across this land of Wales
the princes no more hunt their pagan treasure
Aneirin did he die in the olden glory?

still a faithful woman sang of the story
an israelite who brought grapes to the chapels
and planted a thousand cypress in our valleys
something temperate in our cold Welsh rain

the next Sunday the preacher recalled his voice
and brought passion back into evangelical arms
while the cry of the beast screamed understanding
across the valleys and the farms.

hwyl=an expressive way of evangelical persuasion using the beauty and power of words

aneirin=a 6th century Welsh poet who described the glory of battle and its aftermath for a tribe of people called the Gododdin

Glasgow 14/07/08

Monday and the weather has not improved here in Glasgow
the July we wanted not the month we've had
all flowers seem dangerous now
all trees exiguous

The underground runs with marked efficiency
yet from the deep bowel of the earth a rumble of something
inaudibly expressed. From such an entrail shall we rise
wiser more knowing phoenix wing over the city.

The being friends or not

A Sunday afternoon and what is written
Comes from a hand that offers bread

And wine,and roses,and light,and depth.
My friends talk of glory, untold dreams where all is lovely.

Should I fall into my sleep tomorrow never to know
Who passed my way and was not rose and bread and wine

Forgive my inaction. It is sometimes hard to read the label
On the packets,on the bottles,on the rays around and my breathing

Apparatus where to give myself might hurt just that little too much.

I cannot sleep...the wind crackles around the house and i am all too reminiscent,
the place is redolent of former times
ghosts walk here

i have tried by the power of my crucifix to allay these fears
and stop the frames from bursting
out on the height there is nothing
i am catherine earnshaw come home and i crack my hand until it bleed
at the former window

LOCH ECK,ARGYLL

Green still mountains made her backdrop
Falls into mist
Her eye is wide and opens to curiosity
Tranquil perception no thunder

In her rains. She is named of the Gaelic
Horse figured ancient,
Imagination fills her shape the winding back
Of a sea horse galloping.

Yet she is still and the rain hardly felt-each dark green
Mountain snaps into place
And her colour is precise as the film of my eye
Kodachrome, saturated,precise

it comes as no surprise that a blackbird sings outside my window
as before the trees quaver
and the passing note runs too deep in these old bones

sing for all that is passing and all that will be
these veins are deep and delicious
they cut but do not bleed to ancient song
to full throated ease
to symphonic melancholy

ASHES

I scatter the ashes before me
nothing holds but the wind
oh this circuit of time
that breaks a quick belch of fire

when i was young nothing mattered
least of all love but now
it is a conundrum that burns all centering:
in time i shall understand both ice and fire
moreover why i extinguish the good
ice cubes on personal conflagration

John of Glen Cuaich
Adapted from the Gaelic

oh john oh my love
it is surely the facts I relate
that no one like you
can move me with love so great
I am sick with your love
and your beauty it sings oh to me
there's no fault in your soul
or at least none do I see

but so sad here today
all my friends ask me why
of the sharpness inside
of a love that will not die
for you left me behind and the song
cannot now find the harp
but no other will come love
until of death I share a part

oh john my dear love
who once did love me long
forgets all his care
that love made passionate once
no one now may kiss
she who loved you under the sun
for my earth is so grave
and no one knows I bore such love

so cold turned to me
but give me not pity's sting
for you said love was true
the flame of love enduring
so now my sweet love
take not anger or hate
I will bless what we had
may your choice be a sweeter mate!

Shall I see his eyes again?
(Jimmy)

Shall i see his eyes again,
oh grey blue oceans?
shall i see the glistening ball that wished a sparkle
but found a tear?

i told him he must follow his heart
leave the boarding house of his concerns
but strapped tight the arms
could not release him

now i am brittle my black hair shimmers with grey
willow reeds my pipe
hearts of older glory are solid oak
but christ jimmy why didn't we move such heavy furniture?

i shall see his eyes again
grey blue
when the sun peeps down on the ocean
and love again proves itself true

preparation is the culmination of tear and laughter

Sonnet

To him that is too dear away,hence
This thought die in fools half gold
Silence his heart falls to this sense
Wherefore is not his love recompensed?
Oh gold wore I too in jewelled chain
For all world the sleepy circumstance tell
(And yet the gut says in fidelity remain
Not circle doubt in a private hell.)
His words that do not speak a dainty yes
Imply a death in distance marked
That coldness must be addressed
Where once his enthusiasm was my heart,
Revolves around his absence of letter,
Believes time's chariot will make things better

what is time...

time is the constant to which we must adhere
time is the moment of heartbreak with the inner moment of stillness behind it
it is the cloud of becoming when you are not becomimg
it is time that heals the sore behind the hours
how they pass
and all things become redundant

so time ultimately then is the fullness o f blessings
for parting is hell
but as Joyce Grenfell once wrote...life goes on
so sing as well!