WHAT IS TIME?

Elegy for a friend
To Trevor who left us 26/07/08

The passing sun might still give crystals to the day
But oh it is the moon half blanketed now
As clouds move across its saddened and yet wiser face
The spirit of my friend has ascended,up and how

Lovely his flight from the world of pain and I
Still in fond remembrance of all we shared delight
In elegy of becoming see the angel illumination bright
Stitching his forever face to the eternal sky

He is not dead for how can he be so when he
That befriended many through thick division in this world
Thought not of his own suffering too great to be
That could not give to those his friends a treasure revealed?

Bless you my friend in the forever gaze of those gone before
I shall not forget the downpour of his grace
And twenty years hence when I too am undone by life underscored
Breathe my last recollection of this earthly place

I shall shake your hand again my friend there too
With the welcome of supreme coming home, give my thanks and joy
And know that what is lived and shared in this passing through
Will live and join in friendship that time just cannot cloy

The background to this poem is that I have just heard of the death of my friend of over twenty years. Poetry is consolation and delight. God bless Trevor...till we meet again,rest in the God you loved so well.

Love's thief

Swift these sickening words eight times I have travelled
to those forests, my course for nothing revealed
as a crazed one, many a while in the open air
I forgot the hearth of domesticity there.
But easier for me, before any hint of dawn ray
may I find her there in the woods, long to stay
lovingly for the sweet prize of a girl's touch...
walks the lover to his distant love in the wood.
I become disheartened, and the sun of the forest
once dripping sweetest cups of wine is not mine.Yet
ah despoil then!they view me from the village, fleet
of foot to the lovely girl in that land of hurting meets,
as caught in the nets of dispute my illicit tryst
that greyfaced commentary from the villagers makes me thief.
I do not shun the brighter face of the daytime now
not a cheap thief to take a mans horse,his pony mine now,
only one who steals the girl's heart in the wooded place
no black stallion or ram of worth will I take.
I am thief only of her maiden's awaiting virtue there
not thief from the millers fold but thief of lady's hair;
not one who rips gold coins from the too possessive hands.
Keep your cattle your wealth to be will not be released and
this appelation I take fully into my definition then
that never stole I anything with hoofs rattling from honest men.
All it was that I took was but assignation of stolen part
that I took as I thieved only from a lady and my smarting heart.

Adapted from the medieval Welsh of Dafydd ap Gwilym in his poem Lleidr Serch