Summoned By Bells - John Betjeman

The Waiting Room

This is where you come, nursing

your dearest fears.

Those that, once on a time, in

the country of the healthy, you

would have dismissed with a smile

turning to your latest love.

Yet, like an animal that follows you

home, they wheedled their way

into your sick affection.

Now, casting their speckled

skin they are revealed

for what they are – loathsome,

predatory, implacable - the

many faces of hurt.

Patient and passive, our

lives in parenthesis, we wait

for someone to call our name.

Though we sit side by

side, we are not companions, each

languishes in their own solitude,

our eyes do not meet.

No one’s file of words bears

exactly the same judgment, illness

is as distinctive as a laugh.

We shall return here like sad

comets every three months, until

some vagary of gravity spins

us off, out, onto a path for which

there is no return.

Simon Peter Iredale

Copyright: Simon Peter Iredale

Last poem by this writer

At the Bar

First position comes naturally,

the body equipoised, tranquil.

The expression is one of unrelenting

surprise, eye fixed and gawking.

The corner of the mouth turned down

in disappointment, disapproval?

How can your world always fail

to live up to expectation?

Second position advances the thigh,

the knee bending backwards, ankle

extending each flexed toe tip.

Often the leg is held with a gesture

of suspense before with effortless

elegance, the foot is planted.

The body glides and the cocked

eye sweeps the matted earth.

Third and fourth positions are

accomplished in a swift lunge, the

body following the stabbing head.

Here, pursuing a hapless insect,

motion verges on an abrupt jeté.

Comb and wattles flutter red

warning as the beak snaps shut.

The glazed eye winks satisfaction.

Fifth and sixth positions are lost

in the straw, grand plié, the feathered

rump descends, neck ruffles raised.

Cruel beak in a gape, eye staring,

a primeval chatter wells up through

the lipless mouth, shriller and more

raucous, shaking the roost, until

a great calm – and an egg!

Simon Peter Iredale

Copyright: Simon Peter Iredale

Last poem by this writer

Burnham Beach - video version

Tom Rudge's On Burnham Beach is now on YouTube:

The Bee Blog

Simon Iredale, a regular contributor to this site, has started his own blog, The Bee Blog.

He says: This blog follows my amateur efforts at bee-keeping through the medium of poetry and prose. They are a source of contemplation since they fill you with a kind of wonder - human beings need wonder!

An appearance in Chesterfield

Four writers who have contributed new work to this site will be leading an evening of poetry on Sunday June 28th in Chesterfield, Derbyshire, UK.

It's at 6pm at the Central Methodist Church, 38 Saltergate, Chesterfield, S40 1UH. Admission is free.

Originally and many years ago known as The Five, Colin Gibson, Simon Iredale, Tom Rudge and Christopher Warren will be presenting some of their work, old and new.

Somerset Moths

Lured by the warmth of summer sun on tarmac,
Lingering long here beyond the fall of darkness:
Trapped between high honeysuckle hedges:
Caught by my hurrying headlights.

I never saw moths like this, a summer blizzard,
Each flashing into brightness just as it withers.
Leopard, tiger, ermine, gypsy, emperor
crackle upon my bumper.

What am I to them? First warmth and honeysuckle
and the comforting dark. Then a ton of metal
Mangling their world, a furious Abaddon,
hurling bright wings to oblivion.

I cannot stop. I am held upon this course
that smashes their fragility. I am forced
by fear for a broken child, to follow his fall
and hurry after him to hospital.

Colin Gibson
Copyright: By application

Last poem by this writer

Saimaa

I seek a lake
and in the lake an isle
and in the isle a pool
and in the pool a rock
and there
held and beheld in the still water
a seat of triple secrecy.

There like the sky
that gazes on the water
and like the waters
shining with the skies
I'll gaze and shine and share
reflected mysteries.

Colin Gibson
Copyright: by application

Last poem by this writer

Running along the beach

Fear binds me as I start to write
Fear after so long holding back
Fear that someone will read
and see what I've become
Fear that no-one will.


So let me write like running along a beach
that stretches to the limitless.
Your waves yelling upon her, shouting me on:
Your winds and clouds wrestling for the sky
and all Your stars are blazing.


And me running, shouting Your name,
Delirious and ridiculous, and wanting
Each breath, step, yell, stride, stretch,
to reach You
Like a demented lover
Like a prisoner in a last dash for freedom
Like a splinter burned in unconsuming fire.


Colin Gibson
Copyright: By application

An AQA Anthology

The new laureate

the nation's pupils mourn
a laureate is born;
the cursed AQA's now
enshrined in the Royal Mall.

Oh Harry you must recall
the pain that Havisham-
-Salome caused your classroom
Go tell your gran before

your family's events
become the stuff of tests
exams and student hatred;
perhaps it's just the thing

poems you can't even sing
and words that bury joy,
a job that's only ever
good to write to order


The new patrons

these are the new patrons of poetry
they'll pay for pointless drivel written
for kids, you don't need art
or even a heart, a place
in the AQA's study
guide will keep you
scribbling, a scrabbling squirrel
who'll find her nuts
in the deadened, graphite trees
of the anthology

The GCSE

Puzzled pupils ponderously parse
particles of words and verse
seeking simile and metaphor
creeping by with sly pretence
of personification
Spot the difference and earn a mark
Get it wrong, you're BANNED from poems
for life - and a day
(now no elation!)

So much for personalisation -
in search of quick-step qualification
they're piling Ossia onto Pelion;
as for alliteration
it's easy to read
rare to write and hard to say

Somewhere in the line
there's a half-rhyme
find it if time
and is a pun allowed
or should it be quiet
(for fear of fun and play)?

Tutored/tortured to rip the heart from words
our prize pupils perspire in their task
a soul could flit across the face
and words unleash a dream's display
but none of that would satisfy
the bald minds of the AQA

Seamus, it's a shame they treat you so
Ted, you should be better read;
chuckle, don't frown, at McGough and Patten,
Duffy, there's enough of Carol-Ann
Harry, quick, go tell the Queen
Oh Mr Motion, how can words
paint a human soul?
Ask Plath, whose tormented talent was beyond
craft or deconstruction long before
the age of GCSE


Here's a plan to help the kids enjoy
and achieve some little poem before
the rigours of work and adulthood
turn their heads bald or grey:

Let them write of their own
crystallise in poetic picture
the fevered feelings of the teen
engrave it on a plaque and hang
it on the wall.
That's all.

Tom Rudge, Devon
Copyright: By application

A Facebook group called I Can't Wait to Burn My Anthology has 37,000 members. TR.

Last poem by this writer

Stewart Henderson live! - School Rules

Mersey poet Stewart Henderson, accompanied by Martyn Joseph on the guitar. The link gives you their tour dates this year.

The Scholars

Bald heads forgetful of their sins,
Old, learned, respectable bald heads
Edit and annotate the lines
That young men, tossing on their beds,
Rhymed out in love's despair
To flatter beauty's ignorant ear.

All shuffle there; all cough in ink;
All wear the carpet with their shoes;
All think what other people think;
All know the man their neighbour knows.
Lord, what would they say
Did their Catullus walk that way?

WB Yeats

On Burnham Beach

The sand is mud and it's a struggle
to reach the sea
it departs fast here
and returns slower

Those who tread this path
will sink in mire before
they reach the cool water

and those who're in
the Channel
are swept to the west

Stranded in Bridgwater Bay
there's no causeway here
so foot by foot
they press to the shore
losing ankles, thighs
and waist in the
clawing estuary
until
they can move no more
and will not rise
when the water surges

Oh i'd tumble in crashing waves
turn, tide, turn,
turn again to the shore
i'd ride on your surf
drift on the current
fall from a board
somersault in these
Somerset waters
float on the swell
taste your salt

Lift me from this sand
i can't reach your water
and can't wait for it
to come to me

Let every day be spring
when the Easter tide rises high
freeing all from beach
and estuary
let the Severn's roll take me onward
past Hinkley and Watchet
to Minehead, Porlock
where the sea's magnificent
against cliff and rock
the lights of Wales
shine like stars
and Burnham's mud is no more

Tom Rudge, Devon
Copyright: By application

Last by this author

On Dover Beach

The sea is calm tonight.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand;
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Aegaean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Matthew Arnold

The End of the World, Again

Some said the world would end with fire,

an incandescent cook-out to which all were invited.

Churchmen in waking dreams and night sweats

felt the flames licking their toes and knew

themselves marked for a toasting.

To the medieval mind, floods were another option

(myth offered a precedent), not so showy as combustion

yet they saw the hovel overtop the king’s towers and

rats in velvet breeches vainly bite for the highest place.

Apt too, that, guilt-ridden, they should choke - prince,

bishop and country clown - on their own slops.

Then, when the crystalline firmament was no longer lit

by gods’ or demons’ candles, and fear was not fixed

by the curve of the sky, a fresh fascination.

From the other side of heaven, mountains bowled

like monstrous googlies, gravity’s wrecking balls

swinging round to pulverize and eclipse.

This one would run and run, a lucky bag

for film makers and a truly poncy post-modern terror.

Not divine justice grinding out calamity’s small

change but random and indifferent, humanity

a cosmic road kill, pancaked on the galactic

highway, not noticed therefore not remembered.

But somehow such catastrophe does not satisfy

there is too much scope for panic.

We shall not see the plasma screen readout

(supplied at public expense) counting us down

to chaos, nor the victims of celebrity hurried

underground, tragic pose rehearsed and intact.

Perhaps some silent technology few understand, with

particles invisible, will work up our finale.

A misplaced number in a lab, an enthusiast’s

oversight will calculate our sum and rule it under.

When we all blink out or gurgle down a black

hole what we shall hear last will not be sermons,

threats or maledictions but the soothing

sound of official blandishments, ‘there’s

really no reason for concern,’ a nano

second before unknowable vacuity.

Simon Peter Iredale

Copyright: Simon Peter Iredale

Last poem by this author

Brotherhood of Man

All day, since your haircut in the morning,
you have looked like a painting, even more than usual.
We are in the wind, planting the maples.
We meet an older man who seems to know
I miss my dad.
And he smiles through the limbs.
We talk easily with him
until the rain begins.
This is the brotherhood of man.

Waiting at the airport on my suitcase,
a girl traveling from Spain became my sudden friend,
though I did not learn her name.
And when the subway dimmed
a stranger lit my way.
This is the brotherhood of man.

I never can say what I mean
but you will understand,
coming through clouds on the way.
This is the brotherhood of man.



The Innocence Mission
from the album We Walked In Song,

Copyright: The Innocence Mission
Reproduced with permission

Last lyric by this artist

Suzanne - Leonard Cohen

Leonard Cohen performing Suzanne with the folk singer Judy Collins:

Global warming

In Avalon the abalone
floats uneasy round the Tor
the abbey's still 'mid fish and krill
while Joseph's roses bloom no more

Tom Rudge, Devon
Copyright: By application

Last poem by this author

Koi Carp

Hum
drum

Though, to the ancient
mind, surrounded by rare
novelty like an
enchanter’s castle, the
garden centre’s verdant
overtures fall
flat.

Here, the hunter
gatherer scratches an
atavistic itch, fashions
new Edens suited to
the size of his purse.

And so on,
until mid-sulk, my
truculent eye was thrilled by
complex, gliding
movement.
O wonder!

A thousand jewelled shapes
performed an
endless arabesque, every
way they turned
away, leading the design
into shimmering
convolution.

What He willed was so.
Gratuitous beauty
heaped on the
innocent eye.
A liquid paradise
of contemplation.

These
were not ornamental
fish, these were the
very thoughts of God
glimpsed in
mid-creation.

Shaken
by how simply the shadow
play of the mundane
gives place to
divinity,
I, in spirit, replaced
my shoes and tip-toed
reverently away.

Simon Peter Iredale
Copyright: By application

Last poem by this author

On Wenlock Edge

On Wenlock Edge the wood’s in trouble;
His forest fleece the Wrekin heaves;
The gale, it plies the saplings double,
And thick on Severn snow the leaves.

’Twould blow like this through holt and hanger
When Uricon the city stood:
’Tis the old wind in the old anger,
But then it threshed another wood.

Then, ’twas before my time, the Roman
At yonder heaving hill would stare:
The blood that warms an English yeoman,
The thoughts that hurt him, they were there.

There, like the wind through woods in riot,
Through him the gale of life blew high;
The tree of man was never quiet:
Then ’twas the Roman, now ’tis I.

The gale, it plies the saplings double,
It blows so hard, ’twill soon be gone:
To-day the Roman and his trouble
Are ashes under Uricon.

A.E. Housman