Category Archives: poetry
Loss
I was on my way to Plymouth Hoe after finishing work for my proverbial cappuccino, feeling down on account of my wife leaving for Lithuania tomorrow. I noticed how the daffodils along the way had given way to the blossom, which is also beginning to give way to the bluebells – each following the other as though designed to keep our spirits up: a challenge for me at this time . A line of verse came into my head linking the two. Over my cappo, it developed into something more. I’d like to share it with you.
You went away at blossom time, The daffs had had their day, But blossom comes to fill the void, Though, briefly does it stay. And then the bluebells swarm about, Its trillions fill the land, Their fragrant scent in woodland parts, Completes this godlike hand. But I am sad beyond recall, For you are gone from me, With no set date for your return, To help me in my grief. I will endure and wait for you, To do what you must do, But beg you in that far off land, To think on me and you.
A Poem to a Lost Sister
Yesterday, all your troubles seem so far away;
At last, release, and rescue from the endless fray.
A childhood lost to parents’ waring feuds;
Smart thoughts in afterlife so badly skewed.
Great lines and beauty, all to no avail.
My own unhappy start was yet redeemed.
You said I was the lucky of we three:
I think you right, for I was free to see.
A graveyard near my shop
Walking to my garage through my local church graveyard over the years, I have often pondered the poignancy of the hundreds of near identical slate headstones lined up row after row. Every one represented a life lived, with gripping tales to tell interspersed with heartache and joy.
Yesterday, on the eve of my 80th birthday, a line of verse came into my head which, when I got back to my shop, I developed into a full-blown poem. It brought my thoughts into focus. I hope you like it.
There is a graveyard near my shop jam-packed with myriad stones,
Lined up in serried ranks of slate to be their final homes.
They once had dreams like yours and mine of how they would succeed,
And win a place of some esteem to meet a deep-felt need.
They wanted not to slip away and none to speak their name,
As through the years of toil they sought their little share of fame.
They wanted friends and family to visit and recall
A life well-lived of joy and tears, in which they gave their all.
And so, perhaps, for several years their hopes would be fulfilled;
But time strikes down the left behind and they themselves are stilled.
The grass between the stones grows tall: no human foot is trod.
The wind blows cold between the slates, all vanish in the sod.
The rich and famous of our day, they too will pass from view;
Their fate no different from the rest as life begins anew.
We strut our hour upon the stage, then comes no more our sound;
Gone from our eyes, beneath our feet, a slowly sinking mound.
Poem: Hubris at Waterloo
Unsparing of his soldiers killed,
Yet loved by them in every way.
Oppressed folk all around he thrilled
As Europe’s monarchies he flayed.
‘Upon their stomachs, armies march,’
Said Bonaparte the Corsican.
Europe and Asia, he almost grasped!
That ego said, ‘of course I can’.
A wild adventure drew him east
To fabled Sphynx’s quizzic stare;
But Horatio sank his fleet
And left his army stranded there.
Then east again to Moscow’s gates
With half a million of his best,
The great retreat was left too late:
With winter came that grimmest test.
An island race stood in his way
While others trembled at French might;
To field their armies it would pay
And lead them in a daunting fight.
Through two decades it fought it out;
Old liberties were put on hold.
To drive France from its last redoubt
It knew it must be hard and bold.
Prussians, Russians, Austrians, Dutch,
Belgians and Swedes joined in the cause;
No one thought of the future, much,
Just to survive those endless wars.
At Waterloo the dye was cast;
Sad soldiers penned their final wills.
Those British squares, they must stand fast,
And Frenchmen by the thousand kill.
Cavalry charged against the squares:
Sharp sabres aimed at British breasts.
How would those lines of redcoats fare?
How would they meet that fearsome test?
Volley on volley they must shoot,
‘The closest thing you ever saw…’
‘Hard pounding!’ balled the Iron Duke,
Till Boney’s men could take no more.
To save the day, an Army Corps!
The Emperor’s Imperial Guard:
Unbeaten in a foreign war,
The hardest of the very hard.
In silence and in fearless line
They bore down on their British foe;
But raked by fire ten thousand times,
They did yet make an awesome show.
At last the fates smiled on the reds;
Their musketry was so intense.
Sad doom came in a storm of lead:
‘Now was the game up,’ Boney sensed.
But Allied lines were fading fast,
Exhausted from the nine-hour fight,
When in the distance came at last
Old Marshal Blücher’s Prussian might.
The fearless Duke maintained morale,
Galloping round those battered squares;
They stood there fixed like Zulu kraals,
One and all did that peril share.
The day was clinched, at fearful cost,
With corpses measured by the ton.
‘The next worst thing to battles lost’
‘Is surely that of battles won.’
Was Napoleon murdered on St. Helena?
I personally believe that it was the power of money that defeated Napoleon. Britain dominated world trade. She was already a hundred years into the Industrial Revolution and these two provided her with the funds to build a truly colossal fleet to keep herself safe from invasion, safeguard all her worldwide trade routes and become the paymaster of all the European monarchies opposed to the ideals of Revolutionary France. French battlefield techniques remained superior to those of any other of the European powers, including ourselves, just as the Nazis were in World War Two; but just as in that war the underdogs got better so that their combined material and numerical numbers eventually proved decisive.
I think also there is a strong case for arguing that we made an end of Napoleon on the remote, South Atlantic island of St. Helena, his final place of exile. Crimes need three ingredients: means, opportunity and motive. We had all three. It was a healthy Napoleon who arrived at the island at the age of forty-seven. Six years later he was dead.
First, as our prisoner, we obviously had the means and opportunity. Finally – in my view the decisive factor – his incarceration was costing us a fortune. On that small island of ten miles by six we felt it necessary to garrison 2,000 troops. Second we also felt it necessary to maintain two ships of the line on permanent duty sailing round the island.
The final and perhaps decisive factor influencing the British government of the day was the nightmarish fear that France – which bounced back strongly after Waterloo – would mount a rescue operation to rescue their humiliated hero and begin the Napoleonic Wars all over again.
Please Hubris at Waterloo to read a poem I’ve written attempting to tell the story of Waterloo.
Britain’s most spectacular WWII op
DAMBUSTERS
On the mighty dam men guarding it knew
That a reckoning was coming by air;
The hum, it grew, as the terrified crew
Followed the bomber with which it was paired;
Never was a venture as bold as this,
To blow up a thing so massive and strong;
Only a plan with a devilish twist,
At the centre of which was a bouncing bomb;
Flyers were needed with critical skills,
Matched with a bravery few could muster;
Then with much luck they could go for the kill,
Bestowing on them well-deserved luster;
Ruhr workshops were on the hit-list that day:
Much ordinance for the war they did make;
Across factory floors would floodwaters lay:
German war efforts would falter and shake;
Destruction was wrought on a frightening scale:
Nigh half the flyers would never come home;
’Twas a mission beside which others would pale:
Their glory written on tablets of stone.
The Last Foundling 