Caucasus: Pagan Philosophy

The people are like their mountains
beautiful, wild, untameable,
hard, crushing any weakness,
implacable in revenge on outsiders
who show them no respect

Silly people in the cities
may speak of dying for a cause
but a serious man knows
that for your cause to triumph
you must kill

In the end we all die.
What matters is how we die
and what better way to die
than in defence of your home
surrounded by the bodies of your enemies?

The only true immortality
is to live in legend
when your children's children
tell stories of your mighty deeds.

The mountains and their people
once inspired Pushkin and Lermontov and Tolstoy
and now they inspire Vladimir Putin
- a serious man.

pgs

poems3

Homage to Rupert Brooke
(To be sung to the tune of the Prelude to Act III of "Carmen", by Bizet)

The boy who sang by Granta's stream
of spires and fenland, love and laughter in the morning
taken by a wider dream;
out eastwards sees the blazing sun of golden dawning
hears a voice calling proudly now for songs of war and duty

beauty

youth and honour lie in Flanders field
and by the banks of Somme and Yser seek for fame;
a sword to draw, a lance to wield,
a shield to bear the man who dies to win a name;
and hear him sing, now may God be thanked who matched us with his hour

power

loud rejoicing as the boat sails away
to sun-baked islands, seas that once were dark as wine,
where heroes fought a burning day
and deeds as brightly as the Hellene sun will shine
and so he goes, seeking Ilium's walls and Hector's martial story

for the

boy who sang by Grana's stream
in storm and glory
to the war
is gone

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The Days: a creation myth

The first day was golden with the radiance of pure light as the Sun rose. Creation began. But behind the radiance was the Anti-light, the false creation, which is the greatest sin.

The second day was glittering silver beneath the Moon; and it was a day of mysteries, of hidden things, and of the waters. And the sin of the second day was magic, and forbidden knowledge.

The third day was blood-red, and it was the day of Mars. A day of struggle and fight; a day of iron. The sin of the third day was violence, and blind rage.

The fourth day was black as the infinite void; but from the blackness rose swift Mercury, the Quicksilver, who made it a day of buying and selling, of coming and going, and of messages. The sin of the fourth day was greed.

On the fifth day the firmament was painted bright blue, and its lord was Jupiter. So great was he that some confused him with his Maker. And the sin of the fifth day was pride.

The sixth day was the shining green of verdigris. Here lay the naked form of Venus, who commanded it to be a day of lovemaking. And so the sin of the sixth day was lust.

The seventh day was rich imperial purple, robing ancient Saturn as he yawned on his leaden throne of unendurable weight. On this day all creatures rest from their labours. So the sin of the seventh day was idleness.

So the first week ends.

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The mask of Agamemnon

Pale gold, thin as card, shaped to a face,
heavy-lidded eyes like cowries, and a smile.
Not the faint ironic smile of a skull,
but a grin of power, satiated,
having laid conscience to rest.
This face, not Helen's, launched the thousand ships,
murdered Iphigenia, burned Troy,
to avenge an insult to the family,
to not lose face.

Then, fixed in eternal gold,
sent into darkness, out of sight of man,
unrotted in the grave, for endless years,
only the gods could see. To them it showed its grin
and the message, "This face was not lost:
through heroic genocide and towns laid waste, this face was saved".

And now is saved indeed
since Schliemann dug it from the earth:
placed now behind bullet-proof glass
stronger than stone walls and Lion Gates,
under fluorescence far brighter
than any sun of Hellas:
Agamemnon: great king
of mighty Mycenae
once more in state:
trriumphant over death as over morality,
immortalised in story as in gold,
still grinning. We repeat: this face was saved
- though nothing else was. Troy was lost
and soon after, Mycenae also was lost; but this face was not lost.
What more could any king desire?

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poems 2

Sanctuary Wood, Ypres: School Visits

How can they understand a war poem? How can we?
wars were far away and long ago
and nothing seen on television ever really happened.
Now the woods are full of children
running through the muddy trenches
dodging round the water-filled craters gawping at, or completely failing to notice
the occasional unexploded shell
and squeaking when their nice new jeans
(fashionably ragged and torn at the knee)
are stained with filth in the communications tunnel.
Below the woods the fields are grey with mist
shrouding the view to the sinister places
the Menin Road, and up to Passchendaele,
behind us, Messines Ridge and Plugstreet. The children
have been told, but already they've forgotten
and soon they'll be off for hamburger and chips
(They're looking forward to their succulent Belgian chips),
leaving the trenches and the shattered stumps,
the rusty barbed wire and all the iron harvest of war,
and arching over all, the chestnut trees
- none more than seventy years old
but spouting strongly, because well fertilised
by someone who in happier circumstances
might have married my grandmother
or yours
A SOLDIER
OF THE GREAT WAR
+
KNOWN UNTO GOD
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"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: look on my works, ye mighty, and despair"
(An answer to the poem by Shelley: to be recited in a silly voice)

Last summer I saw Ozymandias
it was on the left bank of the Nile
across from Luxor. His visage
was even more shattered than when Shelley's friend saw it
but the archaeologists had stuck it back on
his patched-up shoulders.
I didn't see any inscription
but maybe it had been removed to
the Cairo museum.
The bit about there being nothing around but sand
is however completely wrong, since these days
the whole area is thick with hucksters selling
the most appalling junk to the parties of tourists
so when you think of it, the natives really should be grateful to Ozymandias
because if he hadn't taken the trouble to put up the statue
the region would be even poorer than it is
and it set me wondering how Adolf Hitler
might be perceived a few thousand years from now
and all the other tourists seemed to be having
equally solemn thought as they gazed on
what is styled the "colossal wreck"
and I even saw genuine despair in some faces
though maybe they were only wondering how long
they would have to last out
until they found the
next lavatory.
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Unicorns

I would like to believe in unicorns
the swift form, silver as the moon,
shyly lurking in deep woodlands, seen by few

The horn like sparkling barley-sugar, the neat cloven hoof
and the dark unplumbable eye, speaking wisdom
from remotest ages.

Saying that romance and adventure live yet
and will return, in an enchanted world
undreamed of by science

Where visions can teach truth, and gods or demons
once more speak to men, and there is wild exaltation
or black terror

And reason will fall from its usurped throne
leaving faith and magic to point the way
incomprehensible and glorious.

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Dog: or, Hegel was right, Bentham was wrong

He has nosed around
and now he proposes
to lie in the sun and do nothing
until dinner.

There is a lot to think about.

The puppies have been ignoring his advice.
His career as a watchdog is threatened by new technology, in the form of a birglar alarm.
The spaniel next door has a much better basket than him.
And should he show solidarity with persecuted pit-bull terriers,
threatened with racial discrimination?
Meanwhile in the Far East, it is said, dogs are still being killed and eaten:
surely some action must be taken?

But none ofthese things concern him at all
as he lies in the sun doing nothing
which is why, whereas we are human,
he is only a dog.

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Romanticism fails again!

When I was a boy, I found a book in a cave
in complete darkness: by touch alone I found it,
sodden and cold. It dripped as I bore it to the light
- not without trepidation;
since had this been an H. P. Lovecraft story, I would have held
a tractatus of occult knowlege
ancient, arcane, and damned. But it proved to be an electricians' manual
scarcely occult even to the least technically-minded.
How it came to be in the cave, far from any power-scource,
might make a story in itself
if I could be bothered.

pgs

Poems

My Grandmother's Clock



It sits on my mantelpiece

my grandmother's clock

and I should very much like

to ask the clock to tell me

of everything it knows

of my grandmother and her time.



But we all know it is a mere

affectation of literature

to ask a clock what it knows

for the face of the clock is eyeless

the hands of the clock do not feel

it tells the hours unknowing

and it speaks, but says nothing but "tick",

and although it stopped when she died

(at a great age, in her own home)

this fact in itself was without

any metaphysical cause

(there was no-one to wind it up).



So it sits on my matelpiece

my grandmother's clock

and a hundred years from now

it will sit on someone else's

and its eyeless face will look on

a world I shall never see

and its unfeeling hands will tell

hours I shall never know



and still it says nothing but "tick".



PGS





Astrology



My horoscope said

that events of this week

would improve my morals

so I'm waiting.



(I know this was a misprint for "morale"

but surely mistakes of this kind

must be supernaturally inspired?)



PGS





Reunions



You haven't seen Philip for twenty years

and you think, "Well,

he may have a better job than me

but he looks a lot older than me!"

And Philip looks at you

and maybe he thinks the same.



PGS