On Love and War
On Love and War
On Love and War opens with three linked poems, Compassion, Persecution and Retribution. Protest and the plight of refugees and the persecuted are recurring themes in my poetry and things I care deeply about. I find the suffering and persecution of children particularly abhorrent. Compassion takes us to earlier times, the days of the blitz and Jewish refugee children, the Jude kinder. This child could be a victim of either, for she represents any child so misused.
She has no return address and
She clutches her tattered teddy
Her only family a grubby, one-eyed bear.
Compassion
In Persecution, we are confronted with the refugees of today, exploited by people smugglers, rejected by governments, drowning in their thousands – the promised land a squalid refugee camp. The final three lines connect to our earlier waif,
No labels here, no faith no charity.
Cant and deceit stink in the febrile air-
No pity for a grubby teddy bear
Persecution
The third and final poem, Retribution, warns of the dystopian future we are creating where those we have persecuted and reviled will rise up and return to exact their revenge.
If you dare stand against us you will die,
Time for us to take an eye, for an eye.
Retribution
War Graves is an elegy for the fallen of the Great War, and the cemeteries where they lie, in Flanders and in English churchyards. It celebrates the equality of the fallen.
Now long after the guns and bullets cease
They sleep here, tended in remembered peace.
War Graves
The Ashes of Memory weaves a mystery, the days of lovers when they are young, and when they grow old, the life they enjoy –and our lives relived by those who are to come.
When others come to play the game anew
They will not know that they are me and you.
Ashes of Memory
When Did Love Begin explores much the same territory as the previous poem, a celebration of a shared life and the time when the flames of passion start to die, but memory still burns brightly.
We are blessed for we have our love to share
Passing years increasing how much we care.
When Did Love Begin
Opening the Gates is from a previous work, The Nonsuch Poems, and follows the first moments of new love
Starshine pinpricks the canopy of night
Intaglio shadows etch the wall’s soft stone.
Moonthrift sprays stable sky with silver light,
Which guides first love; at last, we two, alone
Opening the Gates
Reading from 'Rosemoor's Child'
The final poem from In Light and Shade is Rosemoor’s Child. I have to confess it is a favourite of mine. The child is a statue in the RHS garden at Rosemoor, in Devon, and immediately attracted my affection on a visit and made me wish I could help her – but only in my imagination as I sat and waited –
