Auckland Poetry.com

To Adrian Henri
When in 67 we travelled back on that Ribble bus,
Smug sometimes, arrogant, belly humorous poet,
You were jovial, and graciously evaded the impertinent approval of the lines I felt I could proffer back to you.
You, chuffed with the few bob from the reading, were set on getting back to “Ye Cracke” before closing.
And I continued, until I left the bus, and patronised,                                                                                                           With the serene security of ‘yet another’ sixth former,                                                                                                       Your part in establishing the Ginsberg acclaimed World Centre:                                                                                                                                                                                          Our City’s scene.

I had too quickly recovered from your earlier, opening annnouncement:                                                                                                                                                                          The death of John Coltrane.
Few, if any, in that youthful
Crosby audience, had heard of your revered Sax-man.                                                                                                                                                                                             Your angel to whom you dedicated our evening celebration of
Liverpool,                                                                                                                                                                                       The present and future of verse,                                                                                                                                              And always our City of the moment.
The words you used to describe the notes he’d planted in your brain chilled more than the verses we shared.

Not many weeks later, I responded to the unnecessary invitation I sought.                                                                          I took my place to read, from the floor at O’Connor’s.
I was not displeased to have to turn and glower smugly.
You distracting, chatting, when those girls and you ignored the evening’s proclaimed point.
It was an incident I knew I could and would booze out on:
Boldly having shown up a proselytiser of poetry.                                                                                                          Concerned with recognition’s not writing’s fruits.

Thirty plus year later,
The collapse of your beer battered life,                                                                                                                                     The insulting stroke,                                                                                                                                                                   The perished liver,                                                                                                                                                                       All were unknown to me,                                                                                                                                                      When I shook at the news of your death.

Lost to me are a hero, an era and chances sweet people had made.

Freeman:
Painter:
Poet:
Your glorious topicality warmed,                                                                                                                                           Much more than the gentle words,                                                                                                                                        That shared the howls of a saxophone,
And precipitated young ladies                                                                                                                                           Towards your beery belly.

Princess.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      I I will to bring you peace;

I will share your grief.

I will help you find,

Your dreams in our land.

I will dance,

With you,

On the open plain.

And we will sing,

Warm,

On the cold, cold moon.

I will bring you peace,

Embrace you in your grief,

And dance with you

Into dreams.

The humaneness beaten
And flamed
Into that museumed
Grecian mask
Was the same sorrow
And wisdom
I had seen
On the faces of the Madonnas,
Framed with rocks,
By Da Vinci.
Though it was the first time,
I had seen such life in that bronze,
I was not,
After that morning’s joy,
At such loving laughter,
Surprised.
Brothers and sisters with us all.
Such makers
Whose names we may
Or may not know.
And the many,
Who in so many living ages
Will have seen so much.
I beam in the companionship
Of Pete Green,
And the hurrahs of saints.

Vic West

Clara’s Christmas :a sentimental verse

(I met Clara when she was 70 and I was 11 we became great ‘chuckle chums’. She had gone into service before WW1 and had many tales to tell.
The poem is about a Christmas visit when she sat happily smiling and I guess dreaming and could not hear us knocking at her door. )

As we looked in through the window at her silent night room
We saw no sign of sorrow or gloom:
Clara chuckling, dreams of happy play,
Cheered by the warm sights of her Christmas Day:
Singing for Uncle Sam, her young voice was a treat
Dancing like joy for her Aunts on tireless feet
Cuddling her Daddy and when she begins to tire
Saying prayers with her sisters and having a last warm at the fire.
Laughing again years later that the night of waiting was away
Helping her nieces unwrap their fun for their Christmas Day
Saying she’d never seen such a pretty doll in her life
Smiling no she’d never wanted to be a wife.
Gasping in their delight at the lights on the tree
Cradling young
Tracy crying because of a cut knee.

The favourite Aunt, they’d never leave but always love
Alone in her room, sat gentle and quiet as a dove.
The often-brought out Christmas cards standing on the shelf;
So much love waiting in one whom never thought of herself.

We knocked and knocked.
She never heard.
Soon she had died,
With so much life and love locked inside.

Decide whom you can visit for the sake of Christmas Day.
Knock louder than we did and don’t go away.
One day you may be old tired and cold.
Let’s hope,

One looking through your window,

Will see you with something warmer

Than old memories to hold.

Beloved King

A drab dawn drizzled onto the grey village.
Damped ashes lay stilled in the chill breeze.

No spark from the fires,

Which had caroused with the laughter

Of our plundering visit.
Animals, too contemptible to be taken as trophies,

Shivered and pawed boundaries where their pens had been.
The villagers’ charred corpses lay

Where the flies and foxes would shortly find them.
Such were the ruins our raiders had rendered

From the living hearts of the village;

Hearts, our fight against winter’s threatened famine,

Had trampled.
Such we were told by the fighters we had left to await that village’s men.
Doomed champions,

Whom with rumours of boar and deer in a distant wood,

We had lured away.
Heroes, poisoned by spears, Left,

On the approach track where their children had used to dance them home.

To moan shames and miseries.

And we, at home,

Roar to our giggling children.

Renew tales of our force that will not be withstood.
Give to our women

The hides and meat that will clothe and warm their feasting family futures.

And my Empress,

You take me,

The unchallenged chief,

Into our tomb safe lodge.
I Weep,

To you only,
For the hopes

And the cousins

I have mangled.

PARENTAL PLOT

Why visit that distant grave?
Why, in the loneliness of chilling rain,

Caress engravings weathering on a slab,

Bend, clear frosted, breaking leaves,

Lay a holly wreath bright with love red berries?
And, in such empty air,

Defy still the death of stillborn dialogues?

I remain baffled

And plan a trip

My children may help me make.

LOVE POEM

He paused and checked the horizons;
The tundra ran coldly from his stare.
He returned into the stone, body-heated lair.
Their warm early pups satiated on her hot milk.
He eased the meat of the freshly slaughtered doe from his belly.
Ravenous but cowed their pack companions made no move towards her meal.
This motherly cruelty had torn out the hearts and babies of sisters.
This pair’s servile fellow killers shivered in their famine.
And waited and whined for the howl and hunt, which would lead to slaughter and fullness.
Ignorant of need, a wolf and an empress rested, replete.

I will bring you

Havoc and grace,
And the peace
Of a sacred place.