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Poems
It only starts With just a little art and form, Scarcely surprising, but a rising structure, Architecture born to keep you safe and warm, The vehicle of love's intentions for your heart. So reappears the chalice that your love lay in Long from the start A cup of heaven that has drawn you back within, Once more inside, Again to savor future memories of a bride. Sip just a drop, and your ability to stop Will melt away, abandoning all art And find you being, all-receiving, Yet another, long-awaited, willing victim of the heart. String Quartet Inside each man resides A little girl who waits The coming of that boy a woman hides, Her natural playmate... You reach me (every instant I'm with you), You teach me (all those things I never knew), You seduce me with your tender, smiling glance, And then you trounce me, bounce me, kick me in the pants. And when I run, you chase me, only to be caught By one in hiding, who you never might have thought Could be the self-same person that you thought you knew, While all the time the very rhyme's inside of you. Two boys, two girls go dashing, laughing at their play, Then fall exhausted, safe at home, at end of day: A perfect set, four playmates rendered from above, A string quartet, playing a symphony of love. New Moon Support all flown, all cover blown, Barely afloat, the sinking boat Abandons you as you abandon her To fortune cast away once more, With stroke uncertain, striking for a shore Whose voice unheard above the crashing swell Admonishes an ending not too well Performed by aging actors in a show Too-well directed to come from below The salt that rages silent in the wounds Of means deprived, of ends without a sound Of meaning just a seeming random tune's Finale come expectedly too soon: New Moon. Forfeit I am the sacrifice, I am the Lamb Do what you will with me, Do what you can When you are done with me Throw me away I will come back to you Day after day Morning and evening Never away Ever reentering Into the play so Unmisbegotten yet Misunderstood but Never forgotten I Always remain The very material Born to sustain The form of the forfeit Written in blood: I am the sacrifice, I am the Lamb Do what you will with me, Do what you can My Heart Collapsed My heart collapsed today, just after four, When with the brief slam of your taxi door, A door within flashed open wide, A crimson tide Of sorrow, ashen tears, and woe Is me, who cannot plug the hole So quickly drilled into my heart, A part That cannot be replaced So suddenly has raced Back to another world, While I am hurled into the afternoon, Alone again more soon than I would like, And no heroic child to place a finger in the dyke. Persona Who are you? the thought comes to my mind That I might know you by some other name Than what you told me or that I might find Some other person not at all the same Were I to name you just by what you see Within your mirror when you wonder who Looks back at you, or looking back at me You ask the very question I ask you Like who are we when we are what we claim To be, or should the vagrant thought arise, Is seeing you the same as seeing me, And who is left there when we close our eyes To thoughts that mirrors so succinctly show Us nothing that we don't already know. Spring In A Foreign Land Spring in a foreign land, Once so well-known to me, I thought would take me by the hand To lead me through eternity Now hems me in with harsher, new-found walls Where I within am beckoned from without By calls (like syrens in Ulysses' ears That promise less yet more the more he hears) To come and come about, Till this fell channel's put behind And sailing on a fairer wind Perhaps, withal, Remember that the warming days of spring Are yet a common, repetitious thing, And as their light is shed upon the heart Reveal but nature, all the rest is art. St. Stephen's Out of Christmas Comes St. Stephen's out of Christmas comes The Lamb of God unshod in all but Slippers that in dead of winter run The gamut of the oft-repeated song Only the strong recall The fall of lesser leanings History's gleanings to a single thread A final shred unfolds the thought That aught can know impelled into the only note The instrument is trained to play And to this day The sacrifice is bought By trades once taught Before exchanges still resounding Made accounting far beyond our ken The choice of men is still mankind But now and then upon the wind Remains an echo of that first repast When Christmas and St. Stephen's In an evening By the Lamb were cast. The Silent Bride Upon my instrument one time I played A single note that echoed through the void, Till its return a symphony displayed Before me like some serried host deployed. A family of children from it sprung Unrecognized, yet with familiar ring, A universe by but one sound begun, A winter's cry unfolded into spring. I could but join, though what I joined I knew Was not my own alone, but from a chance Encounter with another, whereon grew An host unnumbered: in an endless dance - Born of itself, inside itself it floats Within its bride, the space between the notes. Two Worlds Another world so far yet near my own Five straying fingers playing with a cat While I am doing business on the phone Betray next door dimensions only that Unknown one to another still remain Reflections of each other in their own Perfection of a vision brought to gain For each a separate realm that quite alone Should be enough entirely to explain The absence of the evidence whereby It could appear that nothing else remain But just a solo vision of the sky Beneath which unbeknownst to me alone A kitten purrs while I hang up the phone Waiting All things come to those who sit and wait, Things to love, things indifferent, things to hate, The waiting of the calm before the storm, Or struggling, while the guns are silent, with the form Of fear itself, impending death a breath away, When suddenly the bombs turn night to day, Each to his station, scrambling to engage A faceless foe, known only by his rage. Then time stands still, all in slow motion so it seems, Each action automatic, as in dreams, Until it stops, as if it never were, A silence falls, and nothing heard to stir. No less in lesser things you find So much anxiety just waiting in a line. On The Dock So here I light my pipe upon the dock, Fresh summer breezes cool across my neck, By friends forsworn, a solitary rock, Eroded like an ancient schooner's deck, Exposed thereby to find that inner core Which lay there all along beneath the sleep Of visions, vain illusions gone before The promises I made I could not keep. Accretions thus acquired now pass away From that which yet remains, once locked within The gathering of years, until this day The water, harbor spray, and summer wind Reveal beneath the flesh enduring bone: The rocky core, untrammeled, stands alone. It is... ...not for yourself or yet for you alone Among your friends to wander as a ship Unburdened by a cargo quite unknown But well-imagined rolling in the grip Of seas unseen except in others' eyes Who spy you unbelieving that the glass That you appear in does in fact disguise A different vessel bound only to pass Them by forsaking all they wish to have Inside its hold once anchored in a port It does not sail to and that all they crave For their deliverance is but a sport For longing eyes' imaginations' fare To hail a ship that wasn't ever there. Demon Drink Demon Drink, you say you are my friend, You fog my brain, nor do my life extend. You bring to ruin other people's lives, The scourge of mothers, daughters, brothers, wives. Oh, do you only lift the brazen coward With instant courage to confront the crowd, But when he rises sick upon the day, Remorse and heartbreak all that all can say? Well, I think not - you've been around too long, Too many poems, plays, too many a song Extol you as the desperado ruse, Despite the cost in pain So many choose their final hour to be again Just one last plunge into the fire The consummation of the all-rewarding long-instilled desire Which raises up beyond the bated breath The choice of long-sought consummation and reward, untimely death. What more devoted follower could ever choose More stern a master or a more demanding Muse? And here are two song translations, just for copyright purposes, done in the summer of 2004, first publicly performed at the Chicago Maritime Music Festival, March 2005: Pokarekareana (Maori song,
composed in about 1914 Round the While the calm is on the ocean, May they bring me back to you. Cho: Here in my heart (oh hear my heart) Across the sea (come home to me) Soft breezes that part us (soft breezes that start, to) Bring you home to me. I have written you my letter, I have given you my ring, Only time will tell us better Of what the tide will bring. Torn and tattered is my paper, And shattered is my pen, But my love is ever growing, Ever knowing you again. The sun will never dry, no The love that you and I know Forever in my eyes grow These tears of Waiapu. The German Lyrics by Hermann Löns, 1866-1914, poem from collection Der kleine Rosengarten (1911) Music
by Herms Niel, 1939 translated/adapted by
John Townley |
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| Copyright © John and Susan Townley 2006. All rights reserved. | ||