[derek fenton]

Written by me in 2015 when Dylann Storm Roof murdered nine Afro-Americans in a church in Charleston. He was wearing a Rhodesian and South African flag on his jacket. Sadly the madness continues!

HEY MAN THE WHITE HOUSE ROOF HAS COLLAPSED

(With apologies to Felicia Hemans’ Casabianca)


The boy sat in the burning car
on the way to Beit Bridge*.
“Tell me, Mom, is it very far?
Are there cokes in the fridge?”

“The country hasn’t collapsed yet,
but it won’t take too long.
Remember son, please don’t forget,
your former country’s song.”

She said it as she stroked the flag
stuck to the car’s dashboard,
“Rhodesia ran just like our Jag
and not a clapped-out ford!”

It was thirty-five years later
he saw that flag again
adorning a racist hater
and now he felt the pain.

His parents were now both long dead,
their views had died with them
and he felt a terrible dread
lingering in his phlegm.

He remembered what bore that flag-
a tea towel on a tray
(not the dashboard of a Jag)
in San Francisco Bay.

He had cast off his parent’s ways
since coming to live here.
His life was full of brighter days
without a hint of fear.

For the most part they’d been quite fair,
not asking him to take part,
but the noblest thing which perished there
was that young faithful heart!

* Border crossing over the Limpopo River between Zimbabwe and SA.

[derek fenton]

It is hard to leave the land of your birth forever, even if your tribe was responsible for most of its woes and you are no longer wanted.

HOMAGE TO EDWARD THOMAS

With thanks to Edward Thomas’ Adlestrop.

I have stopped at countless little dorps*
when no-one gets on or off.
Just a few moments as the train rests
and its hysterical hissing is replaced
by sounds of animals and birds.
Every time I travelled from Rhodesia,
my doomed, damned and devastated home
to South Africa, with its turn to come,
I passed through thousands of lives lived,
as important to them as mine to me.
They sped by in a blink
as my parents had from the world.
Now my last train ride down to Cape Town
to board a Union Castle liner...
As I leave Africa forever
I vow to visit Adlestrop.

*Small towns.

[RCL]

Notes of an Old New Critic

Can it truly be a poem if
It isn’t in a formal shape
It isn’t in a well-known meter
It isn’t cleverly ironic?

It isn’t what’s ambiguous
It isn’t with organic rhymes
It isn’t opposed to paraphrase
It isn't paradoxical?

It isn’t easily read or taught
It's read as if a history text
It's a poet’s biography
It’s biased Lib or GOP?

It's a Frenchman's deconstruction
It's by an AI robot written
It isn’t a solo Verbal Icon
It isn’t a very Well-Wrought Urn?

[RCL]

Some Don’t Fret about a Little Room

After William Wordsworth*

Some don’t fret about a little room:
Not introverts in cells with few chattels
Not students in their small and cramping carrels
Not teachers in an over-crowded classroom
Not honeybees within a lily’s bloom
Not singles networking in no-tell motels
Not nuns within their convent's narrow cells.
The truth? A self-made prison is no doom:
At times, I write within a sonnet’s boundary
And it insists its fourteen lines be bound
By their stout iambs marching metered sound
That frees me from the boundless verse that’s free
Since rhyming stanzas exclude anarchy,
Provide small comfort here, as I’ve just found.

*
“Nuns Fret Not at Their Convent’s Narrow Rooms”

[Ann Drysdale]

Nuns, Skating

Nuns fret not at their convent’s narrow room
Because their spirits can escape beyond
The place that holds them in respectful gloom
To seek the Lord beside the frozen pond.
There He will make their laughter into bells
And turn their breath to incense. He will show
Shadows of magi on the distant hills
And flights of angels shining in the snow.
He will make rushes sing and grasses dance
To the intrusive music of their chatter,
Whispering in their ears that, just this once,
They too can walk as He did, on the water.
Oh, may the year to come be full of these
Small serendipitous epiphanies.

[Carl Copeland]

Beautiful, Ann. You know, in 1980s Leningrad I visited a Russian Orthodox Church whose sanctuary had been turned into a skating rink. The skaters weren’t nuns, however. I’m sure it’s a functioning church again now.

[RCL]

Ann,

It's wonderful that you retained the religious thread!

[Martin Elster]

A lovely poem, Ann!

[Martin Elster]

When I Set Out for Acamar
(With a Nod to Thomas Hardy)

When I set out for Acamar,
***a hundred light years away,
***the galactic winds were at play.
I thirsted for an ice-blue star
when I set out for Acamar
***a hundred light years away.

What I should find at Acamar
***while held in its gravity field,
***AI had not revealed,
nor had my cogitation jar
said what I’d find at Acamar
***while held in its gravity field.

When I came back from Acamar
***with fins and an extra head,
***some gawped, some swooned, some fled—
they said that I had gone too far
when I came back from Acamar
***with fins and an extra head!


(Appeared in Lighten Up Online.)

[Martin Elster]

Do Hasty Harm

A voice arose among the melting
crystals on the boughs—
an aged feline that was belting
out great sad meows.
He had good cause for moaning so,
for he could not climb down
to the mucky slush and yellow snow
that overspread the town.

What was he doing on that tree,
not being crow or thrush?
He caroled in a sour key.
I wanted him to hush.
Leaning upon the coppice gate
in the weakening eye of day,
I aimed my shotgun at him straight
and let the pellets spray.


Parody of “The Darkling Thrush.”
The title is an anagram of Thomas Hardy.

(Appeared in The Spectator.)