PEOPLE AND PLACES
Into The Light
So long in the darkness
A beautiful world faded and lost
Pinpricks in a black universe
Rogues shooting up to the surface
Pulsing for a little while, suspended
Then dissolving into night
Millions of them, each a perfect movie
Once at my beck and call
Automatic, remembered them all
Stored in sensory data-bases
Accessible, open, places, faces
Memories, mine
Now viewed only randomly
Within a multi-complex mind
Pictures of the life I led
Rolling on big screens, inside
Strictly at their choosing, for I am powerless
No control over what is coming soon
Except one
The one repeating every day
I do not order it, there is no order
A spark of regularity in chaos
Not chosen, but willed
Venerated recall
We went a long time ago, that piece of iced land
On our first date we shared the same, secret ambition
An impossible dream, binding us together
No money, no nothing, just the clothes we were married in
But we went anyway, the incredible made real
Held hands in the small hours, shivered in the cold
Standing, waiting, hoping, smiling
Before the horizon blazed a green rainbow
And the heavens danced, shimmered, glowed
Cascading down to us, witnesses on our watch
Ambition achieved, heads held high,
The greatest show on Earth and she kissed me under the sky
Of all the movie memories I ever made
‘The Northern Lights’ will never fade
I am my own audience, morning, noon or night
Scenes, sounds and the lights
The whole wonderful show playing deep inside my consciousness
Raining colours, solar winds of the spectrum
Two people, one perfect wish coming true
We came, we saw and we kept that moment forever new
Now you say are going to the very same place
Telling me hoping I will remember
An iconic family event retraced
Wishing she was with us once more to share the surprise
How I envy your unborn thrill
Arriving through space at incredible speeds
You will jump and dance like she and I
The children will squeal under the greens, mauves, reds and blues
The wondrous particles colliding miles into the air
Big science exploding across a natural planetarium
And you will understand the moment will be all
I will sit in darkness at the zenith of your joy
The Aurora will dazzle you but my void will remain
No matter, no matter, because the movie will roll again
Awe and power will come back to me
When my memory repeats and my eyes are set free
I Cannot Forget Her Face
I cannot forget her face
Corner, crowds, the sacrifice of life
Riding to glory, the memory cuts
My peace, my every dream like a knife
The beauty and my beast
In Royal colours and summer gown
I cannot forget her face
As I raced to cut her down
She fell standing for her right
Righting wrongs by half our race
Her soul's in heaven, mine awaits my fate
I cannot forget her face.
The jockey of the King’s Derby horse that killed suffragette Emily Davison committed suicide years later. One theory, though often discounted, is that he could not forget her face.
When
When Bretton Woods came to Maze Hill
The gold standard not far from the Standard
A Mexican tash rasping a laugh
An economic truth had landed
How green were our U-shaped valleys
How were your moraines stranded?
A little lad out of Blackpool
A geographic truth had grounded
On shining roads the sun still shines
So many lives defined by their lines.
To Gordon and Barry - two of my teachers
Royal History Rag
Two Williams, a Henry, Steve ’n Tilda
Sister brother and Henry Platagenta
Richard, John, Henry third
Then it was Edward three I heard
Richard til Henry four stole the crown
Henry five and six, Eddy York in town
Mad Henry revived, Eddy back in
Dying quickly, son Ed as King
Richard, hunchback, murder, tower
Hello Henry seven, Tudor
Henry eight, Ed, Mary then Liz
Who handed Scottish Stuarts back the biz
James and Charles led to Civil War
Cromwell a bit before Stuarts once more
Charlie was merry and Jamie was banned
So William and Mary from the Netherlands
Anne before Hanover George number one
Three more Georges then Will-i-am
Queen Vic, and Ed/George twice rotate
Elizabeth 2 – we were up to date
But now Chas 3 has sealed his fate
The Future To Come
High on General Wolfe’s crow’s eye view
To the City and the new City on an island of the past
Balances our lives from then until now
Easy tilting back, harder facing new
Old white buildings, towers into the sky
Memories of our memory, playgrounds in time
The panorama is what we knew and what we know
Never out of sight, never questioning why
But the future pulls us forward, into some
Different view, some land beyond the balance
A general perspective always changing as we age
So lives yet to be can live what’s to come
Pure Place
Pure place
This is it
Two lost lovers
Face to face sit
Pure location
Before the sun set
Two yearning souls
Once more met
Pure attraction
Years gone past
Two talking heads
Love to last
Pure cafe
Coffee and cassis
Jesse and Celine
In love, Paris
At Le Pure cafe, Paris - a location for the film Before Sunset
Sense of Place
Senses awake in a sense of place
Catching the air, catching its trace
Moments in time, moments of grace
When the world is wearing a kinder face
Senses alive in a sense of waking
Making you think, here for the taking
Memories kept, memories forsaking
When hope is eternal and the future is shaking
Hyde Park, London
Area
Pitching down peer, plants padlock grill
Open air upwards, white walls to sky
So many scenes remembered
Smokes smoked, spoken truths and lies
London lower down, doorstep domesticity
Over the railings, below the stairs
A house of hidden secrets
That passers-by shared
What happened here, what dreams were dreamt?
What futures were planned, what futures took place?
What rows were rowed by the people who hated?
What loves were pledged when lovers embraced?
A basement area in Bloomsbury
1791
A year looked over the wall at me
While walking in the park
Top of the house white masonry
Read 1791
I’d heard on the radio yesterday
While driving in the car
The great Michael Faraday
Born 1791
Modern power started that year
Sing the world electric
So what other things came all too clear
In 1791?
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart died
Vienna paid no heed
God, alone, stood and cried
In 1791
Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man
Published in London Town
Biting the Establishment’s hand
In 1791
The French Royal Family was caught
Fleeing the Revolution
The divine right of Kings at nought
In 1791
Frederick finished the Brandenburg Gate
In the city of Berlin
Frederick William not Frederick the Great
In 1791
The US Bill of Rights was born
Amendments to the Constitution passed
Heralding a brand new dawn?
In 1791
A year peeped over the wall at me
In Greenwich, the home of time
No ordinary year as you can see
1791
1888
Two hundred years from the Glorious
So many Revolutions around the sun
A web of history cobbled and spun
I was curious
Still looking like a red-brick school
So many pupils through the gates
A lot of lessons learned, a lot of dates
A few fools
Jack the Ripper first stalked the City
Prostitutes butchered for fun
A Martha Tabram was one
Killed without pity
Benjamin Harrison’s Presidential win
So the Washington Monument opened its doors
A White House with yet some more bores
Who remembers him?
Vincent van Gogh cut off his ear
So on the edge with art and life
A sunflower cut with depression and strife
Genius with fear
Raymond Chandler was born to die
So Philip Marlow always in debt
A private dick, a perfect gimlet
Saying a Long Goodbye
Im Arbendrot
Bowie wept Im Arbendrot
Genius tears from Jean Genie’s eyes
Four last songs to last
Until the sunset of the dying day dies
Richard’s valleys fading
Larks ascending into the heavens like dots
Disappearing into sleep
Death’s long farewell Im Arbendrot
David Bowie wept hearing Im Arbendrot - from Four Last Songs by Richard Strauss
The Master
Playing by the book
The strategies the players took
Moving round the battlefield
The Master who would never yield
Matters all in black and white
The grit and grapple of the fight
Champions full of grace and hate
The Master never losing mate
Winning in the winner's style
The plan, the wisdom and the guile
All aboard the ancient game
The Moscow Master, the greatest name
For chess grandmaster Alexander Alekhine
A Hidell
His name for the gun was A Hidell
The gun that wreaked a hill of hell
Or did it? Did it? Did it? Well
There lies the secret of A Hidell
His place in history is A Hidell
Or his other name if truth to tell
Who? What? Where? How? Well
These are the questions of A Hidell
No-one may have ever known A Hidell
The man with our theories under his spell
Guilty? Patsy? Innocent? Well
A piece of the world died as he fell
Alias of Lee Harvey Oswald
Place
Where once we ran and played
In innocent days
Where once we left that far-off trace
Imprinted our sense of place
Where moonlit lips first lifted to kiss
Never forgetting this
Where eyes smiled on the kissers face
Sealed the moment of place
Where lives decided to stay together
Something always remembered
Where life-long pledges pledged in grace
Defined our sense of place
Whiteless
So near the top, so far away
Came to a sudden stop that day
And stared for hours at what had been given me
Full up and bursting with an enormity
Shouted out loud the cry within the breast
Whiteless, Whiteless, Whiteless
Because there were four jumps to the sky
The boy is a man from all the years gone by
Sail across the clouds or row to land and end
Remember the jagged face as you ran to descend
Returned to peak
Looking large the edge of fear
A giant blade to cut and tear
But this side of safety a walk in the wind
Only a panorama to mind
A Red Sea lies at your feet
Across the green glint lap of the mere
You can glimpse a future from here
Only oppressed if you would wish it so
Only down if not up you would go
A hole in the wall and you can really walk through
A life lives in your heart even when senses are tense
You can live in a cage if you won't leap the fence
At the turn of the road down to where the lakes lie
Under the summits you can touch bye and bye
To shout when you see happiness
Whiteless, Whiteless, Whiteless
On seeing Whiteless Pike in the Lake District
Mass for Mary
Quick at the door streaming a choir flowing down stream
Images across the bridge and to the lights of the night
The cultured mass of sounds from a Mass
Amo, Amas,
The old adoration on a cinema screen
The song of a little boy
Telling the care of Mary
Notre Dame, a saint to inspire spires
Hushed by an old lady handing out prayers
As ranked monks chant Latin over the Latin quarters
Half a life away, half a river away
Somehow took your breath away
I could believe it here
She crossed herself and walked away
As I did back to a secular place
A Mass at Notre Dame, Paris
The Point Of It All
I see the point of it all
Diamonds of glass
In the square of figures
Tipping to the sky
The treasures beneath
From ages past
The conquests' haul
Before the gardens
Far before after the deaths
Beyond the arch and to the Arch
Provoking the call to heaven
A human point on a platform for God
Outside The Louvre, Paris