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Sat 10 May, 2003 10:49 am
Sinking Feelings
Is it my own mood or the gloomy mood
Of this brooding Bucks village, grim and gray
Under such deep and solemn cloud for early June?
And we come now to November
And nothing yet has changed
Except, perhaps, for heavier, flooding rain.
In the middle, June to now,
In odd days of sun, the mood came grimly
In anticipation of no sun.
Six months on and still the ground is sodden
With wet that seems to grow with every day.
Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire, Oxfordshire and Bucks -
Anywhere low-lying has gone under.
I wonder - is this some kind of water-year,
A year for fearing inundation of what some sadly name
Our backwater nation?
On the Leighton Buzzard road
All the little streams have burst their banks.
Banks burst, field to lake - and then the lakes poor forth
Through the old farm gates and soak the low highway.
No through road - flood - a dud year, a flood year.
There is a park in Hemel Hempstead
Built in nineteen seventy-three.
Now that park, where children played in dry security,
Looks more like an unplanned inland sea.
It could be that this sea is not quite finished with us yet.
Perhaps next June, six months from now,
Mid two thousand - one,
All the sunken car parks will be full of boats.
My mood will be uplifted then as I make sail
Down through the smooth fjord
That was once known as the Aylesbury vale.
And the once sleek, speedy bypass of the A41
Will have become a causeway
Between Watford and its friends.
And people will be rescued at high tide
Near Berkhampstead, when the moon is full.
And all the world will soon forget the island that was us
Save for legend whispered in heretical archaeological circles -
Whispered in the same breath as Atlantis -
?'Britain.'
?'They say that once it ruled the waves -
Had mastery of the oceans and the world -
Had harnessed the mysterious power of liberal democracy.
No one knows where it went.
They say some terrible political disaster
Sent it to the bottom of the sea.'
It is a possibility
JL June 2000 - January 2001
As I continue to read your poetry, I find myself becoming intimidated.
Will you share where your thoughts come from and what moves you to write? These are incredible.
Mr trips,
Fantastic.
And if ye old England be sent to the bottom of the sea,
wherefore shall ye newer Usa be found??
In the heart of earth, mayhaps.
I read you!
Thank-you, thank-you, thank-you.
BTW:
Jack on the Box
Fee fie foe fum!
I smell the blood of an Englishman.
Be he alive or be he dead,
I'll grind his bones to make my bread.
Giant brutes.
Aboriginal cannibals.
Semi-coherent animals -
Those were the days,
When all Englishmen
Were roaring to take them all on.
I wanted to be Jack.
I wanted to search for the black
And deadly root of all evil
And chop him down
With an axe
For my mother.
The scent of adventure
Wafting over from afar,
Mixed-in with the smell of green fields
In late-summer in the harvest,
Always carried on the wind,
Tantalising simple boys
Seducing them as men,
Drawing them to foreign places
And other races
With darker faces,
Belligerent and grim.
Ah well.
I would go out and mow the lawn right now
If I had one.
Oh, Merry England, marry me!
It's cold and I am lonely.
There's a traffic jam in London
The cashpoint's down again.
My mobile phone is on the blink
And some bastard's bombed Big Ben.
So I'll stay inside till I'm back at work
I'll watch the test match on the box:
Old Blighty's sailed to Australia
And landed on the rocks.
Fee fie foe fum!
I smell the blood of an Englishman!
Mr trips, it's good to see you again.
It sounds like you're a little stir crazy still. Is it cold and damp or have you had at least a little taste of sping?
I like the sort of stream of consciousness of your second poem. It sounds a little zany and desperate, like someone who can't seem to concentrate on the tasks at hand.
Fee fie foe fum, indeed. Let's have some more.
BTW, would you tell me about your signature?
Hi
Once again, thank-you for your comments. The second poem is partly a joke about old-fashioned English cultural/racist stereotypes, partly a tired rant about cultural uncertainty in such a curious, globalised world.
In answer to your second question...I'm afraid my signature is merely a rather conceited self-reference. (I wrote the poem 'The Culture.' I quite liked the sentiment, though. And it seemed approriate to invent a epigram of my own rather than to hijack someone else's.)
Finally, the idea about me being 'stir crazy' is interesting. I hadn't really thought that much about why I feel the way I do about the world into which I have been parachuted. I have very mixed feelings about most things. There are two sides to every coin. And there is also an edge!
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