Tomorrow and Tomorrow
The pulling string,
which is Time's tether,
brings
and binds
all things
together
in the contoured galleries of our minds.
Piaf has been dead
these thirty years or more
and yet her voice is bought
and sold in any CD store.
Yesterday and tomorrow,
mingled joy and sorrow,
are raw material for the present mind
to spin its webs and bind.
Only the present acts,
begins and ceases,
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poem by Brian Taylor
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This Year
This year
mixes spring and summer here,
a sharp wind chasing baking heat.
Hawthorn hangs like snow in clusters
with gorse and last year’s bracken at its feet,
turning the whole cliff into an in-between season.
Beyond the hills
lie great fields of daffodils
balancing organic gold against a leaden sky.
These the farmers grow
instead of food.
This they are paid to do
to keep abundance low
and prices high.
Below the cliff at Tregantle
another kind of fruit appears at low tide;
mines sown half a century ago,
relics of an earlier generation’s
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poem by Brian Taylor
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America, America
We raised our hats to you, Mr Lincoln.
We believed every word that you said.
And when life spilled into darkness
in a night of theatre,
we believed, even though you were dead.
From the decay that was Europe, we sent you our sons
to escape from a thousand-year prison called home;
from money and serfdom and warfare and guns;
from Ireland and Germany, Russia and Rome.
We believed, Mr Lincoln. We knew. We could wait.
From the slave-fields of Africa, we heard all men are equal
and America, like God, would apply it that way.
And having applied it, would insist on the sequel;
that all men were free in this African day.
From Asia, the bent backs of our human machines
learned of machines that would give them their rest;
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poem by Brian Taylor
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Midsummer Dream
I dreamed of Paradise Garden;
sunlight sliding down
from an infinite sky
through cedar trees to emerald lawns;
oriental poppies six feet high,
Indian butterflies gliding by
through multilayered shades of blue.
Olympian Apollo’s statue
holds a fountain in his hands,
which swirls and mists, sparkles and cools,
cascading down to deep green pools,
where red carp flash on silver sands.
Gazing round I find,
beyond the mirror of my mind,
past flowering trees and shrubberies,
how all around
this fertile ground
the garden is confined
within a fence of iron bars,
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poem by Brian Taylor
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Hickory Dickory Dock
A girl pedals.
A boy with the dream of her shirt in his eye
rides the metal carrier behind,
pressing her feet down with his.
An individualist stays within call.
My shoe cushions a small Chinese forehead
pressing down her eyes
for money.
Another kneels her black passin
into the sand
fingering a tin,
shells she has
collected to sell.
Her child rubs dirt
into the bright stripes of his shirt.
Bird song bird
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poem by Brian Taylor
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Judge Not, That Ye Be Not Judged
Long Wig up on his High Chair
stares at Long hair standing there
below him in the dock.
'I cannot deviate from the Law, '
he says, glancing at the clock.
'This is my decision.
Six months without remission.
Oh, and yes, with hard labour.'
'Decision' 'Remission' 'Hard Labour'
rang the echoes round the court
as each man turned to scrutinise his neighbour.
The Judge retired.
To dinners with people of the better sort.
To bottles of wine and vintage port.
To a Knighthood and, well, to cut it short,
to the Daily Telegraph.
On a day when, to his great surprise,
he saw his own obituary spread before his eyes.
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poem by Brian Taylor
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Cinderella's Shoes
The ugly sister, Alice,
glared at the mirror with reflected malice;
gave a grin
and blew a bubble;
stroked the stubble
on her chin
and simpered, in unbridled bliss,
'What a charmer I iss! '
adding, with a grimace,
'Who's the prettier, glass face? '
'Cinderella!
Cinderella. Cinderella. Cinderella.
Cinderella. Cinderella.'
The mirror twinkled a little wintry.
'Cinderella. Cinderella....'
The tiny fragments of splintery
glass were swept up by footman Fred.
'What a wolatile woman! ' Fred said.
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poem by Brian Taylor
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Oxford: Michaelmas
Christ Church meadow
is awash with driving rain
and a wind which bites the skin
and chills the blood within.
Its paths are sticky, yellow mud.
And the Cherwell, brown and dull,
slips ever higher.
Ducks, moorhens, squirrels
endure it.
As they endure frost and ice
and the teeth of pike,
the ill-will of dogs
and the harrassment of herons.
I retreat to Merton,
and the medieval silence
of its Tower.
Greeted by the bell,
I stand quite still in the chapel
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poem by Brian Taylor
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For Mother And Child
Why wake him?
You woke to nothing,
do you think he won’t?
Your hand will guide him firmly and away,
your lips will teach the nonsense he will say,
your sins on him
every day.
At best,
he’ll pass the test
you failed,
but where you won
will be undone.
At worst,
putting him first,
you’ll chain his mind
to you in front and you behind.
At worst/best
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poem by Brian Taylor
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Trematon Castle
The great Bailey wall
keeps the outside out.
Inside, the silence settles
like sediment in a pool.
But there are sounds
that do not disturb the dust
and images
that bend no light waves.
A timeless, parallel world
littered with the jetsam of Time.
In the Keep
upon its mound,
orphans of Nothing
can be found
in its empty, castellated,
stonework crown.
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poem by Brian Taylor
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