This is very roughly based on thinking about the early evolution of Christianity, not the very early years of persecution, but the great meetings that defined doctrine.
FATHERS
A congress of the faithful ruled
That heresy, this solid right
The darkness was defined and named
They drew the boundaries of light
But in the dark a light still shone
And in the land of constant light
The forests shrivelled, streams ran dry
Until the coming of the night.
Posted by simon7banks on February 29, 2012
https://simonsworlds13.wordpress.com/2012/02/29/fathers-3/
Another take on exploration – this time influenced by reading about early European explorers of Australia and their fixed belief that there was a huge inland sea. This is not, though, a poem about them, but something less rational and measurable.
EXPEDITION
It is a long way home from this last camp
We have found the inland sea we planned to find
Though it is smaller than we always thought
And seems to shrivel in the relentless sun.
We found some creatures that were good to eat
And others that entranced our sand-sore eyes
With the incredible sheen of many feathers.
We did not, though, catch fish in this strange sea;
The water is unpleasant to the tongue
Though in the crumbling rocks up this low hill,
Here on the spiny bushes warted slope,
Our cook found this strange scaly fossil that
Must once have been a fish when the sea was higher.
On this loose stone strewn hilltop overlooking
This sparkling sea, we have seen the stumps of trees
And we have heard the comments of our keen
Geologist: these pebbles are black glass
Incredible heat has forged them out of sand
But there is too much here to understand
We are returning what we’ve missed
We will leave this silent land.
On the way back we have kept these chiselled samples,
Relying on the streams we passed and used
On the way out: but now the streams seem smaller
And here is one that has dried to windblown sand.
These yellow fruits resist the hungry teeth
With a tough skin but a sharp knife will do it:
Inside is watery pulp and teasing sugars.
Finally we straggle to the crest from where
You can see the singing valley we started from
Thunder beats a dry drum
But the trees and houses are gone.
Posted by simon7banks on February 27, 2012
https://simonsworlds13.wordpress.com/2012/02/27/expedition/
Back from a week in France and posting again! I think this poem needs little explanation.
THE IMMIGRANT
The immigrant adjusts his hat
Squints at the unfamiliar words
Tests the new land with his shoe
Some casual abuse
Is partly understood
The hat is wrong but not the shirt.
Wrapped in the now familiar streets and shops
Handling the hard language less well than he thinks
He seems to be at home
A diligent Roman
Following the new-found rules
But then a haunting tune, words said in drink,
Recall a half-remembered clouded place
That maybe never was
It’s hard to say
Easier to drive the thoughts away
Than enter that unbounded space.
Posted by simon7banks on February 26, 2012
https://simonsworlds13.wordpress.com/2012/02/26/the-immigrant/
Dark shape of a man against the drifts of white
The pale watching lights on concrete walls
The crump of boots in the untrodden snow
The short scream of an owl in the hidden wood.
No lights show in the sky, but the steady throb
Of a heavy heaving plane in the opaque air;
The dogs begin to bark; a light goes out.
copyright Simon Banks 2012
I think this poem was influenced by images of the Second World War, of prisoner of war camps and concentration camps, but also perhaps by postwar spy thrillers, especially Le Carre. Still, it could be about something completely different! It’s not set in the tropics, anyway.
Posted by simon7banks on February 17, 2012
https://simonsworlds13.wordpress.com/2012/02/17/night-vision/
The world is disenchanted
We have walked in the dark places
And found no ghosts or elves
No dragons roam the forests
The real fearsome beasts
Of the forest we have shot
And made a diagram of their bodily systems.
But now the sabre-toothed beasts from the forest myths
The giant wings, the parallel cunning people
With their invisible cities and hidden spells
Are coursing through the streets of the flooded city.
Come with me to the sea.
We know the source of its power, waves and tides
There’s not a grain of sand disturbed
By the last thrash of the wave
I cannot analyse;
I can tell when a star will disappear.
Hunting elusive messengers in your mind
You may find useful this neat chart
We can identify
The electromagnetic impulses for love or hate
We’ve come a long way, you and I
Perhaps it is too late
To search back for some thing we have forgotten.
Posted by simon7banks on February 15, 2012
https://simonsworlds13.wordpress.com/2012/02/15/disenchantment/
I’ve gone to the shop
With my card in my hand
I’ve bought these fine clothes
So you’ll understand
What a fine, what a sensitive person I am.
Now the wind has blown sharp
And the clothes are all lost
Neither fashion nor pattern
Survive, not the cost
And yellow and blue lie where they were tossed.
The cavern is dark
And the water drips slow
Where are the clothes,
The things that I know?
It is time now to go.
Posted by simon7banks on February 13, 2012
https://simonsworlds13.wordpress.com/2012/02/13/shop/
Half down a long smooth corridor I turned to check
Who I was supposed to be meeting, what I should plead
As the purpose of my visit, length of stay,
And my destination. But there was no-one to ask.
So I just carried on
Hoping someone would tell me, or I’d find a clue
In the codes on my documentation
Or the false heel of a shoe
Anyway, they let me in
Stamping my passport with “indefinite stay”
And then I wandered round the streets making notes
And taking photos to elucidate
What I should do and who I was.
Finally I’ve come to a door
That looks familiar, and the signs on it, though damaged,
Could be a reference to shining shores
Where travellers in the past have managed
To find a boat, to watch the moving oars.
Posted by simon7banks on February 12, 2012
https://simonsworlds13.wordpress.com/2012/02/12/passport/
As a hill-walker and long-distance-trail walker, I’m familiar with interpreting landscape: “down there must be a large river” and so on. I find the idea of a watershed fascinating – the point at which streams flow and valleys begin on opposite sides, a few feet determining whether a raindrop will feed rivers going in one direction or another. The watershed can also be a metaphor, the point at which one worlds becomes another.
This poem was influenced by actually climbing to a watershed and down the other side in Torridon in the North-west of the Scottish Highlands, with elements from the ascent of Black Sail pass in the English Lake District.
WATERSHED
Did you see, there where the cloud broke
Between the high grey ridges an angled cleft
Roughly in line with the uneven river
Which might be a pass? A great bird soared over it
Now nothing shows but cloud and the warning of rain.
The broken impatient river carved the way
We leave the many-angled rocks behind
And the last twisted tree, the last glimpse of a roof;
And the hidden ravens call in the grey mist.
With cunning and husbanded strength
We drag from the circle of sweat to the circle of icy wind
Recovering from a slip is hard
Recovering from the task impossible.
There is never a point where you can say “that’s it”
No throne or light or monument
Only the slope is inconsistent
The shattered smoothing rocks lie in no order
There is no river
These barren pools are the only water
And then the ghost of a trickle
A few thin fingers feeling
Trying to come together, the hiss and sparkle:
We have passed the watershed
We have seen the birth
Of a new river.
Somewhere there is a new land
But it is hidden and the mist rolls in.
There is no warning
No sign, no new music
Just the realisation and the standing still
The dropping, blocking hills
The unknown, long suspected
Alien valley ahead
But half-familiar, like a dream
The hidden end
You feel you ought to remember.
The descent from the murderous heights
To the soft valley is always more dangerous
Than the struggling up:
The sight of meadows and bushes can lead like a mirage
To the eggshell-crushing fall
And the way to the low glittering lake
May be many miles round.
But at least the first task of the explorer
Seems to have been fulfilled
To show what he wanted to explore
Was there at all.
America is found
Mars glows dully but more clear
In the dark waters, something moves after all
Down the strange valley our suspected
Alive waters fall.
Posted by simon7banks on February 10, 2012
https://simonsworlds13.wordpress.com/2012/02/10/watershed/
Waddling unevenly on the ground
A heavy, blunt, ungainly thing
By gawky gait and thick flesh bound
It flaps and struggles to take wing
Once up, a bolt of power and grace
Twisting and gliding in the skies
It revels in its secret race
It will be earthbound when it dies
A shattered, greyish, burst old bag
Much smaller than it seemed in flight
Lies on the road, a filthy rag,
And rat and beetle wait for night.
Posted by simon7banks on February 8, 2012
https://simonsworlds13.wordpress.com/2012/02/08/woodpigeon/
Thanks to Hannah, whose blog I follow, for giving me the idea of blogging book reviews, though I don’t expect to blog as many as she does (she’s a university student of English, so I have an excuse).
I could post them on my blogspot blog (http://sibathehat.blogspot.com), which is meant for pretty well everything that isn’t poetry, but after all, books are literature and I mean to review mainly fiction – so here goes here.
AND ANOTHER THING by EOIN COLFER
This is a continuation of Douglas Adams’ “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” humorous science fiction series. Adams had left this series apparently finished and gone on to other projects, but it seems there was some discussion of a further book in the series, perhaps because the previous one had such a depressing ending. It didn’t happen because Adams died suddenly. Penguin Books got Colfer, whom I had not heard of (he’s written a successful children’s SF series) to take up the torch.
I took a while to be persuaded. Colfer had succesfully imitated Adams’ style, but the frenetic logically counter-logical anarchic fantasy humour seemed to be lacking or laboured. Then, around the arrival of Zaphod Beeblebrox at Asgard, it took off. Weird things happened in line with a ridiculous logic and there were pieces of vivid and hilarious description. Attitudes to religion and particularly cults were revealingly lampooned (I am religious, but I have no problem with this kind of fun: of course there’s much deceit and vanity in religion, but since that’s true of everything else too, it seems no reason to reject the whole idea).
Still the jokes weren’t quite as madly inspired and I doubt if any will develop a life of their own on a level with the meaning of life being 42 or God’s message to his creation being “We apologise for the inconvenience”. In some ways, though, it was better because more serious. Satire needs deep seriousness and passionate anger, and Adams seemed to me to lack these. His passages of jokey tragedy seem a bit like toying with misery. In this territory, the gold standard is Kurt Vonnegut. Vonnegut saw horror mixed in with irony; Adams liked writing about it. Colfer’s book is a bit more like a novel in that it has somewhat more human depth and sympathy.
So it was worthwhile. OK, it wasn’t Adams, but as I felt the Hitchhiker series went one book too far anyway, the last one being rather thin, I felt no inclination to denounce the false prophet.
THE STATE COUNSELLOR by BORIS AKUNIN
Akunin (his real name is something very long, scrabble-hand-like and Georgian) has made a mark over here with clever, literate crime novels, but this is the first one I’ve read. It is very well written and thoughtful, a perceptive picture of Tsarist Russia about twenty years before the Revolution. Good and bad men struggle to keep the ship of state afloat against revolutionaries whose motivation is mostly very understandable. The senior detective Erast Fandorin and a revolutionary cell leader engage in a murderous dance while a shadowy third figure manipulates them. Fandorin and his foe have a lot in common, but they never share words.
I thoroughly enjoyed it. I did guess the identity of the third figure some way before it was revealed, but that shows I got deeply into the book. If it has a weakness, it’s that Fandorin is an oddly shadowy figure, giving very few clues to his emotions, his political or religious beliefs if any (in a book that has plenty of politics) or even why he becomes attached to a revolutionary girl.
I shall read more Akunin.
Posted by simon7banks on February 6, 2012
https://simonsworlds13.wordpress.com/2012/02/06/book-reviews-and-another-thing-and-the-state-counsellor/
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