The wedded boy came back to work,
with his usual lunch-box.
When he opened it, he found his sandwiches,
lovingly wrapped,
and tied with a blue ribbon.
Oh, the shame of it!
He ran away from his mocking mates,
and it never happened again.
Never is a long time,
but it never happened again.
When I first loved her, my love, with out care,
would kiss me and cuddle me anywhere.
Then Mom declared that 'public displays of affection
are always inappropriate',
and that was that.
Now, when she meets me from trips abroad,
and I long to take her, squeeze her and kiss her,
and rumple my fingers through her darling hair,
she pecks me chastely, quickly hugs, and
nags the kids to kiss their father.
It can't be Queen Victoria's fault.
By all accounts, she was as demonstrative as the best of them.
So who organized this poisonous restraint,
this awkward, chilling, stiff resistance to kind,
this nurtured, propagating, unyielding bony-ness?
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Keeping Folly Occupied (27.vii.87)
We live in a time of frantic innovation,
new names, techniques, machines.
Of stuff outside we grow in understanding,
new theorems, particles, genes.
Wisdom eludes us.
Wisdom, Understanding, Counsel, Fortitude,
Knowledge, Piety, and the Fear of the Lord.
A list of gifts, implanted in youth,
shrivelling unwatered in the flourishing growth
of worthless information.
I know I've met this gripe before
in thoughts of men so long dead
that their beautifully-written mud-scribed tongue
lives only, now, upon the thread
of a single scholar's life.
It seems to be the way we are made,
that our minds delight in stuff that's fleeting,
and we wake each day like so many birds,
singing our little hearts out, and keeping
a bright eye cocked for worms.
Even the quest for Wisdom is vain,
a magpie game for serious fools.
For Wisdom is not a creature to own,
or something to use, as one uses a tool.
Wisdom just is.
Why fight folly, always failing?
Why not join the gang, and plunge
across the cliff-top, laughing gaily,
floating freely, trading wisecracks,
holding hands 'til splashdown?
new names, techniques, machines.
Of stuff outside we grow in understanding,
new theorems, particles, genes.
Wisdom eludes us.
Wisdom, Understanding, Counsel, Fortitude,
Knowledge, Piety, and the Fear of the Lord.
A list of gifts, implanted in youth,
shrivelling unwatered in the flourishing growth
of worthless information.
I know I've met this gripe before
in thoughts of men so long dead
that their beautifully-written mud-scribed tongue
lives only, now, upon the thread
of a single scholar's life.
It seems to be the way we are made,
that our minds delight in stuff that's fleeting,
and we wake each day like so many birds,
singing our little hearts out, and keeping
a bright eye cocked for worms.
Even the quest for Wisdom is vain,
a magpie game for serious fools.
For Wisdom is not a creature to own,
or something to use, as one uses a tool.
Wisdom just is.
Why fight folly, always failing?
Why not join the gang, and plunge
across the cliff-top, laughing gaily,
floating freely, trading wisecracks,
holding hands 'til splashdown?
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