Love in the time of cholera

Surrounded by dead,
Those of us merely dying
Must cling together

Dark prism

Glo they call it
Sheened like a beetle's back

High the price
Lives lost or marred
White fingers, clotted lungs
Senghenydd, Gresford, Aberfan

Steam and smoke
Fuel to power an empire
Shovelled into fireboxes and hearths

The wealth it brought
Turned to ash
The land scarred
Buildings silent

On the ridge
Grey turbines turn
The valley sleeps
Its labour done

Kipling on management

"If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you"
Rudyard Kipling, If ...

If you can keep your job when all about you
Are losing theirs and rightly blaming you
If you can fake sincerity when men doubt you
And make them suffer for their doubting too
If you can apologise for keeping someone waiting
But delay them further by your lies
And seem good natured while secretly hating
The well-informed, the gentle and the wise

If you can plot - to overthrow your master
If you can snipe - without bothering to aim
If you can meet with Chaos and Disaster
And treat those two co-workers just the same
If you thrill to hear your name is spoken
Feted by dolts and praised by fools
And insist on fixing things that are not broken
Or, failing, turn around and blame your tools

If you can steal the balance of the Lotto winnings
And fire someone without giving a toss
If you can stall an initiative's beginnings
And ensure the outcome's total loss
If you can do without backbone or sinew
And leave a mess behind you when you've gone
If you can kill all honesty within you
And focus everything on Getting On

If you can reject all impulses to virtue
Poison every task with leprous touch
Ensure that all of those that hurt you
End up hurt themselves at least as much
If you can fill each unproductive minute
With a critique of how the firm is run
And forget the part that you play in it-
You will be a Manager, my son.

A chronological survey of the viability of coalmining at Abernant

Depth: 0 years 2006

Kites circle the landfill tip
Lorries bring waste from far away
The surface sheds make rusting homes
To workshops and short-lived stores
The tidal swarm of miners gone


Depth: 20 years 1986

Hands, deep grimed with coal,
Clap for warmth on the picket line
Shoulder to donkey-jacketed shoulder,
The strikers bar the gateway
Matched by a fluorescent line of police

The scabs arrive in a tatty bus
Met by a storm of jeers and threats
Heads bowed, they pass through
To their lonely shift


Depth: 40 years 1966

A new era of mining dawns
Well engineered, gleaming,
In fresh new buildings
A workforce trained and keen
The promise of coal
A dream of prosperity and purpose


Depth: 60 years 1946

White eyes in black faces
Blinking in the daylight
A cacophony of accents
Bevan Boys from Scotland and Kent
Leaven the local voices
Trudging out of the pit
Exhausted by victory


Depth: 80 years 1926

Striking against pay-cuts
The Feds and Communists
Are joined by their colleagues

Some, penniless, dig pirate mines
To heat their threadbare homes


Depth: 100 years 1906

Smoke fills the valley
A wailing whistle and hiss
The first train heads for Swansea
Heavy with lumps of anthracite
Waved on its way with cheers

Belonging

Some people are born where they belong,
Their home and family supply all needs:
The glow of hearthlight waxes strong
The call of the wider world recedes.

And some search long but never find
A spot where they can set up base
At last they must become resigned
To moving on from place to place

And some again, the lucky few
Are urged to leave, and to seek out
An individual rendezvous
With love's whisper or fame's shout

Belonging is a state of mind
Tranquility its foremost fruit
Sought by all, but many find
It cannot grow without a root


REPRODUCTION RIGHTS
I give permission to students to quote and reproduce this poem in assigments on condition that the poem is credited to Martin Locock and the url is stated: http://locock3.blogspot.com/2007/01/belonging.html.

Teachers and others wishing to include it in resource packs should contact me at mlocockATgmailDOTcom.


CONTEXTUAL INFORMATION
Information about the poet can be found at A Few Words (see for example Self portrait in 30 statements) and Answers to questions from Poet's Letter, and there are also author's notes about the poem.


PUBLICATION

Belonging is included in my poetry collection Carefully Chosen Words published by Carreg Ffylfan Press.

Welsh traditions

Knowing more about rugby than the WRFU
Using three words when one word would do

Forming a committee to get something done
Pooling the talents and wasting each one

And when it goes wrong to everyone's shame
A nation united in apportioning blame

Heat

Sunbathing beauty,
Bronzed skin glistening with oil:
Poetry in lotion

Restless

The wind at sunset
Brings the scent of far bazaars
Calling me away

Answers to questions from Poet's Letter

Q. What made you produce your poetry on a blog?
The main reason was my discouragement at the process of trying to get the poems into print. I had been circulating small collections among my friends, but these were by their nature limited by duplication costs and whether people had expressed an interest in receiving them. I thought that if I put them on the Web then maybe more people would find them.

Q. Do you get feedback and does this help with the creative process?
I don't get a lot of feedback, and what there is tends to be praise or dispraise rather than analysis. I do a lot of reworking as part of the initial drafting process, so by the time it's on the blog I consider it near-finished. A more common effect of feedback is to inspire further poems in response to comments suggesting altenative approaches.

Q. Has it opened your poetry up to people across the world?

Well, the world, including Britain! Most of my readers come from the US, I am a member of Moontown Cafe, a US-based poetry forum, and my closest contacts are with some of their poets.


Q. Has it led to you changing the way you write (in terms of frequency) or think about your poetry?
The immediacy of writing online has led to my writing very short poems: a lot of haiku, for example. In an informal context, a poem doesn't have to be big or clever to be worth writing, so I write more often. Although this isn't quite what you asked, reading other poetry on the Internet has taught me to value brevity and clarity above all; there is an awful lot of awful poetry out there! I think that before I was more willing to embrace complexity and obscurity: now that I am writing for real readers I consider this discourteous.

Pessimism

The single life has
Its points, but my bed is
Half empty without you

The end of days

Loss changes the calendar
Transforms it into a minefield
Of broken anniversaries
Missed events
Empty chairs,
A rosary of grief
Rotating with the months.

Forgetting seems like treachery
To the gone,
Yet without it, who can bear
To face the rolling years?

Love's season

We met in a shower of apple blossom
Loosened by winter's final frost

We kissed as daffodils
Peeked warily from the soil

Our love ripened with the berries:
straw, rasp, black

Autumn brought barrenness
Winter, solitude

Modern proverb

Never mind, there's twenty more fish in the sea

Philosophy's task

There is knowledge
And then there is certainty
We can lightly know a fact
It sits in mind, untroubled and untroubling,
Engendering no warmth
No strong emotion, no fear

But reality intrudes
A visceral certitude
Of consequences sure and soon
And wholly negative

Sometimes this shift
Is occasioned by events
Newsflashes from the outside world
Broadcasts from fate

And sometimes by thought
The erosion of plausible denial
The collapse of cant

Ecologists say "Extinct is forever"
Glib, tautological, as a slogan
For their very specific, very urgent cause-
They also speak a general truth

As Socrates said, philosophy's task
Is learning to die

Roanoke, Spring

The wind blows steady from the east
Bringing air tangy with salt

The banks of mist, torn and tattered, clear,
Revealing distant land-masses to north and south

Sand and reeds whistle and rattle
Across the dunes

The storm beach is littered with flotsam,
Tarred timbers and frayed ropes

The Outer Banks have sheltered many,
Ships and sailors, refugees

Seeking haven from Atlantic storms
A pause for thought

Here the horizon is full of choices
Each compass-point a destination

I wrap myself up, staring out to sea
Awaiting an omen to guide me

I have lost my faith in experience
Since it has brought me here