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

from Bede's History of the English Church (2006 edition)

One sin at a time

On the conscience of St Augustine
Was much that was simply disgusting
He started to worry
And so he said sorry
For it all, apart from the lusting


Many are called, few are chosen

The thing about St Benedict
Was his Rule was incredibly strict
For each one he monked
Ten novices flunked
And out from the abbey were kicked


Against gluttony

Ascetic Thomas Aquinas
Always avoided large dinners
To others who'd fast
He'd say "You won't last:
You're amateurs, only beginners".


Incarnation

According to Cardinal Newman
God, granting salvation to Man,
Smiled on the godly
And damned those who oddly
Insisted His Son's only human


Defending the faith

Henry called the Papal Nuncio
An idiot and a duncio
Enraged, he said
"I'll chop off your head!
I've done it before, more than once-i-o!"


Gently does it

Inquisitorial Torquemada
Gave advice to his torturing cadre
"If they won't confess
You just have to press
On their conscience a little harder"


Schism

Martin Luther's 95 theses
Broke the Christian world in pieces
The question was if
The Roman Pontiff
Oversaw the whole of the species

Soil temperature

To test the soil in Spring
To time the sowing of seed
The farmer used to sit
Bare-buttocked on the ground:
"Warm enough for me", he'd say.

Many seasons later
His bones seed the soil
Under a blanket of earth
Protected from winter's frost:
"Warm enough for me", he'd say.

Turn of the tide

The sea's greedy hand
Finally admits defeat
And loosens its grip

Unaware

Ignorance is bliss
But it cannot last for long:
Bad news travels fast

Two trains to London

08.43
Rustling newspapers
Yawns, coffee; much reading of
Letters and reports


14.06
Lengthening shadows
Empty seats; crossword puzzles,
Books, quiet chatter.

The last librarian

Memory-
Keystone of civilisation,
Of all progress-
Is underwritten by paper

Amnesia
Lives in the continual present,
Errors repeating endlessly

Hypatia,
Knowing this,
Collected scrolls
In numbered halls

Theophilus
Hearing the word of God
Wished to burn all others

Alexandria
Glowered
Under flaming skies

Hypatia weeps
Her loss,
Oblivion's gain

Physics 101

Sleeping in

Motionless bodies
Will remain motionless when
In bed on Sunday

Hypercriticism

Every action will
Cause an equal opposite
Over-reaction

Stress management

Bodies when pressured
Will transmit that pressure to
Everybody else

Argument against filing

A system's total
Entropy over time will
Tend to a limit

Gravitational pull

Small bodies exert
Small forces of attraction:
Large bodies, larger

Final voyage of the North Ship

"The current rate of shrinkage they calculate at 8% per decade; at this rate there may be no ice at all during the summer of 2060." BBC News, Arctic ice 'disappearing quickly'

"I thought it would last my time"
Philip Larkin, Going, going


"I saw three ships go sailing by
Over the sea, the lifting sea
And the wind rose in the morning sky
And one was rigged for a long journey"
Philip Larkin, The North Ship



One sailed towards a northern place
Over the sea, the rising sea
But of the ice there was no trace
Although they searched most wearily

One sailed to the Antarctic pole
Over the sea, the dying sea
To measure the size of the ozone hole
Growing bigger annually

The third sailed for a western shore
Over the sea, the angry sea
It had gone, like Atlantis before
So it returned unhappily

The ships voyaged to and fro
Over the sea, the landless sea
Watching out for a new rainbow
To signify God's mercy

The skies where no dove or raven flew
Over the sea, the cleansing sea
Were scanned in vain by the crew
The water took them tenderly

Sweet sixteen

Daughter, beware of
The wild animals in the
heavy petting zoo