Are we nearly there yet?

Are we nearly there yet? When can we see the sea? Driving over a humpback bridge Making me feel like my stomach Was rolling off a ridge

Are we nearly there yet?

The games of I spy exhausted

No music to listen to

Only the hiss and crackle

Coming from the dodgy car radio

Are we nearly there yet?

So bored, hungry and thirsty

Strapped in my seat difficult to see

My sister to my left

Mum and Dad in front of me

Are we nearly there yet?

Oh yes, yes! There is the sea

Not long to the beach now

Brought my bucket, spade

And flags with me

On our way back home now

Been a long day for me

Playing on the beach

And swimming in the sea

So tired and weary

My bed is calling me

Are we nearly there yet?

by John Larkin 

I do not want to write of war

I do not want to write of war I'll write instead of the Spring sun And the solace of longer days

I do not want to write of war

I'll write instead of Autumn's falling leaves

And of sadness ending

I do not want to write of war

I'll write instead of Winter's hope

And Summer's sure returning

Lark Ascending

 We look We strain our eyes To see The bird wing Unburdened so To fly and soar And we behind our doors Do pine We listen We strain our ears To hear The bird’s song Unfettered so Rise and swell and fall And we enthralled Do dream The lark ascends Above Above the trodden earth Winged heights Are calling Birdsong unfurls And we must follow

Abide with Me +

The inspiration for this hymn by Henry Francis Lyte (1793-1847) is Luke 24, where the disciples on the road to Emmaus say to Jesus – “Abide with us, for it is towards evening and the day is well spent.” Lyte wrote it two weeks before his own death, having a memory return to him of a visit to a dying friend 20 years previously who repeated and repeated to Lyte ‘abide with me’ as his life slipped away.
The first time the hymn was sung was at Lyte’s funeral. He died from TB at the age of 54. Since the 1920s the first and last verse of the hymn has been sung at the FA cup final. It was also sung at the opening ceremony of the London Olympics. 
Lyte was an Anglican minister and accomplished poet. 

 

^{•          Abide with me; fast falls the eventide;
The darkness deepens; Lord, with me abide; ~
When other helpers fail and comforts flee,
Help of the helpless, oh, abide with me.}

^{•          Swift to its close ebbs out life’s little day;
Earth’s joys grow dim, its glories pass away;
Change and decay in all around I see—
O Thou who changest not, abide with me.}

^{•          I need Thy presence every passing hour;
What but Thy grace can foil the tempter’s pow’r?
Who, like Thyself, my guide and stay can be?
Through cloud and sunshine, Lord, abide with me.}

^{•          I fear no foe, with Thee at hand to bless;
Ills have no weight, and tears no bitterness;
Where is death’s sting? Where, grave, thy victory?
I triumph still, if Thou abide with me.}

^{•          Hold Thou Thy cross before my closing eyes;
Shine through the gloom and point me to the skies;
Heav’n’s morning breaks, and earth’s vain shadows flee;
In life, in death, O Lord, abide with me.}

^{Extra verses by Sarah Larkin (April 2021)}

^{•          Jesus alive today, abide with me
Open my failing eyes so I can see
The Lord of all life who was crucified
Risen today, ascended, glorified}

^{•          Abide with me, my sunrise from on high
My bright morning star, always in my sky
Abide with me, all my years revive
This Resurrection Day, Jesus you're alive!}

The cooler air carries calmness

 I’ve swept the sins of my father’s out 
Can I get a drink that is not stained by history? 
(from Sins of the Fathers, a song Poor Bishop Hooper)

-------------------------

The cooler air carries calmness

Who is speaking?
Who hears?
Who wants to understand?

Hurried, harried, hustled into a thousand things
Unloved and unwanted
Giving rise to a thousand things to unlearn

Who will teach us other ways
To the ones that have bound us so tight
Within constriction and pain and unacknowledged losses?

 
The cooler air carries calmness

Great uncertainty looms like a storm soon to break
To drench us with the dread of disease
And dying a lonely singular death

What flickers on in our dreams?
A candle soon to be snuffed out
Or the promise of sunrise?

 
The cooler air carries calmness

Could there now be an end to evil empires
Citadels of sin
Palaces of shame
To ignoble ignorance
That shamelessly exalt the utmost guilty
And condemn the most innocent?

Thousands and thousands of humanity
Brush in bloodied hands
Weeping
Sweep and sweep their ruined city of shards of glass
A people pierced by anger and grief in equal measure

Where is my broom?
What are those shards hurting my feet?
From what horrifying blast did they come?
 

And where will strength come from
To ingest rage and work toward a quiet acceptance
Of that which cannot be changed
But must be reckoned with?

…

From He who lived
From He who died
From drinking to the end
The so bitter dregs
Of humanity’s horror
The cup did not pass
From Him
The most innocent slain
By the utmost guilty
The most holy
Stained
By the utmost filthy
He did not protest to die such a lonely singular death
But Sunrise came
And there He appeared drenched in glory
And victory’s shout

‘’’

Godless generations can now stop
Dead in their tracks
And sweep the sins of their fathers out

I can sweep the sins of my fathers out
 

The cooler air carries calmness

What flickers on in our dreams?
A candle soon to be snuffed out
Or the promise of sunrise?

Frost-locked all Winter*

The key in the lock now turned
But it was hard in the turning
Slow and cold
But the time of turning was promise-filled
As light and warmth and birdsong
Filtered through the slowly opening door

We wait for Spring and Spring comes
Stays a while and then gives way to a fiercer fire

Before the frost-locked time returns
There is a vibrant interlude of red and orange
Deep earth-tones of beauty to be beaten back to wood and bark

But for now I’ll stand out in this season's showers
And wait for its full flowering

* From Christina's Rossetti's poem Spring

Equal day, equal night

Light to equal darkness is two dozen hours
Half and half, fifty percentage
Split right down the middle
That seems very fair not to have more of one or the other
Light or dark, day or night

When there is more light does joy rise?
The desire to go outside, be revealed as awake and alive
The birds singing from their branches and nest-making
Reminding us we can fly

When there is more darkness does sorrow increase?
The desire to stay inside, hide, hibernate is what many creatures do
And I am not of the earth like they?
Called to sleep the sleep of renewal

Equal day, equal night
Flight or rest
I like to think that I am woven in with heavenly matter
Sprinkled with some stardust that glints
Like stars twinkling even on into the darkest of nights ...

Summer Slow Fades

Summer slow fades towards a cooler clime

But oft throughout the day there’s bright sunbursts
Clouds may linger longer against its shine
As bees work hard against their winter’s curse
As summer slow fades towards cooler climes
There’s fullness in the air of ripened fruit
There’s early Autumn flowers in their prime
And trees heavy with leaves and deeper roots
As summer slow fades towards cooler climes
There’s memories of longer, sweeter days
There’s the knowing that it is now the time
For ghosts to vanish into summer’s haze
The seasons grow, they glow and on we go
The sun stays in the sky and winds still blow

I do not have you close by

I do not have you close by

And you did not have yours near

Either

And neither are we broken

We are hard

We made it and lost it

Because we would not let

The self tremble

In the evening breeze

No

Moulded it into stone

Round and hard

Un-smash-able

Yes

Tired [we are]

Tried [we did]

Tread [soft now]

Love

Sweet-lipped waits

Waits and sighs

In the fading light

But our hearts have flown

We have reaped

What we have sown

We have buried our treasure

Deep within

And inside

Him

The unexplored galaxies

And our undiscovered space

Swirls on and on

This Poet's Prayer

The exiled poet's words fell between concrete cracks
To incubate in darkness for unnumbered days
No one to count time passing
No one to add up the word-truth of the man
Who wept himself into his grave

A
Century
Of
Rain
Fell

Snow
Came
Down
In
Torrents

You were well and truly buried



O how we now shiver in this biting cold



But today unearthed
Your remains gleam in a certain kind of light
A heap of warm embers glowing

May they now grow hotter and burn within the bones
Of the living
May they now raise the dead to new life


~ From the top of my ruins I say only this ~

Bless, O Lord,  those bones with your unquenchable fire
To burn and burn


["I regret only this perhaps,
That I shall not be given my own grave,
Such as I have requested from my friends.
So what? Have I missed anything on this earth
With Words? I have waited for everything until
My heart is broken as great organs break.
This too - who knows? - will happen to my grave." *]


[[And so it did **]]



* Cyprian Norwid, A letter from America, 10 April 1853


** On 24 September 2001, 118 years after his death in France, an urn containing soil from the collective pauper's grave where Norwid had been buried in Paris' Montmorency cemetery, was enshrined in the "Crypts of the Bards" at Wawel Cathedral. The cathedral's bell heard only when events of great national and religious significance occur, resounded loudly to mark the poet's return to his homeland. 

Please let the Discourse Begin *

I read a poem by Cyprian Norwid today that so reminded me of one I wrote years before discovery the supreme genius of Norwid. His poem is called 'A Meeting'. The title of my poem 'The Power of the Word' comes from the title of an academic conference on poetry that I attended, which deeply depressed me.

A Meeting

Rubbish is swept away and every chair

In the vast hall is dusted. Great men come in,

Sit down with a scrape like swords sheathed, and then

They announce - what? That all of them are there.

And they sit and they sit – until somewhere

In the world a madman discovers steam,

A mediocre artist nails down a sun-ray,

And some untutored dentist with supreme

Skill saves man from his supreme agony.

The Academies keep silent – all the members there. **

(1851)

The Power of the Word

The academy is gathered Suited, ageing men going grey Growing into texts, so bending And swaying like overbearing trees And those listening, lost in the forest The frost settling on the ground The cold biting, the dark deepening

The care is only for ideas 
Those of self and others who have threaded Thought-waves of a similar ilk Into a silver-surfaced mirror reflecting The one image of manifold unafraid Man's folly Singular Wisdom waited a while and then left, weeping As she locked the door to protect those on the outside

(2010)

* 'End of discourse' is a phrase used by Norwid at the end of his poem Bagatelle (1) 

** 'Cyprian Norwid - Poems - Letters - Drawings' translated by Jerzy Peterkiewicz

Humanity

Humanity, no longer wrapped
But exposed
Removed from the womb
Of personhood  and remembrance

Humanity, no longer housed
But outside
In the cold of eviction
And forgetfulness

Humanity, no longer clothed
But naked
Exposed to the deception
Of all that is in the Idol

The Idol of humanity
Turns and turns
There is a beast
There is a harlot

There is wanton destruction

But there is a Lamb
Slain
But wreathed in victory
King of all Kings
Lord of all Lords
Standing, standing for war

Standing for Man
Standing for Woman
And her seed

Bloodshed inevitable

O sin in the flesh
Is killed only by killing flesh

Sacrifice embedded in humanity's heart
It beats, it beats
To forget
[that sin in the flesh is killed only by killing flesh]


It is finished

Softly, softly, tread softly

Softly softly, tread softly
Lofty ideas range around in the air above
Your head
And within a distant song

Softly softly, tread softly
See the shard ready to pierce
Your ready feet
And heart

Softly softly, tread softly
Flee to the near path
That is only lit from within
Your feet, heart and song

Hope 2018

There comes a word
To break small-stoned silence accumulating in the soul
A whispered word, wisdom-filled
For you

There comes an image
That is not self-filled, ego-driven or face-less
It is faith-filled, faithful and evergreen through the seasons
For you

There comes a sound
Swelling from the depths eternity-covered
Pitch-perfect, shame-lifting with each beat in time
For you

The fire falls

The fire falls and burns behind eyes, within hands

Not long now until the chapter ends and the seal is opened?

And with Inequity unleashed, Justice’s heart will be devoured

O Mercy will weep at such a sight -

Sorrow carrying her young and burying them one by one

In the ancient earth

She will fall silent - no lament or praise to hail this new dawn

The Advent sign was not what we imagined -

Blackness yielding eternity from Time’s beating breast

It took such an age for this coming

Long-awaited, baited-breath, storm-stilled at last
The whirlwind reaped leaving landscapes bereft

Signs of life ripped up and just vanished

O Mercy, Sorrow and Justice

Bowed witnesses, foreheads kissing dust

O Love, to behold beauty born of a woman’s seed

And the perfection of completeness

No incantation accompanied this incarnation

Just silent-night wondering and a heartbeat buried so deep

In eternity bursting into smoke-filled air

With a cry to quench the fiercest of fires

And divide death’s domain in two forever

Sarah Larkin, Advent 2016 and 2017

The bridegroom is at the door

Such a long wait in the dark
Lamplight and love
Fuel for the fire of longing 
For Him to arrive

How long?
Tired eyes anxiously looking
At how much oil is left
To keep the lamp lit

What is that sound?
A midnight cry: 
'Here's the bridegroom! 
Come out to meet him!' 

At last to come in
But O what is that din?
The door is now shut
To those whose oil has run out

There is a day
There is an hour
So keep your lamp alive
Whilst waiting for Him to arrive

The wolf is at the door

The wolf is at the door
Hungry for more than we have
Waiting for a weakness to show itself
And then to attack and quickly devour

The barbarians are at the gate
Rattling sword and shield
Baying for blood
And a sacrifice beyond imagining

The enemy within
Prowls around a beating heart
Like a fox waiting to pounce
When love is at its ripest

gifted

the gift
not the giver
is revered

the created
not the
Creator
is held up
high

o my

the gifted
creature
is hurled
from such heights
and spins
spiralling down
into deepening
darkness

sun-soaked stains
seep deep
from consciousness
to unconsciousness

sleeping so tightly
and sometimes
to dream
of heaven's
window

o where are you
in the day?

lost in the vast
universe
of the unmade
Maker

the uncreated
Creator
waits and watches
and weeps

that your sleep
may not be
the sleep
that is unto
death

Nicodemus goes public

Today I saw ...

Today I saw a graveyard of Christmas trees
Trees Christmassy no more
Stripped
Lying on forlorn sides
Waiting for the shredding
The shattering of needle and bark
Remembering better days
Of sparkling, twinkling lights, and rounded laughter
And so many gifts scattered close in celebration
Did it make the cutting down worthwhile?
Did no one say about the cold and the wind and the dark
And the bitter, bitter waiting for non-existence?

The only hope
Is resurrection