Here are some recent journeyman verses (ten of them) – some suitable for pub sing-songs round the old Joanna, or for guitar and fiddle perhaps…
JULY DREAM TIME
Honey-suckle, dog-rose and bramble entwine
then there’s meadow-sweet, hare-bell, marjoram
evoking deep, ancient Summers to combine
sensual moments of the great I am!
Once, Stitch-wort and wild strawberry
Wood-sorrel and anemone, shone through colours
Of campion, cranes’ bill, bluebell – deep memory
of man-made lanes and long human hours
Now, I brush past fox-glove and cow-parsley
As Bronze Age drovers did on this same lane
And as people should as far as time can see
And I, in husbandry of crops I can sustain
Edwin Muir says, we are this side of the Fall
Not Eden, but agriculture – town and farm
but now grown cancerous and just too tall
Silhouette of pale hubris bent on self-harm
Let’s step back in concert. Uncover lost homes
In extensive woods and well-farmed fields
Where seasons pass in their metronome
and we follow, dependant on tribute and yield
Town and village will make and trade
By steps pragmatic as this verse’s feet
In sequence with heart beats as man-made
and natural forces resolve and meet
Where gravity brings water to ingenious hands
Where wind propels sails over dividing seas
Wresting economies for people in durable lands
From dead hands of ecocide, mal-fire, monopolies…
I sing of Cloud Cuckoo land, or so it’s said
While truth is abstract – status and spending
But I prefer real things – living and dead
Love, pulse and breath with no cruel ending
***
HYMN TO A LOST CYNEFIN
I’ll meet you there in the sweet by and by
in that old camp ground in the sky
friends will gather by the old roof tree
leaning together yet free
Seems so far from my resting place
so long it was reft from me
we flew too fast for the Earthly pace
of soil and river and sea
We stood by the pires of fossilised years
far from our earthly home
grown rich in the trading of future tears
selling rights of those to come
I’ll meet you there in that old camp ground
where all that is lost is found
We’ll gather there in the sweet by and by
in the arms of earth and sky
***
SONG BORROWED FROM THE INCREDIBLE STRING BAND
A glass for my old market town
and for her every trade
De-spend the stifling retail park
Re-spend what she has made
Let money flow through pub thresh-holds
to stalls on market days
Let church and mosque and temple ring
the old convivial ways
You know I believe its easy
Yes I believe its easy
Know I believe it’s easy my love
Don’t even have to try
Here’s health to every ingenious skill
which senses its terrain
A curse for limp dependency
on blind-fold corporate chains
Re-spend people into town
De-spend the motorway
to a distant wage for fruitless ends
where self-respect can’t stay
You know I believe its easy
Yes, I believe its easy
You know I believe its easy, my love
Don’t even have to try
A glass to fruits of woods and fields
in hands of those who’ll tell
what seasons bring from where and how
whose skills made what they sell
A glass to folk in concert halls
in theatre and cafe
May every season’s festival sing
the old convivial ways
You know I believe its easy
Yes, I believe its easy
You know I believe its easy, my love
Don’t even have to try
***
TO THE TUNE OF MY CREOLE BELLE
I love the hand – that was dealt to me
It holds far more – than I’ll ever be
Though I chose more wrong – than I chose right
It gave brightest days – for deepest night
When we unclasped, – that hand we held
to choose dead time – for power’s oil-geld
the allotted place – that was given to Man
was flushed away – as black gold ran
My dearest friends – all we were given
was cast aside – our hopes were driven
to empires made – by fossilised years
we chose blind power – and future tears
I love the hand – that was dealt to me
it gave me my part – of complexity
cultures are made – by common sense
that what we do – has consequence
Choose bright Earth – and walk away
from fires of Man – to that happy day
when species swell – in one Earth song
and we find the space – to at last belong
Home and hearth – is where it began
We love our fire – just because we can
We must out-law – that deepest right
to have bright new days – for darkest night
***
The Source
My muse, you are where all life lives
The future’s source
You are the gauge to test all knowledge
Font of experience
Long years we were alien to you
In narcissistic histories
Now, contrite I stoop to you
For all we do is by your light
My consequence is in your being
For better and for worse
From you alone the future springs
In lovely day or darkest night
You are heart-beat and sap-flow
Breath of the world
You are sunrise and sunset
Noon-sweet shade
You are fierce tides surging
Over rolling stones
You are lives evolving
As species cascade
You are the vanished calling
From sensual moments
When all life happens
And futures are made
***
Song caught by the grave of Christina Rossetti
Let’s join the caravan from here to there
From fantasy to earth my friend
Feel sun on your face and wind in your hair
Let sensual truth ascend
How far is the place we truly belong?
It touches our feet and sings
Were we here when communities first made their songs?
Summer, Winter and Spring?
You trod on this soil and broke its bread
And in forests not of your making
You stepped by the codes of the filial dead
Wood songs drew your singing
Does the road lead uphill? It seems so far
From law and wage and schooling?
There are no miles to where you are
Let them go. End your fooling
Greed of wealth made law and school
To supress how we’d respond
To soil and plant and water ruled
By other laws and bonds
There are no miles to our common home
But a foot-worn way of seeing
Where mile-full, fenced exclusions roam
And we trespass our own being
Where lives are ruled by nothingness
And the sensual world is lost
And deepest loves are meaningless
And life is hung with frost
Not of cold, but heat-frozen time
Fires of fossilised years
Man ascending a dead energy climb
To gas and ashes and tears
Relax into soils of home my friend
There is no journey there
It is where life begins and ends
Finite, true and fair
***
Folk Song
As I rode out to plough, one morning
Voices of Centuries chimed with my call
Summoned soil and ox and iron bringing
Culture to nature this side of the Fall
Property comes with disarray
“Wealth accumulates men decay”
As I walked out in the fields one morning
Grass webs caught dew and harvested light
And every sound was of small birds singing
And from every step rose holy delight
Landlords came ripping people from land
Money from wool sacks killed husbandry’s hand
Now property and usury stalk the field
Without touch, or scent, or sight, or sound
Lord is the market. Money the yield.
Ghosts of destruction shroud holy ground
Gaseous blankets from fires, each hour
Smother where people and nature can flower
Now millions of sequestered years will burn
And billions of living fields are dead
Enclosure is blind and deaf to the urn
Of the loved and lost and mistreated
Living Earth – living people – one and indivisible
Holy soil, holy crops, holy sensible, wholly visible
(then joyous fiddle and any other instrument for joy)
***
Boogaloo Water
Standin’ by the water doin’ the boogaloo dance
Time came rolling in – we didn’t stand a chance
Water’s standin’ over – my heart and my place
Time came rollin’ in playin’ the boogaloo base.
Do the boogaloo yahoo yeha!
Fiddle, squeeze box, harmonica, mandolin, base (Doing the boogaloo)
Water washed over my beans and my corn
Boogaloo dancin’ where I was raised ‘n born
Boogaloo dancin’ where old folks are restin’
Time came rollin’ in playin’ wild mandolin
Do the boogaloo yahoo yeha!
Fiddle, squeeze box, harmonica, mandolin, base (Doing the boogaloo)
It’s broken all the sluices an’ is headed down below
Bruin’ wild boogaloos, reapin’ what we sow.
Scales of boogie justice put us all in the riddle
Time came rollin’ in playin’ harmonica and fiddle
Do the boogaloo yahoo yeha!
Fiddle, squeeze box, harmonica, mandolin, base (Doing the boogaloo)
Seems the best we folk can do is do boogaloo dancin’
‘N join the water flow. There ain’t no second chancin’
‘N join the water flow learnin’ river’s ol’ romance
Time came rollin’ in livin’ the boogaloo dance
Do the boogaloo yahoo yeha!
Fiddle, squeeze box, harmonica, mandolin, base (Doing the boogaloo)
***
A Carol (dancing song)
Sweet Mother Nature, give me room to stand
As people once looked back at lost Doggerland
Sweet Mother nature how much can I bring?
What size is the plot to let small birds sing?
Sweet Mother Nature, I’ve plucked Adam’s desires
I’ve rape you and pillaged as my status requires
Sweet Mother Nature, you are haemorrhaging
Rood tree! My slave-tree! I’ve sent no offering
Who am I?
Everyman
What do I?
The can-can
The two-step
The if I can then you can
The giant step
I’ve stepped in the rose-garden – the honey-suckle bower
Each species selected for a pleasurable hour
I’ve feasted on selections for the finest cuisine
And trashed all the rest by an oil-fed machine
Sweet Mother Nature
I’ve no space
No cure
No embrace
No daughter
No son
No laughter
My name is Man
Of the can-can
My name is oblivion.
***
Good Time Rock ‘n Roll with the Addition of Jamaican beach music
Nothin’ anybody can do
Nothin’ anybody can say
My doin’ don’t belong to you
Gonna do it anyway
(musicians – tambourine, tin drum, wash-board, mandolin, clarinet, trumpet…)
Y’ doin’ don’t belong to me
Nothin’ that I can say
I’ve gotta learn to see
Y’ gonna do it anyway
(musicians as above, but then quietening to Jamaican lilt)
Where I belong
The elders sing
Eternal songs
Of all belonging
Livin’ time
‘s mine to hand
By livin’ rhyme
Where children stand
Inhabit commons
Of good behaviour
Time summons
Digger and leveller.
Enclosures shade
The ingenious view
Cultures are made
By what people do
Please come away
To scents and sounds
Bird-song dawn
Sea-shore day
Fields and woods
Where life is found.
Common good
Is common ground
Nothin’ anybody can do – & etc… (Refrain and return of rock ‘n roll)
***
This from 1990 something – Anorak
Romantic coastal landscape through a Claude-glass again….
And it seemed that all we`d worked for ebbed away
in the ebb and flow,
of Blair`s sublunary yet lunar sway.
We let it go,
though we never loved the violence of his tide,
we let it ride,
and lost all we`d valued in the undertow.
Well anyway,
these thoughts are branching veins in a roseate glow
and all we say
are leafless twigs in life`s liquid light.
An appetite
for conciliatory night pieces has flown away.
Abandon hope.
To survive, we stretch the truth and turning pay
out the rope
to Blair`s Bush-black wings in the dusking sky.
We`ll try.
Tonight, there`s no room to deny the Fall.
We`ve grown too tall.
Winter woods and fields cannot hold the Tide.
We`ll hide.
There`s no room for This Earth and the Cold Light of Day.
One must stay.
There`s no room for both Hope and the W.T.O..
One must go.
***
Old Song
In the valley of the restless mind,
as I stood musing on the moon
and serious faces left behind
and embarrassments both late and soon,
I heard one moan, “She`s such a dish
`s why you find me here. `s for love I languish.”
Ah yes, I said and share my drink
from eastern sloping terra-firma,
though feet slip gently off the brink,
wine`s soil and sun`ll infuse a humour
to float grief and loss and other rubbish
quietly at anchor, mellowing the wildest wish.
“Great – thanks. Why not? I`ll swig that bottle.
It`s so long since I`ve had my end away.
She says I should read more Aristotle,
(pragmatically) or float above it Plato`s way,
but because memory of it`s far from fresh,
I can`t draw my mind from her human flesh.”
And so we sat watching shooting stars,
as owls t`witted to their mate`s t`woos
and beetles droned their way and from far –
rams were grumbling among the ewes.
And we composed odes to oblivion and sang,
as modern blokes do, and all our echoes rang,
in all terrains from mountain or from mead.
Dear God, The very darkness seemed awake
wherever simple tunes had sown a seed.
All solitary things in nature howled their stake
in the indignity and lonely chaos of defeat,
wherever studious, moon-struck, disembodied voices meet.
***
Drinking Song
Here`s to Giant Steps on our lovely Moon,
early in the Last Century`s afternoon,
which remain, even now to hold the tune`s
intoxicant.
To Contemporary Concern I make my pledge.
Campion and stitchwort in the hedge
are so full for Twenty-first Century knowledge,
they are vibrant.
Here`s rank water for those to whom new forms come,
to mutate Creation to the critic`s forum,
like an Ofsted child to a learning outcome.
I rant
and raise my glass to where Arcady stood.
“Rivive our seminary with curious blood:
fresh as the blue-bells in the wood,
and fragrant.”
For New Generation, New Art, but such dullness is strewn
on pavements to promising forms, that may soon…….
Oh form`s but technology to catch a bright tune.
I decant
my vain sorrow into this old instrument:
a re-cycled form that catches it`s content
on glad roads to Hell, with such indolent intent,
it`s pleasant.
Happiness is a large, though nebulous plant,
pushing horizontal, peculiar shaddows aslant,
as my base drone calls to it`s lunar descant.
***
