No bells to ring
Or poet’s cry
When in night’s cloak
The half-sleep moment
Love is confirmed
Not with alarm
The awakening
But in brief exchange
Simply
Silently
With a touching of hands
No bells to ring
Or poet’s cry
When in night’s cloak
The half-sleep moment
Love is confirmed
Not with alarm
The awakening
But in brief exchange
Simply
Silently
With a touching of hands

With Debbie at Wimbledon restaurant for my 70th birthday celebration attended by my five children (Dan from Berlin had furthest to travel). A lovely night.

A courting couple on the seafront, Weston-Super Mare, summer 1947. Contents of the carrier bag forever a mystery!
If not in primeval soup whereby life beget
Then begs a puzzle no one’s solved as yet;
Did the chicken come first or was it an egg?
Did yolk claim the honours or was it a leg?
Did both egg and chicken first creation plan?
Or an Almighty scramble inside the pan?
What I see in your poetry is a fiercely pure and deep perception
Of how all life and existence is connected to an original energy;
A magical mix of wonderful words and classical interpretation
But essentially the charge of youth reacting to those demonic days
When succulence of desire need never be sophisticated or explained,
Nor the values of existence measured in the acquisition of blank gazes.
For all mortals you created pictures brilliantly from the garden of gods
Whereupon in plotting to scoop richness from the entirety of earth
There came a loveliness to see but not hold and in touching came torment
As you suffered pain given to those who reach for stuff gods gorge upon
And out of agony came an immortality borne beyond beauty and the truth

When friends are few
And the night is long
In the fast embrace
To love belong.
When words are weak
And the truth has gone
In the heart alone
To love belong.
When days are dark
And a torch not shone
In the soul remains
To love belong.


