Two years ago I started writing sonnets. Suddenly I found that the words seemed to fall into place and many just seemed to write themselves.
I wrote them about anything and everything from the dog, the hearth rug or the washing machine to Greek myths and all the traditional themes of poetry. Since then I have written over 700 sonnets.
Here’s two that were written in response to local scenes.
In 2018 there was that wonderful sculpture of the poppies cascading over the wall of the keep in Carlisle Castle. The falling poppies seemed like all those men going to their deaths in France, but they also seemed to be about the fragility of our own lives. I imagined standing there looking at it with my granddaughter.
Poppies descending from the castle wall
Are like a mountain stream that breaks its course
Against the rocks that bar its way and force
Its current into drops that plunging fall
Into the surging cauldron down below.
The streams of marching men who flowed through France
Through fields and farms were ordered to advance
And fall to depths that we will never know.
Each poppy is a drop in time’s cold stream.
We find our lives consigned to flame and flare
And then be scattered on the wanton air.
We’re blown about like petals in a dream.
I hold your trusting hand. There is no sound.
The fallen poppies stain the grassy mound.
In April last year I was driving into Carlisle and there was the most wonderful display of cherry blossom being blown about the pavement in West Tower Street. It was stunningly beautiful in the bright sunlight, but everyone was rushing past going about their business.
Pink blossom scattered in the street
Was scuffed and trampled by the feet
Of passing boys who took no care
For the wind-borne petals in the air,
The soft entrancing butterflies
That filled these dull suburban skies
With memories of old Japan,
With geisha girls and how they ran
Delighting in the sifting breeze,
That eased the petals from the trees,
As, lifting blossom from the ground,
They knew the treasure they had found,
The treasure scattered at my feet
And trampled in this city street.
Last summer I drove up to Bewcastle to see the wonderful old cross in the churchyard with its carvings of vines and birds and animals. It has stood there since the seventh century and the carvings have been slowly eroded but they are still quite beautiful. It seemed to me that the sculptor had created a work that was at one with nature whereas we create things that harm the natural world.
The birds and beasts that rested on the vine,
- The scrolling arabesque of Celtic line
That spiralled upwards on this broken cross,
Were effigies in stone, subject to loss,
As weathered by the western wind and rain,
Their vitalness reduced to rock again.
They lost their chiselled edge, their sharp relief,
Their nature’s clarity of true belief,
To be the art work that we see decay
To the uncertainties we feel today,
And we, the guilty ones, survey the loss
Of life that hangs upon this broken cross,
The loss of trees and birds and winter skies,
As we create a world that slowly dies.
I have published two books of Sonnets. 70 Sonnets, and Siciliennes and Sarabands. They are available from Bookends - in Carlisle and Keswick - at £5 each.
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