Times of Yore

And in the aftermath
The whole world quaked
The little birds in the trees sang
Their big world beat
And shoes began their tapping
Down old familiar streets
While the new world was made
In the skipping heart beats

And each place that I had known
Came from some place beneath
The blood extracted from a stone
The thoughts of my belief

I thought that I had known
Just what you were about
But I had read too many books
To be without any doubt

My head was filled with big ideas
And things that I called facts
Just truths that had really been blown
Into God given laws or acts

And in actual fact the tombe
Was written in four acts
One of dancing bees alone
The second of marshaled cats
The third a screaming cacophony
Of Unbridled acts of joy
The fourth like some regret that's known
Only to little boys

And I stood in wonder of all that came to pass
The single voice in a woodland
Calling from the grass
A fallen tree in splender of its dying root
The fire of a birth right won fast
By fierce pursuit

And each were but an emblem of what I could enjoy
When I looked out from castle Eden
At the world He had destroyed

There were no sepulcred temples
Nor thrones of Kings long dead
There were no fire of barren towns
That called for John the Baptist's head

Only the rolling ocean
That answered but for itself
The carol of those lost at sea
Those far from home or health

I wished them on the journey
And sent them Godspeed
The briars and the tourneys
Twisting like the weed
One a rose of wisdom
The other a love sewn seed
Both fell onto fallow ground
Full of envy or of greed

And when they came to harvest
Nothing much of crop was reaped
But for the heads of corn
Whose ears were deaf
And whose eyes did bleed

I searched for the shepherd
Who could rescue the lost sheep
But he told me, friend
I cannot save those who do not bleat

So I called for the lamb
Who was lost and far from heat
And the warmth of the caravan
When the road has worn its feet

I waited in the small hours
Between midnight and the dawn
And soon came the fledgling lamb
Too tired now worldly shorn

We clipped its hooves
And sheered its wool
And once again it joined its flock
One more black sheep to join the herd
One more soul bound to the rock

One Easter Sunday Evening

The scents of jasmine vanish
In the halls where they speak Spanish
And the Banquets all are famished
Down the roads where taxis wait

With six pence in their pockets
And rolls of tenners
Photographs held in lockets
By prisoners and lovers

And Swindlers clean the carpets
Of Millionaires who ask for it
And antique dealers in markets
Hold up artworks to a glass

Four and twenty black birds
Follow out the ravens
Who speak nothing but death words
To the graveyard shift crews

And cockerels in the morning
Wear black for those in mourning
Heralding the dawning
Of a new day spent alone

In the tawny honey dew
Calligraphers they sew
New buttons onto old Bibles
Made of Stone

But I stand there waiting
To listen to lovers talking
From womb to tomb
They're fating
Every stepping stone

For the temples now in silence
Even the birds share no more violence
As the dream of Gerontius
The scurvy pebbles are thrown

And the potter at his wheel
As the pickers in the field
Unearth what was too real
For the inhabitants of Rome

I feel every ivy leaf
Fall like some coincidence
Of a half penny's incidence
As it spins like a silver moon

Unfortunates and cowards
Lock their loves in ivory towers
Wait for knights with white powers
To free them from black doom

Since Marshals ring up Burglars
To break into their particulars
And leave no trace of their vernaculars
As they speak upon their phone

I wish for heavenly bowers
In the sandpits of hell's dowers
Where the marriage of a Figaro
Is a wedding for God alone

I saw an eagle

I saw an eagle on the water
A pig going off to slaughter
A woman in a feint
And a killer with red paint
The writing on the wall
Says I'm tired of it all
And I want to escape
But I can't rewind the tape
It must play on and on
This same old funny song
Of love and life and hate
Of being too early or too late
But never quite on time
To make the perfect crime
To commit the killer hook
To a song or write a book
Never quite so strong
To right the thing that's wrong
I just left it where it fell
Let the whole world go to hell

The end of Beauty

That's the end of Beauty
The tram has turned
On its pretty-polly rails
Down a shadowed road

That's the sun left behind
Its over our shoulder
Rolling down the blind
Like down a hill rolls a boulder

And so I guess it must be true
The Danube really it is blue
Or green or brown, as a frown
Depending on the mood
Its passing through

Oh river throw up your arms and wave
Throw your children to the banks to save
Throw back the bottle tops
Rescue the slaves
We are chained to your bridges
Like martyred braves

Danube in the Bayeux
Your weeping willows cry
Leaf tears into your pools
When your river runs dry
But in this Spring season
Lush Green grow their flanks
That they trail in your flow
Like slender arms
Reaching from your banks

Danube is a season, ever changing joy
Restless without reason
The jobless to employ
River business seen to
They go home with thanks

Budapest Baby

I said do you think its a girl or a boy
She said what the baby?
No I said the city, pretty baby
Why can't you tell?
I mean isn't every city feminine then?
She said it has its city lights on the river
Its not masculine
It shivers, it shudders, it beats and it dances
It slides and it slithers its feet
it takes chances
Take the risk with me then, she said with a smile
I already did, I lost my head for while
Dizzy, dizzy, ditzy lady this city of Budapest
charming in its courtship
Its dirty unwashed cleanliness
Its apathy, its cool
It's thrown out all the rules
It eats you up and spits you out
Yes its a woman, no less
If it were Paris, it would Romance you
In a boulevard
If it were Rome it would slay you
In a ruin of a Roman yard
But it is Budapest, it is past its best
It is full of unbridled restlessness
It is young and dumb and silly
Then it is hobo Roman villa
It is stone broke and the rest
It is a face looking up in helplessness
Then it slaps you back in an angry passion
Yes it is feminine after a fashion
It is ungoverned freedom
A lack of control
It is laying back after an attack
But it has and keeps its soul
Somehow it bleeds into its river
Its dreams of a future
Somehow it blows on its reeds
A city song in a quiver
A warble like a song bird in a tree
The morning after
The night of joyous laughter
Cold, and bold and free