Near Wookey

On a Sunday morning

The old farmer stands

On the bow of his hill ship

And like Ahab

Surveys his pastures

The Mendip hills in their slate green light

Whose trees stand out like ships on the horizon

Distant Galleons riding a swell

And a sea of green before them in the fell

He turns back to his gunwale of hedge

And follows it with his dogs out of sight

Budapest times

In the Out, and any way between

From the Castle set in the Clouds I dream

Dreaming of the spires through

Salt encrusted streets

Someone has sprinkled the Danube

Now its grown extra feet

Far beyond the telegraph

Far over the clouded plain

We journeyed on for hours

Until we rested again

About the busy city

Where the rounds and squares

Fitted into pegged holes

Banners on castles walls where statues stare

Trailing in the sunny azure

An actor from the ramparts calls

Down to invaders at the doors

Stifling in the thronging crowd

We held hands in palms

In clovers, in the marble whiteness

Of the stone that shone like daisy petals

In a field of fire

Under the Trinity Statue and the dome

Whose symbols drove away the plague

Whose gold was yellow chrome fatigue

Whose cherubim twinkled as a fat ballerina around

The legs of Mother Mary, Father, Son and Spirit’s Surround

Trumpeters and fanfares of Ideas

So high and Mighty Up high within the battlements

Embattled soldiers, embodied all the queer and flighty

Tendencies of Post holders to abandon their guard

But their Military training kept them standing hard

(It was a military thing not an object d’art)

Standing to protect this fortress of the mind

Where such ideas integral to statehood we can find

The common man must be able to see but not quite

Touch the divine

For If he does what else is left but to topple regime

Castle post

Aristocracy must keep its distance from peasant orders

Of that kind

In the pleated Hungarian Night

In the pleated Hungarian Night

Where the clouds are rippling high

And the moon is burning bright

Rolling silver pale as a coin in the sky

Hear the houses

See the stain of the blouses

Washed in the rain

In the pleated Hungarian night

As Trans-danubian pillars write

Their own blood histories

On the wall

Of them that rise

And them that fall

In the pleated Hungarian night

While the tyres turning tight

See the racing cars, squeal wheels

As they chase stars on their heels

In the pleated Hungarian night

Because the big sky is there by right

 And the plains are without their borders

So men’s brains are free from chains or orders

They can dream big, in the tree twigs

Seen through the sight

Of the pleated Hungarian night

Long time No Sea

The burnished coast

Green as a pea

Hungary boasts

An inland sea

Where the Holy Ghost

Is in no poverty

The manicured devils finger nails

Ripened claws

As the moonlight pales

Walking east from Minehead’s Pier

The glassy sand, the grassy dune

The monthly moon in Luna phase

As a night sky on Holidays

Easter Fete of spraying water

Over the daughter the Mother, the bride

Or father’s pride

By the boy, the man

The man over board

The Buoy out at Sea

Lost asking in return for saving a wilting flower

Can you with a Piros Tojak (red Egg) save me?

Long time no Sea

In Hungary

Landlocked but knows the Loch, the lake

The lace of Gossamer

Webs like a misty white sea

Over fields or meadows

Where the swallows and swifts

Are the fish

The insects the creel

The whales the loafing cows

Treading through the long grass swells

Like monks saying vows

And little gofers like dolphins

Popping up their heads

Sharks like foxes

Sniffing out ways to be fed

The Sea is the land, the land is the sea

Because what we’ve planned

Is what we can be

And what is possible

There’s no impossibility in endless ocean

In rolls of Mountains

In the fractal geometry

The Partial differential equations

Of change time geology

In topography of sky, sea and land

Interchangeable as three dimensions

Of Space or time

Stretched intermingling

Through the human mind

Dead Sharks

The frantic Atlantic

The Pancreatic Adriatic

The Brownian motion of the Indian Ocean

The rather wet flannel of the English Channel

The rusted Iron Quay of the Trusted Red Sea

Cajoling Memory

Of Sea shanty carols

The whiff of cliffs

The dead fish scrolls

That turn up and roll

Over and over in a white wash

Of crustacean suicide

Calcium lime tide

Abide with me

Its baptism goes

Submerge let go

Of your worldly throes

Let wild horses stampede you to sleep

In the dark inviting night

A swimming adventure

The temptation of death

Easy as slipping into sleep

Less Temporary

Though is drowning

Cousin to snoring, yawning and frowning

Conscious only of its state in itself

Narcoleptic Narcissus

Of the Narwhale tribe

The seeing of unicorns

Of stars in the reflection

Of waves and tide

The thrashing of sharks

The gnashing of teeth

The permanency of death

And its impossibility in the mind of someone living

Except in the Sea

Where we’re all out of reach

But we have to keep moving or like a shark we shall die

A shark has no choice but to kill to survive

And then what you're left with is a dead shark 

Missing Words

Do you remember Weöres Sándor

The exhibit of moving words

Like our own story

We were filling in the gaps

With our hands

Trying different combinations

Approaching a whole

You carried the words so gently

In your cupped hand

As on your lips

So like your kisses

But sometimes they missed

An unrhymed vowel

Improperly pronounced consonant

The dissonance made the little birds shake

On their brittle little legs

But they kept singing

After all

We were not so lost for words

Ours had wings and flew

And the gaps were no more empty

Because we didn’t fill them

But fuller for all we knew

This too will pass

This too will pass

The rose that climbs upon the wall

The primrose blossom all

The Snowdrops and the Hawthorn’s flower

As in the wee small hour

This too will pass

The road that’s cracked and torn asunder

The memories of regret or blunder

And time as light that trips in power

Flickers brief as candlesticks in the midnight hour

This too will pass

The Spring whose surprises do unfold

The stranger waits on a platform cold

The meeting of two friends by chance

Or the sharing of a final dance

This too will pass

All the songs of love and man

All the law broken, held or still in plan

Every thought, or deed or act

Each right or wrong, promise or contract

This too will pass

And so you say you love the season

Spring’s festoon April’s foolish reason

You say the day you prefer to night

What’s bright and gay over what’s out of sight

This too will pass

Be not surprised that all is folly

That the wheel turn’s rain requires your brolly

Nor that woman and man curse and hurt

In Tavern’s the same doomed play rehearsed

This too will pass

I see the writing on the wall

The blood that’s in the mouth of a fool

An eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth

What lies are told through Vanity

Or in Humility what Truth

 This too will pass

The Starlings murmur in the sky

The Cloth is starched, cast is the dye

The Spindle turns driven by the wheel

Desire burns but its just the way we feel

This too will pass

I have no possessions, though once I had Gold

Like a King, I would buy a thing; even a soul could be sold

Wisdom is worth more than any belonging

Sadness makes the heart larger, than for any true or false longing

This too will pass