Some cities were built on solid rock, Some cities were built on marsh, Some cities were built on shifting sands, Or fault-lines sleeping in filigree strands – And some cities brought their own earthshock By building themselves in wilderness harsh, Or building themselves on the very lands That other tribes sought in their conquering hands. But no matter how long ago, And no matter how brute their overthrow, And no matter how the northwinds blow – Not all their dust shall dissipate Upon the breezes’ sarabands – For all a city’s kiss-of-fate, A glimpse remains, a trace withstands. Through their footings bared and carvings old, Through their buried pot and coins of gold, And through their ev’ry mention in the tellers’ tales still told.
Some cities were held in high esteem, Some cities were held in spite, Some cities were held as shining states To journeymen seeking their golden gates – And some cities gave a lustrous gleam That prophets implored their gods to smite, That preachers condemned with envious hates As other men praised for their glorious freights. Ambition or apocalypse, Each name upon their distant lips As the place where sin and fortune grips – The place, the home of orgies grand, The nest of countless sirens’ baits, Where ev’ry taste it shall command, As ev’ry thirst it satiates. Through their legends past and heroes bold, Through their poets’ songs and glamours sold, And still their very mention breathes them life that we behold.
I happened upon her by chancery lane, A greenford-eyed angel was riding my train. She stood like a monument, no poplar tart, She’s shoreditch to snaresbrook my hammersmith heart.
Her body’s a temple, all saints can’t compare, So redbridge her lips and so blackwall her hair. Her beauties are out of my gallions reach – They pinner my tongue, which cockfosters my speech.
A wapping-great loughton’s west acton the fool – He’s epping and barking, but she’s morden cool. She’ll ruislip his grasp with her fairlop display, And mudchute him down as she bounds green away.
I see her each mornington crescent alone, Her marble arch skin is like cream leytonstone. This queensway of smiling’s from upney above – I cyprus with wonder and kilburn with love.
The sun does not rotate about us, Yet it always looks that way – And even when we have the proof, Our eyes persist with their untruth. And solid rock, we learn, is suss – It’s full of holes between the play Of atoms, widely spaced – so small, It’s mostly nothing there at all.
Science, sometimes, isn’t what’s observed – Especially when it’s tiny or immense. Science shouldn’t be so damned absurd, And have such little truck with common sense. Science doesn’t think, of course, on whether it gets heard, It doesn’t even know it gives offence. But Science sometimes doesn’t act The way good Science should – Like when the certain’s inexact, And just beyond what’s understood.
But never get to thinking that we always must defy – Such easy routes to knowledge are the scamjobs of the loafer – They lazily are citing the above to justify Their finding spare dimensions down the backside of the sofa. “If my theories don’t make sense, It’s cos I’m smart and you are dense.” More like, I think, the answers lurk In flailing, stabbing theories cos your sums won’t bloody work.
We cannot use the unknown as a wand To fill the gaps that loom Between the atoms and their neighbour’s bond. These gods are just as empty as the vacuum They are trying to replace – We cannot summon laws from empty space.
But once again, we must recall, That Science doesn’t hold a view – It simply is, that’s all. And if we don’t like where it leads us to, Whose fault is that ? The Universe is flat, or else a ball ? One day we’ll know, one day we’ll see What’s there already, always there, But doesn’t even care for you and me.
So Science, gorgeous Science, thrusting Science – Never let us go ! For you shall not deter with Quantum, All your challenges, we want ’em. Long you taunt us with defiance Yet one day, we’ll know – The random chance that engineers The cam upon the cosmic gears, And how your unseen matter matters more than it appears. A universe of precious things Revolves, vibrates, adheres – And quarks may yet be full of pulsing strings On which you softly play and play the music of the spheres.
This rhyme is too faulty, it just doesn’t sit, It’s splutty and halty, it stumbles awry. This rhyme is too salty, it rattles with grit, It’s ragged and jolty, it’s sneaky and sly.
And there is your problem, your verse is a word-crime, Demurred-crime, absurd-crime, an everyone-heard-crime. So there is your problem, your verse is an eye-rhyme, A dry-rhyme, a shy-rhyme, a just-couldn’t-try-rhyme.
We’ve all of us done it, we have to admit, We kick it and stun it, and hope they won’t espy. We’ve gambled and run it, with rhymes not legit, We’ve all of us spun it, and hoped it would fly.
But you sir, yes, you sir, you jolly-well knew, sir ! Your rhyme is untrue, sir, it does not apply. For shame, sir, it’s lame, sir, you must face the blame, sir They don’t sound the same, sir, your rhyme is a lie.
The lost quotations noticeboard at the Poetry Library, London.
Lost Quotations
Is this how this verse will end, As a barely remembered line or two And all the rest a blur of forty years ? When memory is no friend, And anyway, maybe you never knew The rest of it, that never reached your ears. At least you can still pretend If you pin up a card with a precious few Of its words, to the scrutiny of wordy peers, Then one of them yet can mend The missing heart, and finally claim its due – And spare it from the fate each poet fears.
You say you believe In demons and miracles, Gaia and Eve, In songlines and spirituals, Voodoo and karma, The Secret and aliens, Danu and dharma, And Episcopalians, Dreamcatchers, leylines, The Masons and star-signs, Von Däniken, Xenu – They all mean you well. From Asgard to Jedi, From Hades to Hell, There you dwell.
And I, you think of as too scientific, Too always-specific, Too unhieroglyphic, Too closed in my mind And too open to doubt, Who therefore won’t find What it’s really about – Too weighted by knowing To get where I’m going, My aura ain’t glowing Within or without.
And I guess That you may just be right after all, I confess My cynical pride’s due a fall – That is, If we’re really not really at all But a part of some story Whose telling is tall. For mostly in stories All magic is true, With morals and mores As naïve as you.
Not like in the Real World, The boring old Real World, Where physics still rules And must do so forever – It hasn’t a twisting Beyond its existing, But punishes fools Who refuse to be clever. For the laws shall apply To each rainbow and fly – We cannot suspend them For even a second. Impartial and total, Not just anecdotal – We’d best to befriend them, For by them we’re reckoned.
So tell me, my dear, Are we really right here, right now, Just as real as we feel ? Or maybe, somehow Are we all, I don’t know… Characters perhaps In some novel or show That scripts us and traps us, Creates us and scraps us, Like gods of the gaps Where the laws come and go. So tell me the deal, Your ardent conviction – Are we really real, Or are we just fiction ?
From the First Notes of Dawn to the Last Chords of Dusk
1. Praise Apollo, Sun and Light ! Praise the hand-harp glorifier ! Plays them strings like dynamite, Plays so far he’s outasight. Bringing on the dawn with its mojo rising, Day-long solos from his nuclear fire – And as for his vocals, you should hear the guy sing ! From early-morning blues to evensong choir. He plucks and strums it, Twangs and drums it, Whistles and hums it till his rays expire.
2. But to Marsyas the shepherd, Dusk was no time to retire – So he heckled undeterred This yawning, lightweight, early-bird. “Eager rising, my premising Says is most unhealthy and absurd. Dawn despising, my advising Says is only nat’ral and preferred. For those of us by music stirred Think morning is a dirty word. And what bards view his skies of blue or clouds of white ? Or ever gets to see Apollo’s pyre ? We rise with the lunar satellite To score the shadows, sing the night, And likewise dress in black attire.”
3. “So a challenge I declare, Apollo,” said this acolyte. “Dude, I gotta tell you square I love your image, dig your hair, So please don’t think that all my criticising Is intended as a jealous slight – But you, without your even realising, Lost, I say, your promise and your bite. Let us both play, if you dare, Before the Muses, maidens fair, To blow their fuses, lay them bare. And they shall judge between us, good or dire: Who’s all that or who just cruses, Who’s got nout and who’s got flair. (And man, those spacey chicks can sure inspire.)”
4. Thus the play-off was before These groupies egging on the fight. Order settled by the straw: The kid played first. (He’d lost the draw.) This farmboy fresh from out the shire Lets his magic flute ascend and soar As swooping melodies explore And drift in phrases reaching ever higher – Never shrill, but weightless flight, Aloft, a-dream, their souls alight, He sates their ev’ry appetite. Then comes a shift, the notes downpour As raining from the sky they roar – Led on, led on: this pilot-piping flyer, Who brings them home with themes comprising Of a thousand heights or more. Surely now the gold he’s sizing – How can old Apollo match this score ?
5. Picking up his trusty lyre, Tuning up the strings a nock, Stroking soft each tension-wire, So he turned to his defier: “Son,” he said, “for all you mock, You’re not just crock, I’m no denier: Prince of Pipes – the Fluting Jock. Now, Mister, go home to your flock – For I am King, and you will call me Sire.” Suddenly by some strange sleight His strings were ringing loud and bright, The very air his amplifier. He could make that catgut weep, and tenderly suspire. Now the god was energising Thrashing up the fahrenheit Bass-enticing, tenor-prising Vaporising kryptonite. Squealing strings – discordant crier, Then teased from the aftershock A melody so pure and sprite: The long-lost chord to which we all aspire. “Son, for all your poppycock You really tried, you weren’t just schlock I’m almost sad to clean your clock – But this gig’s mine, you neophyte, For you might fly, but I can rock ! ”
6. Waiting for the girls to sum it, Who would get the nul point blight ? Not our Marsy, for he’s won it ! Blow me down, the kid has done it ! He made all the dames ignite – Faced the music, overcome it. But this god won’t take the plummet: “Just a moment, squire.” Apollo turned his harp capsizing, Upside-down he plays, reprising All he played before entire. “Can you do the same ?” came his enquire. “Course I can’t !” the boy said, wising To his sudden shaky plight. “Flutes don’t work like that, as you know quite.” “Okay, then, no need for spite,” Apollo said, “I’ll turn mine right.” And so again he played his harp – but still the artful tryer, Now his voice was synchronizing, Sweetly singing, improvising – Such a voice ! And who can not admire ? Swiftly was the kid cognising How he’s losing out his prizing, But his protests only mire – For, Apollo makes surmising: “Do you not use your breath to expedite The notes within your flute ? And might Not I use breath to best excite My strings, with my sweet harmonising ?”
7. Then came to Apollo’s aid The Muses, (each a sweet-faced liar). Soon the lad was cast in shade, As Sunshine charmed each fickle maid. They chose again their jollifier, And upon the brow divine were laurels laid. Apollo rent his godly ire: Had that shepherd bound and flayed He flogged the lad himself, to see him slayed. Strip by strip his agonising Sucked his wind and gasped his breathing tight – The breath he blew with, this chastising, Stole away forever, ev’ry smite. “All this for a flute” he whispered as he paid, “It is too much. Your lashstrap is a critic’s blade.” At this Apollo brought respite, The execution briefly stayed, To answer him on how he’d strayed: “You thought my Sun was old, must surely tire, Yet with age comes cunning and desire: When we dim, we fight on smarter, ruthless, slyer. It’s only talent makes the grade – It ain’t what notes you blow, it’s how they’re played.”
Bricks by Carl Andre. It has a longer, poncy name – but let’s face it, it’s just bricks.
The Bland & The Brutal
This macho rejection of beauty as quaint, We bask in the ugly in building and paint – Those worlds of the graceful and subtle all fade, We cannot return back, because we’re afraid.
Rhyming Couplets 