They sculpted each immortal bust As patient as the coming rust – And when our steel has turned to dust, They’ll still be standing here. They’re made from prehistoric shells, Once crushed in subterranic Hells, Then thrust back up on mantel swells, For millions of years. Their flinty eyes have seen it all, Our might kingdoms rise and fall, From city states to urban sprawl, For long as time allows. These statues gaze their stoic stares, Untroubled by our fleeting cares, Just waiting for erosion’s airs To smooth their stony brows.
Paisley Abbey Gargoyle 10 taken by User:Colin, showing the work of sculptor David Lindsay, itself inspired by the work of Hans Giger.
Roofkeepers
The gargoyles are guarding the peregrines’ nests, In their makeshift high-rise habitats. They gurgles-down the gutters near their new houseguests, As they keep the drainpipes clean, and they trap the thieving rats. They shelter the chicks when the North wind blows, Inbetween the buttresses the parapets. They lure-in the pigeons, they ward-off the crows, And they scare-back the devils with their gruesome silhouettes.
Recreations of Hadrian’s Wall and The Great Wall, by artists alas unknown.
Brick for Brick
I grew up with castles and churches and manors, Their architecture feels like home – While Indian temples and Chinese pagodas Were glorious aliens in stone. It all made sense that Kublai Khan Had not one dome in his Pleasure Dome
But when I saw the Great Ming Wall, It all felt too familiar – It looked like something the Romans might have built, Had they reached this far Rounded arches, crenellations, arrow loops – All quite bizarre.
The only telltale signs were in the watchtowers, And their roofs – Simple saddelbacks, slightly concave, They were hard-hill-hatted booths. Not like the four-square hips of the Romans – Projections providing proofs.
Except…on many of the towers we see, These structures are robbed away. And we’re left with familiarity That’s out-of-place, astray. Was it built-up piecemeal, really ? At this point, who can say ?
From what I can see in images, the watchtowers had roofs that were a mix of hard-hill and hanging-hill, the difference being that the latter had slightly overhanging eaves as in the image below.
I live in the suburbs In a box made of ticky-tacky – It’s small and it’s samey, And won no award. It’s not to conform, And it’s not to be strange or wacky, I live here because here Is all I can afford.
I grew up around here, Then I went to the university And I came out with a large debt And I found my first job. And it paid not a lot, Except for in uncertainty, So I tried for a mortgage For a key on a fob.
There’s a Barratt, there’s a Redrow There’s a Wimpey, there’s a Jubilee. Where’s the woodland, where’s the meadow ? Oh, please don’t ask me.
But all they would give me Was a box made of ticky-tacky, But it’s dry and it’s plumbed-in, If no pleasure-dome. I raised up my children And worked as a gopher-lacky, Trying to get by And make it a home.
So spare me your distaste How I went to the university – And spare me your prejudice Of me and my peers. I don’t have your millions Or a co-operative nursery, Yet I struggled and I made it Despite all your sneers.
Blame the council, blame the builder, Blame the bubble, blame the rising-sea. If it all seems out of kilter, Then please don’t blame me.
This is a response to the song Little Boxes by Malvina Reynolds.
There Shall the Falcons also be Gathered, Each One with her Mate
Always it’s the peregrines that nest upon cathedrals, Like wanderers and pilgrims, or like animated gargoyles. The buzzards and the owls are a heather flock, it seems, And the pigeons are unwelcome when they perch upon the beams, And the crows about the graveyard are Satanic in their dress – But the peregrines are cherished by the bishop and the press.
Strange, but back in the Middle Ages, They were never seen about the towers – Till they left the cliffs for the factories And the belfries, once they ceased to toll the hours.
Yet falcons are not very turn-the-other-cheek, They’re far more Old Testament when preying on the weak, They’re thoroughly un-kosher, yet fitting for an earl, And un-patriarchal, where the stronger is the girl. They’re sharp and unrepentant, defiantly un-bowed, As they kill the dove of peace to the cheering of the crowd.
Perhaps they’re waiting for the day when the Lord Says “Fowls in the midst of Heaven, arise ! Come gather yourselves for my supper on the flesh Of the sinners in my temple, and peck out their eyes !”
According to this page on the Natural History Museum website, the first recorded instance of a peregrine falcon ‘using a building (for its nest ?) was at Salisbury Cathedral in 1864. The title comes from the KJV, except it says ‘vultures’ instead. Many other translations say ‘falcons’, but there’s quite a spread – ‘buzzards’ in the New Living, ‘hawks’ in the NASB, ‘kites’ in the Douay-Rheims…and bizarrely, the Brenton Septuagint has ‘deer’ !
Painting’s hard, with all those tiny strokes, And poems are endless rhymes, And anyway, they’re the preserve of snooty folks And so behind the times. And architecture’s super-hard to build With all that carving and stuff I mean, who’s got the time to be that skilled ? Let’s keep it brutally rough. And music’s hard, not worth the perk To learn an instrument – Just sample other people’s work, And pay them not a cent
Creating beauty’s hard, we can’t be arsed, We’re far too lazy – But critics dig our arsey arts, And worship us like crazy. Make it ugly, hard to parse, This public-funded junk – The future finds it vain and sparse, Agog at how we’ve shrunk. We’re sinkholes in the bedrock karst, And ev’ryone knows we’re farces. Amazing how we can’t be arsed, And yet we’re up-our-own-arses.
The Renaissance artist loved two things: Classical Greece, and boobs – Yet Michelangelo must fit His curves in the Sistine’s cubes. The Old Testament’s full of beards, And none of them are Zeus’s – He needs to paint some younger flesh To work-up papal juices. He can’t rely on prudish Mary, She won’t give much boost – So thoroughly pagan, thoroughly female sibyls Are introduced. Said to prophesies Jesus, Though we know the real reason – They’re soft and pale, and keep just shy Of heresy and treason. There’s plenty of other supporting cast, Presumbly cherubs and such – There’s plenty of flesh to be bared up there, All brushed with the master’s touch. Yet these are merely window-dressing, A choir of hangers-on – But the sibyls command their panels with pride, Content to be gazed upon.
Really, treason ? Well, surely in any theocracy like the Papal States, all heresy is treason…
But anyway, as everyone knows Michelangelo lay on his back for four years to paint the roof – but that didn’t stop him occassionally arsing around…
Turn the Other Cheek
God created the Sun on the ceiling, To light up the Pope’s saloon. And then he turned his back, revealing How he created the Moon.
detail from The Creation of the Sun, Moon, & Planets by Michelangelo
Once you had the finest actors Reading the finest verse. These days, all you have are poets – Humourless, or ever worse…- Picking po-faced prosy poems With not a single rhyme, So self-important now, And yet won’t stand the test of time.
What happened to the punk sensibility Of doing-it-yourself, and damn the rules ? Now it’s a lit-fest for middle-class luvvies With their tortured trochees taught in schools. Your audience is tiny and shrinking, With afternoon Sundays such a bore – But you tick the boxes and fill the quotas, And isn’t that what poetry’s for ?
Once you had the finest actors Reading the finest verse, But now your budget is slashed, And your ambition must fit your purse. They read them out in lilting whinges, Full of I Me Mine – Come on, Roger, cheer us up, With a quick and witty line !
Rhyming Couplets 