The Critic’s Lament

detail from The Art Critic by Norman Rockwell

The Critic’s Lament

If you don’t like this then you’re a moron,
If you do like that then you’re a lout,
If you’d rather t’other, then I guess you’re on your own –
For even when the way is shown,
You’d rather do without.

If you don’t like this then you’re a cretin,
If you do like that then you’re a square –
Yet now, for all my years of selfless vetting of the muse,
So you masses never have to choose,
It’s like you just don’t care

How can you reject my spotless taste
In favour of your own ?
Or let my perfect wisdom go to waste
Despite my megaphone ?
For who will sing the praises of the chosen
That they’ve scarcely earned,
And who will prick the egos of the posers
Once their backs are turned ?

So if you don’t like this then you’re a heathen,
And if you do like that, you’re thick as planks –
For I alone am high priest to this seething sea of stars,
I’m crushing dreams, inflicting scars –
Yet still I get no thanks !

Vanity

Vanity

“Van Go”, he said, thus mangling it
Quite in the American style –
Yet in the accent of a Brit,
From maybe Preston or Carlisle.
So natur’ly I had to cough
And stem this slovenly display –
“I think you’ll find it’s said ‘Van Goff’,
Misspoken in the English way.”

Follow Your Nosings

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Follow Your Nosings

Ev’ry staircase runs in two directions,
Even MC Escher’s –
Join midway – on a landing, say,
And we all must make selections –
Oh, the pressure !
Do we climb for the sky through the oculus eye ?
Or sink in the bowel of the gravity well ?
Perhaps it’s an endless trip round a Mobius strip,
To spiral-step forever.
Jacob’s dreams have gone to town,
As the stairs go up, but the stairs go down –
Descend today, and tomorrow we rise,
Or labour now for a future of ease.
Yet up is always hard on our thighs,
And down is hard on our knees.

Butyrumusca getii

Butyrumusca getii

I saw a lepidopter’s case,
A peon to the butterfly.
With filigree of carapace
From abdomen to compound eye.
The duffer who possessed these critters
Spoke at loving length of flitters.

I wondered how this gent possessed
Their tiny feet and stain-glass wings,
For clearly one who so obsessed
Could never harm so precious things –
Therefore, it must surely follow,
Ev’ry bodyshell was hollow.

These weren’t spent, discarded parts –
For butterflies can never shed –
They never get a dozen starts,
And only gain their wings to spread
Upon their change to adulthood –
They change for once and change for good.

Maybe then they’re not rejected,
Rather they are shiny new –
Here displayed to be selected
By the crawling grubs who queue –
So they choose their new quintessence
As they quit their adolescence.

Some are brighter, some are duller,
Some are nippy, some enlarged –
Pick a model, pick a colour,
Carbon-framed and sugar-charged.
Are you a grounded caterpillar ?
You should check these stats – they’re killer !

Lift thou Up thy Rod

salisbury cathedral withstands the wrath of god

Lift thou Up thy Rod

Just as a church is crowned by a spire,
And just as a spire is crowned by a cross,
So a cross is crowned by a stiffened wire
That points heavenwards and reaches higher,
Showing God that science is boss.
From king to serf to country squire,
Nobody’s prayers and nobody’s choir,
To God or Thor or Helios,
Can stop the bolt of electric fire –
Not any pope or priest or friar
Can tame the spark and spare the loss
Like copper can.  And that is why
There’s a spike that jabs the eye of the sky,
With a finger raised to the holy man on high.

Hydrogen Fusion

shame it doesn't show the photons

Hydrogen Fusion

H⁺ + H⁺ → D⁺ + e⁺ + νₑ
D⁺ + H⁺ → ³He⁺ + γ
³He⁺ + ³He⁺ → ⁴He²⁺ + H⁺ + H⁺

H-plus plus H-plus is D-plus,
D-plus plus H-plus, we suss,
Is positively He-3-plus,
He-3-plus twice is thus
An H-plus twice plus He-4-plus –
Plus the two H-plusses free,
To go and make some more for us.

Which is to say, a Hydrogen
Without its lone electron,
Meets another, and their new connection
Merges to Deuterium,
When another Hydrogen jumps-in
To gin them up to Helium,
Which crashes with another one –
Whereby, two Hydrogens say ‘bye’,
And out they fly, ad nauseum.

But this whole synthesis, you know,
This H-&-H-combining show,
Is not so clean –
For it also makes a new neutrino,
Indestructible and lean –
It doesn’t do much, though,
Except to leave -and there it’s keen !
It’s shooting through – just watch it go !
Except you can’t, it can’t be seen…

But H & H will also make
A beta particle –
A beta-plus, a positron,
That’s looking with much spryness
How to get it on with beta-minus –
Say a lone electron
That has lost its Hydrogen –
Birthing photon-twins once done,
That one bright day will light the Sun.

‘He’ above is said with two syllables – Aitch-Ee.

The Engineers’ Plot

penge palace
Gems of The Crystal Palace, Sydenham by George Baxter, showing off the designs of Joseph Paxton

The Engineers’ Plot

Crystal Palace – it’s a suburb,
Station, park, and football team,
And a memory to a time
When this nation still could dream.
Once a product of Empire,
A palace to capture its roar –
Now just a flat-topped hill
In the Republic of Elsinore.
Straddling boroughs, pumping fountains,
Soaring towers, glass for miles.
Till flames across eight counties
Shattered her dreamy crystal aisles.

She no more beguiles – but that sounds Victorian –
Half vers libre, half Tudor sonnet.
Flirting with jazz and television,
Yet still bedecked in her bustle and bonnet.
She was no Bauhaus, no mere function –
Cast iron crockets encrusted her shell –
For all her prefab industry,
She always wore her baubles well.
Ah, she’s gone now – like her dinosaurs,
She’s of her time and place.
Though her place of course is the one she named –
You cannot say she leaves no trace.

Prithee, Sirrah ?

big cocks
details from Charles Vth by Titian, Antonio Navagero by Giovanni Moroni & Guidubaldo della Rovere by Agnolo Bronzino

Prithee, Sirrah ?

The poster announced “Shakespeare Season !”
Well, why not ?, I thought.
For no particular reason,
I’d seen precisely naught.
I know it sounds high treason,
But I guess this time I’m caught.

Yet all reviews and interviews I heard
Said much the same –
They read the play, yes, ev’ry word,
Before they even came,
To better understand.  But that’s absurd !
Just what’s their game…?

What about the spoilers, hey ?
Will Macbeth be number one ?
But the plot matter less, they say,
Than ‘getting’ a Tudor pun !
This all feels like homework anyway,
And not much fun !

You clearly can’t be arsed to try
And make the story clear,
And surely don’t want oiks as I
To gaze upon your Lear.
I think I’m gonna pass you by
For something less austere.

The Tower of Pisa

la torre non pendente di pisa
The Belltower of Pisa Cathedral by Bonanno Pisano

The Tower of Pisa

I know we love it as a symbol –
Hubris, cheap materials and failure,
While locals soak up tourist-dollars
Selling canting paraphernalia.
The crowds all prop it up in photos
Loving that its old and broke –
While laughing at the locals,
Who are all in on the joke.

And now the authorities
Have had to underpin the base,
While taking care to keep the tilt
That underpins their public face.
I guess we do not get to choose
What piques our int’rest, makes us smile –
But here’s a tower full of piquant int’rest
By the mile !

I think I am alone in wishing
That they’d take it down and start again.
I just want my cathedrals
To inspire me, not amuse me, in the main.
But here is a belfry
Far too weak for bells and gravity’s demands –
It’s just a shell, a cynic’s dream
Who’s only wonder is how still it stands.

Ah, listen to me, what misery !
Just moaning off my sunstroke.
Can’t I shrug and let them be,
And maybe even get the joke ?
I guess we do not get to choose
What gets remembered, anyway –
But this one’s sure to loom in mind,
And hold us in its sway.

Upward Spiral

brown snail on grey wall

Upward Spiral

A snail upon the concrete, half-way high,
Just scaling up the slabs to the broken-bottle prism
That shards into the crown that lacerates the sky –
It’s breaking up the straight lines, a bauble on the brutalism.

This snail is still there, years later, its shell becoming its coffin.  I wonder if it were poisoned by the concrete ?