Cats crop up in poetry Like they do in neighbours’ kitchens, But when it’s time for serious, They’re nowhere near to pitch in. They haven’t time for heavy metaphor Or mopey musing – And earnest stream-of-consciousness Will send them straight to snoozing. But crack a smile and shake some wit, Or balladeer some derring-do, And lapping up the limericks, Here comes the kitty-crew: Pepperpot and Sootikin, The tyger tyger in the hat, Macavity and Pangur Ban, The owl-loving pussycat, In nurseries and nightclubs, In the scary and absurd, We’re sure to stumble over them Wherever words are purred.
Sometimes, we shall come to a junction We’re sure we’ve taken before – The fingerpost fulfils its function, But we need it to tell us more:
Did we pass this way in our youth, Rounding the bend to find the familiar ? Can we trust mem’ry to tell the truth When it says the way was hillier ?
I guess the world’s a globe, and feet are curved, And arcs are circles over time, And anyone who’s life has swerved Must one day find they’ve made a rhyme.
And so, this junction has crossed our path, And forced a choice of way – And still we live in the aftermath Of the road we took that day.
This time, let’s take the other of three, The road untook, the life unspent – Except, for all we try to see, We can’t recall which way we went…
Did the Romans ever make it over Antoninus ? Did their legions hike the Highlands, past the cirsium and pinus ? Did they meet his high-king highness, In his fiery hair and golden torc ? And did they think this seaside-caesar woaded-rogue or hawkish-ork ? So did the Fleet Agricolan heave-to in Scapa Flow ? The orcas and the auks go by, but they don’t know.
Scenes from the Chapter House at Salisbury Cathedral depicting Noah, circa HE 11284.
Be Fruitful, and Multiply
The rain comes down and the flood breaks free And ev’ryone dies, from Atlas to Russia In the year 2348 BC – Or so says Bishop Ussher. And after the waters dissipate Noah and sons and wives make eight.
The empty land is beckoning them – Europe to Japheth, Egypt to Ham – And Asia becomes the realm of Shem, From Turkey to Vietnam. So now that the land’s no longer wet, Just how many kin will they beget ?
Well see, the Bible clearly lists out Sixteen grandsons, twenty-seven greats – And these all boys (the girls are missed out), To found the known-world’s states. But such expansion cannot last long Till plague and war and famine are strong.
So let’s say from here, things settle down And nat’ral attrition soon appears, And the time it takes to double a town Is a hundred-and-fifty years – In Ussher’s time, with coal and machine, That’s the highest the world had ever seen.
So, taking his dating of when things happen And taking that girls are as common as boys, So fifty years later we’ll start our mapping And tease some facts from the noise – We’ve roughly a hundred, in all events, And spread across three continents.
A cent’ry post-flood, or so James willed it, The Tower of Babel raises its steeple – But only forty-odd folks can build it – That’s all of Asia’s people, Including elders and babes-in-arms, With no-one fishing or tending the farms.
Then Abraham hears God Almighty, Telling him that he is chosen Out of a pool of a hundred and ninety – And yet his wife is frozen… The Lord, though, promises a son To make it a hundred and ninety-one.
In time, when Jacob’s family go To Egypt – well, the dates allow For Asia to have five-twenty-or-so (Though down by seventy now.) See, that’s how exponentials grow – They end up big but they start off low.
Exodus – 1491, (A shorter sojourn than modern lights), As a third of the world is on the run – Fourteen-hundred Israelites. A count of six-hundred-thousand men ? I think you’d better check it agen.
For those of us who prefer our dates to be logical, 2348 BC is HE 7653, the Tower of Babel is pegged at 7754, Abraham’s calling at 8104, Jacob’s folks move to Egypt in 8295 , and the Exodus is in 8510. The reference to Asia being down by seventy is because Genesis 46:27 gives this as the total size of Jacob’s family to come and join him.
Say you want a revolution ? You wanna be a street-fighting man, Raging hard against the masterplan ? But violence is no solution – However much the Man is to blame, You’ll never beat him by killing in the name.
We won’t be televised On Sunday bloody Sunday, between the barricades, Or meeting with the new boss to lead the black parade. You wanna be mobilized By standing in the way of control As the Eton Rifles take their bloody toll ?
You wanna fight the power ? Then let the records turn turn turn – For we are the Antichrist to make ears burn. Cometh the finest hour, Then lock up the guns & ammo – it’s clear That we’ve gotta sing our way through here.
Fernando, can you hear the drums, Rocking the free world, rocking the casbah – Let’s sing for a year that we’re dreaming after, Until the reckoning comes – And the lost cause chord at last gives birth. To give peace a chance, for what it’s worth.
detail from Banquet of Cleopatra by Geovanni Tiepolo
Margarita Time
Cleopatra dropped a pearl in vinegar To win a bet, And watched her bead dissolve away to nothing Without one regret – Although in truth it must have fizzed a day or two Before it’s done And in that time she’d lost her land and lost her life And lost her son. And Rome, while once her lover, saw her lustre tarnish Bit by bit – For strip away her cultured beauty, And she’s just a speck of grit.
Poison and venom – the diff’rence between them Is pedantry. Biologists may take exception, But only they should. Most of the rest of us navigate life Quite pleasantly With a definition that’s still close-enough To be good.
Evolution has no use for wheels – It walks, it never rolls – Beyond a tumbleweed or spider That the random wind controls. For real life lacks our perfect strips Of smooth and tarmacked roads, These alien technologies, These edges linking nodes. Biology’s against it anyway, Unless the wheels are dead – For how can blood and nerves attach To grow the spokes, repair the tread ?
Though germs can grow their flagellates Upon an axle, loosely bound – And they can drive by swimming, Just by spinning tendrils round and round. So give a million years or ten, And life may well adapt To these ribbons of oil and gravel, If they haven’t been buried or snapped. But while terrain is bumpy And a bogged-down caster cannot trot, Then legs will always run the show – The world may turn, but life does not.
I remember watching the cars go by From the back seat of my Dad’s Cavalier – A rep-mobile, that would sometimes change Into a Sierra, or something near.
I could name them all, down the motorway, From the back seat of my Dad’s works’ Rover By make and model, and sometimes trim, And dreamt of driving them all twice over.
But when I left home with a job, It didn’t come with its own Passat – And I was living in digs in London, Without a garage, and that was that.
Besides, there’s never any parking, And what there is will costs me loads – And if the Tube is crowded, well, Then you should see the roads !
But still I eye the kerbside cars Beyond the pay of my nine-to-five – And fantasise which one I’d have, If I’d only learned to drive.
Until my sensible shoes recall The fossil fuels and rusting hulks – And the boy inside with the brum-brum dreams Just sits in the back seat and sulks.
Rhyming Couplets 