an illusion of snakes

As I lie in the burnt, acrid dust of despair,
I hear the low hiss of a viper, poised to strike.
I raise my tired head and see the reptile prepare
to sink its fangs into the naked flesh, the meat
of my beliefs, to poison and to make alike
the opposites inside my mind. An objective
opinion is thus distorted by the heat
that places death in such improper perspective.

I cannot move, for I am pinned by a python
that squeezes my body so much less than my mind.
My thoughts race oddly in a lonely marathon
of wonder, continuous no more but broken
by the crushing tentacles of doubt, which can blind
tired eyes so they do not glimpse the truth of logic.
So now, as deliberate lies have been spoken,
the snakes may yet conceal their sinister magic.

My thoughts are polluted by venom, and poisoned
by the racking doubt of mental dislocation.
Slowly, steadily, the processes of my brain
cease to operate, except in wild, unreasoned
spirals of hate and pain: mental immolation.
Yet the body lives on—only the mind is slain.

literally literary

Some years ago, a friend asked me to devise a puzzle based on English literature for his daughter. The requirement was that it would require some research. If you find yourself with nothing better to do on the eve of 2017, or you want to numb your brain with something other than alcohol in order to forget the horrors of 2016, you might like to try this literary puzzle:

What is the connection between the following five clues? And on this basis, which is the odd one out?
•  Behaviour described by Gaveston in Act the first, Scene I of Edward the Second by Christopher Marlowe.
•  The last speech by Miranda in The Tempest by William Shakespeare.
•  A line from Samson Agonistes by John Milton.
•  The advice provided in Meditation XVII by John Donne.
•  A definition of ‘the infinite’ from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell by William Blake.

All the relevant material is available online, if required.

If you would prefer something that doesn’t involve research, then you might like to try An English Question or Out of Order #2, the first of which has not had a correct solution submitted to date.

poetry at christmas

I used to write poetry when I was much younger, and I still remember why I stopped: I’d decided that in order to improve, I should read work by established poets. Unfortunately for this strategy, one of the first poems I read was TS Eliot’s The Hollow Men, and my immediate reaction was “I can never match this!” However, I did succeed in getting a small booklet of my own poems published in 1971, and because most of the people who know me now are unaware of this fact, and also because I shall be out cycling with Paula over the Christmas period rather than spending the time compiling blog posts, I present three poems from that 1971 booklet. Merry Christmas.

occult incident
    It is midnight!
The churchyard is shrouded by a low mist
that flows endlessly over the tombstones.
A shrieking that only the occultist
hears, detached from the stimulus of fear,
a sound that shatters, like a telephone’s
shrill cry, rises from the unsmiling ground
and echoes—a certain sign of the near
approach of evil. After the strange sound
   a spectral light
flickers across the graves, reaching the wall
where normal living ends. For here the hand
of death works freely, here a demonic
apparition terrifies. And yet, the brawl
of sound and vision could well be a trick,
played on deluded senses by wind and
   misty moonlight.

shadows of the night
Black, prince of the night, lies hidden by day,
When sunlight chases the shadows away;
But, hidden or not, it is never quite dead,
Gathering when the last traces of red
Fade from the sky at the onset of night,
And shadows of darkness conquer the light.

So the night lowers its dark, deadly veil,
The calm, clear peace of the day to curtail;
And as sinister purple deepens to black,
The forces of evil mount their attack.

The light of the moon (a pale light, and cold)
Outlines the night and the need to be bold,
For darkness means danger to unwary men,
Danger, so deadly, from devils whose den
In the shadow of death, behind yonder wall,
Is fatal for some, a menace to all.

All through the night the dark demons will reign,
Seeking out victims till the light comes again;
For faint fingers of fire in the east have shown:
Light in the darkness dispels the unknown.

the garden of despair
The fruit is black, the trees are bare,
In the garden of despair.
An old man sits among the weeds,
His mind is sown with seeds
Of doubt: a dark course that leads
To the garden of despair.

The birds are poisoned by the air
In the garden of despair.
The gardener is sorely pressed,
There is never time for rest;
Peace is but a hopeless quest
In the garden of despair.

Yet can I hear the sound of prayer
In the garden of despair.
Or is it all becoming worse?
Is there life within the hearse
Of death? Or is life the curse
Of the garden of despair?

sleep

storm raging overhead.
still, he lies suspended,
cool in his cocoon of sleep.

silence (a fragment)

1
the silence is resounding,
  pounding
    like the rain
on a rooftop, echoing,
  glowing.
    twilight’s bane
is the shadow in the dark,
  remark:
    spectral light
criss-crossing across the sky,
  low—high;
    shades of night
closing in. a sudden fear:
  unclear
    higher ground;
uncertain haze descending,
  blending
    sight and sound.

2
silence is a swirling green
  fog, seen
    but unheard.
silence is a resonant
  green slant,
    slightly blurred.

3
flying, fragmentary mind,
  unwind;
    it is air,
it is emptiness. and all
  must fall,
    for there, there
on the mysterious height,
  a light
    (now intense)
burns. and then down, the last spark,
  the dark,
    the silence.