Few are truly ecumenical in their tastes; most of us have our favored corners. My delight comes mostly from light verse, or poetry that was written before 1950. Not that the particular year is important, but I revert to a time before the confessionalists and post modernists, when poets were a little more reserved and when meter and rhyme still were thought to be worth the effort. So, here are the efforts of an unabashed “rhymer” on a set of projects ranging through, art, politics and science (plus a little personal history).
SCHOOL UNIFORM
I remember those grey flannel trousers,
short pants with a button-up fly;
I remember grey shirts (and girls’ blouses)
and a permanent knot in my tie.
My mother bought grey flannel trousers
at a second-hand place in the town,
where folk from those grey terraced houses
bought kecks for a measly half-crown. [1], [2]
Only in fullness of time could
technology make us quite hip,
when every new pairing of pants would
have buttons replaced by a zip.
Despite all our gripes and our grouses,
this fashion passed some of us by,
for those who had second-hand trousers
still had a button-up fly.
Now those without lamb do with mutton ̶
my friends all had pants with a zip,
while I had to fumble a button,
my better-off mates let it rip.
I remember when Dad got his job back,
I remember the glorious trip,
I remember that wonderful gob-smack, [3]
when Mum bought me pants with a zip.
Notes:
[1] Oh the prejudice language arouses
for my generation and sex,
of course we would never say trousers,
we only wore pants or wore kecks.
[2] Half a crown was ⅛ of a pound in the old British currency.
[3] Gob-smack is British slang for a big surprise.
FIRST LIGHT
Look up, look up from our moonless tryst,
can you see the dawn of time?
Swept up, swept up from the primal grist,
the first of stars to shine.
When heavens cleared of their early fug,
when all was a fragment field,
each speck, each fleck with its tiny tug
to firmer things congealed,
and gathered so by this ancient rite
the first of stars to shine.
For thirteen billion years the light
its homeward course aligned,
to seek repose this moonless night,
in your eyes and in mine.