don-whitehotel: Flight and Smoke

don-whitehotel: Flight and Smoke

Flight and Smoke

Francis Boutle publishers has just brought out my new verse collection Flight and Smoke, previously available only in a signed/limited edition. Price £7.99. Dirt cheap!
http://www.francisboutle.co.uk/

First Light

I’d whooping cough, so I was told,
at six weeks, or more likely six months, old;

and I recall as though it were today
what must have been a fierce cough racking me

although I seem outside my own distress
till I can breathe again. Primal, it’s less

a memory than something I still feel,
as real as now is. There’s a woman’s pale

face looking on, upset: I’m sure, my aunt’s;
and I am being held, although I can’t

feel mother’s arms: I seem to float
mid-air. It’s murky, from my sight

being still weak, I suppose; but I’m aware
of the pale face, and larger paleness where

I’ll later know one looks out at a carn.
This is where I was for an instant born

into myself, a being in the world,
and I don’t feel the cough, nor being held,

but love I see and feel. Including light.
And both seem known to me, and infinite.

from Russia with love

In Russia

I notice that it's a full year since I wrote here. The main cause is Russia. In June, Angela and I took a cruise from Moscow to Petersburg, and it re-invigorated all my love for Russian culture, history and literature. When we came back I plunged into writing a long poem, The Russia Train, and when I'd laid that aside for a few months --since I was too close to it to be able to look at it critically-- I started translating Pushkin's 'Eugene Onegin'. I've finished that now, and I can draw breath. And hopefully write here from time to time.

I had a wonderful birthday present in January from Angela, a new website. It's at http://www.dmthomasonline.net/.

a wronged lady's response

Sonnet LXI: Since There's No Help

Since there's no help, come, let us kiss and part,
Nay, I have done, you get no more of me,
And I am glad, yea, glad with all my heart,
That thus so cleanly I myself can free.
Shake hands for ever, cancel all our vows,
And when we meet at any time again
Be it not seen in either of our brows
That we one jot of former love retain.
Now at the last gasp of Love's latest breath,
When, his pulse failing, Passion speechless lies,
When Faith is kneeling by his bed of death,
And Innocence is closing up his eyes,
Now, if thou wouldst, when all have giv'n him over,
From death to life thou might'st him yet recover.

Michael Drayton (1563 - 1631)


Since there’s no help

(after Michael Drayton)

‘Since there’s no help, come let us kiss and part’?
Tosser, don’t think you can fuck with me.
You want to show your groupies I've no heart;
--that’s if it’s even your poem; it’s not in free
verse; you’re dead ignorant about metre. Vows!
You can't be true for one day; time and again
you’ve emailed her, only pretending to browse
for bondage stuff -- I found your password, cuntain,
in your diary. So you can save your breath--
I have them all. You’re right, we’re done. Your lies
and alibis bore me to fucking death…
O, piss off! You can’t even look me in the eyes.
I’ll forward everyone all your filth to Ava;
You can’t just pour me away, like cheap, flat Cava!

DMT

a fight on two fronts

A friend of mine, Anne Morgellyn, is fighting a battle on two fronts, against cancer and against incompetent NHS services. A distinguished writer and academic, she is a single parent with a highly talented daughter, Cara, a student at Christ's Hospital. Reading Anne's blog is a humbling experience, so strong is her fighting spirit and refusal to take her illness and poor NHS response to it lying down; see http://www.topicofcancer.blogspot.com

I have my own memories of NHS incompetence --in my case my late wife's GP (now retired) at the same surgery in Truro. Anne praises highly the clinicians who have treated her; her complaint is against slothful, untrained receptionists, poor communication and dirty, depressing waiting rooms. If anyone has had similar bad experiences, do get in touch with her via her blog.

I was saying...

I was saying I'm forever changing my sonnet 'Through the fens'. This is my latest version...

Through the Fens

Hot summer, a slow train through Cambridgeshire.
After one halt, a country woman sat
in my double-seat. Merged almost into her,
I saw, etched by her tautened dress on fat,
motherly fen-wife thighs, corset suspenders,
a resurrection, their chunky contours plain,
immense and unashamed. The lesser splendour,
Ely cathedral, slid past the dusty pane.

She drowsed, we swayed; the flatlands drifted by;
I ached to touch, as pilgrims drew the power
of healing relics -- faint with desire
to let a sideways lurch propel my hand
to rest --‘I’m sorry!’ -- a moment on her thigh;
and she’d be moved by it, and understand.


Feel free to tell me which you prefer. Assuming you like either!