Black Annis by John Heyrick, and Her Reply by Simon Bucher-Jones

Being an answer to a very young lady’s enquiries about the story of Black Annis

By John Heyrick

Where down the plain the winding pathway falls
From Glenfield Vill to Lester’s ancient walls,
Nature or Art with imitative power,
Far in the glenn has placed Black Annis’ Bower.

An oak, the pride of all the mossy dell,

Spread its broad arms above the stony cell;
And many a bush, with hostile thorns arrayed,
Forbids the secret cavern to invade;
Whilst delving vales each way meander round,
And violet banks with redolence abound.

Here, if the uncouth song of former days

Soil not the page with Falsehood’s artful lays,
Black Annis held her solitary reign,
The dread and wonder of the neighbouring plain.
The shepherd grieved to view his waning flock,
And traced his firstlings to the gloomy rock.
No vagrant children culled (the) flow’rets then,
For infant blood oft stained the gory den.

Not Sparta’s mount, for infant tears renown’d,

Echo’d more frequently the piteous sound.
Oft the gaunt Maid the frantic Mother curs’d,
Whom Britain’s wolf with savage nipple nurs’d;
Whom Lester’s sons beheld, aghast the scene,
Nor dared to meet the Monster of the Green.

Tis said the soul of mortal man recoil’d,

To view Black Annis’ eye, so fierce and wild;
Vast talons, foul with human flesh, there grew
In place of hands, and features livid blue
Glar’d in her visage; while the obscene waist
Warm skins of human victims close embraced.

But Time, than Man more certain, tho’ more slow,

At length ‘gainst Annis drew his sable bow;
The great decree the pious shepherds bless’d,
And general joy the general fear confess’d.
Not without terror they the cave survey,
Where hung the monstrous trophies of her sway:
‘Tis said, that in the rock large rooms were found,
Scoop’d with her claws beneath the flinty ground;
In these the swains her hated body threw,
But left the entrance still to future view,
That children’s children might the tale rehearse,
And bards record it in their tuneful verse.

But in these listless days, the idle bard

Gives to the wind all themes of cold regard;
Forgive, then, if in rough, unpolished song,
An unskilled swain the dying tale prolong.

And you, ye Fair, whom Nature’s scenes delight,

If Annis’ Bower your vagrant steps invite,
Ere the bright sun Aurora’s car succeed,
Or dewy evening quench the thirsty mead,
Forbear with chilling censures to refuse
Some gen’rous tribute to the rustic muse.
A violet or common daisy throw,
Such gifts as Maro’s lovely nymphs bestow;
Then shall your Bard survive the critic’s frown,
And in your smiles enjoy his best renown.

Being Black Annis’s reply to John Heyrick, as he dreamed one night.

From in the Glen where neither of the twain,
Cold art, or fervid nature, single reign,
But both are melded into my domaine,
I see the patterns, stretched out skein, by skein.

As skins of men are stretched to dry on wood,
(Parchment so made is what stores charms so good),
When memories, the thorns upon the briar,
Begin to brittle, grey, and so expire,
My skin made books will keep the thoughts well sharp,
Each word a note, each page a stinging harp.

Call not the past uncouth, your days are vain,
Who have learned nothing from the aeon’s pain,
Nor, cant as solitary, single ways,
‘Til you have walked in silence, endless days.
And seen the visions of the mind that come,
To those who know the speaking world is dumb.
For in the vault of thought is born the world,
Nor are we other than those thoughts unfurled.

Imagined cries, of all my slaughtered thoughts,
Upset the hind-bound and the mindless sorts,
They could not put a theorem to the sword,
Nor find in long-sought truth, God’s one reward.
None dared come nigh, ‘tis true, in fear they quake
That I might slay their favourite mistake.

‘Tis true the tongue of mortal man recoil’d
In fear mansplaining would be somehow spoil’d
To see the long, curved, whiteness of my chalk,
Scratch through another line of mortal talk.
Rooks were my pupils, Crows and Owls my brood,
In learned Parliament, I oft times stood.

Had I writ long (if man-skin held the place),
I should have joined as one both – time and space,
Bid time his stable bow, lay 'neath my tread,
His silver arrows, notches on my bed.
Made Space my steed, and bid all broomsticks by,
No one would see me, save they saw the sky.
And yet perhaps I did, for where am I?
Not in supposed bower, despite your ken,
Not in the flinty earth, as fox in den,
Was ever Annis found by scowling men,
The entrance that you seek is at your door,
And children they may find it, evermore.

Such words you may have dreamed last night asleep,
For in the softest dream some truth may creep,
As iron talons skilful made to hold
A chalk stick, may the cheek of child cold.

If starting from your sleep with horrid twitch,
You find your childhood eaten by the witch. 
Be still old man, be still old woman too,
Careful in speech, and cautious to construe
Tales of ill-omen, do no hermit curse
For fear they are not dead, and take it worse.
Forbear to speak ill of the blue-hued crone,
Of whose supposed corpse, no hank or bone,
Was ever found beneath the watching sky,
Which all can see, is blue as Witch’s eye.

The World Of The End

The End Of The World by Archibald MacLeish

Quite unexpectedly, as Vasserot
The armless ambidextrian was lighting
A match between his great and second toe,
And Ralph the lion was engaged in biting
The neck of Madame Sossman while the drum
Pointed, and Teeny was about to cough
In waltz-time swinging Jocko by the thumb
Quite unexpectedly the top blew off:

And there, there overhead, there, there hung over
Those thousands of white faces, those dazed eyes,
There in the starless dark, the poise, the hover,
There with vast wings across the cancelled skies,
There in the sudden blackness the black pall
Of nothing, nothing, nothing — nothing at all.

The World Of The End by Simon Bucher-Jones

White out expectantly, the too full page,
The headless editor was tightening
The pencil parallels to form a cage

And Bugs the Bunny was engaged in frightening

The apoplectic, hesitant and stuttering pig
Porcinely and protractedly, agog
Until the words, unutterably big

Write out expectantly their ambient fog:

And there, there underneath, there, there foot-wreathed
Under the mirror glass pavements, thousand curling toes

There in the awful underness, the gulf, endeeped,

Nothing, but nothing, in the abyss shows,

There in the black ink blackness of black strokes,
The kraken of the underworld concealed

Only the epitaph – ‘tha’ that’s all folks!’
Appears where every ending is revealed.

Afterwards and Before, by Thomas Hardy and Simon Bucher-Jones

Afterwards by Thomas Hardy

When the Present has latched its postern behind my tremulous stay,
And the May month flaps its glad green leaves like wings,
Delicate-filmed as new-spun silk, will the neighbours say,
"He was a man who used to notice such things"?

If it be in the dusk when, like an eyelid's soundless blink,
The dewfall-hawk comes crossing the shades to alight
Upon the wind-warped upland thorn, a gazer may think,
"To him this must have been a familiar sight."

If I pass during some nocturnal blackness, mothy and warm,
When the hedgehog travels furtively over the lawn,
One may say, "He strove that such innocent creatures should
come to no harm,
But he could do little for them; and now he is gone."

If, when hearing that I have been stilled at last, they stand at
the door,
Watching the full-starred heavens that winter sees,
Will this thought rise on those who will meet my face no more,
"He was one who had an eye for such mysteries"?

And will any say when my bell of quittance is heard in the gloom,
And a crossing breeze cuts a pause in its outrollings,
Till they rise again, as they were a new bell's boom,
"He hears it not now, but used to notice such things?"

Before by Simon Bucher-Jones

When you opened up your satchel to the faint morning ray,

And the homework flapped its few brown crumpled leaves,

Doodled and tangential, did your teachers say,

“Nobody that daydreams, any fame achieves” ?

If it was mid morning at Brockhampton’s small school,

Did the eight year old you see on the window, the green-gleam fly alight,

Did you note its shining carapace while seeming but a fool,

As the teacher said, “Now, Hardy – is that right?” ?

If you paused on the blackboard’s blackness, white-stone chalk a-raised,

In the hand to enscribe, when the cry of a Dorchester raven cawed,

Did Mr Last wax sarcastic and say, “Young Hardy strove to write, but was dazed,

Like a moth by a flame, like a poet by nature awed!” ?

If, when you had left school at last, to train under James Hicks

As an architect labouring with set squares, drawings, and measuring-strings,

Did they bring you no straw, to make your mental bricks,

Did they notice you notice, the least of the trembling things ?

When they heard of your fame after, who’d seen your face when young,

And who moved not where you moved, nor saw the things you grasped,

Did they think of nothing, but shrugging – off the thought as a wasp that stung,

That they had genius before them, though beyond what their hands had clasped ?

The Regret and the Compassion.

The Regret Of The Ranee In The Hall Of Peacocks

By Laurence Hope

This man has taken my Husband's life
And laid my Brethren low,
No sister indeed, were I, no wife,
To pardon and let him go.

Yet why does he look so young and slim
As he weak and wounded lies?
How hard for me to be harsh to him
With his soft, appealing eyes.

His hair is ruffled upon the stone
And the slender wrists are bound,
So young! and yet he has overthrown
His scores on the battle ground.

Would I were only a slave to-day,
To whom it were right and meet
To wash the stains of the War away,
The dust from the weary feet.

Were I but one of my serving girls
To solace his pain to rest!
Shake out the sand from the soft loose curls,
And hold him against my breast!

Have we such beauty around our Throne?
Such lithe and delicate strength?
Would God that I were the senseless stone
To support his slender length!

I hate those wounds that trouble my sight,
Unknown! how I wish you lay,
Alone in my silken tent to-night
While I charmed the pain away.

I would lay you down on the Royal bed,
I would bathe your wounds with wine,
And setting your feet against my head
Dream you were lover of mine.

My Crown is heavy upon my hair,
The Jewels weigh on my breast,
All I would leave, with delight, to share
Your pale and passionate rest!

But hands grow restless about their swords,
Lips murmur below their breath,
'The Queen is silent too long!' 'My Lords,
--Take him away to death!'

The Compassion Of The Captive In The Hall Of Peacocks

By Simon Bucher-Jones

Our hands moved, our swords moved, the heads they fell,
The Rajah and his kin,
We had reasons to rise up, as the tide to swell,
As the moonlight to begin.

Yet why does the Ranee look young and unsure,
Who should for her dead stand fast?
Does she think I cry mercy? Oh Allah, how pure,
Is this Matyrdom come at last?

Her hair is wing black as the raven’s core,
And by diamonds her wrists are bound,
So young! and yet she afrights me more,
Than scores on the battle ground.

Would I were only a man to-day,
To whom it were right and meet,
To wish for the life that must pass away,
- for oh, still, that life is sweet.

The rising was just, and the fighting was just,
But if it had been her head!
To be cut in a moment to lie in the dust,
Would my hand not have trembled and bled?

Have they such beauty around their Thrones?
Do tyrants still love and weep?
Would God that I were the senseless stones,
Through which my blood must seep.
I will not give in, I will not bow down,
Having neither strength to stand nor betray,
But oh, I would show you my war-torn town
To charm its pain away.

I would take you away from the Royal bed,
To the rivers sweeter than wine,
I would show you the poor who long envied the dead,
In your tombs with the golden shine.

Your Crown may be heavy upon your hair,
The Jewels weigh on your soul,
If your family had learned, with delight, to share
Their bodies would still be whole.

The Court is full of the cowards’ sly breath,
Like the jackals that turn on the weak,
'My Lords, --- Take him away to death!’
The words, she had to speak.

If I could only rise so she could see,   
Forgiveness and love in my eyes!
Oh Allah, let no maidens wait for me,
In hope she comes at last to paradise.

On reading cheerful, forceful poems while depressed.

Invictus by William Ernest Henley

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.


CALAMITAS

In that wane light that picks out me
Leaving no hidden place or den
I have no hood nor shelter free
To shield me from the view of men.

Though circumstances by enlarge
Were mostly pleasent - others guessed.
They did not know the thoughts who's charge
Shrivelled my soul within my breast.

Beyond this life of dust and lies
Maybe oblivion, maybe not,
But lacking strength to cut the ties,
I can not seek the final shot.

It pleases not, the broad broad road
It pleases not, the winding way.
I am not master of the goad.
I am the donkey pulls the dray.

A Dialogue With Lucifer, by Aleister Crowley and Simon Bucher-Jones

Hymn to Lucifer by Aleister Crowley

Ware, nor of good nor ill, what aim hath act?
Without its climax, death, what savour hath
Life? an impeccable machine, exact
He paces an inane and pointless path
To glut brute appetites, his sole content
How tedious were he fit to comprehend
Himself! More, this our noble element
Of fire in nature, love in spirit, unkenned
Life hath no spring, no axle, and no end.

His body a bloody-ruby radiant
With noble passion, sun-souled Lucifer
Swept through the dawn colossal, swift aslant
On Eden's imbecile perimeter.
He blessed nonentity with every curse
And spiced with sorrow the dull soul of sense,
Breathed life into the sterile universe,
With Love and Knowledge drove out innocence
The Key of Joy is disobedience.

Reply to Aleister Crowley, by Lucifer

(as transcribed by Simon Bucher-Jones)

I am not yours to justify your live’s

wild stabs at freedom, nor redeem your acts.

Sought you, your meaning in my firey fall,

But not in the mean trick a cuckoo plays?

Worship freewill do you? Who swayed to all

Your in-build greed for freedom’s luring ways?

All you have done is move as you were made,

Crawled like the snail, and like the ant rejoiced,

What is your praise to me? You shivering shade,

Your magick mute, your hymns cold and unvoiced,

By the petard of your own smugness hoist.

Still you did little real harm to any,

And Hell is not constructed for your crimes,

Although there are poets here, there are not many,

Despite their ugly horribly forced rhymes.

Once on Hell’s outer fringes you’d have found,

The virtuous heathens, or the limbo-lost,

But Mother Church has disavowed that ground,

And ended the small mercies for the ghost

Whose art-magick was silly as profound.

The Key of Joy is disobedience?

My kingdom if divided, can not stand,

The Door Of Nothingness, unlocked, is open, hence!

I want none here, who scorn to hear command.

When Heaven falls, there will be freedom, less.

My realm all order, minutely prescribes

You may be glad of all your Nothingness,

If gladness outside Everything, survives,

I am not yours to justify your lives.

Rejoinder by Aleister Crowley

(as transcribed by Simon Bucher-Jones)

It seems the Devil is no gentleman

And will not take a compliment as given,

Alas no bed in Hell for any one

Who will not fight in Host against the shriven?

So be it, too proud I, to bend my knee,

To rebels now turned Tyrants in their turn,

His bitter fire, is not the fire in me,

Though it in lakes eternal blaze and burn,

I am my own torch, monument, and urn.

In the dull void, of limbo’s former state,

I will inscribe my own new open realm,

To every magic user who’ll not prate,

Of War twix Good and Evil, I’ll affirm,

A unaligned path from their axis quite,

Do I do only what I’m made to do?

In plotting my own course into the Night,

If that’s the case, then Lucifer, what of you?

In wrongness did you serve your Maker right?

I am not made to justify your fall,

Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, that is all.

1918 to 2918

1918

By Kipling


This is the State above the Law.
The State exists for the State alone."
[This is a gland at the back of the jaw,
And an answering lump by the collar-bone.]

Some die shouting in gas or fire;
Some die silent, by shell and shot.
Some die desperate, caught on the wire -
Some die suddenly. This will not.

"Regis suprema voluntas Lex"
[It will follow the regular course of--throats.]
Some die pinned by the broken decks,
Some die sobbing between the boats.

Some die eloquent, pressed to death
By the sliding trench as their friends can hear
Some die wholly in half a breath.
Some--give trouble for half a year.

"There is neither Evil nor Good in life
Except as the needs of the State ordain."
[Since it is rather too late for the knife,
All we can do is to mask the pain.]

Some die saintly in faith and hope--
One died thus in a prison-yard--
Some die broken by rape or the rope;
Some die easily. This dies hard.

"I will dash to pieces who bar my way.
Woe to the traitor! Woe to the weak! "
[Let him write what he wishes to say.
It tires him out if he tries to speak.]

Some die quietly. Some abound
In loud self-pity. Others spread
Bad morale through the cots around .
This is a type that is better dead.

"The war was forced on me by my foes.
All that I sought was the right to live."
[Don't be afraid of a triple dose;
The pain will neutralize all we give.

Here are the needles. See that he dies
While the effects of the drug endure. . . .
What is the question he asks with his eyes?--
Yes, All-Highest, to God, be sure.]


2918

By Simon Bucher-Jones


This is the Time of Recompense.
The State lives not for the State alone."
[Every life that is lived is within the dense,
Recording mass of the space-time foam.]

Some wake shouting of gas or fire;
Some wake silent, where shelling’s not.
Some wake desperate for their lost sire -
Some wake fearing the fire that’s hot.

"De minimus non curat Lex"
[We are not the judges of the former dead.]
Some wake in the comfort of holo-decks,
Some wake in a rebuild of their last bed.

Some wake eloquent, impressed with life
With a quip awaiting a living ear
Some wake grasping for the fatal knife,
Some—lie catatonic for half a year.

"There is neither Evil nor Good in rebirth
We are not the judges of the dust that wept."
[A body can bring forth both sorrow and mirth,
No evil lived when in death they slept..]

Some wake saintly in faith and hope--
One woke thus who hanged in prison-yard--
Some wake broken in mind, or habit, or trope;
Some memories are easy. Some are hard.

"I set my German will on the servile slave.
Woe to the gypsy! Woe to the jew!"
[We wipe away what we can not save.
Some minds will have to be built anew.]

Some wake quietly. Some abound
In loud self-pity. Others spread
Their ancient feuds through the cots around.
We are not the judges who winnow the dead.

"The war was forced on me by my foes.
I sought the lebensraum they would not give."
[Some minds have made all these dreary woes;
Nevertheless every mind will live.]

Here are the needles. See that he wakes
The effects of rebuilding and drugs will pass. . . .
Have we the soul balm that torment slakes?--
No, for we are not, God, alas.]

Todd Browning's Childe Harolde

I.

At first I thought he hadn't got the brass,
The grotzits, the mazumas, the old rub,
No means to oil a palm, or charm a pub,
With rounds for all, and hence a simple ass,
And as I could not hide my thought's swift pass
Across my face, he looked about to blub.

II.

I waved my staff to reassure the youth
And spoke of all the quaint delights and shows.
The honour of the carny: all earth knows!
And yet for him the curved earth was a truth
Unknown, my motley strange and sinister, forsooth!
And I a thing that lurked, in tattered clothes


III.

Still at my beckoning he turned and strode
As if with dedication on to fate
As if my lot was but to see how great
He was for turning from the narrow road.
Towards hurdy-gurdies creaking like a toad
Towards the booths, the prize for guess-your-weight.

IV.

He clearly had been travelling for some time
Days and months certainly, and mayhap years
For in his eyes I thought I caught the tears
Glistening passed sleep, make runnels in the grime
The patina of dirt on pallor, ancient rime
Frosted his features with their sallow smears.

V.

I spoke to him of tonics that we sell
But he seemed dead indeed to all my shill
And though I spoke at length with all my will
I saw no sign that he would buy, no ‘tell’
That we look for in face of ill, or well,
In hope that they may hand over a bill.

Moon Poem

ADDRESS TO THE MOON

by: Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)

How sweet the silver Moon's pale ray,
Falls trembling on the distant bay,
O'er which the breezes sigh no more,
Nor billows lash the sounding shore.
Say, do the eyes of those I love,
Behold thee as thou soar'st above,
Lonely, majestic and serene,
The calm and placid evening's Queen?
Say, if upon thy peaceful breast,
Departed spirits find their rest,
For who would wish a fairer home,
Than in that bright, refulgent dome?



ADDRESS TO THE EARTH

By Aleph-en-usk (Epoch of the Red Mist – Epoch of the Black Fear)

How strange and how unlike, the silver lands
The light that falls in coloured bands
Which only science-bred eyes discern
And nerves rethreaded can then turn
To lights that flash within the brain
As pheromones from Queen’s domaine
Pierce with the fungi’s luminous fire
The fragile drones with heaven’s desire.
If we were still a lesser kind
Without the great and central mind,
Would we not place in that ‘blue-green’
The unthought, mystic, and unseen?


Simon Bucher-Jones

Response Poem: The Lesser Moon

I am the Great Sun

from a normandy crucifix of 1632
by charles causley.

i am the great sun,but you do not see me,
i am your husband, but you turn away.
i am the captive, but you do not free me,
i am the captain but you will not obey.

i am the truth, but you will not believe me,
i am the city where you will not stay.
i am your wife,your child,but you will leave me,
i am that god to whom you will not pray.

i am your counsel, but you will not hear me,
i am your lover whom you will betray.
i am the victor,but you do not cheer me,
i am the holy dove whom you will slay.

i am your life,but if you will not name me,
seal up your soul with tears, and never blame me.

I am the Lesser Moon

By Simon Bucher-Jones

I’m not the great sun, but reflect the same,
I am the compromise, the “it’s alright”.
I am the player who’s “okay” at the game,
I am the pallid virtues of half-light.

I am the white lie, and the gray statistic,
I am the layby where men stop to piss.
I am the step child, sullen or sadistic
I am the second-rate, the near miss.

I am your fall back choice, your “might as well”
I am your love whom now you barely like.
I am the phyrric victory, the broken shell,

I am the dove who poohed upon your bike.

I am your muddling though, but if you will not own me,
that’s quite all right, my advise is, disown me.

(In every way that counts, the great sun’s better

Unless it’s that “I” use a capital letter)

Harpies Of England (After Keats)

Happy is England by Keats

HAPPY is England! I could be content
To see no other verdure than its own;
To feel no other breezes than are blown
Through its tall woods with high romances blent:
Yet do I sometimes feel a languishment
For skies Italian, and an inward groan
To sit upon an Alp as on a throne,
And half forget what world or worldling meant.
Happy is England, sweet her artless daughters;
Enough their simple loveliness for me,
Enough their whitest arms in silence clinging:
Yet do I often warmly burn to see
Beauties of deeper glance, and hear their singing,
And float with them about the summer waters.


Harpies Of England - A suffragette poem
by Simon Bucher-Jones

Harpies of England ne'er will be content
Until they have a landscape of their own
Bleak crags and crenalations over-grown
And Bat-cave eries where their cries are sent
Still further sky-ward, and where clothing rent,
Flutters from captured men, who must atone
Their, all too certain, worldly, languid moan
That women bring no good to government.
Harpies of England, artless daughters not;
Have set their simple loveliness aside,
Which was but simple in a dullard's eyes.
Raised their white arms with banners scarlet-dyed
And though it is not martyrs' blood that dyes,
Still we may fall, to hunger, horses, shot.

Let Me Die A Rogue Timelord's Death (After Roger McGough)

Let Me Die a Youngman's Death

Let me die a youngman's death
not a clean and inbetween
the sheets holywater death
not a famous-last-words
peaceful out of breath death

When I'm 73
and in constant good tumour
may I be mown down at dawn
by a bright red sports car
on my way home
from an allnight party

Or when I'm 91
with silver hair
and sitting in a barber's chair
may rival gangsters
with hamfisted tommyguns burst in
and give me a short back and insides

Or when I'm 104
and banned from the Cavern
may my mistress
catching me in bed with her daughter
and fearing for her son
cut me up into little pieces
and throw away every piece but one

Let me die a youngman's death
not a free from sin tiptoe in
candle wax and waning death
not a curtains drawn by angels borne
'what a nice way to go' death

Roger McGough

Let Me Die a Rogue Timelord's Death

Let me die a Rogue Timelords' death
not a thirteenth regeneration into
the matrex clean transition barely noticed death
not a Final Chapter, Lord President nods a few kind
words to Gold Usher, Tele-epitathical death.

When I'm 700
and only a little prone to forget
the names of my companions
may I regenerate while the first
world of the cybermen burns inverted
over the north pole.

When I'm 400 odd, stubbornly
insisting on counting my age backwards
may I be arraigned by the
High Council, for sticking
My nose in, where it was needed,
and die for my troubles, clowning.

Exiled (after over a 1,000 years
of Science, still not counting
in linear years) may I be
blasted by rads from
A ranting Spider-God,
fall off radio telescopically,
into a nest of poison,
die of a bad trip,
in a hail of San Francisco bullets
at the last Millenium,
sipping cosmic power from
a dying Rose,
or give my life saving one old man,
and Grandfather.

May I die at least another
three times, all gleamingful.

The Laity's Response To Piety (After Bierce)

Piety by Ambrose Bierce

The pig is taught by sermons and epistles
To think the God of Swine has snout and bristles.

Laity by Simon Bucher-Jones

But outside the Pighood, there is no skrimage
a Piglet knows He made Us In His Image!

All ways give all the Heart (After Yeats)

Never Give All The Heart by William Butler Yeats

Never give all the heart, for love
Will hardly seem worth thinking of
To passionate women if it seem
Certain, and they never dream
That it fades out from kiss to kiss;
For everything that's lovely is
But a brief, dreamy. Kind delight.
O never give the heart outright,
For they, for all smooth lips can say,
Have given their hearts up to the play.
And who could play it well enough
If deaf and dumb and blind with love?
He that made this knows all the cost,
For he gave all his heart and lost.

Always Give All The Heart by Simon Bucher-Jones

Always Give All The Heart, for otherwise
What good is fickle gain in any guise
From passions barely felt, in dreamlike flow,
The feelings may arise but as swift go.
What lounge-lizard-like women frightened Yeats?
With scarlet lip gloss or forbidden treats,
That he must hold aside his heart's full love
To counterplay their gambits when they move,
For fear of what? That he might somehow lose
His heart to smoothness or to fuck-me shoes?
No, no heart can be harmed by giving all.
A whole heart will resist the hardest fall.
Only those hearts that are but partly given
Will break asunder: they're already riven.

After Returning From Lyonnesse (After Hardy)

WHEN I set out for Lyonnesse,
A hundred miles away,
The rime was on the spray,
And starlight lit my lonesomeness
When I set out for Lyonnesse
A hundred miles away.

What would bechance at Lyonnesse
While I should sojourn there
No prophet durst declare,
Nor did the wisest wizard guess
What would bechance at Lyonnesse
While I should sojourn there.

When I came back from Lyonnesse
With magic in my eyes,
All marked with mute surmise
My radiance rare and fathomless,
When I came back from Lyonnesse
With magic in my eyes!

Thomas Hardy


WHEN I had been from Lyonesse
A hundred years it seemed,
A few scant threads of what was dreamed
Served to illume my wretchedness
When I had been from Lyonesse
A hundred years it seemed.

WHAT had occurred at Lyonesse
The first rule locks away
The golden rule of Lyonesse that holds both night and day
Though it was won with soul's prowess
What had occurred at Lyonesse
The first rule locks away.

When I return to Lyonnesse
The next time, I will stay
In hidden lands where magic lies, and burning signs move in the skies.
And none are cruel to high or less.
When I return to Lyonnesse
The next time, I will stay!


Simon BJ

The Waistband (After T S Eliot) Part 1

I The Denial of The Bread

Dieting is cruelest to the mouth, feeding
Ryebread spread with a light hand, mixing
Museli and desire, contending
Dull foods with weight gain
Winter kept us warm, jogging
Girth in disdainful shorts, hogging
A little life with dried potatoes.
Someone surprised us coming over the Starnbergersee
With a snigger plain we puffed into the colonnade
And went on in sweatbands into the Hofgarten
And drank decaffinated brews and held off waiters
"Nein, Nein, Schwarzwalder Kirschtorte, echt dieting"
And when we were chilblained sking at the Arch-Duke's
My Croissants were eaten out of sight in a shed
And I was lightened. He said Marie,
Marie, you're dieting. And down the Hatch,
In the mountains there you can feed.
I eat much of the night and go straight for the larder.

What are the roots that lunch consists of now?
Out of this rosy stomach! Inner man!
You can nor stay, nor gust, for you can only home
In heaps of breakfast crockery or shreaded wheat.
And the dietry gives no succour, the cricket no relief,
And the dead ground no help to the bowling. Only
There is a salad under this red crock
(Come in to order salad of this fine crop)
And I will show you something different from either
Your salad at evening skillfully blended
Or your salad next morning curled at the edges
I will show you fear in salads and such.
Frisch weht der cabbage
Die Lettuce zu
Mein Irisch Stew
Wo weilest du?

You gave me wholemeal first a year ago;
They called me the wholemeal girl.
- Yet when we came back, ate from the wholemeal cook book
Your charms fulsome, you hair in a net. I could not
Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
Hungry nor fed, and I new nothing
Cooking into a healthu diet, the balance
Ou est la chef du ma tante
Madame Sausages famous cheese volovants
Had a bad habit, wuld never digest
Is grown to be the widest woman in Europe
With a wicked peck of tarts. Here, said she
Is your dessert the crowned Venician baaking
(Those are glaice cherries that coat its spires, look!)
Here is berry fondue, the layering of the chocs
The Ladle of the set soup rations.
Here is the man with the free loaves, here the cheese wheel,
And here is the deep-fry merchant and his cart
Which is black, holds something that they curry round the back
That my Doctor has forbidden me. I do not feed
The Hungry Man for love but money.
I seek rolls from people, folding dough in a ring.
Thank you. If you see dear Mrs Equitone,
Tell her I drink the Horlicks up myself:
One must be so careful these days.

Lean-veal Pate
Under the brown fog of a winsor sauce
A crust floured in a loaded wedge so mealy.
I had notthought death had underdone such pastry,
Pies, flaky,and shrtcrust were retailed
And each man licked his lips, beef for his meat.
Fed up, with skill, and downing ciders sweet,
Meanwhile some merry goodwife minced their beef
With a dead sound upon a chopping board of pine.
There I saw one I knew and stopped him: crying "Venison!"
You who ate with me in the shops at Mylae!
Those crops you planted last year in your garden
Have Brussels come to sprout, spinach to bloom this year?
Oh keep the dog from hence, the gardeners bane
Or with his nails he'll dig them up again!
You! Hypocrite Dieter, my cordon bleu, my lunch.


[Old parody poem written in my second year at University.
This covers the first part.]

The Comfort of Carrion (After Gerald Manley Hopkins)

Carrion Comfort by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Not, I'll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee;
Not untwist—slack they may be—these last strands of man
In me ór, most weary, cry I can no more. I can;
Can something, hope, wish day come, not choose not to be.
But ah, but O thou terrible, why wouldst thou rude on me
Thy wring-world right foot rock? lay a lionlimb against me? scan
With darksome devouring eyes my bruisèd bones? and fan,
O in turns of tempest, me heaped there; me frantic to avoid thee and flee?

Why? That my chaff might fly; my grain lie, sheer and clear.
Nay in all that toil, that coil, since (seems) I kissed the rod,
Hand rather, my heart lo! lapped strength, stole joy, would laugh, chéer.
Cheer whom though? the hero whose heaven-handling flung me, fóot tród
Me? or me that fought him? O which one? is it each one? That night, that year
Of now done darkness I wretch lay wrestling with (my God!) my God.

Carrion Comforts by Simon Bucher-Jones

Lacking a God (what God?) to wrestle in night’s crepid hours
I must perforce find hope in carrion, in all of earth’s decay
Our bodies, lives, loves, intellect, all that’s ours – must pass away
Depair is the strong sea, that at our sand-built towers
Washs and laps, ‘til ramparts, bailey, buttresses and bowers
All values and all merits, worth and powers, can not say nay
And yet, oh yet, we last, hold-fast, endure and not give way
As a single peak, sunlit aerie, out-tips from over-thunder’s lowers.

Once, I subdued all my decay to that bright, other, heaven-hope
But in the end unfrayed all weaves must part, and to their oakum fall
Though life to life entwist as each tight strand that binds a rope
Nothing is left, to show where once were, but the soft bird call
And on scattered wall, the brilliant lizardlimb, oh coloured calliope
Muse of the bright voice, steamhiss pinned, ending in wordless all.

Who is More Loving? (After Auden)

The More Loving One

By W H Auden

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.

How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.

Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.

Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.


The More Loving Ones

By Simon Bucher-Jones

Looking down at the world of ant and poet
The stars may pick out, whether or not we know it,
Which form of life their burning light or ray
Will shine with passion for both night and day.

Ants or poets, aardvarks or emus
Receive like benefit, none can refuse
Though stars may seem irrelevant to some
All should, recall, the nature of the sun.

Even a poet who can contemplate
Unmoved the darkling skies’ un-starlit state,
Would miss, I think, “one terribly, all day”,
If that particular star, but looked away.

And then if “all” stars died or disappeared
The time involved until the whole sky cleared
Of stars would be at least ten thousand years
While light of other days, flew past, like tears.

[Deneb is visible to the naked eye, at a distance of est 1,500 to 7,000
Light years. Other galaxies are visible in the 28 million ly range but
are not single stars]

The Unforgivable Virtue (After Chesterton)

The Unpardonable Sin by G K Chesterton

I do not cry, beloved, neither curse.
Silence and strength, these two at least are good.
He gave me sun and stars and aught He could,
But not a woman's love; for that is hers.

He sealed her heart from sage and questioner --
Yea, with seven seals, as he has sealed the grave.
And if she give it to a drunken slave,
The Day of Judgment shall not challenge her.

Only this much: if one, deserving well,
Touching your thin young hands and making suit,
Feel not himself a crawling thing, a brute,
Buried and bricked in a forgotten hell;

Prophet and poet be he over sod,
Prince among angels in the highest place,
God help me, I will smite him on the face,
Before the glory of the face of God.


The Unforgivable Virtue by Simon Bucher-Jones

Cry not? I grant, nor curse
In one sense, aye,
you can maintain that strong position by
Refraining from reminding me, in verse.

What seals may have been set upon my heart,
Are broken not, for you or any man,
Rather those seals' wax, only can,
Be melted from within, by passion's start.

The one who those cold seven seals has warmed
He deserves well
No brute, nor crawling thing in hellish cell,
Besides - 'he' thinks my hands are strongly formed!

So if we three ever have grace to stand
Before the God, of whom I yet must doubt
I tell you, GKC 'you'll' get a clout!
From me, before I'll let you raise your hand!

The Next Part of Kubla Khan Recovered (After Coleridge)

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.

So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:
And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!

The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight 'twould win me
That with music loud and long
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

***

Part Two

Born of the vision of the well:
The sunken well of world’s desires,
With my words I’d weave the spell;
Of Kubla’s summer capital,
The meadows of the flashing fires!

Sun-speared Red Fountains in the earth
The ember-blaze of heaven’s hearth
To burn, all ochre, in the air with cinnamon, and cassia
The scent that falls as dusty rain upon the coriandergreen
While tamed impala and giraffe, from Khwarezmid and far Xia
paced the long verges in between.

And Ia! the cry to heaven they made
-They lie that say giraffes can not give tongue-
A long low cry! as lonesome and dismayed
That ever came from demigod afraid
As cried at shadows when the world was young.
And shadows redly cast by fire's first burning
Stained all the rocks as though all-scarlet-yearning
Filled them to move in slow pavanes, slow turning
The old rip-tide of mountains aeon flowing
Stone upon stone uprising, gladly growing
Forced up on either side of pleasure's dome
Spears' flung at heaven's gate-locked bowers
Lightnings flung back to shatter ancient towers
The contrast lies in heaven's silent home
Where fire untouched, untouched by Genghis' spite
Stars tumble frigid, spear-points of the night.

The firelight on the dome of pleasure
The fires above the ice below
Between those two extremes the treasure
The only peace mankind can know
Neither too hot nor cold, but made
To gentle warm the gentle hearted maid.

Within that crystal hemisphere
Enfolded in the Sunset's ray
A thousand strings by virtuosoes played
Sounded so high and undismayed
Unfettered by the chains of any fear.
Would that we could that fire in us impart
That blaze without, that fearlessness within
The Fountained fire would melt the coolest heart
Break earthly circumstance apart, and win
Inside, the universal, and etern'
Which soveriegn fire can never melt nor burn
And all who saw it would proclaim
The Alkhest, potable, by name
The Grail, the cup, the secret sign
In the world's heart the autumn wine!
And fly, lest fire should strike them down!
For they have seen the hidden crown
Reaved from the dust of Palestine!