Short Poems

Seven Black Friars sitting back to back
Fished from the bridge for a pike or a jack.
The first caught a tiddler, the second caught a crab,
The third caught a winkle, the fourth caught a dab,
The fifth caught a tadpole, the sixth caught an eel,
And the seventh one caught an old cart-wheel.

" SET he that Hat on his head? "
" Nay, chance so led
That by that time the Hat
came he had no head. "

The sergeant, the sergeant he is the worst of all,
He gets us up in the morning before the early call,
With squads right, and squads left, and left front into line;
Then the slimy son of a gun, he gives us double time.

Seekers of peace, enough hypocrisy!
Your words are all deceit and trickery
There's nothing but thick darkness in your hearts
In which no ray of light can ever be.
Your conference is a market where the rout
sell justice and buy perfidy. No doubt
Peace-making should be easy, but I ask
When did the tigers pull their own claws out?

Searching for souvenirs among some rubble,
A post-atomic-warfare man observed
That " those who made this little bit of trouble
Got only what they asked for and deserved"
Then, in a kindlier afterthought's release,
He pitied " them that only asked for peace".

Sea-weed sways and sways and swirls
as if swaying were its form of stillness;
and if it flushes against fierce rock
it slips over it as shadows do, without hurting itself.

" SCORN not the sonnet, " though its strength be sapped,
Nor say malignant its inventor blundered;
The corpse that here in fourteen lines is wrapped
Had otherwise been covered with a hundred.

The Saviour came. With trembling lips
He counted Europe's battleships.
" Yet millions lack their daily bread.
So much for Calvary! " He said.

Sand has the ants, clay ferny weeds for play
But what shall please the wind now the trees are away
War took on Witcombe steep?
It breathes there, and wonders at old night roarings;
October time at all lights, and the new clearings
For memory are like to weep.
It was right for the beeches to stand over Witcombe reaches,
Until the wind roared and softened and died to sleep.

Robin sang sweetly
In the Autumn days,
" There are fruits for every one.
Let all give praise! "