Suicide on a whim is not unheard of but few such perpetrators live to tell the tale
one such rescued from his indecision by the Gardai lived through his trauma sweet Liffey run softly while I tell the story
distraught by his gambling debts and the drinking his only way to a conclusion seemed to him to be voluntary self-inflicted euthanasia yes he thought that he wanted to die half-determined part irresolute
in a single moment of wavering he had jumped just fell perhaps but the fear and the cold water soon hit him hit harder than the twenty foot drop
an instinctive cry escaped him you could call it a change of mind his cry for help was a second thought an unintended consequence of his half-hearted conviction
and now he was held grasped in a rescue bid
but did he wish to be salvaged to be pleaded with would that bring him the closure he craved attention unwanted
but secured attention secured but unwanted
and still he could not let go the ladder his passport to life a life he did not desire could he bear to go there yet again to continue victim to more pain to yet more anguish
but temporary chagrin is no killer his cri de coeur answered his indecision thwarted
is it heads or tails is it stay or go is life’s hurt greater than death’s pain is future shame worse than eternity’s opprobrium
we will never know the prognosis I suspect he is still amongst us ever indecisive a suitor for attention defaulting on his debts not stopping at three pints one of life’s protean chancers
The lessons of history are all around Etched on death’s memorial But who looks at memorials?
The war to end all wars ended But the peace had not been won
Exchanging eyes Has not proved a workable proposition And yet the attempt goes on And mankind is condemned to try again To seek an end to conflict By perpetuating conflict itself
Those lessons from the past Unlearnt At best misunderstood Ignored And so it continues The errors of the past Visited on countless future generations
Fear reigns And stultifies hope Because mankind remains Because mankind will not change Still comatose Sleepwalking into conflict again Again And yet again
Original sin Casts its sinister shadow Over hope And so The cycle continues War and peace Unfeasible bedfellows History hardly notices the difference
But we do And suffer for it
The two illustrations above were scanned from my copy of Holbein’s ‘Le Triomphe De La Mort’ published in
1780 … Etchings of Holbein’s originals by Chr.De Michel
“ . . . A Robin Redbreast in a Cage Puts all Heaven in a Rage. A dove house fill’d with doves and pigeons Shudders Hell thro’ all its regions. A Dog starv’d at his Master’s Gate Predicts the ruin of the State. A Horse misus’d upon the Road Calls to Heaven for Human blood. Each outcry of the hunted Hare A fiber from the Brain does tear . . . ”
Contentment suffuses the scene And peace lies softly on the land Life languishes in its grip Labour held in thrall to lassitude Neglectful now of endeavour.
In the calm Of the midday sun The farm sleeps on Parading its contentment Revealing its accord With its heritage By just being there Seemingly throughout time Amid the rolling fields Savouring The languor of a lazy day The serenity Of a sublime summer
The quiet joy of existence Tells more of peace Than a thousand pacts Life lived In alliance with nature Endowing us with serenity.
The sun’s open arms Embrace the emerging day Seeking lost sunbeams
Clutching at ripe fruit Ever hoping to regain Spent and mislaid strength
Hopeless task to set Once spent never recovered Now feeding our homes
Caught by our panels Sustained by the human race Lost to Mother Earth
The pen & wash sketches are by WHB (aka Roland). In order they are of …
Top: South Bishop Lighthouse, Pembrokeshire, Wales (1993); Centre: An English Dawn . . . (1991) Bottom: Lamlash and Holy Isle, Isle of Arran, Firth of Clyde, Scotland … (2001)
View from Decimus Burton’s Wellington Arch, Hyde Park Corner, Adrian Jones’s sculpture of ‘The Angel of Peace Descending in the Quadriga of War’ (Watercolour – WHB)
LONDON 2017
In all that bright and glorious sunshine, amongst those trees, those parks, those sculptural delights, Hidden below that Impressive skyline, Beneath and among those imposing sights, How much deprivation is still concealed As that which was to Blake revealed?
( Pen and Wash drawing and the accompanying verse above are by WHB)
What was revealed to William Blake as he wandered the streets of late 18th and early 19th Century London, he wrote about in the following poem. It was first published in his ‘Songs of Experience’ in 1794
London-Seven Dial early 19th Century – Sketches by Boz
London . . . By William Blake
I wander thro’ each charter’d street Near where the charter’d Thames does flow. And mark in every face I meet Marks of weakness, marks of woe.
In every cry of every Man, In every Infants cry of fear, In every voice: in every ban, The mind-forg’d manacles I hear
How the Chimney-sweepers cry Every blackning Church appalls, And the hapless Soldiers sigh Runs in blood down Palace walls
But most thro’ midnight streets I hear How the youthful Harlots curse Blasts the new-born Infants tear And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse
Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones …’The Sleeping Beauty’ 1871
DREAMLAND
My mind enfranchised in sleep liberated from rationality and conscious executive decision my unconscious set free to roam my history.
The blurred narrative picks and chooses what it wants to portray to examine to reconnoitre.
Personae and locale juxtaposed regardless of sequence of time and of place
A current friend a past acquaintance someone who is no one brought together and the scene is set.
I wander amongst its passage ways through its disjointed scenery meeting both friends and strangers so unclarified and yet telling a minimal story its sequence uncontrolled unfettered by personal decision moving on at leisured pace subject it seems to no control seemingly governed solely by its own momentum no decisions involved in the flow of events linked by no conscious reason aware of scenery of being somewhere half-known but insensate unaware of how I feel towards it.
Then, an arbitrary end to these inconclusive series of events; sometimes just a fading; but at other times an abrupt cessation of the out-of-focus story’s flow an abrupt end often in mid event.
And I am left with traces vague recollections of where indistinct awareness of who no understanding of why no connection to past no sense of a future
Just dreamland half-remembered soon forgotten altogether lost in another time another life a parallel reality or even outside reality but it must be my reality.
My mind enfranchised in sleep liberated from rationality and conscious executive decision
My unconscious set free to roam my history. How that happens to be
The Vikings . . . Embroidery by Eileen Phelps – 2013
OUR VIKING FOREFATHERS
(Or perhaps it should be ‘FiveFathers’?)
Kirk, Ulf, Dag, Garth and young Sven, Five fierce and intrepid Norse men, All were keen for a spot of adventure, And some philand’ring as well now and then.
These five Vikings set off from their fiord, Their longboat just bristling with gear; Spangenhelm, chain mail and hatchets, They thought they had nothing to fear.
But the North Sea didn’t prove easy, They rowed until practically dead, Till at last they spotted the Orkneys Then got ready some Scots’ blood to shed.
They’d set out equipped to do battle, To plunder, to pillage, despoil, But they could not decide where to settle, Where best to create more turmoil.
So they carried on rowing southwards And kept their eyes skinned for a village; For any old Saxon encampment With people and pastures to pillage.
Before long they came to an island That was covered in seaweed and priests; They decided to stop and replenish, While the priests signalled, clear off you beasts.
At first they weren’t kind to the natives; They took all their women and corn, But they could not abide all the chanting And treated the abbot with scorn.
But in time they took to the island, Found some fair Saxons to wed; Even started attending the chapel, Word of their atonement soon spread.
When I think of my Norsemen forefathers
Now I don’t see foreign insurgents; I think of them solely as tourists, Who created a bit of disturbance.
NOTES:
I am indebted to the artist, Eileen Phelps, for permission to use a photograph of her embroidery, first exhibited at the Barn Arts Centre, Surrey, in 2013.
Because Eileen’s embroidery on which I based these verses is clearly light-hearted, jocular and whimsical, I have followed that approach with my verses. I apologise to the historians of the period of British history for seemingly making light of the violence and deprivation which the Viking raids wreaked on coastal communities in the North of Britain.
The Vikings first invaded Britain in AD 793 and last invaded in 1066 when William the Conqueror became King of England after the Battle of Hastings.
The first place the Vikings raided in Britain was the monastery at Lindisfarne, a small holy island located off the north-east coast of England. Some of the monks were drowned in the sea, others killed or taken away as slaves along with many treasures of the church.
Following many years of incursions by the Vikings, eventually, King Alfred of Wessex was able to confront the Viking ‘Great Army’ at Edington, in 878, when his victory enabled him to establish terms for peace, though this did not put a complete stop to Viking activity which continued on and off for several more generations. Alfred had to concede the northern and eastern counties to the Vikings, where their disbanded armies settled, created new settlements and merged with the local populations. Lincoln, Nottingham, Derby, Stamford and Leicester became important Viking
towns within The Danelaw (or ‘Scandinavian England’), while York became the capital of the Viking Kingdom of York, which extended more or less over what we now call Yorkshire.
These areas were gradually reconquered and brought back under English control by Alfred’s successors, but not before the Scandinavian influence had been locally imprinted to an extent which is still detectable today in place names as well as the DNA of many of its inhabitants.
London, Victoria Embankment, late 19th Century … Pen & Wash – WHB – 2014
Late autumn evening treading wet leaves on the broad embankment beside the dark river; starry sky and the pavement spotted with lights dark pools between those balustrade sentries the eighty year old yablochkov candles (the country’s very first electric street lights) still throwing the trees’ shadows across the road to Victoria’s gardens.
Perhaps memory twists my tale; mike, dave, wally, ray, with me five of us, fresh lads freshers too up from the far country to study to see the big city to re-start a life men now together soliciting knowledge tempting experience.
Interned for a Chelsea month, then the anticipated incursion, our first excursion into the great city set for new challenges no plan just exploration; for the moment nothing cerebral just life in the moment awaiting a happening neophytic greenhorns.
Walking where Victoria walked, or did she ever really enjoy her gardens by the river? thrilling evening walking that promenade, drinking the sights eating the sounds devouring the smells and tastes soaking up the river and the beer, Victoria’s Embankment Gardens.
We didn’t know it then nor did any of us suspect it was to be ray’s swan song sweet Thames run softly and be his swan song.
Turned up Villiers Street, Kipling’s and Evelyn’s street, tumbled into The Trafalgar, seedy then, well, rare student prices, waitress in black and white I remember the white cap with lace and black band the tiny white apron on black dress alluringly short wiping her hands by rubbing them seductively on her aproned thighs, “what can I get you lads?” … ribaldry … ray “what time do you finish?” … her answer no more than a half-smile;
After the spam fritters and the glorious knickerbockers and more small pink hands attentive hands rubbed clean on lacy white apron, ray’s eyes never taken off them then drinks nothing heavy.
Ray fell must have done from a great height smitten I would say to his adam’s apple core, eyes only for a pretty face and those lacy edges.
Conversation ricocheted across the tables voices spurted out their verbiage as those yablochkov candles expended their light, more raucous than uncouth.
Then the attempt to close to dispense with customers we head for the street ray stays in his seat “’bye chaps, I’ll see you.”
… But he never did.
Nor we him. Ever again.
The Thames Embankment is a work of 19th Century civil engineering which reclaimed marshy land next to the River Thames in central London. It follows the North Bank of the river from Westminster Bridge to Blackfriars Bridge.
The Victoria Embankment Gardens , built also in the latter part of the 19th Century, separate the embankment and the road running alongside from the buildings on the south side of Whitehall, Trafalgar Square and The Strand.
Villiers Street is a short connecting thoroughfare, now mainly pedestrianised, running from the Thames Embankment and Charing Cross underground Station uphill to the Strand, Charing Cross Mainline Railway Station and Trafalgar Square. It contains many restaurants and eating establishments. The Trafalgar Cafe, however, can no longer be found there.
Poem by WHB and re-published in memory of Dave and Mike – now passed on to where all memories are filed and all mysteries are resolved.
Roland's Ragbag 