THREE RONDELETS

The RONDELET   is a poetic form originating in France.  It consists of a single septet (7 lines) with just two rhymes and one repeating refrain, in the fom of: AbAabbA.  (The capital letters represent the repeats. The 3 refrains (A) are written in tetra-syllabic (dimeter) and the other lines are twice as long, these being octasyllabic (tetrameter).

Below I print three of my attempts at constructing a RONDELET – all on the subject of ‘PARTING’ . . .

Scanned image by Philip V.Allingham of a wood engraving by Dalziel at: http://www.thevictorianweb.org

ON PARTING … 1

Tell me to go
I know at last that we are through
Tell me to go
 The damage is to all on show
 And time is up for me and you
Better move on to pastures new
Tell me to go

ON PARTING … 2

But now we part
I know I’ll miss your every kiss
But now we part
The hurt has caused my broken heart
I am not given to reminisce
But your embrace I know I’ll miss
But now we part

ON PARTING … 3

(A similar form, but not strictly a Rondelet,

the lines of the refrain being in trimeter ! )

Love me or let me go
The hurt is more than I can bear
Love me or let me go
Stop dealing me that parting blow
You tease and tempt my heart to ensnare
Without a thought to commit or share
Love me or let me go

The description, with examples, of this poetic form can be found on the :
  ‘Shadow Poetry’  website

A Lifetime Away

Guisborough Priory – North Yorkshire, England

Three hundred miles
and a lifetime away
from the place where I was born 
the memories are vivid
burned into my soul
heightened by distance
by time past

Ghosts of my past
inhabit my dreams
chances gone begging
opportunities missed
loving and leaving
a heritage of hope
bringing certitude
where doubt once held sway.

I loved and love
those dark purple hills
outcrops and the Nab
towering over the town
Cass Rock
where Sisyphus finally capitulated

Beyond these,
just rolling
heather clad moor
soft dales 
grey-green heathland,
burnt golden yellow gorse
and swaying bracken

And on the scarp slope
the detritus of iron mines
defunct air shafts
ancient workings
the ruins of hard labour
and alongside these
pyramids of shale and slag
creating their own foothills
bracken spores now binding
their surfaces
reconstructing life
nature reclaiming its own

And the view which nurtured me
from my school room
of graveyard and priory
its arched east window
tracery shattered
configuring my sky

The ancient stone dovecote
now sheltering jackdaws
ravens, blackbirds.
the Norman arched gateway
still standing adrift
isolated from the remnants
of its dismantled
castellated walls
whose dispersed masonry
now furnishes
so many of the town’s dwellings

The mill pond stocked still
by the descendants of those
pre-dissolution carp
the Augustinians first introduced
fed and nurtured

The monk’s walk
cloistered
by beech and birch
sheltering silent contemplation
which
even now
as I tread in their footsteps
I replicate
in awe and reverence

And in the Apple Garth
where now the wheat
is harvested
still a silent windswept
arbour
now lovers
not penitents
linger
embrace
exchange kisses
and vows.

Thus am I now
beholden to the past
nurturer of my present
promise of my future

Roseberry Topping, Cleveland Hills, N.Yorkshire

Seven Against the World – The Robot’s Revenge

Seven against the world
lined up to face the unknown …

What is it with you robots
you are the fruit that man has sown
and when your time has come
as it will
you’ll boot up and become
our lords our masters
takeover bid sealed
role reversal accomplished

Now become
foremen of our outmoded skills
reducing us to caricatures of yourselves
giving to us the menial jobs
we once gave you.

Our breeding
the continuation of our species
controlled by your own
perceived needs
as once we controlled your destinies

Fate comes full circle
the maker
made to serve
the servants

 God subsumed by his creations
emasculated by his foundlings
victim of consequence
slave now to his oeuvre 

The self corrosive  imperative
of progress
the self-fulfilling rationale
behind mankind’s striving for perfection
now turned turtle

Unable to correct his miscalculation
his magnum opus
flawed to self destruction
subservience
and AI’s eventual annihilation

. . . Of both us and itself

Six Lanturnes

The LANTURNE is a traditional poetic form which has a five-line verse, normally without rhyme, in the shape of a Japanese lantern.
It has a syllabic pattern of one, two, three, four, one.
Below ,I have composed six loosely connected verses in this form . . .

  Raise
 your voice
 make it ring
don’t let it die
   sing

Vows
last long
when new but
promises  soon
   die

  Love
  yields hope
 but time tells
and soon it dies
    hurt

    Life
 brings joy
But  sorrow
Intrudes too soon
    … Damn!

 I
alas
will die soon
leaving this life
  hurts

Cry
and ask
this fool world
to  forgive  your
    tears

Revelations

I’m reluctant to reveal
The way that I feel
It’s not a big deal
Less said, soonest heal.

NO …

Revelations are not for me,
I’m a secretive person, you see.

And I of course know
That you reap what you sow.

So for now I’m a sceptic,
More than a little dyspeptic.

It may be divisive to say so,
But I just don’t like hubris or ego.

You can say that I’m bitter
‘Cos I’m not a transmitter.

Not allowing myself to be smart
I bury my sins in my heart.

That’s the best place for litter,
Not on Facebook or Twitter!

Sharing the Glow

Photo: Loch Awe,Scotland . . . WHB 19990

Sharing the Glow

I remember that evening –
The sun sinking low,
When you stood beside me
Sharing the glow.

We bathed in that splendour –
That golden sunset,
Drenched in that promise
I’ll never forget.

I held your hand tightly,
Placed a kiss on your lips
In youth, in the gloaming,
The lie was eclipsed.

For then we were young,
Life had not bitten hard.
Our futures seemed certain
But we let down our guard.

I left with a pledge,
But never returned;
Dissolved into dreams
Your derision I earned.

But now we are older,
Life has taken its toll.
Is it too much to ask,
Can I recapture your soul?

Now that same sun is sinking
Setting fire to the sea;
Can this Phoenix bring hope
To you and to me?

Let me hold your hand now,
Place a kiss on your lips,
For bliss in old age
Does all else eclipse

The RECLUSE

The RECLUSE

I am not a driven man
Consumed by purpose
I have ambled along life’s path
No particular aim in mind
I take no pride in not being assertive
For I have let life happen
Not forced its course
Little guidance have I sought
Or been offered
Little forethought have I given
I steered no path between the tides
To avoid the quicksands
Or to avoid being tempted by the Sirens’ wail
Gratefully
I was not confronted with
Scylla and Charybdis
I would have baulked with indecision
And without a philosophy
Religion no longer holding any sway with me
No politics to speak of
An indolent practitioner of life
Without imperative
Perhaps too conscious
Of everyone else’s point of view
For this no doubt I’ll pay a price
And when the final reckoning comes
They’ll say “He never cared”
But they will be wrong.
I cared too much to confront
My irresolution
And now I suffer for it.

THE BECK

THE BECK

the beck
my beck
North England
Old English bece
Dutch beek
German bach
my beck
my early life
my once-upon-a-time world

it was all things to me
my territory
my front line
against the outside world
fell in
fished out
fished in
fishes out
tiddlers
minnows
sticklebacks
 countless times
jumped it daily
dammed it
constructed waterfalls
floods flooded
floods receded
dredged
repaired
renewed

succoured my imagination
my coliseum
 my Olympic stadium
succeeding
my umbilical chord
as my link to the world
it ran through my heart
and past my house
gave me a ballpark
my own adventure playground
complete with running water
subterranean tunnels
waterfalls
dams
stepping stones
overhanging trees
to climb
to suspend myself
dangling
over the running water
sandstone-walled bridges
for carving initials
routes to explore
in both directions
crossings to navigate
ledges to crawl along
overgrown banks
forbidden sections
Rubicon for gang warfare
Lethe at dusk

above all
suspending my belief
in dreams
for this was my reality

once upon a time

Photographs . . . WHB – 2016 – Guisborough, North Yorkshire

The Leper Stone

In a cleft in the scarp slope of the Cleveland Hills, surrounded on three sides by steep tree-clad hills, now part of the North Yorkshire Moors National Park, lie a small number of houses. Now highly desirable properties, two miles from the nearby market town where I grew up. It is said that this secluded spot was, in medieval times, inhabited by a small community of lepers. In past times leprosy was thought to be both highly infectious and incurable. Lepers were required to remain within the confines of their village and never to come into direct contact with other human beings. Well meaning townsfolk would, from time to time, leave food beside a stone set up to mark the limit beyond which all lepers were never to venture. Such a ‘Leper Stone’ still stands at this spot as do several similar stones in other parts of the British Isles.  Whilst there is some dispute over the truth of this story, there does appear to have been a leper colony here in medieval times and certainly such places and such stones can be found in other parts of the country.  My verse below attempts to convey something of the desolate, bleak, despairing nature of existence for those who in past times were afflicted with this dreaded

The LEPER STONE

I live
a lazar
isolated
shut off from life
from the world’s reality
in that ancient Chernobyl
as a hermit monk
an eremite

my path
not of my choosing
but chosen for me
by disease
by circumstance
life’s throw of the dice
or perhaps it was death’s
for my existence is
a living death
my isolation
whilst I wither
unknown
untouchable
confined
in this cleft in the hills
one carucate of land
one oxgang
to roam
to till
to survive

let no one in
lest I corrupt all
contamination’s child
my daily burden
to see what morsels
of discarded waste
have been left for me
on the leper stone
pig swill yesterday
nothing today
tomorrow
I may not be here tomorrow

my family
similarly afflicted
now passed on
released from
their sentence
myself
inheriting
their misfortune
their bleak history
their misbegotten future

Three Tercets

William Blake … ‘The Vision Of Christ Resurrected’

A Haiku, when written in English, is a 3-lined unrhymed tercet.
A Poetic  TERCET is essentially a verse of three-lines all of which end in the same rhyme and often written in iambic pentameter.  I print three of my own such Poetic TERCETS below .  . .

 THE DOUBTING THOMAS

To start each morning he would kneel and pray;

He needed that to get him through the day.

At least his god would let him have his say.

THE BOMBAST

He loved to speak and then have the last word.

His friends, such as they were, called him absurd,

The rest just closed their ears and nothing heard.

THE CHOICE

God said to Man I’ll give to you a choice,

Believe in me and then with me rejoice,

Or be a Trappist monk and lose your voice.