A friend sent me this passage. At the time I did not realise that it was Wordsworth…

This spiritual Love acts not nor can exist
Without Imagination, which, in truth,
Is but another name for absolute power
And clearest insight, amplitude of mind,
And Reason in her most exalted mood.
This faculty hath been the feeding source
Of our long labour: we have traced the stream
From the blind cavern whence is faintly heard
Its natal murmur; followed it to light
And open day; accompanied its course
Among the ways of Nature, for a time
Lost sight of it bewildered and engulfed;
Then given it greeting as it rose once more
In strength, reflecting from its placid breast
The works of man and face of human life;
And lastly,from its progress have we drawn
Faith in life endless, the sustaining thought
Of human Being, Eternity, and God”.

and I wrote this response….

“Faith in life endless”, such sustaining thought
Has crept upon us from a source unseen yet
By no means unknown for, though ceaselessly sought,
It concedes nothing to those who would get
Some low or high advantage from its sport,
But rather, as fair and true ancestors beget
Their offspring by all most hidden comport,
It too will only yield its mystery secret
To those whose faith o’erwhelms all rational report
And to those graced few that it did so vet
It shows a way where’s needless to labour or court
The fates with own amplitudes one must trumpet
For in its unstinting love there is no “ought”
Or progress by compunction, merely a long set
Gaze of unremitting cherishment unsought
Wherein we may find Being, Eternity and, yes, God, even yet.

I hear your secret calling
In the bidding night
When regrets become most galling
And the lashes from each mauling
Plight my silence to your light

I hear your strident calling
In the urgent morn
As if the catawaling
Of the city traffic stalling
Might cause me to be born

I hear your soothing calling
In the high noon hour
As the shade shrinking
And the thirsty drinking
Mark the ebb of human power.

I hear your raucus calling
In the far gone dusk
As if revellers a-brawling
Or broken hearts a-squalling
Might wrest me from my husk

I hear you always calling
In the hale and the diseased
As the clatter of my falling
As a hurt child bawling
Sends me whither all is eased.

Written December 2006

Darkness in our hearts
Like the chill of a winter night
We tell our stories
Huddled around Amida’s fireside
In our togetherness
We suddenly remember:
Spring daffodils will come
In their own good time.

Written in northern France
while thinking of wars
past and present there
and in the Lebanon.

Sylvan soldiers stand
A poplar guard of honour
‘Cross Picardy’s land
Their crests bob faint bows toward
The becalmed dead ‘neath their sand.

Elsewhere the world burns
With flames of hate rekindled
Across other sands
Where cedars famed of old
No longer now bear witness

All the world’s on fire
With the fire of greed, say I,
With the fire of hate
Who will to nirvana go?
Who will bury all this woe?

The corn is golden
The woodlands are all at peace
In Picardy now
Poplars continue to bow
To those interred at their feet.

A tanka (Japanese 5-7-5-7-7  verse)

Two grey heron fish
By the bridge at Valigny,
Likewise two grey men;
Atop the water haze hangs
Like frosted passion waiting

board for a tray
cloth for a bunk
strolling the way
gathering junk

living on nuts
sleeping on hay
build little huts
watch them decay

weeds grow over
get fat get thin
daisies and clover
on the plate in the bin

they spread and they pass
the frown and the smile
along the old worn way
…..walk in style.