kingston october 1980

the sound of gunfire on the empty street
it comes from miles away and yet you quake
it's been too quiet if you'd made a mistake
the answer and the shock could both be fleet
but right here right now there's no one to greet
all sensible folk the public ways forsake
if they fear a stray shot their lives might take
and they can't trust as single soul they meet
what happens is they venture out a while
and see that everyone's coccooned at home
while isolate police cars roam the roads
i found this out i walked alone many a mile
and i seemed the only one who chose to roam
while others squatted fearful grim as toads

the savage wars of peace

when hell's unleashed and on every height
we see the flash of guns and hear bombs blast
we're thrown as it were into unburied past
when all that mattered was just simple might
excused as being a bringing towards the light
of savage folk who'd been in darkness cast
now breathing in clean freedom's air at last
freed from their long and horrid years of fright
and yet the dogs ungrateful for the gift
resist in every manner their new liberation
and to their earlier state seek to revert
between them and us is an eternal rift
demon-driven they want to reject salvation
we'll master them so what if they are hurt

ballade of higher education

the journey which we've taken heretofore
has been one which demanded that we wait
and learn some of the long-time walkers' lore
before we put ourselves in the hands of fate
and yet as it befalls i must now relate
that someone who had yet to mark the map
felt obliged to set the more experienced straight
and insist that we had reached the final lap

now someone who thinks they know the score
might turn out after all to be quite sensate
but those who've been on the road before
have in their turn each come upon a spate
of eager beavers whose small minds conflate
entering the trials with achieving the cap
who think that they could set the going rate
and insist that we had reached the final lap

in the distance we might descry some more
foolish adventurers hurrying to reach the gate
not knowing if they ventured on peace or war
the glittering prizes their imaginations inflate
into who knows some giant pile of gold and plate
each would believe their preceptor is a sap
conceive that on thin ice it's safe to skate
and insist that we had reached the final lap

prince we've learned we cannot habituate
apprentices to see where lies the trap
they'll think that fortune's already in a crate
and insist that we had reached the final lap

(no subject)

Another year draws at last to its close,
what's been completed and what's left undone
will see another year's first ray of sun,
but little will be different I suppose.
The sun illuminates some painted rose,
but not a live one. If this were plain prose
I'd say it longer, make some vulgar pun;
instead I find myself drawn here to write,
about imagined flowers in this grey season.
I'd want to say otherwise but that would be wrong.
Rather, I look outside at the pale light
and wonder on this day at time's subtle treason,
yet still I hear a bird uttering song.

The sonnet as a form

The sonnet begins when a fine man of law
devised the structure of a little song;
a genre that, while definitely not long,
could say a lot -- indeed entirely more
than any ballad sung by troubadour.
Journeys to far lands have made it strong,
and many fine companies it has been among;
its makers are the ones who know the score.
Shakespeare and Milton, Wordsworth and Millay,
Longfellow, Whittier, that transcendental lot,
a host of other poets have used the form;
it's a surprising, yet quite lovely way
to take some flowers, fit them in tiny pot,
and in this way create a wondrous norm.