When your firstborn leaves home
it leaves a large hole
for your heart to tumble right into,
the care of your hands, your eyes and your tongue
is too weak from the distance between you,
left unused and with nothing to cling to,
I’m useless.
When your firstborn leaves home
it makes you feel proud
and you can’t talk about him enough,
what he is, where he lives, what he’s earning and why
helps to hide that you’re feeling so rough,
just not touching him really is tough,
I’m speechless.
When your firstborn leaves home
is there ever a minute
when he wonders what you must be thinking,
or is he too busy, too tied up, too driven
like you were to stop everything sinking,
just one view without ever blinking,
I was foolish.
© Graham Sherwood 2006
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Lullaby
My large strong hands can easily cradle you,
close to my vision, just an inch away.
I kiss your mouth, your forehead, eyes
and savour the just bathed smell of your neck,
Ample child-skin is not yet taught,
to mould the man, your father’s son,
so for long then I’ll watch you sleep,
hear you come and see you go.
until I lose you,
in the distance of a curving road.
© Graham Sherwood 2009
close to my vision, just an inch away.
I kiss your mouth, your forehead, eyes
and savour the just bathed smell of your neck,
Ample child-skin is not yet taught,
to mould the man, your father’s son,
so for long then I’ll watch you sleep,
hear you come and see you go.
until I lose you,
in the distance of a curving road.
© Graham Sherwood 2009
Tate Modern
I walk into the large white box.
Some young people look cool,
others just take the piss,
some students appear informed, anguished even, intelligent,
others merely shake their heads.
I study Wine Crucifix, Arnulf Rainer.
Some old ladies stand there straight and tilt their heads,
others lean in closer, in wistful passivity.
A large group of children are lead to Jackson Pollock, Summertime 9a.
Some are expressionless, dismissive and uncomfortable,
others speak of images I cannot recognise, only one gets it.
A well-dressed man, American perhaps, is ambivalent,
a half-dressed girl is beautiful, and knows it,
others are imprisoned in their ugliness.
Cy Twombly’s Quattro Stagione beguiles me completely,
like Mucha posters in the rain.
Some tourists read the captions, inquisitive and scratch their chins,
others, Japanese, leave reverentially but return for yet another look.
La femme et son Poisson, Man Ray shimmers,
both lithe, both swim, both dream.
A small group do not look, but look at each other,
some are tired, blow out their cheeks, vacant,
others sympathetically recoil, feel conned.
I puzzle at Brague and fall in love with Metzinger’s
La femme a la Cafetiere, sensual, ovoid, warm.
Some schoolgirls look like schoolgirls, are schoolgirls
others wish not to be at school,
some clutch books for authenticity, I should be here,
others leave hurriedly, reluctant to stay.
Everyone notices the crack across the floor.
© Graham Sherwood 2008
Some young people look cool,
others just take the piss,
some students appear informed, anguished even, intelligent,
others merely shake their heads.
I study Wine Crucifix, Arnulf Rainer.
Some old ladies stand there straight and tilt their heads,
others lean in closer, in wistful passivity.
A large group of children are lead to Jackson Pollock, Summertime 9a.
Some are expressionless, dismissive and uncomfortable,
others speak of images I cannot recognise, only one gets it.
A well-dressed man, American perhaps, is ambivalent,
a half-dressed girl is beautiful, and knows it,
others are imprisoned in their ugliness.
Cy Twombly’s Quattro Stagione beguiles me completely,
like Mucha posters in the rain.
Some tourists read the captions, inquisitive and scratch their chins,
others, Japanese, leave reverentially but return for yet another look.
La femme et son Poisson, Man Ray shimmers,
both lithe, both swim, both dream.
A small group do not look, but look at each other,
some are tired, blow out their cheeks, vacant,
others sympathetically recoil, feel conned.
I puzzle at Brague and fall in love with Metzinger’s
La femme a la Cafetiere, sensual, ovoid, warm.
Some schoolgirls look like schoolgirls, are schoolgirls
others wish not to be at school,
some clutch books for authenticity, I should be here,
others leave hurriedly, reluctant to stay.
Everyone notices the crack across the floor.
© Graham Sherwood 2008
Sunday, February 01, 2009
Church Pece
A somewhat lean and mossy spire stands here,
with sombre face to toll long hours,
abroad and down a verdant bank,
it peers at proud church pece.
A frontier field of kindred fighting men,
a squabbling patch where true men died,
long, long forgotten under sod,
where wheeling kites patrol.
Now, old souls bend their broken weary backs,
strange weapons prod the ochre soil,
rod, pole and perch, they proudly tend
the graves of yester men.
So any warm idyllic sun drowsed eve,
the clink of hoe, the jag of rake,
rekindles, in the bonfire’s smoke,
a ghostly garrison.
Thin breezes whistle amidst bent rusting wires,
crow-scare flags stream from battle tents,
laid-up to rest are Cromwell’s men,
the skirmish dawn awaits
© Graham Sherwood 2008
with sombre face to toll long hours,
abroad and down a verdant bank,
it peers at proud church pece.
A frontier field of kindred fighting men,
a squabbling patch where true men died,
long, long forgotten under sod,
where wheeling kites patrol.
Now, old souls bend their broken weary backs,
strange weapons prod the ochre soil,
rod, pole and perch, they proudly tend
the graves of yester men.
So any warm idyllic sun drowsed eve,
the clink of hoe, the jag of rake,
rekindles, in the bonfire’s smoke,
a ghostly garrison.
Thin breezes whistle amidst bent rusting wires,
crow-scare flags stream from battle tents,
laid-up to rest are Cromwell’s men,
the skirmish dawn awaits
© Graham Sherwood 2008
Festival
Old friends meet loudly, hug and call each other “man”
their heads on other days would turn to Dave or James or Tim
rich suburbanites who freely mix with New Age scruffs
safe in the folds of music, smoke and pricey beer.
They lie on an acre’s nest of tiny dome-shaped multi-coloured tents,
that glimmer like torch-lit tics and smell of sweat and muddy grass
all dressed in tie-dyed, old, damp, outrageous clothes
until Monday comes once more, the suit, the tie, the tube.
In feathery drizzle, they stretch last nights’ stiff necks, backs and legs
and aimless, stroll with skinny dogs who sniff for discarded burger scraps
before the music calls, the thudding bass, screeching riffs and angry drawl
the Eloi turn and amble to this hypnotic churning noise.
Then demure young girls sensually writhe and show their breasts
And hope they won’t appear on someone’s MySpace page
Some henge-like stare, some sway, some jig with arms aloft
It’s festival man, you have to be here, come one come all
© Graham Sherwood 2008
their heads on other days would turn to Dave or James or Tim
rich suburbanites who freely mix with New Age scruffs
safe in the folds of music, smoke and pricey beer.
They lie on an acre’s nest of tiny dome-shaped multi-coloured tents,
that glimmer like torch-lit tics and smell of sweat and muddy grass
all dressed in tie-dyed, old, damp, outrageous clothes
until Monday comes once more, the suit, the tie, the tube.
In feathery drizzle, they stretch last nights’ stiff necks, backs and legs
and aimless, stroll with skinny dogs who sniff for discarded burger scraps
before the music calls, the thudding bass, screeching riffs and angry drawl
the Eloi turn and amble to this hypnotic churning noise.
Then demure young girls sensually writhe and show their breasts
And hope they won’t appear on someone’s MySpace page
Some henge-like stare, some sway, some jig with arms aloft
It’s festival man, you have to be here, come one come all
© Graham Sherwood 2008
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