There Will Come A Time.

        April 30th. last day of April, last poem, of poem a day month, love, anger, cry for justice, memories, call for peace, and much more, a poem can say it all. However I thought I would end the month with a prediction, a promise.

THERE WILL COME A TIME.

There will come a time when the hordes remember,

who bound our grand-parents to the yoke of oppression,

who sentenced our parents to deprivation,

who bid poverty sink its teeth into our heart,

who teach our children,   greed is a noble art.

who sent our sons through the gates of hell

to a litany of cambist brawls,

crammed coffers with blood-stained gold

while laughing in Ares hall's.

"Who does these terrible things to us?" they will ask,

and when they remember,

they'll bring an energy that is endless

to drive a fist that is fearless.

Then this merciless market-driven world will crumble

under an insurrection of integrity,

the poor will emerge from the dark husk of capitalism

to live in the light of social justice.

There will come a time when the hordes remember.

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

Wind, Sea And Hills.

 Whitehills.

     Last Monday, April the 7th. ann arky and partner, took off with the bike and headed for the north eastern corner of Scotland. We stayed in a small village called Gardenstown, near Banff. It is a small area at the bottom of an extremely steep hill and the houses are all crammed together with virtually no space between them, and right on the rocks at the shore facing the North Sea. Your heart bleeds when you think of the life of hardship the residents of the late 19th. early 20th century, must have had to endure just to survive in such a harsh and cramped environment. Herring fishing was their life's blood. Now, most of the cottages are holiday homes, one of which we rented. There is no mobile phone signal and no wi-fi. In the kitchen of the cottage there was instructions telling you that there was no phone signal, but if you walk towards Grovie, past the harbour and the steps down to the beach, there is a phone signal. I had a vision of walking there and seeing this "thing" on the beach with a label, "phone signal". Or perhaps at certain times of the day the village population of holiday makers, congregate at that point and stand in groups with their mobile phones stuck to their ear chatting to the outside world.

McDuff.

      I also believe it is the windiest and hilliest spot on the planet, making it very hard work for ann arky's legs when on the bike. Perhaps I should have recognised the signs, lots of very large wind turbines, always turning at a fair pace. 

McDuff.

      In saying that, it is a very beautiful area and we will be back, though perhaps not to Gardenstown, beautiful as it was, I didn't like the feeling of being trapped, unable to get out of the village without a car. I didn't tackle the hill on the bike.

Near Whitehills.

      I regret not having been able to post a poem a day for the whole month of April, but here we are with today's rendering.

JUST IMAGINE!

If only we could find the imagination

to see this world as one rich colourful nation,

not a collection of camps, insular and small

always eager to mount a border brawl

sending forth an army of fruit growers

to shed the blood of some seed sowers,

holding high a coloured rag

proclaim, "the blood we shed is for this flag",

believing this justifies the countless dead

across nature's beaty spread.

Can't we learn from yesterday's errors

borders breed false fears and foolish terrors;

each flag waving hand sows the seeds

of tomorrow's pointless brutal deeds.

If only we could find the imagination

to see this world as one rich colourful nation,

all free to walk our chosen path

free from fear of the strangers wrath.

A brother rich or poor we can accept,

a different coloured skin is cause to reject,

smile at a brown eyed sister with reddish hair

yet mock one who walks a jungle path, with bosom bare.

Shower with praise and welcome embrace

anyone from our spurious race,

greet with snarl and angry glare

those strange people from over there;

then using our culture as some kind of shield

guarantee our future in isolation sealed.

if only we could find the imagination

to see this world as one rich colourful nation.

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

Youthful Traveller.

       April 29th., one more day to go, after today, of "poem a day" month of April. I hope you have had as much pleasure reading them as I have had posting them. It forced me to go back over pages I hadn't looked at for years, it kindle sparks that I thought had been extinguished.

Youthful Traveller.

Now,

firm in winter's bosom clasped

gazing back along a path

a path I never can retrace

wondering, when summer's blaze

cooled to autumn's seductive charm,

when autumn ran to winter's chill?

I saw no signpost mark the borders

no checkpoint with the list

bidding me declare.

So the sea of life I duely sailed

a smuggler to the last,

contraband I carry in my heart,

the joy of spring

mid winter's icy blast.

ann arky's home.

Dialogue Of The Destitute.

        Today's poem, written by Yamanoue no Okura, from another place and another time, but sadly, some things never change. The poverty written about all those years ago, in this poem is still very much part of today's world. For how much longer?

This from Wikipedia:

       Yamanoue no Okura (660–733) was a Japanese poet, the best known for his poems of children and commoners. He was a member of Japanese missions to Tang China. He was also a contributor to the Man'yōshū and his writing had a strong Chinese influence. Unlike other Japanese poetry of the time, his work emphasizes a morality based on the teachings of Confucius. He was perhaps born in 660 because his fifth volume, published in 733, has a sentence saying "in this year, I am 74".

        The Yamanoue clan was a tributary of the Kasuga clan,^[1] who is a descendant of Emperor Kōshō. Yamanoue no Okura went on to accompany a mission to Tang China in 701 and returned to Japan in 707. In the years following his return he served in various official capacities. He served as the Governor of Hōki (near present day Tottori), tutor to the crown prince, and Governor of Chikuzen.

      Modern scholar^[who?] have reached the general consensus that Okura was likely of Korean extraction. He is believed to have been one of the refugees from the Korean kingdom of Baekje (called Kudara in Japanese) who fled the Korean peninsula for Baekje's close ally Japan after their kingdom was invaded by Tang China.

Dialogue of the Destitue
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"On nights when rain falls,
                  mixed with wind,
on nights when snow falls,
               mixed with rain,
I am cold
And the cold.
       leaves me helpless:"
I lick black lumps of salt
and suck up melted dregs of sake.
Coughing and sniffling,
I smooth my uncertain wisps
                        of beard.

I am proud-
          I know no man
                is better than me.
But I am cold.
I pull up my hempen nightclothes
and throw on every scrap
of cloth shirt that I own.
But the night is cold.
And I wonder how a man like you,
          even poorer than myself,
with his father and mother
starving and freezing,
with his wife and children
begging and begging
              through their tears,
can get through the world alive
               at times like this. "

"Wide, they say,
              are heaven and earth-
but have they shrunk for me?
Bright, they say,
               are the sun and moon-
but do they refuse to shine for me?
Is it thus for all men,
                  or for me alone?
Above all, I was born human,
I too toil for my keep-
as much as the next man-

yet on my shoulders hangs

a cloth shirt

not even lined with cotton,

these tattered rags

thin as strips of seaweed..

"In my groveling hut,
    my tilting hut,
sleeping on straw
cut and spread right on the ground,
with my father and mother
       huddled at my pillow
and my wife and children

       huddled at my feet,
I grieve and lament.

Not a spark rises in the stove,

and in the pot

a spider has drawn its web,

I have forgotten

what it is to cook rice!
As I lie here,
a thin cry tearing from my throat-
                  a tiger thrush's moan-
then, as they say,
to slice the ends
of a thing already too short,
to our rough bed
comes the scream of the village headman
           with his tax collecting whip.
Is it so helpless and desperate,
the way of the world?"

ENVOY
I find this world
a hard and shameful place.
But I cannot fly away-
I am not a bird. 

 

ann arky's home.