{"id":600,"date":"2014-10-30T17:55:50","date_gmt":"2014-10-30T17:55:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olioweb.me.uk\/wordpress_marcus\/?p=600"},"modified":"2024-08-19T16:37:52","modified_gmt":"2024-08-19T16:37:52","slug":"poems-of-the-month-november-2014-the-autumn-of-life-moonlit-ruin-doubts-asking-for-help","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.olioweb.me.uk\/marcus\/?p=600","title":{"rendered":"Poems of the Month, November 2014: The Autumn Of Life, Moonlit Ruin, Doubts, Asking For Help"},"content":{"rendered":"

THE AUTUMN OF LIFE\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

I’m old. I’m an old fart, long past it.
\nGirls don’t look at me, or if they do they laugh.
\nThat ridiculous beard, those fashionable glasses,
\ntrying to be sexy. Let them giggle.<\/p>\n

The only fun I get out of life
\nthese autumn days, is to skiffle through the park
\nscuffing the dead brown leaves with my feet,
\nnoticing the ducks and swans, listening to the fountain.<\/p>\n

I’m not a foodie. Lunch is a toasted crust
\nwith a bit of beef showing signs of mould.
\nNobody sleeps with me. My teddies stare at the ceiling.
\nI’m up at 4, to fill the bottomless hole
\nof unrequited loneliness with e-mails
\nto Verna, Sandra, Anna, Liz and Kate.<\/p>\n

Maria makes my bed and buys me trousers
\nin an attempt to make me happy, and forget.
\nOnce a week I telephone Bolivia
\nand share some family scandal with a cousin
\ncatching me up in years but living in the past.<\/p>\n

Why did our favourite tango singer have to die
\nin an airplane accident before the age of 40?
\nThere is not much left for us. Time gets shorter
\nand we scrape the barrel of our savings.<\/p>\n

They’re making a film about Marcus Cumberlege –
\nthe old fart mentioned, in tennis shoes and raincoat,
\nrunning away from the rest of his life
\nwith a poem in his hand for Cara, aged 21.<\/p>\n

\n

MOONLIT RUIN\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

While the Waterman fingers
\nthe shakuhachi with his lips,
\nblue grey twinkling eyes
\nchecking the music and the holes,
\nnotes like under-ocean bubbles
\nor a chilly breeze in the trees<\/p>\n

sailing forth from the instrument
\n(a centuries old Japanese flute)
\nI, the sadly demolished ancient
\nfeudal castle, take time to think.
\nDespite the melancholy Germanic
\nRomantic gloom of this piece
\nspecially chosen to delight me<\/p>\n

and enlivened by trills and quavers,
\nI can almost hear the kitchen clock
\nticking with a smile towards four –
\nwhen the Moon of Libra, balanced
\nand serene, clicks with Jupiter
\nand I have an afspraak with Cara
\nin KT, made long before dawn.<\/p>\n

Green dustbin, St Jansplein,<\/p>\n

Wednesday 22 October 14, 17.25<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

DOUBTS<\/strong><\/p>\n

impromptu in B flat<\/p>\n

Will I ever grow sick and tired
\nof saying Namo Amida Butsu?<\/p>\n

Will I ever get bored and weary
\nwith Maria, Diana, Anabel and Rose?<\/p>\n

Will I one day stop writing poetry,
\ndisgusted with the plain indifference<\/p>\n

of the Powers that Be, to you and me,
\nand the strange foreign language we write in?<\/p>\n

Will Amida break his inconceivable vow
\nmade a hundred billion aeons from now<\/p>\n

to prevent me from reincarnating
\nin this burning samsaric world of pain?<\/p>\n

Will cell-phones, i-pads, tablets and TV
\nhave done away with language altogether?<\/p>\n

These are trivial unimportant questions.
\nA forties Mexican called Pedro Infante<\/p>\n

is voicing one of his melancholy waltzes
\nabout the usual treason in affairs of love<\/p>\n

and the woman of my life is back at last
\nfrom a Saturday afternoon with her friend.<\/p>\n

25.10.14, 18.15<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

ASKING FOR HELP<\/strong><\/p>\n

to Alain
\n(an impromptu)<\/p>\n

‘If all else fails, write a poem<\/em>
\non the back of your ID card,<\/em>‘
\nwhispered an angel called Christine
\nin my ear. ‘But make it short and sweet,<\/em>
\nwith no reference to the house<\/em>
\nin the Biddersstraat where we meet.<\/em>‘<\/p>\n

I once kissed Christine near her mouth
\nand lost my memory for days,
\naswoon in an alcoholic haze.
\nOK, I realize there are better ways
\nof being lonely on autumn Saturdays,
\nwriting the boredom out of your system
\nand leaving that first glass alone –<\/p>\n

but Christine’s advice had sunk home,
\nlike the drill in a nice dentist’s chair
\ntouching a hypersensitive bone:
\n‘Do what you have to do, Marcus.<\/em>‘
\nshe smiled with a nonchalant air
\n(Marc, Willy and Rudi were there).
\nI could almost hear my eurocent fall.
\nEven Amida can’t do it all!<\/p>\n

West Gistelhof, 25.10.14, 16.20<\/em>
\nRevised and corrected 26.10, 05.20<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

THE AUTUMN OF LIFE\u00a0 I’m old. I’m an old fart, long past it. Girls don’t look at me, or if […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-600","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-all","category-poem"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.olioweb.me.uk\/marcus\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/600","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.olioweb.me.uk\/marcus\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.olioweb.me.uk\/marcus\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.olioweb.me.uk\/marcus\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.olioweb.me.uk\/marcus\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=600"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.olioweb.me.uk\/marcus\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/600\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.olioweb.me.uk\/marcus\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.olioweb.me.uk\/marcus\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.olioweb.me.uk\/marcus\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}