WAITING FOR THE TIDE AND OTHER SONNETS
WAITING FOR THE TIDE
Have I offended Time to live so long?
I caught no flights to leave the land I knew,
no ships to foreign parts - but this is true,
I'm now Time's refugee. For right or wrong,
my fields are under tarmac - all that's gone,
and shadows from the dream world call my name.
Only at the edge can maps remain,
with tracks and landmarks bulldozed by the ton –
the border oaks which caught the village bell
and swayed the hours of sanctity and poise
were felled for Bedlam’s electronic noise -
I miss my trees and woods. I loved them well…
and deep down in the moor, three longships wait
to carry fabled kings who lie in state.
THE PILGRIM ON THE MOOR
Written on St Lucy’s Day
The abbey’s lamp will guide me to its door,
without it I’d be lost, as night sets in,
without it, there’s no pathway out of sin -
God bless the light above the darkened moor!
O gold of votive candles – faith and awe
before her weeping shrine: the bones within
are oozing oil, as sweet as honeyed wine;
salvation’s in the cup - though agues gnaw
the mortise and the tenon of a man
until he barely stands - despite his prayer,
and doubt will bring the devils to his brain.
O kindly Saint, reprieve me, if you can,
at least on earth – my Purgatory is here;
my steps are slow - my spirit drenched with rain.
GNATS IN MARCH
Gnat-fume, rising sure in morning light -
collective ghost, remembering Man's form
or else, a tree of sparks, a subtle-bright
ebullience, above our patch of lawn;
a circus from the fountain of themselves,
exuberant, although the air's still cool,
those clusterings in eights and tens and twelves
are joining - breaking - keeping no-one's rule
except the rule of Chaos - one and all,
those musketeers of grace - they dance or duel
as wilful dots - capricious, whirling things,
embodying the diva and the fool;
juggling themselves - without a clumsy fall,
so long as heat is love on fragile wings.
CONDEMNING HELL
If Hell is one communal, endless shriek
while bodies melt in flame to be reshaped,
while mouths that would repent can only gape,
how blessed are the chastened and the meek?
I'd let them out - who wouldn't? Life alone
is Hell enough for many - let's talk sense,
both good and wicked souls need recompense
for lives that were too much. We're on our own
when listening to the whispers from Above,
and some are sharper listeners, I'd say:
a matter of their intellect or birth.
If Hell is loveless, what's the point of love,
and why the flames, if nothing's burned away?
And what's the point of suffering here, on earth?
THOSE GREY, IMMORTAL SPIRITS
Behind our coins' assuming copper faces,
the nameless Lords of Landscape wait and stare.
By broken altars, in forsaken places,
their spectral, solemn drumbeats stir the air.
So ragged-horned - those angels of the wild
stand hooded in the glimpse beyond the eye,
by trackways best avoided by the child,
where even seasoned hikers hurry by.
Those grey, immortal spirits sense us well -
but are they night or day? - they'll love the fern
or welcome Easter violets to their dell,
yet seldom do they feel our seasons turn -
as if we serve one purpose through our days:
to learn which wood or mound requires our praise.
AN OFFERING FOR A WINTER GOD
Not for me, the Cutty Wren
On Stephen's Day - you'll ask me why?
The bird I hunt, brave gentlemen,
Has colours far beyond the dye.
Let others make the Wren their test,
Brown Wren, small wren - such is their fun;
I'll craft a hat from Robin's breast,
All bloody in the Winter's sun.
Go far, you Wren Boys - dance and run,
The Wren is fastened to your stick,
Go tell the Dark the battle's won
And Spring is coming, slow or quick -
What's that to me, you bully crowd,
With Robin’s dye on Winter's shroud?
DUSK WITH BROKEN FIGURES
A statue grove, where heroes pose to fade,
where verdigris paints whiskers on a nymph
and broken is the pipe that fierce Pan played
when Syrinx was a sigh amongst the dead.
The bald Odysseus wears his wig of moss,
(a robin pecks for tubeworms on his head)
Achilles in the gloom laments his loss -
Patroclus down and done for - off his plinth.
Now Chaos, creeping back, asserts her right
to topple every thought and every love;
though youth's a gift too fine for just one life -
It's over now. Her push becomes a shove,
and even one-armed Kore, bare and bright,
is shattered to abstractions dark with night.
WHEN ALL THE SHOUTING'S DONE
When all the shouting's done, I wish to see
the temple standing, overgrown with flowers,
wisteria dripping purple in the sun
and chimes to mark a zephyr's timeless hours
while children feel the welcome of their land,
as incense rises solemn to the light;
their days of fear long over – how they run,
towards the beaming statues, hand in hand,
while priests play chequers with the names of God
and never disagree (though still opining)
and the bright faces - the bright faces shining -
we’ll gather in the square - both young and old,
and catch the blowing petals, red and white,
as sacred, whirling dancers fill our sight.
HAUNTED BOOKS
Who now can ride a stallion to the sun
or halt the speeding flywheel of the world
when science tells us, no... those days are done?
Instead of haunted books, the truth's unfurled
as hieroglyphic theorems scratched on time;
and even if God’s knife can chop the moon,
computers find no spirit in Man's rhyme
and strings that swing the earth go out of tune.
But look - a lunar fullness - raised again
among the raging, equinoctial cloud:
it brings a silvered grace to falling rain
when autumn's woods are restless, wild and loud;
the waning moon’s a slice of mottled rind,
at least for eyes of faith, if not the mind.
BRIGHT MANTILLA
A dolphin clears the wave's unravelling lace
as sailors point from curving prows of reed
or from the olive ships of Samothrace,
from sleek Venetian galleons built for speed -
glad sailors all - to see a dolphin leap
and foam's a silver ribbon over swirls -
ten thousand streamers ripple on the deep
and spray's a bright mantilla set with pearls.
Ah, holy is this moment - holy dread
that youth might be mistaken in such glee -
when tides consume the living and the dead,
when shanty songs mean nothing to the sea.
But look! - the wide horizon flares with gold
and youth has time and visions to behold.
WHERE THE SEAS GO DEEP
Still cruising through, alert - a Greenland shark
concealed beneath a galleon's gilded prow
once heard the viol and hautboy stir the dark:
a grand age passing by - the Then and Now
contained and held the same within its mind,
all human visitations, rare and strange
across the artic planet of its eye;
it seeks and finds the majesty of range
within itself and where the seas go deep -
it heeds the shaman's drum to comprehend
how Man would sink through fathoms in his sleep:
gradations of the night, where clamours end,
until it cannot sense the beaten rhyme;
in space and cold - a slow heart sieving time.
Gary Bills was born at Wordsley, near Stourbridge. He took his first degree at Durham University, where he studied English, and he has subsequently worked as a journalist. He is fiction editor for Poetry on the Lake.
Gary gained his MA in Creative Writing at BCU, with a distinction.
He was nominated for a Pushcart Prize for his post-modernist epic poem, “Bredbeddle's Well”, which was published in Lothlorien in 2022, and he has been nominated for the Best of the Net awards, for his short story, “Country Burr”.
Gary's poetry has appeared in numerous publications, including The Guardian, Magma, HQ and Acumen, and he has had three full collections published, – “The Echo and the Breath” (Peterloo Poets, 2001); “The Ridiculous Nests of the Heart” (bluechrome, 2003); and “Laws for Honey” (erbacce 2020). In 2005, he edited “The Review of Contemporary Poetry”, for bluechrome.
His work has been translated in to German, Romanian and Italian. A US-based indie publisher, The Little French, published his first novel, “A Letter for Alice” in 2019, and a collection of stories, “Bizarre Fables”, in 2021. His second novel, "Sleep not my Wanton", came out in January 2022, and it is due out shortly as a Spanish language version.
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