TEN POEMS: We Dream of Gods
JENNY TATTERSOCKS
Remember - pity - Jenny Tattersocks
who rose on gibbous moons to reach her rapture,
who died too soon - still in the village stocks,
abused yet mourned by some - who else could capture
half a creaking crow's wing in a bottle
and sell it for a shilling at the fayre?
(She spent the lot to buy a rooster’s wattle,
and love spells from the naked ghosts of air…)
and once she tapped her staff to burst a fountain;
(she'd dabbled deep to learn the lore of gnomes
and traced their secret routes beneath the mountain,
a lamp of quartz to seek their cavern homes.)
Now the crossroads, Jenny lies at rest,
poor Jenny, with a boulder on her chest.
MATING IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
One massive fig leaf for his clothes,
As roses grope up every post –
Ah, see the naked statue pose,
This verdigrised and Roman ghost
Too far from home - the English Shires
Where genteel Lords and Ladies sigh
In sweaty silks and wigs like wires;
An almost Adriatic sky
Oppresses them – Oh, damn that sun!
If they got naked too, I think,
The statue’s lust might be outdone –
But as it is, their clothes do stink!
Rise Priapus, and put to shame
The lack of native ardour here,
Let them undress and try love’s game,
If not this year – another year…
THE VICTIM
He’d barely paused to recognise himself,
remote from what the red-faced Judge had said,
too bored perhaps, while all his crimes were read,
indifferent to his soul's eternal health -
he told the Parson so - God knows my heart -
the folks that called him evil had no right,
as if his bestial deeds were spots on light;
(the World misunderstood him from the start...)
What chances did he have? Well, more than some,
but what of that? Should Man condemn a man?
He'd only loitered where dark currents ran -
no need to send him down to Kingdom Come…
I'm better than you all - no child of Hell.
What do ya bastards know?
(The trapdoor fell.)
EQUINOCTIAL ODE
From distance – from the still of noontide streets,
the Sun in splendour looks towards the shade
but will not turn to winter yet, when gold’s
for fallen leaves, but not his flame – or white gold’s
winter’s gift to sky, when silence meets
the scratchy bones of trees, their grace unmade –
today’s bright tales of Equinox are told
to hail the new and set aside the old
But both exist where stones have marked the dawn,
and spirit lights went dancing through a room
where ageless bones lay waiting to be born -
forsaken, in their dry and dusty womb
laid down for summer’s peak or winter’s morn;
may light weave clothes on Time’s eternal loom
to robe a risen king – his crown of thorn
in blossom, as he stumbles from the tomb.
GENII CUCULLATI
Three figures cross the landscape – hooded shades
Who’ll pause by ancient crossroads, side by side
By vanished shrines to nymphs or martyred maids;
Lost servants of a goddess – still they guide,
Still they’ll lead you on past wood and moor
By kindling in the mind a recognition
Of what this stumbling journey might be for,
Beyond all words - a pagan benediction
Which brings you to the shadows of the year
When you'll forget the notes of nectared fruit;
Put on your cloak and set aside your fear
And join them on their cold eternal route.
THE BIRD WITHOUT A PERCH
One day - alas - we shall be Babylon,
Remembered for the garden and the rhyme;
No kingdom bears the beating of the sun
And Babel's towers must crumble, given time;
Then we shall be the ghosts who might abide
If reveries can set us on the page:
Our cruelties and glories side by side
In records of our gentleness and rage.
Perhaps the seas will cover all our land
Until we are the bird without a perch,
Beneath great waves or heaped with tidal sand -
Faint chirrups from the village and the church...
Will strangers then still listen hard and long
For murmurs from the sonnet and the song?
“HERE BE MONSTERS”
Beyond this line, there’s madness – see, they come!
Crowned serpents with the pygmy wings of hens,
The back-to-front, which quibbles with its bum,
And manticores – which bred in Pharoah’s pens;
The head of Christ, set on a lion’s form,
And dogmen, keen to bargain for a pearl,
And bat-eared monkeys - baking bread at dawn;
The wyvern with its body in a whirl,
The goat that trails a viper in its wake...
The unicorn’s aghast at how he’s made,
While monk seals count the beads for no-one’s sake
And hares behead three nobles by the blade;
Beyond this line, beyond the Thule sea,
We sketch the forms which are, and which may be.
THREE KNOCKS
"Ah, Doctor, though he seemed to show f'best,
the fever having broken so - I knew,
to hear our door knocked thrice, the rest
was set - yes, thrice - and nothing I might do
could turn that tide – say, what might turn that tide?
and when the church clock chimed its proper three,
a little on, or thereabouts, he died -
as though he slept, and still might wake for me;
would that ha' been the case! But he waxed grey,
because his soul, which coloured him, had fled -
and whither went his spirit? Who can say?
But he was of the kinder sort - though dead
he'll stick by me – (we spoke of this before)
And by and by, my death will tap our door."
THE SHADOW BLOWS
I tell my mind, observe yourself with trust,
Accept the brooding enclaves of your power,
For who can paint a shadow from its roost
If no light’s there, through every sundial hour?
Shade has its purpose too – to cloak the ghost;
I’m grateful that the gloom is always there,
Mind-salving for the living and the dead,
To bright a touch of darkness to the flower;
The shadow of a rose is still a rose
And when one petal drifts, the shadow blows.
WE DREAM OF GODS
We dream of gods - perhaps to let them in,
And see - they dance beyond the deepest mind,
Blue-skinned and juggling planets as they sing,
And barely spare a thought for humankind;
But oh! - their minds are greater than the stars,
Infinities lie in their briefest pause -
They comprehend the struggles which are ours
And judge and love through deep eternal laws
And share one form, asleep on that great sea,
For what has been, for what is yet to be.
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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