Half-Past Five

Jennospot 111  Half-Past Five

Jus' recently a poem, wot were writ by PStJ, got mentioned on Facebook. It's a weird sort o' poem, an' it's a bit long, but it seems as 'ow some people reckon it's okay. If'n yew don't loike it there's no need ter go a-blamin' me, 'cos there ain't no accountin' fer stuff wot ovver people write. Any'ow 'ere it is:

 

         Half-Past Five

No time for dreams – the time is now.

Eternal now that cannot change.
A frozen moment – yet somehow
The sun moves on, familiar, strange.

In windy silence, tempest calm,

The trees stand still and shout their lives.
Around is light without alarm
And fearful joyfulness survives.

All sky-blue bright the dark is light

That gleams and glows in dark that grows –
Subdues the form – the day is night
And everything together flows

In symbiotic freedom fixed.

Together linked and yet apart
All individually mixed
Alone together, end and start.

The ploughman, on his tractor, dreams

Of half-past-five and then his beer.

The gulls wheel round and each one seems

A feasting, feathered buccaneer. 

Competing, squabbling, hovering still

While swooping in the static breeze.

They scream aloud with silent bill

And gleam between the glowing trees. 

As one they dive – all aerobatic

Around the furrowing ploughman go.

A single creature singly static

So swiftly swirling and so slow. 

Then time itself takes up the theme

To tune its beat to ever now

And harmonize the ploughman's dream.

Plough on, plough on and ever plough. 

Time's furrow on the ploughman's brow

Is no more than a seagull's care

To furrow, burrow, know not how,

While time stands still on windy air. 

For time is wind and tree and bird

And ploughman dreaming of his beer

And seagull's scheming dreaming heard,

And hope and love and screeching fear. 

With screaming seagulls, gleaming trees

And dreaming ploughman in the sun.

All time stands still – its vortices

Together flow and make all one. 

That battered tractor, rattling wreck–

While breaking up a ploughman's dream

And shaking up the ploughman's neck–

Is scarce a chariot supreme. 

Through integrality's one eye

Is seen the tractor's elegance.

It's like a cunning jewellery

All sparkling in its radiance. 

For each translucent element

In fine and stately motion, weaves

A linked and wondrous complement

Where each the other's dance achieves. 

Each dancing part proclaims a name

And where it came from, each one knows.

See each component part aflame;

Transforming fire on substance pose. 

So glance around – no need to look

Where they from eggs the seagulls hatched.

The ploughman's life an open book

With all the details finely matched. 

Each seagull sees a squirming worm

Go worming through the teeming earth.

And teeming, scheming with the germ

Of ever-living, endless birth 

And death; in life's great library

Where every word, unchangeable,

Is fixed and evolutionary

In language clear, ineffable. 

And there beyond Andromeda

Unseen, the stars revolve and fade.

There see, celestial space joy-rider,

On time's eternal path remade. 

One finite leap to boundless space.

Where every book on every shelf

Is known to those who know the grace –

The secret key to time and self. 

One transcendental ‘now’, astride

All individual competence

That brings awareness qualified

For complete being; deep, intense. 

For all is known and clear as glass.

And all revealed and nothing hid.

For all is linked, no thing can pass

A coherence so clear, limpid. 

Time flowing not – yet ever there.

Time ploughing on and furrowing.

Time for a dream – to be aware.

Time dreaming on a seagull's wing. 

All clocks converge, their treacly ticks

Suspend the bubbles in the beer.

It's half-past five – or is it six?

Is ‘now’ far off, or is it near?

 

Oi jus' thought Oi'd loike ter share it wiv yew, if'n yew've got the toime; wiv luv from Jenno.

If'n yew'd loike ter know more about PStJ (but Oi won't 'old it against yew if'n yew don't) yew could go, if'n yew want, ter: http://www.peterstjohn.net/index.htm