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.
