St David's Day, and I rediscovered the little flower sent to me by Dianne (with proceeds going to the Marie Curie Cancer Fund) to mark my national day.
     This is not the first time that I have written a poem about what St David's Day might mean for me, but I did not set out today to write a poem about identity.  The real impetus was the lifeguard who shook my wet hand just before I went in for my swim.  I was strangely moved by the fact that some random Catalan actually knew the significance of the day!
     My mother was notorious for her emotional reaction to things ranging from film of Margot Fonteyn dancing sublimely to Labrador puppies in the Andrex adverts.  No matter how crass the appeal to emotion, my mother would duly emote!  I find myself following her easy emotional involvement and am a sucker for what I find emotionally compelling - and believe me it doesn't take something as overwhelming as Bruckner's Seventh to reduce me to a quivering wreck!  So, I do not trust my emotional reactions to things, when my reason is telling me that the quiver is too glib to be convincing.  But, as the person who knew he had a persecution complex said, "It doesn't stop people persecuting me!" in the same way, knowing that I am easily moved doesn't mean that I am not moved!  Which is basically my explanation and justification for the end of the poem!
     Perhaps in twenty years time I will have sufficient poems to form the basis for a short monograph on the subject of St David's Day and what it might mean for a monoglot English speaker living abroad!

Hardy annual

I couldn’t find a red

so wore a blue.

At least it showed up well –

though people must have wondered

why I chose, today, to wear a

flower, artificial, small, discrete –

as far as yellow, bright,

against a background,

dark, can be subdued.

I tell those who I know by sight

that it’s my national day.

A concept that they understand

though theirs, with ‘English’ irony

(that we think’s just our own),

commemorates defeat, complete, defining –

which strangely gave new life.

They have a mythic saint

the English, share as well.

What does mine mean?  To me?

And here and now?

Perhaps the questions asked,

answer themselves?

The ‘struggle’ with identity

pricks only when a gaudy

daffodil in pinned into my shirt.

Turning from the shower

to the pool to start my swim,

a lifeguard smiles and offers me his hand,

unprompted, shaking mine, “¡Felicidades!

For your special day!” he says.

No daffodil, just skin.  He knows.

And I was moved.

Maybe no more than maudlin

sentiment, but something,

obviously, I recognized. 

And was there

water in my eyes before

I actually dived in!

I feel that this poem will undergo a few revisions before I am fully satisfied with what I was trying to say.  The structure is fluid at the moment and perhaps it might be well to tighten it up.

   The blue pencil calls!

As is sometimes traditional on a Thursday, there is a poem which was started in the Wednesday evening meeting of the Barcelona Poetry Group.
     The theme this week was Mortality and the discussion was lively and interesting.
     The idea, or the memory for this poem came when another member of the group was describing digging up her dead hamster to find out if it had, in accordance with the faith of her parents, resurrected.  It hadn't, though her memory is carefully blank about what she actually found in the buried box!
     My poem has absolutely nothing to do with dead hamsters or lapsed Mormon faith, but it probably says something profound about my brain processes that such an anecdote should bring up my memory of jumping off a bus.  Almost!
     I can still re-live the experience: the horror of knowing that the best you can expect is a serious accident; the time-stopping trick at the moment of crisis; the exultation of survival.  All of those are at my memory's beck and call.  And the realisation that the whole incident must have been over in less than two seconds!
     Although there have been a number of drafts of this poem, the original structure is preserved and this is one of those rare works where the narrative, feeling and meaning flowed together.
     I still don't really know how "I stopped, upright" but I am very glad that it did, in spite of the vague sense of underlying invulnerability that I think it added to my character!

Crossing

It was not when I was knocked down.

No.  That was bump and bruise –

and tears of course.  But that

was accident, not what you’d call

The Smirk of Death. 

No, those fell words for me were,

out from school, and number 30 bus.

The bus was open deck, with pole –

unthinkable in these strict

Health & Safety days.

It didn’t really stop at my true stop.

There was a crossing and, mostly,

the bus would pause

with time enough for me to leave.

There was a gap.  I,

hand on pole, stepped off.

The bus accelerated and I,

. . .  and I, as if in Ten League Boots

took giant steps until,

in that split-second age that

stretches from a life to nothingness,

I saw my hand and told myself,

quite calmly (as it seemed to me)

just to, “Let go.”

The hand responded,

though momentum bumped me

dancingly, until I stopped, upright,

and watched oblivion drive quickly

up the Newport Road.

Breathless. 

Uninjured.

Startled. 

I was alive. 

Wiser?

Who can tell?

Perhaps it needed blood

to strengthen faith that

Death would come for all.

Perhaps I’ve lived my life

as if I’ll always

see the hand, and speak.

My "true stop" was The Carpenter's Arms, although the bus actually stopped outside the Esso garage.  Both have been demolished: the garage became a video store and the pub, a metro outlet of Sainsbury - nothing remains the same, except the memory described in the poem.  That will never change.

As always, any responses will be welcomed!

In my defence I did not know that my chosen title was a Bowie song before I used it!  I thought that it had a sort of old-fashioned charm of many of the privately printed pamphlets of the early years of the twentieth century where questions were being asked about the direction that so-called civilisation was taking.
     This title is the result of a meditation on the word 'Animals' and the relationship of that word with what we regard as human.  My initial ideas were, to put it mildly, cynical, and I was thinking about what should have blighted the years of my early teens and cast a shadow over the rest of my life: the ticking down to midnight of the atomic clock of destruction.
     I have always thought it is difficult to hate a species that, after having developed a weapon of mass destruction, could then deploy this weapon in a strategy called MAD - Mutually Assured Destruction!  The 'red in tooth and claw' savagery of Nature has never, until our own time, seen one species have the unique capability of wiping out all life on the planet.  And we are the civilised ones!  As opposed say, to a slug - which, as far as I am aware, has no plans for world domination and is not much preoccupied about those who have!
     I was also thinking about the sorts of questions that we ask ourselves (and our parents) and how we deal with the answers (or the lack of them) in our everyday lives.
     I started my notes thinking about memory and using the cliche of a bridge in time.  I hoped to breathe some life into the cliche by thinking about the quality of remembering comparing the more immediate memory of childhood with the more measure and self-deluding memory of age and contrasting a simple plank bridging a brook with a more 'engineered' bridge in age.
     All of the thoughts above went through a number of drafts and note making.  Another major component in this poem was sheer frustration, as things did not work out as I expected them to.  After a dozen drafts I am at least partially satisfied with the present poem.
     I like the opening two lines and I think that the idea that we sometimes spend more time on the shaping of the way of getting back to what happened rather than the reality of the events that we are trying to remember, is something which I am conscious of when I think of even the simplest of events in my childhood.
     I suppose the ending of the poem retains some of the cynicism which was a bitter starting point for my first thoughts, though I also think that there is a 'saving' ambiguity in the last section which gives pause for thought.

Where are we now?

I.

Bridges built to yesterdays

grow more ornate with age.

The simple, slanted, childhood plank,

rough, solid wood, across a brook,

to link the then with now.

(Harsh grass with broken reeds

and sickly-sweet wild garlic crushed

beneath footfalls of day-before.)

II.

Hour-gone experiences

glitter-flit like dragon flies

catching recall’s gleam and

coruscating ripples

smoothing over stones.

The childhood “Game of ‘Whys?’”

that force the questions

parents find so hard to play:

why is the sea so blue,

when drinking water in my glass

is colourless?

with quick responses like:

I’ll tell you later;

God just made it so;

it’s Science you may come to understand –

at length; and anyway the colour’s nice.

The comfortable words that we are told

that hide the ignorance

sustaining lies that

every answer is out there:

in institutions we don’t know;

in libraries of tight, shut doors.

III.

With time the streams push rivers

through the lakes where blurred

shapes move and twist;

a moment’s light of underbelly

flashing white among dark narratives

is glimpsed, but hardly recognised

from spans, suspended, engineered,

to keep a distance soundly safe.

IV.

There is no special sanctity

from Ur to Angeles

can stop the double helix

twisting human eyes to mirror-gaze

the regimented worlds of ants,

communities of bees –

and realise our place.

This is slightly longer than the usual length of my poems, but I felt that the complexity of the subject matter asked for a more considered response than a short lyric.

This poem is part confessional, part autobiographical and part observational.  I'm not sure about the proportions, but the themes are there.
     I suppose that each generation looks askance at how the next is bringing up children and, even if you have no children of your own, it doesn't stop you having opinions.  Just look at ministers of education around the world to see that actual knowledge of teaching is obviously seen as a serious disadvantage to the successful carrying out of duties!
     Perhaps it is because the Christmas holidays this year in Catalonia have been unduly (!) extended so that the kids have not gone back to school until today, the 11th of January, that has encouraged me to think about the behaviour of children.  
     It is indeed true that you cannot remain impervious to the daily drama as child after howling child is dragged away from the swings in the outside part of the leisure centre cafe by exasperated parents.  It is also inevitable that you think of your own behaviour when you were that age.  Or at least you think about what you think was your behaviour at that age.  Whatever the truths of the situation, it is one - if only because of the sheer noise involved - that demands some sort of response!
     Living by the side of the sea, we also have a number of sellers who display their goods on sheets which can, in a moment (when the police have been seen) be gathered up and taken away out of the sight of the eyes of the law.  At the moment the objects for sale are sports shoes and mechanical toys, but during the high days of summer we were urged to buy baseball hats with the brand 'Obey' writ large on them.
     It was a combination of memory, observation and need to say something that prompted this poem.

Obey

I was, it must be said, unnervingly

polite when I was small.

When still too young

to understand the means,

I realised how ruthless

being nice could be.

My ready smile and fluent speech

(in accents unattached to who I was)

got me what tantrums never did.

I left the Roath Park swings when I was told;

agreed time limits for the saving

of my castle on the Barry beach

against the boringly relentless tide,

and always said my ‘please’ and ‘thank you’

without prompt.

Outside the house, in streets

where I was free to roam:

in Dogfield and in Malefant,

in Tewkesbury and Robert too,

my father’s whistled rhythm

(one-two and one-two-three and one)

would bring me back at once.

Just like the dogs we later had –

though Labradors were more

recalcitrant than ever Stephen was!

And so I watch the modern kids,

whose parents now

negotiate, cajole and plead

and often are rebuffed

with what looks like imperial distain!

But parenting’s an easy hit

when you have raised

no children of your own

to make your aim unsure.

Instead, reliance on the partial

memories of what you were

steady the telling shot.

I watch a girl ignore her parent’s call

and use her toddling sister’s wanderings

to justify her staying on the swings.

I watch three boys kick at a ball,

and then play on, ignoring

all their fathers’ shouts.

They deign to make faux turns

placating parent protest

allowing gesture, once again,

to take the place of fact.

And at my present age,

and distant from the young

(yet old) remembered self,

it’s tempting to assert

‘Obey’ has just become another

brand on baseball hats

(and always worn the wrong way round)

and that the concept is as distant now

as those delightful, winsome smiles that

creased my infant, knowing face.

The italics and bold print are intentional, as is the extra space before the final stanza.

     There is a sinister feel to the last line which I think is exactly what I was aiming at!