"Calculation" Poem 5 from "A slur of tense"

 

“Calculation”   Poem 5 from “A slur of tense”

 

 

In Erewhon by Samuel Butler, a dystopian novel, criminality is regarded as an illness, while illness is regarded as a crime.  The novel came back to me as I swam my lengths and was very careful to cough underwater, so as not to give anyone cause to panic.  I had developed what would usually have been considered as a ‘nothing-cold  – but growing hysteria about the virus and the lack of anything like adequate vaccination for most people, means that any seasonal deviation by way of cough, sneeze, wheeze or runny nose is a cause for suspicion.

I did the sums and worked back to when I could have been infected and tried to work out just how worried I should actually be.

The poem relates the literary shrug that I gave, where I felt that what I had was absolutely no different to what I had had before, and I could write myself better.

The poem was drafted in Holy Week, and I still have not received my first jab.  I’ve not even been given a date for my first injection – and Spain is gearing up to welcome tourists to try and salvage something from the wreckage of holiday seasons lost and gone.

Writing can be powerful; but I would prefer to rely more on a vaccine.

 

Day 5 Maundy Thursday

 

Calculation

 

 

Resting beside a cooling tea,

I ache in elbow, foot, and knees.

And though I’ve done my daily swim

the stokes were sluggish, kick inept.

 

“Not firing on all cylinders?”

I ask myself, and realise

I do not understand.

To do with cars?  I think. 

But that is pistons?  No?

Perhaps they are ‘inside’ somehow?

And spark plugs link . . .

 

And this meandering

is just a drift of words

to silt digression’s oxbows,

to keep me from equations, like:

Today ‘Rundown’;

subtract 10 days;

add contact;

minus vaccine;

equals?

something best not thought about,

though Media conspires to scare

that isolation, gel and masks,

have really not been quite enough.

 

It’s present tense; it’s here and now.

 

It’s paranoia you might say.

Though, I’m not good at illness,

as a rule.

 

My fear is fed by others’ lack;

What part of ‘pan’ that starts

the word that rules our lives,

do you not understand!

 

I’ve still not had the jab,

though age and lungs

might signify an urgency

that is not being met

 

But,

as is usual for me,

my writing is a remedy

(placebo possibly)

I’ve come to trust.

 

And so,

I’ll write myself a spot

that’s free from morning shadows’ shade

and in full sun (that’s warming elbow, foot, and knees)

all will seem better in the world –

and I’ll  be better too.

 

And I will take my morning ride

and cycle-glide paseo crowds

and be serene, for I ‘believe’

the pen is mightier than syringe.

 

For now. 

But not for long!

"Opera Oasis" Poem 4 from "A slur of tense"

 

“Opera Oasis”  Poem 4 from “A slur of tense”

 

Going to the Opera during a pandemic is a strange affair.

I have a season ticket for the Liceu in Barcelona, and at the beginning of the strict lockdown the programme was simply abandoned.  The Liceu invested in new safety measures and installed a new air conditioning system to cope with the virus.  We were informed that our season tickets (giving us ‘our’ specific seat for each performance) were now invalid – we would be issued with new digital tickets for each performance that was deemed possible and safe.  Numbers were cut down and only 50% of the audience was allowed to attend.

To go to the Opera today, you are given a timed slot during which you should arrive and then after showing your digital ticket and washing your hands you go to your seat allotted for the performance and sit, surrounded by empty chairs around you.  You have to wear your mask at all times.  There are no programmes other than digital ones.  There are no refreshments.  There is no cloakroom for coats.  You are urged to stay put.  The intervals are shorter.

In a bad situation, the Liceu does its best to carry on some form of programming.

The Opera I saw during Holy Week was Otello by Verdi.  In the Shakespeare play Iago’s reasons for destroying Othello are ambiguous, they do not seem sufficient for his actions and the play ends with the audience having been given no real explanation to justify his ‘motiveless malignancy’ as Coleridge put it.

In Otello we have a musical answer: Iago’s Credo in a cruel god!  It is a part of the opera that never fails to excite, with the sheer horror of what Iago is saying.

During something as difficult as a pandemic, with loss of life and livelihood, it is hardly surprising if difficult circumstances prompted the heartfelt question, “Why?”

I sit in the stalls in the Liceu and my ticket is expensive.  There is, after all, no cheap way to produce opera.  Even with the high price I pay to get in, I am conscious that my ticket is still subsidised: Opera is high culture and it is state sponsored as well as being generously supported by wealthy individuals and large companies.  It is an elitist form of entertainment, though the music can reach anybody.  During a pandemic, the dislocate between a lavish production of Otello and what is going on in the world is uncomfortable.  There is always a feeling of privileged guilt over my opera jaunts, even though I passionately believe that it is part of the sort of culture that makes us human.

At the end of the day, it is a balancing act of things intangible and very concrete.

 

Day 4 Wednesday

 

Opera Oasis

 

 

I have my ticket (digital) to show police,

if I am asked, my reason to be here,

outside my town, in central BCN.

 

I drive, alone, on free, uncluttered roads,

and make good time to dip beneath Las Ramblas

to constricted space to park the car.

 

The walk along the surface

is quite strangely jostle free:

pedestrians keep their perimeters.

Almost.   

 

I keep to my allotted slot,

my phone is scanned, and I am through.

Devout and cowed I stretch my hand

towards the holy water stoup,

am blessed with Gel Ubiquitous,

process my way inside.

 

I walk through temperature control

and disinfected space

while breathing ever-filtered air

to mark the safety difference engineered

for well-heeled, mostly older folk,

(at least around me in the stalls)

compared with what is going on elsewhere:

illicit parties (we are told) and blatant flouting of The Rules

(though what they are, we’re not quite sure)

But here, on iron thrones of plush,

we sit in civilized companionship,

together, but not too near.

 

Islanded by empty seats, and masked,

five rows behind my customary place,

the full half-empty Opera House

is hushed to black     

at curtain rise,

orchestral storm; dark chorus singing lustily,

and Desdemona - pensive, in her square of stage.

 

All well and good. 

 

But, the early action is, for me

just prologue to the crux of this great piece:

Iago’s nihilistic lash,

his Credo to a vicious God.[1]

 

Statistics are just numbers after all,

but the obnoxious toll

of misery each life-lost costs,

should force at least some questioning.

 

Iago has the answers!

We’re bad because we’re human stuff;[2]

Fate has it in for all of us;[3]

The ‘best’, are all just hypocrites;[4]

Death is The End and there’s no heaven.[5]

 

We watch, applaud the dead

who rise to take their curtain calls,

and merge with musos of the band

who make their way to scooters and to bikes

to expedite their getaways:

toque de queda[6] matches curtain fall.

 

And as I walk down to the car

I muse: my ticket’s price

could buy some fifty

AZ vaccine shots.

 

And then I drive away

back home.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

---

[1] Credo in un Dio crudel (I believe in a cruel God)  Atto Secondo/Act Two     

All quotations from the libretto of Otello (1887) and the translations into English are taken from  http://www.murashev.com/opera/Otello_libretto_English_Italian

[2] Son scellerato perchè son uomo  (I am a wretch/villain because I am a man) ibid.

[3] Che il mal ch’io penso che da me procede per mio destino adempio  (the evil I think and that which I perform I think and do by destiny’s decree) ibid.

[4] Credo che il guisto è un istrion beffardo  (I believe the just man to be a mocking actor) ibid.

[5] La Morte è il Nulla, é vecchia fola il Ciel  (Death is nothingness, heaven an old wives’ tale) ibid.

[6] Curfew

"Connexion" Poem 3 from "A slur of tense"

 

“Connexion”   Poem 3 from “A slur of tense”

 

October 1962 was not a happy time for the world.  I was perfectly happy as it was my twelfth birthday and the Cuban Missile Crisis did not unduly worry me.  In fact, it didn’t worry me at all, so if things had gone the wrong way and the Russians had not backed down, I could have been incinerated in a state of bliss-full ignorance as Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD – never was an acronym so apt) destroyed us all!

A year later I had become much more politically aware and the death of JFK shook me.  I seem to recall that the newsflash on the BBC was after The Harry Worth comedy show and the progressive revelation that JFK was dead and that he had been assassinated produced yelps of horror from my parents and me.

I am sure that the element that strikes youngsters on hearing the way that the news of the death was relayed to the populations of the world the most, is the slowness of it all.  The world was a much bigger place than it is today.  Today mobile phones give an immediacy that we did not have.

The poem uses a Dickens’ serial on the BBC (of course!) to explain the difference in expectations.  This classic serial was of Great Expectations and was broadcast on a Sunday week by week for three months and that was the time it took to see it – no shortcuts.

Nowadays, things are different and we are getting nearer and nearer to the Sci-Fi ‘ideal’ of almost instantaneous communication.

But the poem’s end points out the irony of our live today as compared with those savage days in the 1960s!

 

Day 3 Tuesday

 

Connexion

 

 

It could have been,

if happenstance had tailored irony to

my twelfth birthday cake,

that when I blew the candles out

life could have followed too.

 

The Cuban Crisis passed me by.

October ’62?  Unwrapping gifts,

and first half term at Grammar School,

not MAD and Doomsday Clock,

were my concerns.

 

The world was wider

and the news was slower then.

 

The death of Kennedy in ‘63

made me politically aware –

though first transmission,

Doctor Who, the day before,

likely touched me more.

 

In ways newspapers weren’t,

the Beeb was the fast source

of what went on – though

eighty minutes passed

before we knew that he’d been shot.

 

Now news, worldwide is instant –

so’s so much else that’s not.

 

When I was eight, in black & white,

I watched a Dickens’ serial on TV,

Great Expectations, half an hour each week

from April to the end of June.

 

We’re not well trained to wait:

‘binge watch’, ‘catch up’, ‘replay’

feed our attention deficits.

 

‘See it or miss it’ is a warning

from another age.

 

We’re not well trained for idleness:

twitching thumbs must have their press

with pliant keys, responsive screens

and friends (within quotation marks)

co-responding in electric life.

 

Conversations, always present,

ongoing, not left behind –

the ‘past’ is now a slur of tense.

 

In ’62 we lived two minutes short

of Midnight on the Doomsday Clock.

 

Today, when we are all in touch

with everyone and everything,

we’re twenty seconds from the end.

 

 

 

 

"Time" Poem 2 from "A slur of time"

 

Time   Poem 2 from A slur of time

 

When circumstances conspire to keep you inside and further conspire to limit your possibilities then it is hardly surprising that time begins to be thought of with a capital letter and to be personified: Time becomes a tyrant or an accuser or someone who does not have your best interests at heart.  A pandemic, where concepts of Time become ever more fluid is exactly the sort of place to let your imagination and philosophy run riot.

But I have always been, paradoxically, fascinated by the corporality of time, or at least by the physical way in which it is measured – in other words, I am constantly beguiled by watches.

When I finally bought display cases for the timepieces that I possess I was truly shocked by the number of individual watches that I owned.  Not a single one of them is of Rolex quality (not even in its fake form) and most of them are, to put it kindly, inexpensive models.  Nevertheless, I value them all.  Even though the necessity of measuring time, as a retired person, does not have the same urgency as when I was teaching a timetable!

Wearing a watch, whether it is a smartwatch or a humble analogue wind-up affair, is something of a statement, although the meaning of that statement can be ambiguous.

 

These ideas are explored in this poem.

 

Day 2 Monday

 

Time

 

 

Time, like water, always finds a way,

seeps through all barriers,

will not be stopped –

in spite of metaphors’ attempts to dam it in.

But Time’s fluidity is not as gross as water’s flow.

Neutrino-like, Time sweeps its way through human lives,

untouched, but dragging

everything to dust.

 

And we acknowledge servitude,

and “tag” ourselves, not ankled,

but by wrist, with gaudy shackles

we believe will bend indifference

to care, as our constructed seconds

give significance to daily life.

 

My body clock is workable,

my timetable is judged by eye.

I like to think I live (or I could do)

untouched by tyranny of clocks.

 

And yet, I feel that naked skin

where watch face ought to be

is something just unnatural!

 

And I collect and celebrate

my weaknesses,

as watch is joined to silent watch

in pillowed sequences

compartmented,  

unmoving, snug, 

observable through clear glass fronts:

 

inert comforters, 

against the chaos of eternity.