Saturday 9 February 2013


OUTSIDE OXSHOTT



Two minutes gone,
And there is stillness.
No cars, no intrepid cyclists –
Just bird song,
And woods offering retreat.

Let it last, this moment.
I tune-in to sanity.




(Michael Newman)
18 Courtiers Drive
Bishops Cleeve
Cheltenham
Glos GL52 8NU

RESIGN THE HARVEST


Those sad September days
Accumulate.
A tractor ploughs autumn
Into the soil.
Leaves tinge with melancholia,
Tingle with threat of frost.
Rusted barley crashes
Before off-yellow combine harvesters.

It is not now possible
To talk of renewal.
We are fed the myths of childhood,
Yet here the ripe and rotten merge –
Merge, and submerge summer
On the marron side of rouge…
Apotheosis, decay.

Sibelius knew it, this disorder,
This going down with the leaves,
This etiolation.
Sunset lies enmeshed in network branches;
Poppies coagulate in the remaining barley.
Trench warfare is close.


(Michael Newman)
18 Courtiers Drive
Bishops Cleeve
Cheltenham
Glos GL52 4NU

LISZT



You, Franz Liszt,
Showman turned seer,
Once glittering virtuoso,
Once Paganini of the Piano,
Now granitic,
Dark,
Serpentine motifs among uncharted dissonance,
Quicksands of atonality
Trod by your prophet's feet.




(Michael Newman)
18 Courtiers Drive
Bishops Cleeve
Cheltenham
Glos GL52 8NU

Friday 8 February 2013


 A COMING OF WINTER




The year-pulse quickens;
Autumn leaves scatter
And whirl down the street
In a never-ceasing agitation.
Later, the days darken to a
Ghost-world of ghost-figures,
And flakes of snow descend,
Mysterious visitors
Floating through the æther.



(Michael Newman)
18 Courtiers Drive
Bishops Cleeve
Cheltenham
Glos GL52 4NU

A NIGHT AT THE OPERA


All the torment and tenderness

Of the Russian soul,

All the vision behind melancholic eyes.

And the walls of Hell, look –

Four thousand miles thick;

And worms in the mouth;

And the chemist’s methyl poison

On the breath.

Mussorgsky,

Part-time composer,

Full-time alcoholic.

And full of heroic melancholy.

* * *

So take Boris the opera, and you decide –

Pageant or polemic?
The voice of Mother Russia herself,
Or the bleatings of a latter-day
Decembrist?

The false Dmitri sings, and
Weaves his way into treachery.
First accusation, then vicarious guilt,
Then the unquiet confession.
We know that Boris the Tsar,
Soul and split personality,
Must disintegrate before our ears,
Reduced to deep bass instincts.

* * *

Fuelled by illicit liquor
From Professor Borodin’s laboratory,
The composer lays down his pen.

Poor Russia,
Perma-frosted Russia,
Still hungry,
Still hungering after truth,
Still tasting
The bread of disappointment:

The curtain falls.

(Michael Newman) 18 Courtiers Drive, Bishops Cleeve, Cheltenham

DEGREES OF RED


We tried to explain to Edwin
The principle of parallax,
How if he lined up two pheasants
He could get both with one barrel.
In the end, he tried glancing off the one bird
To hit the other,
Which he missed.
The first bird, red-plumed,
He took home.

We watched Melanie dye her hair
Carrot-red, and garish.
It was the fashion, she said,
And we dared not mouth the obvious joke.
She felt the makeover gave her identity.

Just about this time,
Sunsets were drawn-out and brilliant –
Dust, they said, from Mount St.Helens,
Circling the world. Beauty born of death.
Whatever, we were treated to some spectacular displays,
Pyrotechnics in slowest motion.

* * *

Three reds, then –
A violent volcano
Somewhere in the west of America,
A girl nicknamed 'Carrot Top',
And a stunned pheasant coming to life,
Flying round and round the kitchen,
And out of the door.


(Michael Newman)
18 Courtiers Drive
Bishops Cleeve
Cheltenham
Glos GL52 8NU

CANTUS by ARVO PÄRT



Plangent strings intone
Mood and memory,
A sad tune varied
By endless repetition.

Superimposed thirds chime
Subconscious responses,
Concatenation of childhood longing.

It is a processional,
Holding back,
Decelerating,
Almost stationary.
The end is death, and renewal.

Delayed applause,
The music beatified
By silence.

We should pray:
But all the prayers
Have been written –
It is ourselves we must give.


(Michael Newman)
18 Courtiers Drive
Bishops Cleeve
Cheltenham
Glos GL52 4NU