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

 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

SYMPHONY No.5 by PROKOFIEV

The express is unstoppable.

The critics with their peashooters

Fail to derail it.

Right note music,

Always on the tonal side of dissonance.

The heart is the slow movement,

Hollywood tearmelt,

Until Stalin’s thugs trample over

Cherished treasure.

Insistent goose steps,

And the ‘quick march’ bark.

After which,

Hollywood tearmelt returns.

The truth is unstoppable.

The critics with their pen-stabs

Fail to debunk it.

And so a great composer

Outlives his usefulness,

But proves an icon too far.

(Michael Newman)

18 Courtiers Drive

Bishops Cleeve

Cheltenham

Glos GL52 8NU

SYMPHONY No.6 by VAUGHAN WILLIAMS

Such violence unbecomes music.

Blatant aggression gives way

To macho swagger.

Man and beast join in intercession.

More than a hint of anglicised jazz –

Snakehips Johnson to the fore,

And death a casual dance across the floor.

Tenderness. There has to be tenderness.

A second subject, folksy.

England in a time warp,

Georgian/Eton/Pastorale.

The universe as one in-your-face movement.

Now let’s talk about the War:

Strident violins, insistent brass,

Faceless terror on the move,

Gloria in parenthesis.

Scherzo for the Blitz,

Dance today, death tomorrow.

Grim abandon, escapist in truth;

Lightning proposals,

Marriage on the hoof.

Which leaves the finale,

Where applause would intrude.

Paradiso out of bombers’ moon –

Believer, believe.

(Michael Newman)

18 Courtiers Drive

Bishops Cleeve

Cheltenham

Glos GL52 8NU

E GUITARIST

He lingers dreamily over each phrase,

Reluctant to let go.

I approach, laden with shopping.

The sun dances in the piazza.

One blind guitarist,

Transcribing Paraguayan rhythms –

The music of Barrios

Raised to awareness;

Until the sultry aroma of Moroccan broom

Assails my nostrils,

And moves me strangely.

Vulnerable, I hesitate beside the guitarist.

Seated, he taps his white stick twice

On the pavement,

Then resumes a Minuet.

Fumbling for change,

I wince with guilt.

Two pathetic pound coins

To set against this,

A life of blindness.

(Michael Newman)

18 Courtiers Drive

Bishops Cleeve

Cheltenham

Glos GL52 8NU

VAULT BEACH

A shingle, a shale,

A shell-strewn beach,

Waves unzipping white

Along the length of inlet,

Shadows merging, submerging,

At once mysterious, at once nebulous –

Only to snorkel into three-dimension:

Divers.

Now ocean liners balance

On earth’s rim,

Pitch their sirens

Towards an occidental fantasy:

Eldorado.

A dozen turnstones fly in,

Take over one corner

Of the beach.

Enthralled, I watch

The complex socialising,

But move too close.

A dozen turnstones take off,

Drawing the wildness and the magic

From the beach,

To leave only desolation. Mine.

(Michael Newman)

18 Courtiers Drive

Bishops Cleeve

Cheltenham

Glos GL52 4NU

WINTER

Snow has settled.

Each garden takes on pristine beauty.

In this white-out,

Evening extends far into night.

It is so quiet I can hear

The pulse of the stars.

My breath forms blue statuettes

That taunt the iconoclast.

Nothing moves beyond the rhythm

Of stained-glass remembrance.

(Michael Newman)

18 Courtiers Drive

Bishops Cleeve

Cheltenham

Glos GL52 8NU