A Poet's Blog: Roger N.Taber shares his thoughts & poems...

Thoughts and observations by English poet Roger N. Taber, a retired librarian and poet-novelist.- "Ethnicity, Religion, Gender, Sexuality ... these are but parts of a whole. It is the whole that counts." RNT [NB While I have no wish to create a social network, I will always reply to critical emails about my poetry. Contact: rogertab@aol.com].

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Location: London, United Kingdom

Sadly, a bad fall in 2012 has left me with a mobility problem, and being diagnosed with prostate cancer the same year hasn't helped, but I get out and about with my trusty walking stick as much as I can, take each day as it comes and try to keep looking on the bright(er) side of life. Many of my poems reflect the need to nurture a positive-thinking mindset whatever life throws at us.

Tuesday, 2 October 2012

A Little Light Rain

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber

Today's poem has not appeared on the blog since 2008, a good enough reason I thought to give it an airing for those readers who may have missed it.

Now, it is often said, love is blind. True, love can be blind. Worse still, though, is the participant in a relationship who inflicts that blindness on his or her partner for their own selfish ends.

It can happen to a couple on the home front or political allies on the front line. 

That's life...a force for love that can make or break the human spirit. Thankfully, the latter is blessed with incredible powers of self-healing if not always quick to come into play.... 

A LITTLE LIGHT RAIN

The night I died, you cried over me
tears that lied, for it was never
meant to be that we’d have forever
though spring, summer, autumn,
winter years promising an eternity
of love to be tucked up in some
time capsule buried in Epping Forest
for total strangers to chance upon
in darker centuries come and gone
than knew that love once lived here,
a progressive world’s brief to let it die,
pick its flowers, rework its songs

It’s the power of love mends fences,
heals wounds but better, you said,
to let the dogs of war have their day,
grab a lion’s share of spoils not ours,
make good the tools mercenaries leave
for other predators to fight over where
they have spilt red wine on the best
tablecloths left like out of date maps
in a White House kitchen, reflections
on a love and peace stacked up among
other dirty laundry and washing-up

Who are we to let slip an opportunity
to sit at table with kings and queens,
presidents, prime ministers, whatever
religious leaders flavour of the day,
at parties to which we’re not invited
but by default, permitted to have our say
if only to seal a bargain, prove a point,
make outlaws of good people or heroes
of a portraiture long dead and gone,
unable to tell how it was, likely to go on
playing the chameleon?

Ah, I know you by your crocodile tears;
your face appears in glossy magazines
and billboards in every High Street
telling us what we should do or not do,
say or not say, eat or not eat, in case
we start to think for ourselves, even see
our spreadsheets inclined to agree
with an underlying trend of inhumanity;
Heaven forbid, anyone come to know
that wherever the lies your tears tell fall
only weeds will ever grow

It takes but a little acid rain in the eye
to blind us to hypocrisy

[From: Tracking the Torchbearer by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2012]



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