Time, Critic-cum-Tallyman

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

I wrote an earlier and significantly different version of this poem for a collection published in 2010. So why revise it nearly ten years later? You may well ask, and I will do my best to make the case not only for for its revision but for having revised many poems that appear in my collections between 2001-2012.

Our perspectives on and attitudes towards life and people  change as time passes, perhaps not radically, but significantly all the same. You only have to look at political correctness; what was tolerated - even if not acceptable - years ago  is now considered abuse; racism and sexism are but two examples, never acceptable but once tolerated. Even now, there are often huge discrepancies as to what is politically incorrect and what is not, often depending on the context in which something is said/interpreted/misinterpreted and/ or the person who says it. It is one reason why I object to people being taken to task for politically incorrect behaviour years ago when it did not have anywhere near as high a profile as it rightly does now;  it doesn't mean that a person was right to say or do whatever at the time, but society, too, has to take its share of responsibility for not taking that person to task then rather than using it as a weapon against them years later.

Language and the use of language changes alongside our perceptions on all manner of issues. Climate change is another example; now getting the high profile it deserves, but still dismissed by some as a fairy story or 'fake news'. Ordinary people like me cannot help but become confused sometimes, and this confusion sometimes comes through in what they say - or write - at any given moment in time; by the time it is made public, circumstances may have caused hem us to have a change of mind and heart. The point being, they genuinely believed whatever they said or wrote at the time; even more to the point, perhaps, is that they were satisfied at the time with heir choice of words.

There is always, of course, the hope that we become better speakers/writers the more we practise either craft or both.

In poetry especially, titles are so important too.I have to confess I struggle with titles. Interestingly, I have changed the title of a poem that hasn't gone down too well with readers and - without changing a word of the poem itself - hey, presto, it attracts significantly more readers and favourable feedback.

There will always be some who don't like what we say or do, for whatever reason, and that is human nature; no problem there so long as the critic is prepared to engage with the writer/speaker rather than seize upon one word or sentence and proceed to attack that, rather than take in the whole. As I have said many times, many parts make a whole, but it is the whole that counts; the parts may well be critically interpreted separately, but should always replaced.in the context of that same whole.

Such is human nature and the complexity of mind-body-spirit, that we are too often inclined to mistake one or more parts of a person for their whole; a whole that is not always a certainty; as such, can it not be forgiven for being  no less susceptible to change than  any uncertainty, feeling its way though the maze that is life - and the range of emotions it invariably invokes - at any age or given moment in time, no matter what our ethnicity, culture, politics, social background or religion...?

TIME, CRITIC-CUM-TALLYMAN

No impartial critic of old age,

(performance s-l-o-w-i--n-g)

Time's remit, clearing the stage

Letting slip how life’s last page

guarantees no happy ending,

no impartial critic of old age

Like a songbird kept in a cage

see humanity flex a wing;

Time's remit, clearing the stage

Earth, driven to express outrage

for an inhumanity enduring,

no impartial critic of old age

Proving neither apathy nor rage

a true template for living,

Time's remit, clearing the stage

Humanity (still) acting The Sage,
its poetry-prose but reworking;

no impartial critic of old age, 

Time’s remit, clearing the stage

Copyright R. N. Taber 2019

[Note: An earlier version of this poem appears under the title ‘By Way of Marking Old Age’in On the Battlefields of Love by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2010.]

A Leaf out of Time

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

Another old poem, this, recently unearthed under layers of dust in a cupboard; it reveals a love affair with rhyme that has lasted the best part of a lifetime although I seem to have rekindled  another on-off affair with blank verse recently.

At school, more years ago than I care to remember, we were sometimes given homework by our English teacher, ‘Jock’ Rankin the title of which would comprise just a few words. We were expected to  comment at any length (or brevity) on these words and what they meant to us; subsequently, the best comments would be shared with and debated in class another time.  One such title was Beginnings and Endings. After much head scratching, I asked my mother what on earth there was to say about beginning and endings other than they…well, begin and end?

My mother merely shrugged over the ironing, “It depends how you choose to see either, I suppose. I mean, some of us see endings as no more or less than beginnings that have run their course and are up for something new…”

Jock was impressed and asked me where I had found the quote. When I said, my mother, he asked me to thank her for making his day.

Oh, but I love autumn, so beautiful if tinged with sadness; memories of spring and summer held in safe-keeping by Earth Mother to be rummaged and enjoyed over and over through even the worst winters...

A LEAF OUT OF TIME

I've floated free, like a leaf
in a world still half-asleep,
kept company with sparrows,
watched its willows weep

I've watched the hands of time
sign warnings to passers-by
concerning the fall of Icarus,
(the eternal How-and-Why)

I've seen foxes stalk their kill,
heard the victim’s last cry,
protesting an ages-old truth,
(a time to live, a time to die)

I've heard the lonely singing
love songs loud and clear;
lasting memories of a summer,
though its close drawing near

Breeze dropping, the leaf too
that once had pride of place,
but gently, evergreen epiphany
through all time and space

I'm left lying on a bed of moss,
an everyday lesson learned,
that each new day, my being gay,
is but a leaf in Nature’s hand

Copyright R. N. Taber 1982; 2017