As a beginner learning photography I take great delight in capturing mother nature and the varied faces of her seasons dramatically. Every picture tells a story through my own interpretations and interests, and my style tends to dwell on the colourful patterns and dancing lights and shadows that create an impact and awaken one’s spirits…
© Jeannette D’Souza
Christmas seems near when salubrious sights appear
In mingling tones of festivity and the season’s goodwill cheer
They sprightly unwrap those nostalgic moments of Yuletides far gone
With glowing streamers outside homes and over wreaths that linger on…
Christmas seems near when empty spaces begin to sparkle
In tones of gold, green and red silhouettes that warmly twinkle
With shoppers stopping by to hear the merry caroller’s jingle
Here comes Santa’s sleigh inviting every child in jollity’s chuckles!
Christmas seems nearer when children huddle around in wondrous solace
Gathering by cribs where a manger awaits an infant’s paltry space!
Yet their other kind of awaiting makes Santa’s visit seem farther
When wrapped pressies from under trees watch their amused glimmer…
Christmas seems dearer when genuine-giving outweighs receiving
And kindness and compassion never run out of style to light up smiles
Like a halo they miraculously fill a soul’s forlorn plight
With bliss overrun!, for it is Christmas’ intended design
Christmas is here when we hear the St Mary’s bells ringing
Inviting us in joyful voices to the eve’s ceremonial keeping…
We open the Gloria in exalted spirits to hail the new born sweet!
And after service communities gather conveying jubilant wishes!!
And finally Christmas Day is here…and families unite with cheery hearts kindled
There is music and warm laughter and also time for comfy snuggles
Everything follows this sole merriment rhythm of festive bubbles
Toasting to exuberant festivities, to hearty meals and cracking riddles!!
Jeannette D’Souza 24/12/2024
© Jeannette D’Souza | Copyright 2024 | jdsouza.uk
© Jeannette D’Souza
The twirling Jasmines revived in awe
Peeping up to the swirling of the winds
They anticipated a soothing downpour
From the balmy clouds loftily gathering
Gulmohars stood tall with boughs opening wide
While Sita-Ashoka brushed aside its stays
In prep the Champak lowered its spirited blossoms,
Offering me scents in the rapture of its sways
The air felt warmer and cuckoos sang peculiarly
They tweeted tuneful tones of the advancing rains
Sooner feathery feet collated in thrilling euphoria
Predicting a splendid monsoon’s display to gain
Now the skies went deeper and sombre,
Majestically summoning a bright celestial flash
And at the crack of a reverberating thunder
They unfurled into a harmonious sprightly bash!
They poured in mellowness over exuberant fanning peacocks
Over sweet-scented Indian lilies and Indigo bays
Welcoming all flora and fauna into a festive alliance
In this dazzling dance of monsoon days!
At this sparkling flurry of the rain
I pranced like a child into memories’ lane
Recalling a girl in pigtails capering homeward
To the playful beat of monsoon games
When it poured it poured, over tiled rooftops and pedlar’s carts
Over vibrant raincoats that all looked so surreal
And would I start inviting other children?
Alluring them to lunge with me into puddles…
At home mothers sought the opportunity
To prepare monsoon favourites to savour
And so we huddled cosily in a crowded kitchen
To sip cardamom chai and relish bountiful flavours
Gone are those days and memories can fade
Yet newer ones are meant to be created…
For this is the design intended by nature
To thus heal every being and every creature
As the rain abated nature enthralled me in its splendour
From the drenched earth and wild balsam smiling,
To the nostalgic shoots of turmeric and mogras inviting
Oh how their verdant hues grew even brighter with fragrances vividly enchanting!
Monsoons bring alive great ancient traditions
For the onset of the season heralds auspicious festivals
These are rather unique and colourfully portrayed in India
With celebratory drumming, pageantry and mirthful hysteria!
There was the sense of ancestral souls sending down blessings
When prayerful venerations were diligently observed…
Marigold garlands being offered with heartfelt thanksgiving
Even for the souls’ peaceful resting and to invoke abundant favours
The sun soon shone as foreseeable as the rain
Bringing with it a peaceful rainbow’s promise
Thus consoling the hearts that seek revival
Through the Creator’s abounding love and graces…
The freshness from luscious plains under coconut trees gliding
The togetherness from all livings beings warmly uniting,
It simply nourishes the soul’s thirst that feels so satiating
For divinity brings Indian monsoons to the heart’s wanting
I still felt that enormous tranquility walking in India’s pouring rains
As I heard that childhood rhyme of joy again and again,
From little children distantly echoing- ‘Rain, rain come again,…’
Even decades later the redolent tune joyfully remains!!
© Jeannette D’Souza | Copyright 2024 | jdsouza.uk
© Jeannette D’Souza
Walking through a distant memory
I soon paused to ponder over a silent alley
It was to reminisce fondest memories of grandma and her fascinating stories,
Of those chai talks in leisure socks, all brimming at her scintillating soirées!
Yet even long before that was a time I knew, when cheer found no expression
And this alley’s laughter was meagre to share, all cloaked in suspicion
Folks spoke little and went quietly about their affairs each way
In their boredom ruminating as to where their happiness lay…
For, fun-filled gatherings were shrouded in fear and so people hid in their superstitious depths,
It only got them drooped in silent tears and hopeless melancholic days
Yearning for ‘joy in living’ the older community looked out for a change in site
They wished there was heed given to this their unacknowledged plight
Now eagerly awaiting this miracle when a sudden change did occur one summer’s night,
And to everyone’s wonder it was an awaited welcome sight…
It came by unknowingly, draped in a sea blue saree that held a sincere expression
For this teacher of cheer came beaming by to eliminate dispirited impressions
Snapping out of my thoughts I noticed the time-worn verandahs succeeding in vibrant colours
They brought back overwhelming memories of those by-gone recipe’s and their quintessential flavours
Circling my stance around the timeless hedges of green locks
I got nostalgically swept into our cosy dilapidated blocks
They sent me whirling back into thoughts,
As I recalled grandma’s chirpy entry into this neighbourhood’s mystified lot!
Grandma Rosemary stepped into our quiet alley to brighten those mundane clocked pre-evenings,
Bringing with her a spark of wits and some valuable practicalities
She quickly reached out to neighbours over doorsteps genuinely enquiring of their welfare
And ended up engaging them for a chai and chat in order to dispel their despair
Our indistinct neighbourhood soon stirred
And from nowhere gathered many…
Intently they listened to a fellow familiar narrate
Life’s Intrepid ventures aplenty
They out-poured their feelings too onto this newly found remedy
Wondering in thankfulness that this source surely is a boon’s bounty
As their ears got tuned to grandma’s profound perceptions,
They hovered around our parapet narrating life’s scores by the dozens
Yet grandma’s stories were seasoned and coated throwing in her charisma so enchanting
To everyone’s delight she sprung like a lotus from a quiet pond, all very inviting!
Now daily at the strike of a span gathered they
Chatting around on our street’s verandahs decked from clay
Sitting in their favourite spots their eyes would begin to sparkle
Like the enamoured children lured by a piper’s melody
And so, not withholding her passion for forthright thoughts,
Grandma’s reflective paradoxes poured out steeped in life’s humorous plots!
Soon fresh pakoras and spicy bhajas by cart-pedlars came to be sold
To the whiff of chai poured by my mother and neighbours from of old
Over marigolds and jasmine twirls their whiffs drifted
Over pedlars’s fruit carts and my seasonal surprises
And Oh! the ‘mazza’ of it all sparkled my newly inspired senses!
Grandma’s chai community grew even larger by her vivacious rhythm
Each addition bringing in an account of their own..
Their empirical versions abounding, at times loony
While others daring and risky and some stupendously funny
Yet there was a lesson in each account to treasure
With instances of reflection and laughter being their measure!
The older folks soon started thinking of their unit’s welfare
Of bringing their older community together in well being to share
They cooked in turns many delicacies bearing many constitutions
I remembered the yummy savouries when invited to partake with discretion
How I relished every morsel while listening to their chai chats after meals
It all began to imbue within those wise words and folk lores tunefully pleasing!
From discussing health issues, bringing in herbs to initiating magnetic therapies…
Grandma thus opened gates of practical wisdom among the gated communities!
I remember Grandma speaking of family life and its undulating stances
Of sadness and happiness and all of life’s incentives
Her mellow narratives many a times spiralled in articulated rhythms
While listeners slurped on spiced tea made from cardamoms and cinnamons
How the aura and radiance permeated me in this atmosphere of infusions
Leaving me thoroughly influenced to apply the lessons learnt from grandma’s conversations
Her popular anecdote was- ‘Every home and neighbourhood has a familiar unflavoured story,
Those who never speak ill of it were considered wisely’
Yet there were other life’s tales she spoke of, those mystical instances…
Not long before she had worked as a security supervisor at the Gokak Falls mill-
One hot day, when lying down by a tree after a meal during a break
A cobra crawled from the rear tree up her slender neck
It stationed majestically near her head in a watchful tone
It wouldn’t move nor hiss as it settled its bone
Bewildered passer-bys saw this spectacle and came to stand firm
Knowing the safest course was to stay still while the lady was resting unbeknown
Yet later they tried to distract the serpent away
But it hissed to open its hooded display
And finally when the lady came to awaken
The snake quickly traced back to retrieve its burrowed position
Then there was this instance that I clearly remember
Grandma spoke of encountering spiritual souls
Once… as she walked from a jungle toward home in sandals torn,
All but lost in her young widowed grief thinking of circumstances forlorn
Then, further from the jungle side-paths she crossed into tracks unknown
And felt the sun going down in despondent sobs alone
Sooner from nowhere appeared a mysterious man
Clad in white kurta dhoti bearing a staff in one hand,
With his countenance covered by the vermillion setting sun
He enquired of her anxious nature and of her destination
Then he listened quietly with empathy in his bearing to her rendition
While he spoke not a word yet somehow it calmed her trepidation
Grandma gestured toward a village narrating her woes
While pouring out her shocked heart that had seen miseries’s course
Understanding that her need of the hour was more than finding her way
The silent man just nodded to her helpless poignant display
And somehow grandma felt comforted in her thoughts and feelings
Whilst she was brought back to her path secured toward her home…
Now when she turned around to return an appreciating gesture
Gone was he this angel in radiant vesture
She paused to look up the path they’d come
There only remained a peaceful silence with a gratifying assurance!
Grandma imparted several secret excerpts from her vocal journal of life
Her tuneful expressions were so inspiring and at times entrancing
Even though life brought forth dingy tones eventful in disguise
She learned that she had to carry on no matter what was felt inside
When she ran out of solutions she strode bravely through her challenges
With discipline and self taught abilities which brought forth untold advantages…
Widowed early in life with 2 younger children to rear
Tragedy followed on additions after the demise of her oldest daughter fair
Watching them grieving the five orphans with no one to care
Grandma came to fend for these little ones in her living of meagre and bare
She followed them through with devotion and family prayer every night,
Every child and adult was sat when candles were lit around the icon of Lord Jesus Christ!
Grandma also spoke of a time of prosperity and grandeur that presented her from early life
Her ancestral horses and carriages and their property’s abounding pride
Of how she’d adorned knee long necklaces of gold and jewellery spellbinding
There lacked no dearth for the family’s mortal wanting
For in her younger days her sea green eyes and bronze hair shone like a doll
She was indeed praised for her fair face and her slender stature tall
Then there came plague and war and a devastating famine
With dead rats to dispose, deceased to bury and the village’s homes burning
There was starvation and communities walked over kilometres to fetch water
And collected wild amaranth and grains over laden sarees together
All historical facts she unfolded in her unique style with colour
It sent everyone into spherical modes of reliving the narration with atmospheric wonder
Grandma was forgiving and never vengeful
Her mantra for life was- ‘Make Life Meaningful’
She believed in being happy, and also that one needed to be active for life
In every little way work and laugh so as to balance the two, thus celebrating being alive
She always mentioned- ‘Idle times pile on illnesses and repercussions galore,
So choose a hobby to share and impart wisdom gained from yore’
Grandma succeeded in decluttering the negatives by focussing on the positives
And so taught the community to make most of life and to laugh out aloud!
She taught them to enjoy the little things that made their day
From bits of chocolate to traditional celebrations and folk music sways
From smiles that went grinning wide… to tolerance in families
And comforting those broken hearted by giving hope in weaker circumstances
Snapped out of my thoughts by a ‘hello’!
I turned around instantly to recognise a face with a furrow,
It was my old neighbour alive and grinning
She reminisced those happier days when grandma was alive, the neighbourly banter and those delightful evenings…
While some folks had moved away and some others departed
Yet some stayed put carrying on the spirit of ‘laughing’,
In the hope of imparting ‘the truth’ learnt and their graces,
Those vivid narrations of seeing life through another’s glasses,
Remembering a spirit so distinctive that made such strides,
There carries on grandma’s exuberant spirit and her infectious smile!!
-Dedicated to grandma Rosemary RIP🌟- July 2024
© Jeannette D’Souza | Copyright 2024 | jdsouza.uk
© Jeannette D’Souza
Dedicated to my 6 year old Joshua 🎁 🎄 🎅 🎊
Above the small bedroom perched a silent attic
That huddled under the shelter of barrel tiles and clay
Its sloppy space made it seem even more mysterious
With dusty boxes and bundles hiding in its obscure bay
I watched the space from below through a ceiling mesh
All sparked with dreams of wonder and excitement
And dared promise one day to climb that rickety ladder
That cleverly hid behind the door tucked away
One noon I squinted through the mesh to hear
Noises of a peculiar sort that interested my skin
They allured me in tippy toes to the spot
Where the ladder’s latch opened from a twill
Grabbing on I tugged up the ladder’s rung
Onward trailing towards the sparse shimmering patch
Holding my breath to avoid waking my mum, stealthily
I tread, passing cross-eyed by my tabby’s hatch
As I landed up my tabby surveyed my curiosity to find
Web covered paraphernalia of peculiar sorts of archaic kinds
Expectations drew me too into my child’s world of fantasy
Which I’d always sought after within a library’s canopy
Boxes of old dolls, toys and Christmas cards unfurled
Together with my family’s heirloom of brass pots and nickels
Exploring further I stumbled on an enormous box
That contained the most exciting object in the loft!
My eyes twinkled when I hurriedly rushed to open it
And they even got brighter to uncover a tiny broken shed
It was like a barn with a stable of mini wooden posts
And at the centre lay a straw-manger bed!
Beside this box stood another one that seemed pretty
As I opened there popped up 3 kings with the set of nativity
But soon I heard my name being called from down below
So I dashed down the ladder disguising my face that blushed mellow
The next few days that followed it got me quiet
Watching for opportunities to sneak up in the attic
But to no avail, days grew closer to Christmas as fast
And my venturing secret almost grew impatient to last…
Once again I found myself magically up in the attic
Checking on the little crib that needed much repair
So I pulled off the straying bamboo from the overhead crop
And thatched it in bits to the crib with a flair
From them on learning ways to get sneakily into the attic
I got further ideas to improve the manger’s essence
It also started me into growing corn, barley and wheat
To improvise naturally a village scene on a ply board spread
As days came closer to Christmas my dwelling grew in the attic
For it was an elaborate affair…
To paper craft a backdrop of Herod’s palace and Jerusalem
And finding colours to paint at night over the earthen nativity ware
And so the exhilarated spirit made stupendous efforts
To work and keep every relevant undertaking a surprise
Yet mainly to present baby Jesus that Christmas
With a token offering from a young heart’s pride
Now on the Eve all set and ready for my revelation
I cleared the living room end and placed there the family’s dining table
On it I arranged the saplings springing verdantly in slopes
Together with a Bethlehem’s scene encircling them like a globe
Then from the attic came down the earthy bamboo-hay crib
Together with various freshly painted nativity statues in a box
Planning on I set the crib and statues in their strategic places
While my mum peeked approving with an all knowing nod!
Ready to greet around the manger’s scene there stood,
Blessed Mary, St Joseph, hovering angels and cattle and all!
Then I secured a miniature lantern with fairy lights streaming
To festively illuminate the backdrop of my Jerusalem standing tall!
Soon gathered my family to watch that blessed sight
When I placed baby Jesus in the manger after mass over midnight!
And thus carried on a tradition if not decades but for long
Yet to me the memory of it all remains emotively strong…
Uncles, aunts and cousins visited us to wish after services
And praised the scene and undertaking with many nods and kisses
The glowing lights around the crib kept us warm
In one spirit we sang ‘Come to the manger’ one and all!
My senses held close those sights and sounds in heightened elation
Realising then that the humble attic held my dearest possession
Mum grinned as she felt my heart leaping proud
And brought out port with fruit cake and festivities to celebrate!
Soon my tabby drew her long yawns under the crib’s main table
As Jim Reeves carols begun and we dreamily gazed upon our Christmas tinsel
And while the family’s kin took their seats around the Crib of hay
Mum was left wondering on where to lay the Christmas buffet that day… 😊
5 December 2023
© Jeannette D’Souza | Copyright 2024 | jdsouza.uk
© Jeannette D’Souza
I once knew an old man walking with incense burnt
From home to church he’d keep its fragrant light unperturbed
Until he reached the vestibule to genuflect-
Raising the thurible high he served the almighty in reverence praise…
Soon outside the church people stood waiting
Following him for counsel, wisdom and his benevolence
He would hurry to offer help from a tiny space
Thus he was set in deeds towards God’s place!
Moving down years: a thriving plan and pleasant days
Under the blanket’s cosiest “me” space
There lives a man who may only hoard
He keeps vindication over his conscience board
Judging and hurting and distancing brothers
Remembering every wrong from the past, he lives life only to repay others
Day after day his blaming thoughts make a pace
For every wrong passed he’d settle God in a place…
Under a shiny sun and hallo moon
Chasing passions to secure our lives of doom
Oblation tables are placed with solemn wishes
Offering without meaning its true reasons
Offering not beyond the good received, and
On we try to compensate with newer ways-
Just a measure of fairness and feel good charity
It is only to blind our consciences and its plays
How hard we strive to push God into a place…
We eat, drink and unconsciously say
Life is short and so be merry and gay
Living neither happy nor sad lives we don’t realise
That we treat life like shallow throws of dice
Without considering our actions blindly following
The most modern commodities of a worldly belonging…
We pacify our hearts in illusion’s sways
And as we stumble we forget God and His place
Hear, we hear talks of peace while loathing outruns
Lofty views being delivered yet no better outcomes
Wanting and winning under greed’s obsession,
As we witness the good weak under subjugation
When desire calculates every political move it makes,
Its rationalising actions nurture a vicious spate
Soon to be moving pawns into a confusing state,
Thence, we chose to abandon God’s place…
Where does it all go wrong…
Does God have a place?
When we strive with conscience to not hurt others,
Lighten a neighbour’s hardship and bring about wonders
Offer love’s charity that permeates hearts-
Choosing to forgive and forget, and
Reaching out offering help over horizon’s borders
Thus bringing joy and seeking fellowship of true colours!
But not keeping accounts of our good deeds,
Yet sewing Love and Compassion into a perennial lace,
It is then in our hearts that ‘God Makes A Place’!!
18 January 2023
© Jeannette D’Souza | Copyright 2024 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
Spinning the thread of the life,
Trailing it behind her,
Black-cloaked Fate sits brooding.
Silver-gowned Fate weaves the thread
Into the cloth of the life,
The tapestry telling the story.
No chance of unpicking
If the thread is uneven
Or the tale seems uncertain;
Black and silver spin and weave
Till the thread is all used
And the story’s complete.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
To those who follow me
So far ahead you haven’t yet been born
I leave this message:
If you’ve an interest in who we were
Look in the C20 censuses
Until you come to 1961.
There you will find us, Anne and Peter Smith
Married the year before and filling in
Together our first census. Imagine your surprise
When you find he’s called the captain, I am mate
(Though in those unenlightened times
I should explain I was the breadwinner,
Since I was older, he still a student,
But yet he was the household’s head
And I the wife or mate-those were the rules).
What, you will wonder, can these titles mean?
Were we of fishing stock and owned a boat
To earn our living catching, selling fish?
This answer makes no sense when you can see
The boat we lived on was in Oxfordshire
Just outside Oxford on the river Thames
Where it is known as Isis by the folk
Who like to use historic names.
Why did we live there? Then as now
Decisions made because of poverty:
We couldn’t afford a house or flat in town.
Was it idyllic? I seem to hear you ask
Down through the sentimental years.
Well yes and no I say, depending on
Which bank you faced when you were on the boat.
One bank was on the border of the park
Where trees and pastures captivate the eye,
And songbirds serenade the passing lovers.
Alas! On the other bank our boat was moored
Against the municipal rubbish tip
Where all day long the rumbling lorries came
To dump the detritus of Oxford homes.
One day – I’ve seen it since and so I know –
It would become the site of playing fields
As green and pretty as the opposing side
But not when we lived there.
On Sunday mornings student boats went by
Practising oarsmanship from early hours,
We were awoken by the gentle swell
Of waters from the boat-race-hopefuls’ wakes
Cries through loud hailers on the other bank
As coaches cycled past: In…out…in…out..
And: Easy oars, and: Bloody well rowed chaps.
In contrast sometimes we’d look out and see
In total silence coming up the river
A flock of quiet bathing hats
Swimming to breakfast at the Iffley inn.
And when the human beings gave them space
Swans, ducks and coots would swim majestically
Or bob along the surface of the water
While voles and shrews foraged along the bank
Until they met our cat who caught and ate them –
All but the tails and feet, and these she left
A kindly offering upon the boat.
You won’t find any of this in your research
But will be left to speculate
On who we were and how we managed there.
You’ll get it wrong just as I know we do
When piecing facts together, trying to make sense
Of what we know about our ancestors.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
Read at his funeral in May 2009
I see you, hanging on my kitchen wall,
Pointing a minatory finger in that way you had,
Now frozen in time; and further on that wall
Appear again but in a different guise,
Your ‘Who? Me?’ face, or likelier just ‘Moi?’
As one unjustly accused of challenging us
In a commanding or peremptory way.
But in my mind’s eye now I conjure you,
In your extreme old age not fractious,
Without the impatience of your earlier days
But making peace with those who needed it,
Accepting your constraints without complaint
Adding a newer and a sweeter tone
To all your rich life’s diapaison.
And now you’re gone. What stays with us
Are photographs and memories, and it is these
Which now ensure your immortality.
Live, on my wall and in our hearts!
Alive in memory, be once more alive,
More truly you than simply that old man
You had to be in your last weeks and days.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
(for ERM, aged 92)
I’ll tell you what it is:
Old people, sometimes, shrink
And are so wizened, mind and body,
That it seems they can no longer be
Who they once were.
Impossible to see them
In the mind’s eye
Heading the table at Christmas
Or being the life and soul
Of any gathering
Or engaging us with a joke
Or a philosophical discussion.
It’s often our own fear,
That we shan’t be seen any more
As an individual, unique
In loving and laughter.
But my father has not shrunk
And he has not diminished.
He is more than the sum
Of his own disabilities.
It is hard for him to be deaf
And hardly able to walk,
And worse for him to forget his words
Who was always so quick with the mot juste.
And it’s hard on us, but only
Because we can see how much
He cares about these changes.
But he is still who he was
Can still be contentious
Be funny and amused,
Irascible, cantankerous,
As the whim takes him.
He gives his family hope
That they too will not dwindle
Into anonymity.
He is indomitable
And frail, and still and always
He is himself.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
for my mother
You’re sitting on a table
In a photographic studio;
You are three or four,
Pretty, with long dark ringlets.
Your face is self-contained,
A half smile on your lips,
Not that childish openness
Of sullenness or delight
We might expect to see
A few years later, here you are again
Standing outside your grandma’s house.
Your face is serious, though pleasant,
No wide smile here; only a guarded look
Under your wide-brimmed hat.
Not tall, with sloping shoulders,
Blue eyes, black curly hair,
And a straight Egyptian nose –
You were Nefertiti, a friend said of you,
You were lovely in your youth.
Yet in your whole life
There are few photographs –
But for a few at school
Or with friends in the WEA –
Which show you smiling
Relaxed and natural.
Lines of self-consciousness
Stiffen your face.
I never doubted that you loved us
Although you didn’t demonstrate
With hugs and kisses after we were babies;
Clean house, clean clothes, good food,
Unerring memory of what we’d like
Or mentioned liking in the previous year
When choosing presents.
Desperate to make a perfect family
You lacked experience of family in your life;
Your face was often furrowed with concern
Lest you fail us or we fail you –
Which made it almost bound to happen.
After your father died at Passchendaele
Leaving those touching postcards
Promising good times when he returned
Your mother went to work, and for six years
Your nineteenth century grandparents
Gave you their love and moral standards –
Not many hugs and kisses I would guess.
When you were nine your mother took you back,
Gave you a stepfather and new brother too,
And some years later a half-sister came.
After you left his house your grandfather
Killed himself – you found this out
For no one told you this or talked of it.
And so you thought it must have been your fault.
Your mother’s was a cold unlovely house;
Always you thought of grandma Speller’s as home.
So, with no father and a cold mother,
A grandfather you thought you’d forced to die,
You needed love, you longed for love,
Far more of it than anyone could give;
But dared not always show your own in case
Your love was not returned or – even worse –
Those you dared love would die or go away.
And now you’ve gone, along with all the rest,
Parents and grandparents alike,
Not knowing how your love remains alive
In all your children who remember you,
And in the families they have themselves,
Not even trying to make them perfect,
Knowing they can’t be, more relaxed in that
Than you could ever be.
When you were here I went along with you
Not making demonstrations of my love.
But now I think you might have welcomed my
Showing more clearly what you meant to me.
It was not easy work; you were disturbed
In ways we could not rectify.
I wish I could have told you what I know
Now, since you died, that no one can
Replace the mother that you were for me.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
Gwen Pickard: 1914-1979
Your photo, standing on my windowsill,
Perpetuates a joke I did not share.
Those others who are laughing with you there
May look at it and see you laughing still.
And in my album you in plural fill
The pages, from your early girlhood where
You smirk and flirt and hide behind your hair,
And, later, stand composed upon a hill.
But all the pictures say that you are gone,
Whether they show a scene that I recall
Or one forgotten long ere I was born.
Of your bright talk and gestures there are none,
And that fixed smile and pose will never fall
Into the long-familiar lines I mourn.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
A parent has died:
Generations shift their places
On the family tree.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
You sit by the fire with crumpets
Your face flushed slightly in its rising heat;
I pour the tea and play the gramophone,
Whilst as you stir you read a poem aloud
Or criticize the syllabus we chose.
Outside the sun shifts on the dreaming spires
Mocking our need to live and alter things.
We cannot change the world: banal, we talk
Of films or meetings. You kiss my cheek and go,
Leaving your cigarette ash in the grate
The poetry books forgotten on the floor.
© Anne Smith
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
When I was little they said
After the war we’ll have bananas.
They talked about them so much
I rather thought they were fighting
For the right to have bananas.
At the end of the war
A visitor came to our house
And there were small shrieks
Of grownup excitement.
It’s bananas! they said.
Come and have one! they cried.
So I did.
It was a dried banana.
It looked like dog poo
And didn’t taste much better.
I cannot tell you
What a letdown it was –
Was that what they fought for?
So I didn’t like bananas
From that point onwards
Even though I learned
In time, but not in time,
That real bananas were yellow
And not dried up and turd-like.
It has taken me sixty-eight years
To recover from that betrayal;
But I am happy now to tell you
That at last I can say
I have forgiven the grownups
For putting me off bananas
So completely. For so long.
And now I really and finally
Like the taste
Of bananas.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
My family tree unrolls before me,
A tattered fan, thin, with holes
Where people are missing.
Facing the other way I know everyone:
My sisters, my children, and theirs.
But facing backwards I know
Only my nearest relatives,
Most of them now gone.
Beyond them are simply names
Some with dates, some with places too,
Some of which I have visited.
But a family tree does not reconstruct
Lives: how they lived, what caused their deaths,
The times they lived through.
Sometimes there are clues, such as
The Coal Superintendent who died of emphysema
Or the groom who died of glanders.
Sometimes a fact provokes further research.
I found a family who drowned together
In the Empress of Ireland
Coming from Canada in 1914
Rammed in the St Lawrence Seaway.
Most of my forebears could not read,
Worked on the land or in London,
And many of them worked with horses…
The tattered tree holds not only names, but lives
I am a product of their living,
But they would not know me or the world I live in.
One day I and my world will be a forgotten name
On other people’s trees.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
‘It’s a grey day’ we tell each other;
In fact the sky is white not grey.
As we cross the river the water
Shimmers in silver, and raindrops
Fall like silver fish on and around us.
We ought to celebrate this sparkling day –
Instead we denigrate
Its subtle monochrome, refracted light,
With words like ‘grey’ and ‘overcast’.
Because we’re wet and chilly and because
We want the golden sun to shine
And chase away shadows.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
Come to the door at night. Listen.
The wind breathes softly through the leafless boughs
With a tiny rattle as they move together.
In the garden shrubs rustle in sympathy
But not from wind: fox or cat perhaps.
A distant roar tells of the midnight plane;
Occasional cars sound as if miles away,
Trains rattle quietly by from time to time.
Behind us the old house creaks and cracks.
Silence at night is not without noise, then,
And yet in a way it still seems to be.
We associate lack of visible movement
With what we can hear or not hear;
The darkness in place of daylight
Leads us to say ‘How quiet it is!’
But come to the door at night. Listen.Night soundsCome to the door at night. Listen.
The wind breathes softly through the leafless boughs
With a tiny rattle as they move together.
In the garden shrubs rustle in sympathy
But not from wind: fox or cat perhaps.
A distant roar tells of the midnight plane;
Occasional cars sound as if miles away,
Trains rattle quietly by from time to time.
Behind us the old house creaks and cracks.
Silence at night is not without noise, then,
And yet in a way it still seems to be.
We associate lack of visible movement
With what we can hear or not hear;
The darkness in place of daylight
Leads us to say ‘How quiet it is!’
But come to the door at night. Listen.
© Anne Smith
Come to the door at night. Listen.
The wind breathes softly through the leafless boughs
With a tiny rattle as they move together.
In the garden shrubs rustle in sympathy
But not from wind: fox or cat perhaps.
A distant roar tells of the midnight plane;
Occasional cars sound as if miles away,
Trains rattle quietly by from time to time.
Behind us the old house creaks and cracks.
Silence at night is not without noise, then,
And yet in a way it still seems to be.
We associate lack of visible movement
With what we can hear or not hear;
The darkness in place of daylight
Leads us to say ‘How quiet it is!’
But come to the door at night. Listen.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
when it is dark
my bedside light
fights shadows
drives back goblins
wears shining
armour
and knows
it is needed
to save me
but in daylight
the bedside light
no longer needed
illuminates
only itself and
will be ignored
until the darkness
comes
Again.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
I wake up
I open my eyes
it is not too hot
it is not too cold
it is warm
comfortable
nothing hurts
nothing aches
I do not want
to move again
ever.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
No man’s land, between the days, nights lie
Uninterested, black, mysterious.
Dark pearls upon the endless strings of time.
Sometimes the night will, unremarked, slip by;
Sometimes foul weather rages, furious
And thunder punctuates the town clock’s chime.
Then in the morning all the songbirds cry,
Welcome fresh day in tones melodious,
Banish the night with tuneful, wordless, rhyme.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
Sometimes in the night
We slip from our familiar world
Into the sepia world of dreaming
Where everything is different.
We may find we are at any age;
We may have a family
We have never seen before;
We may wander alone
Filled with inexplicable dread
Through lightless forests
Laced with cobwebs.
There are no points of reference
In this world of our sleeping.
Yet sometimes when we wake
We are filled with warmth or suspicion
Towards someone we know,
Someone we met in the night
In the sepia half-light of dreams.
And if we tell them of this,
That they were in our heads,
They often take offence
As if, while they were sleeping,
Righteously and dreamlessly,
We had tried to steal their souls.
But sometimes in the night
We slip from our familiar world
Into the world of dreaming
Where we may meet again
People we know, whether we want to
Or not. But perhaps this time
We won’t tell them.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
Wind crackles through the withered stalks,
Through leafless trees grotesquely stretching claws
Towards the oppressive and metallic sky.
You travel on old pathways now decayed;
Before you as you struggle on your way
Lie my bleached bones without identity.
Yet for all that, do not tread on my
Neglected, unremembered
Skull.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
If everyone believed
And I don’t mean ‘If only
Everyone believed’ –
My mood being reflective
And not disapproving –
What they say they believe,
Everyone would be struck
Dumb with awe;, the world
We explain by using symbol,
Abstraction and myth would,
Ifthey all turned out to be
True, come to an amazed
Full stop.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
The dark gods swooped down;
They smelled the reeking hecatombs
Burning on the temple floor.
They sniffed, they lapped the pools of blood
Oozing from the sacrifice.
The dark gods followers, killers all,
Courted death, brandishing knives
Dancing round the death fires.
The dark gods scowl down
Admiring their handiwork,
Proud of what they have done.
No more are the hecatombs
Reeking in the temples;
No more do the warlike priests
Strut to the thudding drums.
But the hearts of the followers remain
Proud, unrepentant, bloodstained
Amid the ruins the dark gods made.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
about dementia
Waking, I’d suddenly no idea
Who or where I was
Or the time or day.
It was shocking, it was terror.
What must they feel
Who wake each morning
Knowing that soon
For all their lives to come
They’ll be like that?
And what of those to whom
It’s happened, and on whom
This blanket of unknowing
Sits every day?
Who never recognise
Those who most loved them,
Never know why they are there,
Adrift on an ocean of blankness?
What terrors this must bring!
For me the moment ended
In a sudden rush
Of recognition and delight.
For them it never will.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
I passed a van today with on its side
Advertisement: Bespoke
Curtains and blinds and something else.
I wondered idly what the driver’d say
(sitting behind the wheel reading the Sun)
IfI approached him on the driver’s side,
Tapped on the window courteously
And Pardon, my good man,
May I bespeak some curtains and some blinds?
If satisfied with them I may bespeak
Something more as well.’
I think he’d say, ‘What kind of word is that?
Clear off, get out of here, I’m on my break’,
Or something worse and ruder.
Or maybe not. Perhaps he’d say
‘Pray, do not seek to order from my van,
Nor yet bespeak goods out here in the street.
My number’s clearly written on the side –
Bespeak on that if telephone you will.
If you’d prefer bespeaking on the net
My website’s clearly written there as well.’
I don’t think so. But now I’ll never know,
Since all I did was wander past the van
In airy fairy poet’s speculation
No scientific test of this hypothesis.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
We carry the guilt of the living.
We carry the guilt of the Gentile.
We do not come here as tourists
But in expiation: to pay our respects,
To acknowledge your humanity
Stolen by the inhumane
Along with your names, your clothes,
Your pride, your families, your lives.
We try to understand the suffering
Of the murdered and of those who did not die.
On a bleak railway platform
We light a candle and say the De Profundis
For Kaddish, we who are not Jewish,
For the souls of the Jews of Europe.
And your story reminds us, too,
Of those from all nations, in large groups
Or small, or singly, who were put to death
Whose murderers without humanity
Dehumanised others through hatred
Or anger, or fear, or indifference.
We know whose conflicts continue
Through suspicion of the different.
So we say with the De Profundis –
‘Out of the depths I cry’ –
Mea culpa for the wrongs of the present,
Mea culpa for the horrors of the past,
Mea culpa for all that is yet to come.
We are the guilty, we are the victims too:
Shalom to you, the murdered Jews of Israel,
May you rest in peace.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
Above the earth
Beyond the stars
Behind all galaxies
At the edge of the universe
Is the veiled dark golden
Weeping face of God.
‘And what have I done?’
Weeps God.
‘Prelapsarian, postlapsarian,
Pre Incarnation, post Incarnation,
What difference has it made?
I offered my son, part of myself,
To suffer, to die for their lives.
But still they kill in my name,
Still kill for the love of power,
Enslave and punish the innocent.’
‘Bringing good news to the world
Is one thing’, says God,
But getting the world to take notice
Is quite another.
Making a paradise for men
Is one thing; persuading them
To save it, look after it,
Is quite another’, says God
‘So what have I done?’
Weeps God,
‘And what can I do now it’s done?
I can’t do any more,’
Weeps God.
And his tears sear the earth
And blot out the stars,
As God folds the universe
Neatly in two
And throws it away.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
And when we die
We start to be forgotten.
As we fall asleep
Our lives become a dream
Imperfectly remembered
Half understood
In the minds of others.
What we did and who we were
Can no longer be added to
But is completed:
Our virtues lauded
Vices glossed over;
Our prejudices
Tenderly mocked
Or put out of mind;
Possessions stowed away or sold.
Even our faces
Are recalled no longer;
Photograph and film
Seem to recreate us
But briefly, hazily.
A ripple only
In the pond of living
Soon absorbed
Into its smooth surface.
For when we die
As soon as we die
As early as that
We start to be forgotten.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
When we are born we are nothing,
An inchoate blob of physical needs.
When we are young we begin
To knit our lives to a pattern
Of our choosing, a pattern
Of what we see and what we think.
Faster and faster we knit,
Draw in all colours, all experience,
Exciting and comprehensive.
Growing up we knit more slowly
Weaving in darker colours at times,
But usually we knit more certainly,
Understanding how each life event
Takes its place in our pattern.
As we grow old our knitting
Begins to unravel behind us.
The pattern one day is rich, complete,
The next day parts of it fray
Until it is lost.
When we die we are nothing,
An inchoate blob of physical needs;
Yet more than when we were born.
For our pattern is partly preserved
In the memories of others
Who knit parts of us into their patterns
Like a patchwork of living.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
Is heaven, I wonder, warm
Like a summer day in a flowery park?
Or bright,like a sharp frosty day
In winter, walking through the woods?
Perhaps heaven is blustery,
Exhilarating, like a hike on the moors –
Or like walking in soft rain, cool
On the face after a hot day.
Is it all, or none, of the above
Being inconceivably better
And past all our imagining?
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
A tear shines
In the Virgin’s eye,
Slides down her cheek,
Quietly splashing
The Baby’s head.
That tear
Carries within it
All sorrow
And all love.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
In church today a baby called out
A loud holy coo of interest or pleasure.
The sound had no accent,
Gave no information as to gender
Or class, or racial background.
That baby, I thought, knew more
Of freedom and joy and equality
Than any of us.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
Today is a doing day:
Washing and cleaning, tidying
And reorganising.
The pale blue sky looks down
Uncomprehending:
‘I am the sky’ it says.
‘That’s what I do’.
We consider the lilies
Which don’t toil or spin.
They might say, too,
‘We are lilies. That’s what we do’.
I envy the lilies. I envy the sky.
The sky is for ever, the lilies
Live out their little span
Contentedly. What do they know?
But if I don’t toil,
If I don’t have a doing day,
I’ll have nothing to wear,
I’ll have nothing to eat,
I’11 have nowhere to live.
And it’ll be my fault.
While I think of all this
My doing day grinds to a halt.
Now it’s a thinking day.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
If only, in real life,
We went round as if in a film
Hearing the music which tells us
If we should expect the worst,
Or that our romance will last,
Or that we should be very scared.
We’d know where we stood all the time –
When to be valiant, or to turn tail,
When to expect a happy ending.
Of course the characters in films
Can’t hear the music either,
So they don’t know what to expect.
We don’t want them to know,
Or she’d never have taken that shower,
And no-one would have travelled
On the Orient Express that day.
But that’s entertainment;
Lilies and sky
Don’t have those either.
It would certainly be useful
In real life.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
The world is glorious, shining, sparkling,
Green and gold with promise;
Childhood holidays or being in love,
You can’t keep still for a moment.
There’s the absorption in something
Which takes all the attention,
So that nothing else matters
But also in rare moments there is stillness;
Everything in the background is right;
There are no sharp edges.
And then something is beautiful,
Is exceptional, and you are aware of that,
And you think ‘Now. At this moment.
I am perfectly happy. I will always remember.’
And contentment is a warm embrace,
Comfortable, friendly, familiar,
Not exciting, excitement not being needed.
It’s being by the fire, being at home:
It’s belonging to where you live,
In your body and in your mind.
And that’s a kind of happiness too.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
In the eye of the storm of life
Round which all places, all times, whirl,
Multi-faceted, separate, confused,
In many coloured frenzies,
In the eye of this tornado
There is a small space
Of peace and calm and silence.
Here are no colours, no sudden movements,
Only the quiet stirrings of water
And an imperceptible murmur
Of wind on the leaves.
Here is refuge, not escape
Here is all meaning, here is no harm
In its soft green serenity
stillness makes sense of things.
Do not invade the eye of my storms;
The times and places roaring about me
Are my places, my times.
My quiet space interprets them
Only to me. You cannot find yourself there.
You must discover your own refuge
And your own explanations.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
In that inner room
There are no windows.
When I shut the door
Only velvet blackness.
I do not know who
Or why or where I am
Or where I am going
Or should be going.
There is a candle
Only a small one.
As the wick catches
A golden pool spills
Over the table
Over the folded hands
And lights them up
Warm in the darkness.
I do not know who
Or why or where I am
But now I am sure
That all will be well.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
Orange-glowing globe, light the gloaming,
Banish gloom, ward off goblins
With terrifying teeth: your face frightens folk.
Sometimes you’re someone spell-changed for displeasing
Warlock or witch enjoying the juice
Of transmogrification.
On Samhain, Hallowe’en, days of the dead souls,
Festivals in firelight, dispelling the dark,
Veteran of vegetables, you lead lordly
Squadrons of squashes – you are magic, metamorphose
To carriage or coach, though to midnight merely.
I take my sharp blade to bite through your rind
Revealing the rich gold within
And silver seeds floating from fibers
Like stars against sunshine.
I take out your seeds and set them aside
Most meet for roasting, tidy on trays.
I peel off your skin, so thick and protective,
Form flesh into cubes, cook them with fervour
Over the fire, then savour your sweetness,
Warming the winter, warding off witches.
Pumpkin! Protect us from spirits-and scurvy –
Till Samhain is past and we’ve had Hallowe’en,
Hobgoblins and bogies are beaten and banished
From the year that is over, the new year to come.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
Under our feet
Where we stand
On what we call reality
Lie magic and mystery,
Remembered, half-believed,
Never seen, always there.
Chuckling in corners,
They shimmer in showers,
Shine in sunlight,
Sparkle in snowflakes,
Lilt on summer lakes,
Lend laughter to life.
We build on reality,
Need firm foundations –
But magic and mystery,
Beauty and love,
Play their own music,
Singing strange songs
In the darkness.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
‘Nature’s great book is written in Mathematical symbols’ -Galileo
On the Mathematical Plain
A troupe of those small
Mischievous theorems,
The Pythagorean ones,
Run and prance, disturbing
Their ponderous cousins
The Euclidean Proofs.
Under the trees,
Within the squares
Of the other two sides,
A flock of Hypotenuse
Graze quietly, safely hidden
Within their own squares
From those screeching, leather-winged,
Predators, the Logarithm
And its cousin the Algorithm.
On our Quadratics we roam,
Watched from their burrows
By the beady-eyed Sums,
Taking a break from their busy
Expansion of Fractions.
In the shimmering heat
Of the waterhole
We glimpse the Poggendorf Ilusion
And some Quasigroups,
Drinking beside an Abundant Number
Of Transitive Groups
Whose thirst is increased
By crossing the Plane
At a Transverse Gallop.
They use the Plane-filling curves
To avoid the long-necked Parpolygon
In his hunting mode.
It is a Totally Ordered Set
In the Telescoping Series
Showing us the fractal Geometry of Nature –
Mathematics: the science of patterns!
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
What shall I put into Room 101?
What do I dislike so much that I want it
To be gone, never to have been?
I can rant as much as I like,
But I do need to think what would happen
If something – or someone-just wasn’t there any more.
In no particular order, (sic) I want
To get rid of litter, which decorates the streets
Like dandruff on a jacket collar;
And those who deny the holocaust ever
Happened, and that many of us
Are missing relatives we ought to have;
And riders who think if they are on two wheels
The speed limit doesn’t apply to them.
I hate crows which gang up on little birds
(But I forgive magpies for looking exotic);
And Id happily wave goodbye
To those expensive hairstyles which look
Just like my hair when I first wake up.
I’d send in generalisations,
Even if it took us longer to say
What we mean: classing people in groups,
Putting them into boxes; it’s a trick
Not just of speaking, but of thinking,
And means we don’t have to remember
That we are all human beings.
Those who are cruel to others, in word
As well as deed, should go to Room 101;
All bullies and abusers, including
And specially those who think love
Is about control or possession.
And slugs. I can’t see any point in them,
Nor in wisdom teeth or appendices.
But of course what we’d all like
And can’t possibly think of,
Even by the rules of Room 101,
Is to throw away death.
We can abolish – at least in this game –
Murder and genocide and killing oneself
(With all that leads up to it)
But we can’t do away with death,
Redefine our lives in that way.
And if we went on and on,
Our children would truly regret
That we’d said ‘goodbye’ to ‘goodbye’.
So maybe I’ll limit my ranting
To litter, the acne of cities,
And slugs and crows,
Oh yes, I forgot to add wasps –
Intolerance, and cruelty –
And maybe the expensive hairstyles.
Though hair stylists do have to live.
And why should I care?
I look like that for nothing
Each time I get out of bed.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
Oats and whisky, pibroch and caber;
Beret, absinthe, Croque Monsieur-
These are the words we use to remind us
We recognise who you are.
Goosestep, Black Forest, bratwurst and lager;
Volga and vodka and boots;
Bollywood, brahmin and funeral pyre;
Cuckoo clock, bankers and suits.
Castanet, tarantella, Sangria, ole!
Tulip and windmill and clogs;
Llewellyn, Llanelli, druid and harp
Whelks, jellied eels, Isle of Dogs.
Opera, icecream, veni vidi and vici,
Leprechaun, shamrock, St Pat;
Sled and harpoon, husky and ice;
Boomerang, corks on the hat.
Hollywood, stardom, gangsters and jazz;
Playing cricket, polo, the Game –
If we didn’t know how you’re different from us,
We might think we’re nearly the same.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
The man on the radio said
Having your family round you
Makes life worth while.
And I thought:
Well that’s helpful –
What a smack in the eye
For the barren, for those
Who can’t keep the embryo
Long enough for it to be born!
How encouraging for the single mother
Whose only child was stabbed on the street;
What a boost for the widow
Who has no children, or whose kids
Don’t keep in touch – for anyone in fact
Who has no one around.
Are you saying, man on the radio,
Their life’s not worth while?
No, of course you aren’t saying that
You small minded, self-centred, smug
Man on the radio; for you never think
Of all the millions of people
Whose lives are different from yours.
You’re oblivious of the damage you do
To those who need support and help,
Not confirmation of their suspicion
That they are useless
And nothing will ever be good again.
Nonetheless, man on the radio,
I maintain even your life is worth while
(An assurance I don’t think you need)
Along with, of course, everyone else’s.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
February is not a poetic month –
Not even a harmonious word,
Hard to say and harder still to spell.
But worst of all is having to endure it.
The days are short, though maybe just as well,
Since they are dark and cold and often wet.
They do not fill me with hope for the future;
I see each frost-killed bud, not as a harbinger,
But a deluded optimist, still more depressing.
How to survive? Don’t even try to write:
Pull up the duvet, sleep and wait for spring.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
grey day
May
skies cry
lower, closer
rain
pains
lead head
dolorosa.
sunlight
in showers
brightens
new flowers
earth’s
rebirth
unfurled
world is ours,
jocosa.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
Archimedes, it seems,
Invented the computer,
Through whose gears he could show
The movement of the planets
And the future of the world.
When Syracuse fell
The Roman leader commanded
Archimedes be spared;
But a soldier saw only
An old man drawing circles
In the sand on the sea shore,
Who would not move when told,
So he killed him.
Archimedes perished;
Greek science was lost to the west;
The computers lay on the seabed
Forgotten, unlamented,
For centuries, until at last
Recovered, identified.
How could that young Roman
Know that his angry attack
On an old man making circles
Would hold back computers
For so many ages?
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
She was a bundle of sticks and bones –
He less so, but then he went sooner –
Who would chirp and smile to meet the new day,
Ready to make sure her house was spotless
As she’d always done. He did the garden.
Now no one attended to the outside plot.
‘Oh what a pity!’ she sometimes thought
But did nothing about it, ensuring rather
That she in her copper kitchen gleamed and shone
But one day the garden revolted,
Reached its ecological climax –
Flowers and vegetables gone,
The lawn had long since disappeared.
Trees reverted to sycamore and oak,
Crowded nearer and menacingly nearer
Until, on the day of which I speak,
They broke the windows, burst open the door,
Imposed unruliness on that ordered quiet
With a sound like wind in the treetops
On a turbulent day, and began to climb the stairs.
The house was isolated and soon disappeared
So it was some time before it was found.
She had been reduced to sticks and bones roads.
And all that chirping busyness was gone.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
They came to Bethlehem, it seems, by the light
Of a supernova, these men – or women –
Interested in the stars and science in general.
There were three gifts, we are told,
So three astrologers were assumed;
(They were called wise men by those
Who knew little or nothing of astrology.)
But there may have been three groups,
Each one bringing a present; or perhaps
Someone was so absorbed in the algebra
He forgot what time the shops closed;
Or else one person, or group, came from a culture
Where it wasn’t done to bring gifts for a newborn.
We can never know the truth of it.
But they came from the fabulous east
Full of learning, expecting a king.
How surprised then must they have been
To find a homeless baby, without a cot to lie in!
Did they decide to recalculate their figures,
Or instead adjust their interpretation?
We don’t know the answer to that.
And they may not have been unanimous
About their choices, for scientists rarely agree;
But we can be sure that they did agree on one thing
And how right they turned out to be!
They didn’t trust Herod, and were against infanticide.
So they didn’t go back as he’d asked them to,
But went home secretly by the back roads
Not calling again at Jerusalem.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
Tis the season to be jolly
Crowned with mistletoe and holly
Paper chains, mince pies and gifts,
Snow in painter-pleasing drifts,
Carol-singing, jingle bells,
And the organ sounds and swells
In the church where we can see
The scene of the nativity.
Then we hurry home to greet
Visitors who’ve come to eat
Turkey, stuffing and all that
With cracker, motto, paper hat.
Next, coffee, chocolate and a snooze
Will see us through to tea and booze
And hefty slice of Christmas cake
We have to eat for hostess’ sake.
But before tea we have to go
To the garden full of snow
And build a snowman – what a laugh! –
Coal eyes, carrot nose and scarf.
And when we’re cold we come back in
Playing games, to lose or win,
Warm and cosy by the fire
Until the kids begin to tire.
And so the day turns into night
Under the star which shines so bright.
Now we’re waiting for new year;
But meantime we have had good cheer.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
Christmas Song
Christmas is a-cumen in
Lhude sing ‘Oh blow!’
Parties, silly hats. old songs,
If you’re really unlucky, snow.
Midwinter isn’t bleak at all
In the Middle East,
And Jesus may not have been born
In our northern winter feast.
The wise men may not have been wise
Or even men, or kings;
They didn’t have mistletoe or holly
And such traditional things.
But for all the confusing humbug,
From Scrooge to the bizarre
Under the vulgar trappings
And Santas in the bazaar,
There’s something sweet and touching
About this innocent birth:
Solicitous Joseph, with Mary
Nursing the god of the earth.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
The toecaps of my walking boots
Looked up in shocked amaze:
‘You cannot want us to go out
On icy, snowy days!
You bought us for Galicia;
In its September shine
We took you by the pilgrim paths
To Santiago’s shrine.
Was it for this we trudged so far,
To go out on the ice?
To trudge through melting slush and snow?
That isn’t very nice.’
‘Oh do be quiet!’ I begged my boots.
‘And toecaps, shut your trap!
I’d be ashamed if you were heard
Uttering such crap.
I brought you here because I know
I can rely on you
To keep me steady, better than
Any other shoe.
No blisters in Galicia,
Disaster-free in snow –
Don’t you see I love you?
Now hold your tongues and go!’
‘We didn’t know you cared so!
Oh! now well carry you
In snow and ice and burning drought
From here to Timbuctoo!’
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
Sometimes I write of worlds that don’t exist;
Sometimes an everyday event
Attracts attention, asks to be set down
And here recorded.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
Under the threatening clouds
At the end of a long grey road
There was a sudden splash of orange
A woman in a summer dress
Vibrant and startling -a touch of colour
Like those carefully included in rooms
Being rearranged by designers,
Or like the spot of colour put
Artfully in a picture to draw the eye
To a particular part of it.
But this was not artful: this was not
Feng shui, and its unexpectedness
Made it all the more charming.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
Snow decorates the pavements,
Icing-sugars the roads,
Making all lovely.
There are bundled figures
Trudging up the road
Breath visible before them.
They’re returning from work –
Hi ho! Hi ho!- they are not lovely:
Dwarves not Snow Whites.
On the Christmas cake
The figures are frozen in time.
They do not move.
They do not walk gingerly
To avoid a fall; or seek
Assistance for a broken limb.
Snow decorates the pavements,
Icing-sugars the roads,
Making all lovely.
Get out your camera
But shoot from inside
Looking out.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
It’s here again.
Feared and welcomed:
The mysterious magic
Of waking to whiteness
Finding feathers falling
To earth, unearthly.
Snow is silent,
Snow is secret;
And the world is not
As it was yesterday.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
Footprints like exotic leaves
On a silver floor;
Fir trees prematurely grey
Where they were green before.
On the windows filigree
Silver stars of frost
Decorate them beautifully
With no designer cost.
The grass is crisp beneath the feet;
We blow out dragon’s breath
With burning smoke in icy cold,
Each puff a little death.
Too early flowers droop and drop
Their petals brown and curled;
The heavy sky is pressing down
Upon a silent world.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
The gloomy sky as summer slides away
Reflects a mood both grey and overcast,
For darkness greets the coming of the day
And brings its end too soon and far too fast.
And then the clocks go back and we are told
That summertime is over, winter’s here.
The morning’s light; we can’t resent the cold
As we approach the ending of the year.
We rise at sunrise, happy in the light;
We feel we’ve bested winter when it’s mild;
The dark of evening is a welcome sight
With curtains closed against the wet and wild.
So often summer cheats us, lets us drown:
Winter, true to itself, deserves the crown.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
There’s something wrong with November,
It’s heavy and leaden and grey
With no promise of anything good…
Words thud down on the page and
Lie there like misshapen biscuits
Made with unrisen dough.
Or-lumpen-they lie in the head
And refuse to come out at all.
It picks up a bit in December;
The lights go on in the towns,
And the shortest day marks the turning
Towards the new waking year.
But by then we’re too busy to sit
And wait for the words to come out,
And they’re occupied writing the letters,
The cards and the labels and lists.
So it’s best to close down the season
And harvest the parties and fun,
And lay them up for the time when
The words will again venture out,
Prepared to dance on the paper
And sing with the coming of spring.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
Wrapped up against the cold
I turned the corner. And saw there,
There where never before was
A small Big Wheel and
A small ice rink and
Small people gliding and falling
While families rose to the sky
Pointing at unfamiliar views
Of their home town.
It was all twinkling lights
And furry hats and mufflers
And laughter and mulled wine
From a nearby stall.
And on that bright and frosty night
We might as well have been living
A hundred and fifty years ago.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
Early this morning
I go to my garden
To visit my plants.
As I go down the paths
I become aware
Gradually
Of a quiet
Susurration,
Gentle, persistent,
Green amongst the shrubs.
The rain is so light
That I can only hear it;
I feel nothing.
And when I go back
Into my house
I am nearly dry.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
Summer’s merging sweetly
Into autumn;
Harvest’s over: no fruit remains –
apple, pear, fig –
Herbs are set to dry.
Bees give way to wasps,
Butterflies to midges –
Late blossoms mix
Colours with winter berries;
Still green, the leaves
Of trees begin to fall
And change, adding
Orange, yellow and red
To autumn’s palette.
All is mature, alive,
Enjoying the turn of the year
The more because
Afterwards
Winter comes.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
Heart-stoppingly new,
All pastels, still furled,
Still budded, not yet bedded,
Spring spreads pale skirts.
Enviably confident,
Summer’s a tumble of brightness;
She nests in sharp shadows
And wears flowers in her hair.
But Autumn is richness,
Beauty of experience,
Harvesting love
In life’s final fling.
Spring knows no fears,
Summer is all day long
But Autumn relishes pleasure,
Aware of winter’s approach.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
clouds threaten
skies drench
earth sodden
rivers flood.
don’t repine
but recall
March sunshine
was summer
we said so
at the time
hoping to be
wrong.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
After the heatwave
It was not sunny but cloudy,
Dry with a bright breeze.
Under one tree
Lay small clumps of leaves;
Under another
Lay single, some smudged, red berries.
Both recalled William Morris patterns
Against the grey background
Of the pavement.
It looked so Deco, so Arts and Crafts;
Far different from the little flowers
We see in spring time,
Pink and white on the Laura Ashley trees.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
It was becoming hotter all that day;
The sun burned down, the sky was cloudless, blue,
And on the terrasse where we spent our time
The terracotta pots ablaze with flowers.
Bees buzzed around, a butterfly appeared,
A baby lizard ran from shade to shade
Lifting its tiny fingers one by one
Protecting each in turn against the heat.
Swallows above us swooped and looped the loop,
And we were drowsy,lazy and content.
Later we went for pizza down the hill
Taking the car in case the rain should come –
And we were right, for just as we drove back
The first large spots of rain began to fall.
Our window gave a panoramic view
Across the river valley to the woods
Which clothed the hillside on the other bank.
And as we looked sheet lightning backlit them
Forked lightning too, and then the thunder came.
After the thunder rain began again
And fell in stair rods on the arid earth
And fell in sheets and tumbled down the hill
Missing the gutters, sweeping all ahead.
All night the thunder rolled and lightning flashed,
The rain beat down on road and house alike.
And then the morning came: the world as damp
And clean as I am freshly from the shower,
The sky a pale washed blue, the plants and trees
Shining with water droplets on their leaves.
Cooler this morning than the night before,
We saw a new and unfamiliar world.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
a cloud of
translucent blossoms,
night moths flew up
from the dry leaves
and the dusty soil
where I watered
lakes onto the dryness
in the summer sunlight
of an early morning.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
In the summer night
A violin’s plangent song
Fills us with sadness.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
A child wept at the crucifxion
Today, at the shopping centre,
Though Jesus was only an actor,
And His blood unconvincingly orange.
When He died and it was finished
There was a silence in the centre
Though Jesus was only an actor
And His blood unconvincingly orange.
The beat of a drum led the way
As His body was carried aloft,
Followed by some lost in thought
And some who could not maintain
Any more serious silence –
For Jesus was only an actor
And His blood unconvincingly orange.
But all of us acted the Passion –
For some, that day long ago,
Would have sensed that this was special,
In some way a moment of history,
While others were there just to watch
Without feeling it was important –
And today Jesus was only an actor,
And His blood unconvincingly orange.
But a child wept at this crucifixion.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
When I say I love water,
To be on water, in water, by it,
I mean: ocean, sea, river,
Stream, lake, pool, pond,
Not, oh never:
This interminable,
Beating, driving,
Incessant,
Dripping,
Dropping,
Rain.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
Year follows year, season follows season,
Day follows night, night follows day:
Changes in seasons keep our senses sharp,
While one will come, the other pass away.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
The corners of your mouth
Turned down in repose
But when you were happy rose
In a delighted curve.
The corners of your eyes
Folded when you smiled
The eyes with creases for tails
Looked like merry fish.
Life is full of corners
And I can choose, remembering,
To turn my own mouth
Up or down.
But my eyes never look
Like merry blue fish
Being neither blue
Nor merry.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
On this side of the river
Iam comfortable
Knowing where I am
Whom I shall see
And what is to be done.
The river is wide and brown,
Swift-flowing, swollen with floodwater.
The only bridge
Is flimsy and narrow.
It does not look safe.
But on the other shore
With a sudden pang of joy
I see you looking at me
With love on your face
And laughing eyes.
And Icannot cross the bridge
Icannot run to meet you
For you cannot be real.
Though the river divides us
There is still a bridge.
Lethe lies between us
The river of oblivion
Thundering below me
In a foaming torrent.
And who can cross Lethe?
How can I turn a bridge
From barrier to highway?
I shoulder Memory,
My tightrope walker’s pole,
And cross to the other side.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
No one is truly dead
While they live in the memory.
In the mind they throng,
The not dead,
Like sepia photographs,
Some more faded than others.
In my ten-years-old bedroom
My great grandmother
Brushes her white waist-length hair.
My mother persuades me
To give my doll to the soldiers
Marching off to war.
Her father died at Ypres
In a different war;
I see him with her eyes.
Friends are in my head too
And colleagues, alive
In my memory:
More every year, recalled
At irregular intervals
But always cropping up.
But you, dearest and most loved,
You are not sepia, not faded;
You are in colour and everywhere
You are here always.
You come through the doors,
You sit in the chairs;
I hear your footsteps, your voice.
Most of all you are beside me
In the car, reading the maps,
Finding new routes.
But I don’t want to recall
Your last moments on earth,
And remember your death
When you slipped out of life
Into that ghostly throng.
For while I am alive,
In my mind, in my memory.
You are always alive too:
You are not truly dead.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
I think of you as trees begin to change;
When one great leaf, more golden than the rest,
Spirals to earth past traceries of black
Branches outlined against a leaden sky,
It seems that you are reaching out to me
Reminding me of love, all golden, but all gone.
Now on the earth it lies and browns and rots –
And yet in spring it and the other leaves
Regenerate the soil for those that follow them.
And we will join them when our autumn’s come
Leaving perhaps some nourishment behind.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
I drift alone upon uncharted seas,
Sails flapping, I am taken all aback
And prey to adverse currents, winds and fog.
Driven on jagged rocks and hostile shores
I’m holed and helpless, wallow to and fro;
Needing to caulk below the waterline.
For when you went I lost my sailing plan,
My charts, my rudder, my ability
To shoot the sun and work out where I am.
And when my father joined you in the dark
I lost my anchor too so could not stop,
Could not avoid those rocks, those dangerous seas.
Without an anchor, rudderless as well,
Alien, I cannot know where I have been,
Nor where I go from this unfriendly place.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
Above the high tideline
Stranded, Ilie
Far away from
The countless murmurings
Of grains of sand
Brushing against each other.
In my ears
Only the ebb and flow of life
Reverberates at a distance.
One day, in a spring tide
I will be washed back to sea.
But not yet.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
Without you
The world is monochrome
Unstable, misshapen;
It is tomato without salt,
Film without soundtrack,
Oyster without that grit-
Irritant but pearl-shaping.
For you were
The music in my ears,
Sunlight on shining leaves,
Bacon and coffee smells
Welcoming the day,
Warmth by a golden fire,
And all of life’s laughter.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
I am so far out at sea
I could use shape-shifter
As seal or dolphin.
But I choose instead
Stamina, and swim on
Unchanged through the riptide.
But that will end
With fatigue or tsunami
And then I will know
The vulnerability
Of enduring, not changing.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
I see no reason to go into black
To show the world I was a loving wife
Though dedicated to her public duty
She stayed in public mourning through her life.
I see no point in suttee as a statement:
Weeping, to throw myself upon the pyre,
Or to be dragged unwilling by my family
And – screaming, struggling – chucked into the fire.
I see no reason to call in a shrink
To analyse and treat my frame of mind
Or ask the doctor for a numbing drug
To block the pain of being left behind.
I will not scatter ashes on my head
Or tear my clothes or ululate aloud
I do not wish my children to be shamed;
I’d rather that my bearing made them proud.
But in my blood the pyre is raging still
A funerary scarf is on my heart
My head is heavy with the drug of grief
My inward clothing torn and ripped apart.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
Mourning is raw
Sweeping over arid plains
In a north-east wind.
Later there is
A green sunlit valley
With clear waters.
Enjoy the respite
Before the blizzard
Comes again.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
In the grey sea a small white fishing smack
Heads for the horizon, crossing the bar. –
As it disappears, a small black boat
Sets out in the same direction
To be followed after a time by a string
Of boats, one after another.
When we were young
Everyone we had ever known
Was here on the beach.
Now we are older
Many we knew have taken the little boats
And headed out to sea.
So we can imagine them meeting
New friends and rediscovering old ones
As in a really good party,
While we wait for our own boat
So that we can join them.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
I woke today weeping
For as I was sleeping
Your form in my dreaming
Appeared to me seeming
To be singing and dancing
So life-enhancing
Joking and jesting.
At bedtime divesting
Yourself of your wearing –
For our private sharing –
We were kissing and holding
And then you enfolding
My person while sleeping.
So I woke today weeping.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
Tonight I’m at your deathbed once again
Watching you lie unnaturally still,
Eyes closed, not moving, suffering no pain;
But long slow waiting for the lungs to fll,
And long slow waiting for the air to go.
We’re talking quietly and waiting till
You lift your head, your blue eyes open wide
And catch our gaze. Next time the lungs don’t fill.
The moment lengthens. Silently you’ve died.
Nothing dramatic happens as you go,
Who you are leaves, departing with the air
Of your last breath. You are no longer there.
Tonight I’m at your deathbed once again,
Reliving the moment, taking on the pain.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
I am alone but you are in my heart;
We are apart and though for ever one
I am alone.
I am alone but you are in my mind:
You are behind but always out of sight.
Lost in the night.
I am alone but you are in my head
When in my bed I turn and see your hair
But you’re not there.
I was alone until you joined my life
And as your wife was never quite alone
Nor on my own.
I carry you with me in who I’ll be
Though never you and you were never me
Having you always, not wanting to be free,
Almost alone.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
Soul mates, best friends,
Often disagreeing,
But bound together all our days,
All the life we shared.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
After Haiti
I am buried under my house.
The ground shook and groaned
before the house fell down.
It is black dark and quiet now.
The air is thick with dust;
it gets into my throat.
My room is smaller than before
and the windows have gone.
Ido not know what will happen
or how long I have been here
or where my family is.
From time to time I cry a little.
I am buried under my house.
Iam hungry and thirsty.
I cannot see or hear
anything outside this space.
Iknow Iam under my bed;
Ican feel it above me.
I think my leg is broken –
but it doesn’t hurt any more.
Sometimes small bits of my house
patter down around me.
I am afraid it will fall in and kill me.
But perhaps I am dead already;
being here is not like living.
I am asleep under my house.
A sound wakes me up.
I don’t know if it is night or day.
I lick my dry lips and listen.
The wall is suddenly tapping at me.
Ido not know what it means
but I find I can tap back.
‘Are you all right?’ I can’t reply:
my voice doesn’t work:
my throat is too dry.
So I keep on tapping.
Ihave no idea what it means.
They pull me out of my house.
Life returns: pain shoots through me.
I drink water and my throat eases
but I still don’t speak:
there is nothing I want to say.
No one mentions my family
so Ithink they must be dead.
They take me to hospital
where nurses treat my leg
and doctors ask how I feel.
I do not answer this question.
Ithink it is foolish.
I do not speak again…
… my life hurts in this light.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
Gang Member
Inside my head I am angry,
Always angry, but not bad.
I’ve no one that cares for me
No one who thinks I’m special
No one who says they will love me
No matter what I do.
And Ithink to myself, what did I do
And how did I deserve this?
I’m a person like you are and you
Have somewhere you feel you belong.
So I join a gang when I’m asked
And now I’m on the inside
And everyone else is outside
And not real. They don’t matter.
I aim my anger at anyone
Who isn’t in my gang with me:
At God if he’s real, or if not
At those who try to cash in on him;
At my home where nobody wants me
And my teachers who think I’m a fool
And bad through and through.
But inside my head I’m not bad.
One day I’m out with my gang,
My brothers now, my family,
And someone we pass disrespects me
Muttering behind his hand –
And the anger wells up inside me.
I can’t see,I can’t hear, I can’t speak.
So I take out the knife the gang gave me
When Ifirst joined them
And I stick it deep in his ribs.
No, I don’t know him, never seen him.
Why shouldn’t he suffer
For making me look and feel small?
I look down at him on the ground
And that’ll learn you, I think.
Next I get taken to court
Where no one turns up to tell them
I’m not a bad person really,
Not even my family, the gang;
They want out of it too.
As I told you before no one cares.
I’m taken off to the prison –
Don’t want to say much about that
Except it was frightening and hateful
And I never want to go back.
Now I’m out I don’t see the group.
I don’t belong any more.
I know I must goit alone,
For I am all that I’ve got.
I know I haven’t to listen
To those who have no faith in me;
I know I mustn’t get angry.
Instead I must learn how to feel
More like the people around me
Who also go it alone.
Then I won’t want to hurt them,
And perhaps someone will see
That inside my head I’m not bad,
Or angry with them any more.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
And when she awoke
It was to the sound
Of voices, young but grownup,
Chatting somewhere nearby:
Watching at my bedside’,
She thought, ‘waiting for me
To leave them together’.
And she drifted away
Into a youth when
She was the watcher
Beside another bed
Awaiting a death –
But not impatiently
Though without much sadness,
Since that woman was old too;
She’d had her time.
‘Just like me now’, she thought.
But inside her head
She was walking,
She was singing,
In young woman’s sunshine
Where the trees cast shadows
On the woodland floor,
Giving no thought
To twilight and darkness
Or the end of the day.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
I’ll ring my mother today. Just to keep in touch.
You know- poor old thing, living alone now,
No one to talk to, putting a brave face on it
I dial. I wait, tolerantly expecting
She’l take her time coming to the phone.
Her voice interrupts my fond thoughts;
She tells me she’s out. Out!
When I wanted to tell her I cared!
In a nanosecond tolerant sympathy
Gives way to irritation, indignation.
How dare she be out when I need her?
Isn’t it a mother’s job to allow
Her children to cosset and comfort her
When they have time? I want to talk over.
Some problems I’m having at work –
As well as, of course, asking about hers –
But she isn’t there, I feel rejected.
Ijust know she’ll phone back
At the most inconvenient time
And hear I’m annoyed at being interrupted.
I can never tell her why I rang though,
So I won’t do it again in a hurry.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
After the Epiphany:
So, they came from Jerusalem,
These strange exotic people
Speaking in other tongues,
And gave our baby presents:
Gold and frankincense and myrrh.
And Id expect you to ask,
When we’re telling the whole tale,
The inn overbooked, the star, the shepherds
And these rich men who,
As far as I could understand them,
Just followed the star here –
I’d expect you to ask
‘What happened to the gifts?’
Not presents, after all, that you could hand
Straight to a new baby.
Although of course they were always his.
And we were a carpenter’s family,
Not rich or wanting to be showy.
But the gold did come in handy
When we had to go to Egypt.
We had to leave in a hurry
After I had a dream, when an angel
Told me not to hang about.
And, as I knew from Mary,
You don’t argue with an angel;
So we were spared the appalling tragedy
Of massacred children, bereaved parents,
Being on our way to Egypt,
Where I couldn’t work, so, as I say,
The gold came in handy.
The frankincense and myrrh I locked away
When we got home again.
Mary and I always went to Jerusalem
For the paschal feast; when Jesus was twelve
And almost a man, we took him too.
We travelled in a parish party;
Jesus was a popular boy
And in general obedient,
So on the way home it was some time
Before we knew he was missing.
He’d stayed behind in the temple
Listening to the rabbis
Amazing them with his questions.
Look, he was a really bright boy,
So Ifelt proud and angry at the same time
For upsetting his mother so.
Anyway, when we were talking things over,
He told us he’d taken the frankincense,
Given it to the priests in the temple.
He thought it’ d be all right
As it was his own frankincense.
Which of course it was,
And he was after all almost a man.
So it was all right by us.
About the myrrh:
Jesus never found a use for that.
But at a later paschal feast,
On the terrible day when they took my boy
And crucified him, they gave his body
To someone who had a tomb all ready.
Then Mary took the myrrh, and she
And the other women -for death as you know
Is women’s business- prepared the myrth
With other spices and ointments
For the body after the Sabbath was over.
But as you know, when they went to the tomb
There was no body to anoint.
So I really don’t know what happened
To the myrrh, the third present.
There were, after all, other things
On our minds after that.
But that was the end of the gifts
Brought to our Jesus all those years ago;
And now it’s all finished
Mary and I live quietly, and John,
Jesus’s friend, comes round to see us.
Sometimes we talk of the past;
Sometimes it’s easier not to think of it.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
For a thousand years they lived here
In this house and the earlier ones.
Lined up along the walls, they are still here,
Impassive in paint, staring judgmentally down.
As we move we are somehow
Less substantial than they are:
United by blood, we are divided by time.
I am a fly caught in this intricate web –
This house imprisons me, then and now.
Over a crinoline or ruff, under a wig.
Posing, flaunting a shako,
Standing before my estate,
Proudly riding my rocking horse,
My face stares down at me as I pass by.
I cannot buy what does not fit well into my house;
I cannot buy anyway for they have filled my house.
I am all my ancestors, carrying their name,
Sharing their history, living in their house.
It would be hard to leave it all behind.
But if I stay here, with the strangers who have my face,
How will I ever become,
How will I ever know how to be
With modern tastes and individual foibles,
Myself alone?
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
A legendary tale
I cannot read or write.
I have no Latin.
I do not buy or sell;
My counting is ‘all’ and ‘some’,
‘One’, ‘two’, ‘three, ‘many’.
I have no silver pence
Often I have no food
Or bed for the night.
There is only one thing
I can do better than most:
I do tumbling and juggling
And I make people laugh.
So one day I’m passing
This grey Priory Church,
And it’s starting to rain
So it seems a good time
For a visit to Our Lady.
At the end of the aisle
I catch sight of Mother Mary
In blue and gold,
Holding her Baby.
But she looks so sad,
And He, He is too serious,
As if He carries
The weight of the world.
So they need what I give them.
The coloured balls rise and spin
Towards the carved wooden angels
Making music under the roof –
And fall like jewels into my hands.
And then start to spin too,
My coloured suit turning and tumbling,
Until I think the Lady leans forward
Smiling a little, and speaks to the Child.
But suddenly a brother – black habit, black looks –
Comes rushing towards me, his sandals
Clack-clacking on the tiles.
He seizes my arm and hauls me
To see Father Prior,
For no commendation either –
Condemnation is in his mind.
The Prior asks what am I thinking of:
So I tell him what I told you.
He has a black habit like the brother,
But no darkness in his heart,
And he listens and understands
And knows it is all I can do
As my gift for God and His Mother.
So he lets me do it again: the Lady smiles:
Then the heavens ring with her laughter.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
The peasant speaks
I thought at first
That the story was all about me.
After all. I was the reason
The king and his page
(Whose mother is a neighbour
Of mine, by the way)
Set out carrying wood and food
And turned up at my hovel
To give me a fire and a meal.
It’s an understatement
To say I was surprised.
I mean, wouldn’t you be,
If a celebrity turned up
Unexpectedly, with a picnic?
And when I got over the surprise
I thought, good on you sire.
After all, he’s not elected –
He doesn’t need my vote
Or anything like that.
But of course when the story
Did hit the news, it wasn’t about me
At all. I ought to have known.
I figure in the tale only at the start
To show how saintly our king was.
The page was more important than me;
Not just for knowing my address,
Which was handy, but also
For feeling the heat in the king’s footsteps,
Which, coupled with a very practical
Kindness and charity to me,
Seemed miraculous enough to show
That he was indeed a saint.
And that’s what the story is really about.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
With faces like flowers the grave-eyed girls
Stamp the beaten earth with ritual feet,
Skirts closed like pleated petals.
Flutes silver the sky where the goddess waits
And the pillared shrine stands guard
Over the dancing maidens, over the city.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
Old men sat in the sun on the walls of Troy
Oblivious of most of what went on around them,
Till Helen walked by them teasing the senses
With lingering perfumes which scented the air
And her long robe swishing around her feet.
Then the old men sat up, looking suddenly alert
Like old hounds following the course of the hare,
Turning their heads to watch Helen walking.
We were never told what Helen looked like,
The colour of her eyes or her hair;
But we know she was indeed most lovely of all,
Chosen by Aphrodite to send Paris love-mad
And bring down the walls of Troy, where the old men
Used to sit in the sun sleeping and dreaming.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
When we were young we all looked up to
The grown up Antony, Caesar’s right hand man,
Commander of the left wing
At the battle of Pharsalus,
Caesar’s master of horse.
There was a man that knew how to live,
A fighter, a brawler, one for the ladies!
Mind you, he came from a good family,
Had everything going for him.
More than I did, as the son
Of a nouveau riche father
I owed all I had to my great-uncle,
Julius Caesar, who adopted me.
When Antony went to Egypt we expected him
To do as we did all over our empire:
To bring it Roman values and beliefs.
But he, totally spellbound,
Embarked on a passionate affair
With that harpy Cleopatra,
And indulging all his senses,
Harked back to the dissipations of his youth
And went as they say completely native.
So it was left to me to stand up for Rome
And try to get him back in line.
Ieven married him to my sister,
Who was good and loyal, a true Roman matron,
And gave him two daughters.
But in the end even she couldn’t hold him,
And he went back to Egypt,
An old man besotted, who had once been our hero,
No longer deserving to jointly manage Rome.
So finally he had to go: after Actium
He saw the writing on the wall
And killed himself. I must say
I was surprised when Cleopatra too
Took the Roman path. Good riddance though
So here I was, so much less of a hero,
Here I was, left to clear up Egypt,
Take on unaided the responsibility
Of restoring the republic, which, having done,
I set out at once to turn another way –
So I became emperor
And later on I and the emperors after me
Became gods as well.
The people of Rome may not have loved me
As we loved Antony once;
(It took good propaganda I recall
To turn that feeling round)
But history will remember me
For having achieved the most.
For what, in the end, could they say of him
Who lived too long and threw away
All that had made him great?
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
Under a grey and cloudy sky we follow the whale roads
Adventure seeking for younger sons we are
Far from rocky homesteads with no room for all.
Sea is glassy grey no widowmaker today:
Wildgoosepath rather. Oars splinter the waves,
Splash us with crystal wound us with water.
Sky ahead crouches down holding rainclouds over cliffs
Luring us onwards to an uncertain future.
We bend to our oars with a will following the ways of our fathers:
We bellow a shanty in fellowship as we sail to the western sunset.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
‘Isn’t the weather appalling?
This could last for the rest of the month.’
“Longer than that’, thought Noah,
As he reached out for his saw.
‘What does Noah think he’s doing
You’d think he’d come in to the dry.’
‘I’ll be drier than you in a while’,
Thought Noah, applying some caulk.
‘You know it’s a positive farmyard
Trampling his lawns to mud’.
‘They’ll be a lot warmer than you lot
By the time this planing is done.’
‘I really do think he is barmy;
He seems to be building a boat.
Does he think he will need it or something?
And how will he get it to float?’
But in due course the floods overcame them
While Noah just floated away.
And the rain stopped; and a rainbow
Shone out over the sea.
They found some land in the end,
After stuff with two birds and a twig.
It was good to be less overcrowded
Once the animals had gone their way.
Noah’s boys built a few little houses
For themselves and their mum and dad:
But Noah put his boat into storage:
‘You can never be sure’, thought Noah.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
We know the major characters
In history and legend.
Imagining how their sidekicks tick
Adds interest to the tales.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
Balloons float from my mind
In all colours
Drifting to white clouds
Quietly alight.
Each holds a thought
Is an idea
Sent out to ask you
To share the sight.
Like bubbles from soap flakes
They dance away
Fragile ephemera
Reflecting the light.
Imagine balloons
Filling the sky
Look up as they pass you
Follow their flight.
Watch while you’re able
They may not last long
Vibrant in daytime
They vanish at night.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
While I’ve always maintained a close relationship
With my pen, I never got to first base with
The keyboard. My keyboard has a life of its own.
‘Many garts on your brithday!’ it writes.
On your brithday I take it you eat something Welsh
And ‘garts’, I think, are a kind of gaiter
To keep your feet warm when you are in Wales.
New words creep in all the time:
The man who runs the Christmas shop is the ‘manger’,
And you send spiky *thnaks’ for an unwanted gift.
But maybe it’s all simpler than that;
I can write and keep hold of my pen,
But my fingers haven’t adapted so well
To the trampoline approach,
That rhythmic bounce the keyboard demands
The keyboard, inventing words?
Oh no! That’s all carp!
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
Poems do not have to rhyme
But if you do, to pass the time,
Pay heed to the rhythm too
To keep the structure straight and true.
Make sure the rhyme does not dictate
The content, and it shouldn’t grate
Unpleasantly upon the ear,
Making the content far less clear.
Good rhyming will enhance your verse;
The bad will only make it worse.
So if you don’t feel quite secure,
Free verse is best for you, that’s sure.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
I used to teach once, to the sixth form,
Literary Criticism.
What’s that, miss?
It is how you can tell if and why
A poem is a good one or not.
And then you must like it?
At least if it is good?
No no. It isn’t at all about liking.
A poem may be good and not at all
Your cup of tea.
But you are a teacher so surely
You like all the good ones –
The classics?
Not at all; and if anyone
Says he likes all the good poems
He is probably lying.
Well, what’s the point then
If it isn’t to tell you
What to like?
You get to know how it is done
And at least learn to admire
Something done well
Try it yourself, you might
Want to apply things you have learned
To your own writing.
If I don’t have to like
Al the good poems
Can I like bad ones too?
Of course, as long as you know
Liking doesn’t make them good.
We all have moods in which
We enjoy watching rubbish
And reading it too.
So literary criticism
Is about understanding
And not, necessarily,
About my feelings?
Exactly. Now shall we start?
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
Terza Rima
Villanelle:
Writing these
Would be swell –
But I can hardly
Find the time
To pen a simple
Nursery rhyme.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
Love, swift as thought
Invaded my harsh heart and bound it fast.
As I still fought
Love, swift as thought
He captured and caught
My hostile heart and made it yours at last.
Love swift as thought
Invaded my harsh heart and bound it fast.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
If nothing comes to mind
Iwant to write,
What verses can I find
If nothing comes to mind?
I’ll fail what I’m assigned
Even if I try all night,
If nothing comes to mind
I want to write.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
haiku pen me in
five seven five my mantra:
is there no escape?
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
I know which poem I want to find.
And as I look I feel a frisson
And hear a tiny chuckle.
From the corner of my eye
I catch a glimpse, a whisk of stanza
Round the corner of a page.
This is not a game!’ I cry.
Ireally want to find you!
But the poem rustles and evades me,
Making me read the others in the book
Before letting itself be found
And making me late.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
In my head there lurked
The first two lines of a verse
And skulking close beside it
Two lines to close the verse.
But there was no middle.
There was nothing to unite
This end with this beginning:
I could not get it right.
The first two lines flew off
Right out of my head.
The ending of the poem
Without the rest was dead.
And so I had to leave
That riveting first line
And also those which promised
An ending just as fine.
They’ve gone to be recycled
In a poem yet to be.
This time there’ll be a middle –
Just you wait and see!
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
I woke up in the night fizzing with poems
And had to put the light on.
Reaching for my pad and paper
I tried to capture what was in my head
And failed to catch it in the net
In which I fished for bubbles of champagne;
For now awake I could not hinder their
Elusive dancing through the interstices.
I’d lost the key to unlock and find again
Those poems smuggled from the world of sleep.
And yet I could not go to sleep again
Whether to dream the sunlit poems there
Or to escape their memory and lie
Unthinking until morning came.
And so bereft I lay awake all night
Waiting for day, or dreaming to begin.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
One night in hot weather
The fan in the bedroom
Blew the sheets from the bed
And the thoughts from her head.
Blew the words from the paper
And the ink from her pen;
So wading through words
Which had blown to the floor
She went to the door
Searching for more.
But the words which had blown
Down the street were now flown
Far away, far away!
And she had to follow,
For her bedroom rang hollow
Sans sheets and sans thought.
Fan still moves the air
But nothing is there
In the cold light of day.
It has all blown away –
So she could not stay
But travels the highways
And searches the byways
For the words she lost then
From her paper and pen
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
In my box I keep
Individual lines of verse
Which came to me once
But had to go away.
They never grew into poems.
You can make patchwork quilts
From remnants of material
Acquired at different times
And reminding you
Of things that have happened,
Important or touching.
Can you make patchwork poems
On the same principle,
Recycling the lines and remembering
Where they came from?
Or, after I die,
When they are going through my things,
Will they find, disjointed, confusing,
Lines from my life whose significance
Is now lost?
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
1.
Beautiful, virginal, sheets
Of plain white paper await
Despoiling by pen or keyboard.
Multiple ravishments
Will destroy your appeal
Until your ravisher
Loses patience, screws you up
And casts you aside.
What a lowly end to come to,
Crumpled, homeless, on the streets;
How far from your dreams and hopes
For a fitting conclusion
For all your beauty!
So for today, beautiful, virginal
Sheets of white paper,
I’ll leave you unsmirched,
Pure and untouched, and play
Some less repulsive role.
2.
Walking along the road
Imade three poems in my head
And fixed them there.
And fixed them there,
And came to the trams,
Went home and then
They were gone…
They were gone;
I know where they are
But I can’t get at them;
They are locked away.
They are locked away
In the filing cabinet
Which we call memory,
But I’ve lost the key.
I’ve lost the key.
It’s been a hard week
And I have not transmuted
Its base metals
Into the golden words
Which make order from chaos
And give the illusion
Of being in control.
Putting it on paper
Is not just medicinal,
offloading stuff
From one’s life or one’s head
By writing it down.
No! It changes emotions
Even as it describes them,
Makes patterns of them,
Gives them beginnings
And middles and ends.
But life has no such resolution
And who is to say
Of any occurrence
Where the beginning is
And when it is finished?
It’s always a middle
Of some story or other,
Which makes it a muddle.
Ah well! This time
I’ll just have to survive it
Since for this leaden week
There’s to be no alchemy.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
Language and reason tie us to the earth;
In hackneyed phrases our desires congeal;
Accurate words have only worldly worth –
Meaning betrays the truth of what we feel.
For voiceless is the music of the spheres,
For ever changing and always the same;
Unsayable how beauty moves to tears;
The colour of the heavens has no name.
And all man’s yearning cannot help him reach
That state in which he has no need to explain:
What would he learn if anyone could teach?
What would he find though never would attain ?
For words are very often all we have
To save us going lonely to the grave.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
As a meat stock cube
Encapsulates in little
The goodness of beef
So a poem may
Condense meaning
In a small-but perfectly
Framed- metaphor.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
Little, sharp, unbidden,
Snapshots of memory
Come into the mind.
No photographs remain
Of these small moments.
Only their bright images
Inside the head
Beg for immortality.
Poems can do it –
Act like photographs,
Capture the minute,
Share remembrances.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
Poetry is electric: it tingles in the head
And crackles down the arm.
Words scamper to the page,
Jostle in line for the right place.
Meanings change; lines disappear
Though some may come back later.
Where does it come from, this itch,
This fizzing in the blood
Which cannot be ignored?
It’s all restlessness and feelings.
Exciting or sad, stirring or elegiac,
It is electric. It is how life is.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
Leads a humdrum life, cooking,
Cleaning, shopping, gardening…
Suddenly a poem has you by the throat
Which you have to deal with, get it off you
Now, at once, before it strangles you.
Ideas bubble up, red before the eyes, and always words.
You have to let the poem have its head
Before it has yours -and the shopping,
Cleaning, washing, and the dinner
Are put on the back burner.
Even – if the poem gets there first –
Getting dressed, whatever the time of day,
Takes second place to capturing it on paper,
At least the first if not the final draft.
These seizures, this continual abuse,
Make the humdrum extraordinary,
And rich, and valued, though it does not show.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
With our sublunary nature we can only
Make the best of things, put a brave face on them.
The jester’s red and yellow antics ward off shadows;
Our hands applaud man’s brave romantic gests,
So death-defying, so frequently dead all the same.
It’s worth it, it keeps us going, but it’s sad.
Under the high romance, the improbable beauty,
The bawdy punsters and the spate of weddings,
The clown bleeds, dry-eyed, while we laugh.
Between the courtly ideals, the extravagant friendships,
And the rough vitality of the boozing mob,
Are the villains, who come to no happy ending.
Only he could make us weep for his villains:
Shylock a Christian, Malvolio madly-used,
Caliban, the monster with an ear for music;
And Falstaff, gross fraud, fat comic without an audience,
Kneeling bare-headed in the cobbled street,
Travel-stained, alone in the oblivious crowd.
We all need something to look up to, to dream about.
That’s what we think we go to the play for:
We go to be taken out of ourselves, for our pleasure.
But to his credit we remember most clearly,
Meeting our just deserts, the clowns and the villains:
Laughter with a lump in the throat, the tears of things.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
Bawdy, noisy, smelly, dirty –
Robustly vulgar – that must have been
The early Globe on rip roaring Bankside.
Now the South Bank is a centre
Of culture and art and history,
Pricey housing, swaying bridge,
Jogging professionals intent on fitness;
No stews or bear-baiting these days
.
Yet in the modern Globe we can
Sit as they sat or as groundlings
Stand by the stage in the sunlight,
Join in the action, eat, drink and chat,
Wandering in and out of the theatre.
The actors can see us and act at us,
And we can shout back (and we do).
Some actors love this; some hate it.
We don’t sit, reverently silent,
Remembering school, to hear
The Words of the Bard. No, we’re here
For a theatrical experience
Whether we’re scholars or not.
Maybe it’s no longer dirty or smelly
And there are sprinklers on the thatched roof.
Sensible, since the last Globe burned down –
But it’s still noisy and bawdy,
Robustly vulgar and full of laughter
And – what they had but never named it –
Audience participation.
What they had and we’ve not retained
Is the simultaneous ear:
The ear for outrageous puns which hears also
The heart-stopping music of verse
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
Most men fear death:
Whatever hardships they’ve suffered
They do not want to die.
A minority
Cannot bear evil, unkindness, poverty.
They kill themselves.
There are some men who choose death
When life was an option,
Who die for a cause, a country,
A friend , a relation.
And then there’s the tragic hero.
He is a king, a general, a leader.
His world is filled with lies,
Wickedness, filth, deceit.
He is doomed to die
Through his own fault –
The moment predetermined
By fate of wicked plot –
We see it coming from the start.
If it’s his fault why are we so sad?
If we are sad for him why don’t we
Rebel against this death?
Each tragic hero represents ourselves
But at his death he’s somehow purified
As we are not – he’s come to accept
That he’s responsible for what he’s done.
He knows himself at last, makes no excuse,
And dies because he cannot bear to live
With this self-knowledge.
We are uplifted in our turn though sad
To realise what isn’t true of us:
That man is capable of facing up
To what he’s done, to talent thrown away,
To death and to destruction brought upon
Himself and those he loves.
This weight of knowledge cannot be endured,
Yet as he dies the hero’s also freed
From all the dirt and pettiness around
In which we all must live.
His death ennobles him as noble birth could not –
We feel his death ennobles all of us.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
We must also remember –
Not the villains, Iago, Edmund –
And not the victims either,
Desdemona, Cordelia,
And all those young children,
But those most like us,
Not hero material at all.
They are left behind
to restore order to the chaos
The hero leaves when he dies.
Enobarbus and Kent, now,
They couldn’t face it.
They died too, almost
Stealing the scene.
But cold Octavius,
The much-wronged Edgar,
And widowed Macduff
(not counting Malcolm
Who’s too young to matter)
Pronounce the epitaphs
And help us acknowledge
What we’ve always known,
That hard as it is
Life must go on
And we, the survivors,
Must go on with it.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
If the poems of my youth were
Adolescent
Are these scribblings of my age then
Senescent
Or merely like myself – you too –
Obsolescent?
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
I like poems which are surreal,
Existential, impressionist;
And poems without capital letters
Or the support of punctuation.
I like poems containing images
Which carry an emotional punch
Even ehilr you realise that in them
Many metaphors mean nothing.
I liked excited poems
With compound adjectives and
Ejaculations in mid-line.
I like poems written in a form –
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
The Comic Muse knocked on my door.
Wearing a tutu over black leggings,
And a mediaeval liripipe.
She also had a black eye.
‘I was told you were kind’ she said.
So I invited her in
And gave her a steak for her eye,
Reducing my calorie intake.
Before I could get her to talk
The doorknocker called me again.
With tearstains all down his cheeks,
And wearing black jeans and a hoodie,
There stood the Muse of Tragedy.
‘Is she here?’ he asked. ‘ I was told so’.
‘You’d better come in’ I replied,
‘And explain that black eye to me’.
They agreed over their cuppa
They’d had a row about Shakespeare.
He said the comedians weren’t funny
And were really quite tragic in parts –
Falstaff’s rejection for one,
And Shylock’s loss of his daughter.
She claimed there were too many laughs
In the tragedies, which ought to be sad:
Juliet’s Nurse for example,
And Cleopatra’s servants at play.
The debate got quite heated, they told me,
With plays and plots tossed about
Till finally fisticuffs flew.
The Comic Muse came off worse,
Since Tragedy’d had more to do
With fighting (just think of the dead
At the end of one of his plays).
Hence the black eye.
He was sorry about that but wouldn’t
Go back on his earlier grievance;
And she still felt she was right.
So I couldn’t let them go home
With their arugment still unresolved.
We sat for a bit eating biscuits
And silently drinking our tea
Till the doorknocker sounded again
And would you believe? There was Shakespeare!
Like the Droeshout engraving to look at –
Though perhaps that was only because
He knew I would know who he was
From that portrayal alone.
I invited him in (as who wouldn’t?)
And told him about the affair
And asked if he’d act as the umpire
For the sulky and still silent Muses,
Comedy with a steak to her eye.
So Shakespeare sat down between them
And tasted his tea with suspicion
As he’d never had it before,
And decided he found it thirst-quenching
And soon even asked me for more.
He looked at the Muses quite gravely
And yet with a twinkle I thought
And addressed them as his inspirations
Which got their attentions at least.
He explained that he needed both Muses
To do what he wanted to do
Which was to write plays about people
And make them seem real to those
Who came to the plays to experience
Escape but also emotions
They’d recognise from their own lives.
Through a mouthful of biscuit he said
That life wasn’t all games and fun
But that even in desperate times
We could usually laugh through our tears.
So he needed them both as a playwright
And please would they stop making war
And bring back the balance they’d brought him
So that modern playwrights could draw
As much as he had from both of them –
And please please said Shakespeare with passion
Tragedy mop up your tears
And Comedy chuck out that steak now
And wash all that blood off your face.
And both of you, get back to work.
A grin crossed Comedy’s face
And even Tragedy smiled;
They finished their tea and departed,
And when I went back inside
Shakespeare had vanished as well
Though I’d hoped against hope for a chat
I might have supposed it a dream
But for three empty cups on the table
And all the biscuits had gone.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
The sculptor fights the ugly block
Of hard grey stone before him
Seeking the imprisoned shape.
Sleeves rolled up, sweat-streaked,
Coughing, dusty, exhausted,
He labours while rough-hewn at first
A figure emerges.
But the bronze-worker
Taking the mould from the fire
Waits for the cooling and taps
Till the plaster falls away
And shows, detailed, complete,
Red-gold sparking off it,
All at once the incarnation
Of his private misson
Was he sculptor or word-smith?
Did he sweat and toil, waiting ti see
How it turned out? Or did he gamble
On that final, finished moment?
If he chiselled and chipped in words,
How did he find time to do it?
But how could he fashion such splendour
In the hidden mould of his fancy?
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
Discussing the art and mystery
Of making poetry,
Sometimes when it is inconvenient,
And sometimes it doesn’t come at all.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Joshua
The Studies were occasionally boring,
And it wouldn’t never stop.
When my mum would extend,
My head would eventually pop.
The time never ended,
It was so bothering.
And when I would dream and dream,
I would be the word ‘ play’ on my head hovering.
However, I would dearly miss studies if it was ever gone,
Especially when my mum was away.
She would unceasingly bring laughter in my heart,
And I would desire it non-stop, I would even pray.
It included Meanings, Bible Study,
Poems and Spelling.
And when out of control,
Gradually would lead to lots of yelling.
It was always exciting,
Of course, when it went fast.
If there included any jokes,
It would cause comedy ablast.
If There was anything that I would learn from studies,
it would definitely be this :
Even if it is boring,
Believe me, it will bring future bliss.
For when you grow up and earn a job,
It comes handy in your career.
And when you are blessed with a good life,
You’ll be grateful with sheer cheer.
So Kids, From now on
Listen to your wise mums and dads.
For they know why they teach you,
And eventually you’ll be Glad.
© Joshua | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Joshua
She kisses and kisses, But also hisses.
She has grey curly hair, And feeds me a pear.
She bites me down until I am ash. But even worse, buys a lash.
She has big big eyes and doesn’t tell lies.
Makes me eat ajwain and loves to dine.
She went through cancer, beat it with banter.
She is a woman to high – five, and can mess with a bee hive.
Always need to hide because she can take you on a ride.
She has a sense of humour, and her favourite company is Puma.
She is a firm mum, but is always the best kind of fun.
© Joshua | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Joshua
I once saw a little birdie,
Shivering his tail in his bath.
And gazed out the window with sheer cheer,
To see him dry out on the garden path.
He would swing back and forth,
From the peaks of the luscious trees.
Imagining himself to be so fast,
Soaring through the breeze.
And what enjoyment would enlighten my heart,
To share such elevating bliss.
At such young ages do these things happen,
I’d long for the things I miss.
But as always, the most beautiful things,
Would sadly come to an end.
As so did this little birdie,
I would yearn and start to send.
He settled and gathered together his might determinedly,
As if to lift to fly.
But seeing the old poor fella droop multiple times,
I knew and regretted it was his time to say goodbye.
We splashed droplets here and there,
Hoping he would gently awake.
But looking at him stoop to the ground,
I had made a grave mistake.
His will was certainly weakened
And his lungs were rapidly breathing.
The little birdie saw his life pass by,
And started to quieten his heaving.
My heart was broken and dole within,
To see the tweeting chirper go.
Even in his last ages and falling times,
I’d see his spirit glow.
To see him pass in the rain brought tears to my eyes,
And gave him the proper send-off.
Burying him down was the shatter to my soul,
Making me weep and unceasingly cough.
As sturdy as the oak we honoured him as fortified,
And buried him under the young tree.
For his body maybe old and gone,
But his spirit lives on within thee.
We bowed to this day as we say farewell,
As a persevering soldier has fallen.
But through the rain and dearth of joy,
Out comes the sun.
And so we say bye bye my little birdie
As he does sadly pass.
And so should we move on,
Because he shall always last…
IN OUR HEARTS, FOREVER AND EVER –
LOVE YOU MY LITTLE BIRDIE!!!
© Joshua | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Joshua
It was on the day that my mum suggested a nice walk,
And we’d all enjoy and laugh as we used to talk.
We’d smell and savour the fragrant, scented flowers,
And gaze upon the silhouette of the tree that always towers.
It was a stroll to last for eternity,
And I would run with the accompanied breeze.
I’d bike, kick a ball or scooter afar,
Hoping my parents would catch up as fast as cars.
I would once or twice every week,
Invite my adventurous friends.
Only to desperately find out that,
It had led to more cooler stints and trends.
My mum would nostalgically reminisce on the memory – casting seat,
Simultaneously yearn for the sun’s radiant heat.
While we race up and down the pavement fast,
It’d be a press up for the not least, but last.
As we’d walk back, I would desire to go back again,
And now I’m writing it all currently in bold pen.
All the memories of the serene walks gushing through my mind,
Only to plead to go back by dreaming of my past a hind.
And now we arrive, unfortunately back at home once more,
But through the wind and cold weather, it would come to lure.
That all the good times through the walk shall peal in my heart,
Goodbye my beautiful walk, a graceful, optimistic path…
© Joshua | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Joshua
The playtime was always decided by votes,
And it mostly was a choice for the older boys.
It was an array of the most common sports,
And was definitely a lot of noise.
It was a whole buncha fun,
Especially when our team had the upper hand.
And as for the ceremonial trophy presentation,
We’d have a victory dance so grand.
It’d also be the core of the teaching points,
To understand the art of the game.
And through all the cool skills and moves,
Brought us jazzy fame.
There would be football, cricket, tennis and more,
All been suggested by me.
And when the time came for me to shine,
I had never felt any more free.
One of the most favoured home games,
Was a thorough game of ultimate hide and seek.
It was a round that all could enjoy,
Including all the timid and meek.
Sometimes it even lead to the greatest video games,
Yes and definitely Fortnite.
Boy, I’d be so glued to it that even
My mum would tell me to back away for the benefit of my sight.
One of the things I’d remember was the times,
my friends would kick the ball over the fence.
And the only thing we could do,
was trying to hope and wait in deep suspense.
It was not only the neighbourhood that was always there,
I also had school friends to come around and play.
The best night – overs we ever had,
And didn’t sleep until early rise of the next day.
And now that the summers are coming to its conclusion,
All the fun starts to fade away.
But we shall cherish the wonderous moments,
Of when we used to play.
© Joshua | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Joshua
My Dad is fun and enjoyable,
Especially when we laugh and play.
But if not slept well enough,
Can lead to a grump on the occasional day.
We non – stop laugh and laugh,
Even at the worst jokes.
We sometimes do DT and craft,
And enjoy a nice cup of coke.
We both are told off all the time,
Again and again by Mum,
But as she leaves to another room,
We giggle and start to act really dumb.
During the nights in the dark,
When we both pretend to sleep.
He tells me a comical story,
Until Mum comes in to peep.
When we go out to a shop or two,
I ask if I could eat something.
In the end, I have a meal so big,
I would bloat and start limping.
As a dad he is really helpful,
Especially when I get badly injured or hurt,
And at home for breakfast, when there is nothing left,
He whips up something from the limited food dearth.
When we fool around in something known as kabaddi,
It is very easy to beat him with a clean win.
But when he cheats and starts to tickle me,
He victory dances so much in his ‘ music’ which is actually a pealing din.
Oh the most fabulous ventures,
I have with my comedically – influenced dad.
Able to tease him endlessly,
Until he blows and erupts to be mad !!!
© Joshua | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Joshua
The Church is a place of deep worship,
Where all is always calm.
There are readings, a gospel, notices,
And also a peaceful psalm.
All are devoted and pay attention
To the priest and deacon,
We all contemplate on the homily
Like a retrospective beacon.
It is easy to daydream off or even sleep,
Especially if the explanation is really long.
Once I dozed off so hard and loud,
My dad had to wake me up with a bong.
When we play the Violins all together,
And all sound so grace and well,
There is harmony and melody in the atmosphere ,
It blends in and gradually we gel.
At festive seasons such as Christmas,
When the time gets hectic and alive,
I enjoy the end result of fun songs,
And the praise after all that we strive.
Eldon is a great maestro minister,
And can any time, any day make a laugh.
He Produces the best tunes for musicians,
And we all have a blast.
You can hear the celestial choir singing,
And all the children dancing with joy.
How the priests genuflect with deep conscience,
And the kids play with a toy.
The magical sight of the festooned Church,
A beautiful manager filled with garlands of peace.
When in the Church to view and pray,
To leave is a challenge impossible to cease.
We all dance when the fast hymns come,
And shake on tambourines and all non-stop.
And after it ends, and our energy expended,
It comes to notice that we finally drop.
Church is one place you can trust,
Where one can meditate and relax.
God is there helping those in need,
And has got our backs.
© Joshua | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
Love is shining.
Love is brilliant:
Diamond hard
Not soft and sweet.
For love is support;
It is to hold you up
In its strong arms.
It is taking the place
If one who is to due
And dying for that person.
It is not a hammock.
So do not think of love
As a marshmallow;
Love is in striving
To run faster or jump higher,
To make better music,
To show a new world
Through paint or marble,
Ceramics or embroidery.
Love is being the best possible.
It is the beauty
Of bringing a splinter
Of heaven’s light
To this transient world.
Love is not soft. Or weak.
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Anne Smith
Sixteen years ago
By dying you escaped
The referendum and Brexit
The lies, Boris Johnson,
Corruption, sexual assaults,
The sheer vulgarity and hatred
In a divided country:
Abuse online, Westminster plotting,
The false belief that democracy
Is rule by plebiscite
And parliamentary democracy
Is simply a show.
And the pandemic
With false claims of success
And the most death in Europe.
Who’s to say now you were unlucky
To die so young
To escape climate change,
To escape this beginning of the end
As the world burns?
© Anne Smith | Copyright 2022 | jdsouza.uk
© Jeannette D’Souza
Shining through soft lacy panes
Pearly warm beads of sunshine appear again
Revealing their radiant glow within scented stems…
This invigorating spell from summer’s reign!
Stepping lightly over the cool lawn of thyme,
I ponder over nature’s harvest sublime
Mallows and purslane, wild rocket and corn
Delight my senses at this summer’s dawn
Soon mellow beams seeping beneath sorghum blades,
Awaken a host of dwellers who warmly embrace
Tweets and chirps from feathery silhouettes,
They echo chants from within luscious emerald bays
Under a brim-full sunrise, blossom’s towers gleefully rise
Vibrant in foliage they gush toward the cerulean canopy
With leaning cornucopia of crisp apples and pears
Providence in abundance! proving nurturing ways…
As I gently recline the row of Raspberry that tenderly hover
Over sunny rustic fences, they bashfully uncover
To display their ruby red clusters in harmony!
Tangy ripe berries to gather aplenty
Sprouting buds of dahlias, zinnias and sunflowers unfurl
In wonder they widen to relish the lights of day!
Their merry auras spring forth in tune
Complimenting the hues of divine roses in bloom
As I revel in sunshine’s comfort, butterflies and bumble hoppers
Close in to sample fragrances from lavender and fennel flowers
Twisting their coils they hastily relish this divine nectar
In intoxicating swings they turn dancing together
Watching this winged flurry rapidly chases them Milly
Dispersing gleaming dust in the air…
Midday’s weather exciting her canine bounces
She enjoys swirling to follow their retreating trails and advances
Walking past the bright floral beds I potter
And recall the season’s many blessings and even more stored…
Those sanguine fields of poppy and purple amaranth are yet to unfold
Reminding me of magical planes soon to behold
Springing through the sinews the season’s brilliance
Captivates my mind, uplifting the optimistic spirit,
I standstill in oblivion drawing in the lustre of sights
These summery visions I pen… to savour-in time’s delights!
Jeannette D’Souza – 17 July 2021
© Jeannette D’Souza | Copyright 2024 | jdsouza.uk
© Jeannette D’Souza
The rugged Toiling hands seen an arid day on ploughshares
Sweltering heat making no changes to his course
Mingling deep in chapped clay ceaselessly working through the land,
Trampling the hardened soil to loosen with
furrows deepening the expanse, unshaken;
For life hath matched the forehead’s furrowed bands
His land stretched for miles, widespread over the fertile plane
Verdure pastures in plenitude and vegetables and grain
Treasuring the vales and hills and lake he grew
While wandering folks speculated on the natural wonders he knew
Then later travelled he to many a distant lands in search of fortune and favour
Destiny proved otherwise, for the more he pursued man-laid ambitions the more he felt convinced with a life’s yearning fire,
Of valuing his green country scenes and farming
Nature sustained closer to his heart yet even more in serving those purposeful preserving intentions with an unwavering desire!
And beyond his land lay our civilisation’s justification;
Of packed concrete jungles that cared less for it’s indigenous living
Brushing aside all carefully established old systems of self sufficiency,
Relying wholly on continents for supplies and commodities and grain,
Erecting more grids and towers and paved surfaces over forests
Living unconsciously, while sparing no space, nowhere to be found a trace of Mother Nature’s beings…
Through decades marked a catastrophic decline in the village life for green farming
And villagers resigned their interests for naturally breeding livestock and green growing
Farmers left their communities selling estates and head towards urban trends
And so, Lurers filled their pockets raising lofty edifices for gain
Humbly stood I to witness this lonely farmer proudly holding his stand
To fetch for his younger family less be gruels, earned humbly by his own hands!
Tender memories of childhood years swept my mind
With~holding not my steps I clambered down the rocky slopes to find
A long time forgotten kindred spirit from years
And saying hello we dissembled a few tears
Oh how the sunken eyes met with sincere fondness
To cherish the almost erased past of forgotten true richness!
I recalled little hands with beaming faces playing in wet marshes along the village taps
And mums keenly watching them while bathing plump toddlers on their laps
Grannies eagerly cooking nourishing supper over smoky earthen pots
Tempting hungry little mouths to line up and savour flavorous mouthfuls
And lo!.. summoning kin to dinners from their red thatched huts
We reminisced trailing exuberantly along rolling tyres, and shaping toys out of mud
Mounting onto our hemp corded swings by the tranquil rivulet shouting endlessly
Of grand aunts and uncles and their lost family trades
Our cheerful visits to the sweet meat pedlars to hurriedly fill mouthfuls
Playing voraciously Gilly-Danda on the neighbour’s jasmine scented verandah
Then stealthily creeping back into our homes invariably late for supper…
We spoke of charming old days when numerous decorated bullock carts packed with gratified Farmers lined the narrow tar streets, setting off for harvesting,
Proudly presenting their Bullocks with iridescent tasseled horns at midday dazzling
Villagers donned in brilliant pagadees, dhotis and beaded festive sarees with ritual teekaas adorning!
And keeping ready every tool in sacks of gunny,
Loaded they the wise old elders together with families and infants
Cramming all together towards the golden fields of crops and honey!
Memories from Years flown by held onto me clinging,
When the closing sun shone bright glowing every peasant’s cheerful face
And the warm rejoicing after crops were gathered echoed miles away
Surrounding the grain spirited folks gathered to open in unison traditional folklores
While feasts from their harvests steamed over vermillion fires
Upon feeding everyone and favouring every effort that went in,
They made it a season’s closing festive song and dance to welcome a new beginning!
Afar to be now, village communities had moved away for non-rural pastures and so had I
And nowhere were to be found those farmers or familiar chore gatherings
Nor the tradesmen noisily beating tools in their rowed sheds
Neither the cows parading early in multi hued horns towards meadows
Nor the vibrant and festive zatras of bangles and evoking village folklores
Oh how time had turned people and spaces into a different world…
Soon enough leisurely wafting warm aromas swayed the fields
And muffled whispers continued under the cool banyan trees
Cheerful greetings surrounded my ear lobes, and loving folks nudged to feast on traditional spreads
The family and kin and all sat down to partake, thanking God for the day
That brought forth togetherness and happiness,
Precious moments soon sped away!
Winds now gathered softening clouds to it’s bosom,
Sweeping up wishes in the air, dispersing sparking gold dust in leaves of crimson
It was time for goodbye and we wished each other well as we parted in reverent praise…
I had not known a farmer of a more greener kind
Cultivating yields with such dedication to humankind
When all throughout sought their own progressive sways
Determined stood an epitome of wisdom besieged with committed genuine ways
Where could we find such worthy humans that were Godlike
Caring for our universe and it’s creatures alike!
Humbly his soul worshipped the very ground he lived on, the trees and the rivulet,
Hoping one day his life could leave his little ones something to emulate!!
Holding on to those gracious insights that a visionary soul had inadvertently given
I smiled into the oblivion reflecting to applaud an honourable living!
Could we leave on worthy footprints of humble living, instil nature’s words of wisdom to our offspring?
Should we be stepping in strides of solidarity by serving and preserving our cosmos and it’s beings?,
Could we restart again being self sufficient… turning back to a community, planting trees, green sowing and reaping?
My last glance of the scene remained to be a hopeful world into memories to be fulfilling!
I remember ~
Toiling hands that Never quit when life challenged it’s route,
Toiling hands that sowed seeds with an endearing conscience,
An earnest soul that persevered with a resonating essence
Bringing to us an awakening into a truer vocation of sense!
How promising the ploughing wheels turned…on and on
In rhythm with iron shafts sowing the seeds and burying the weeds forlorn
Heralding a joyful scene of abundance that would unfold in months, to repeat on and on for years, and decades to come!!
Jeannette D’Souza – September 2021
© Jeannette D’Souza | Copyright 2024 | jdsouza.uk
© Jeannette D’Souza
Crisp lush scents meandering within March’s lazuli mists
Don over the bosom of winter transforming it to spring
Casting out it’s bleak slumber’s resonance to unveil
Mother Earth’s tender face wondrously appealing!
Fresh protruding saplings on fertile dales foster and thrive
Through the hail, frost and gushes they miraculously survive,
And within a twinkle reveal lustre and variegation
They bloom in graceful glory announcing paschal celebration!
Heralding April showers open wide the grey shrouded skies
Drenching the earth to proudly display spring’s design
Behold love’s celestial wands driving away gusts to celebrate,
The miracle of a bride and groom’s solemn promise made!
Spring’s revelling cornucopia of sublime florals and bountiful laurels,
Bestow their hues of golds, lilacs, rubies and emeralds
In unison the silent niches hail their magnificent greeting,
Vibrantly gleaming as if to have been swayed by a Midas King
Cosy nooks and nests rustle from their habitants’s renewed vigours
Spring awakening their quiet winter’s resting…
Preening ready for the season’s showy beginnings
Now sing the jaunty furs and feathers through tree trunks and hedges
Beaming brilliant long days adorning the turquoise skies,
Swing in cheerful action witnessing sunny Mays
Crimson sundowns harbouring the deep sapphire nights,
Nestle luminescent astral realms that perform wonders far away!
Soon humming bees and butterflies hover over ornate fragrances
They summon taut budding jewels to open swathed in nectar’s dews
Then exchanging floral honeyed kisses they drone passing in flights,
Conjugating every tree’s essence to a wondrous fruity delight!
I stop to gaze upon the luscious wisteria in purply silhouette spellbound
Sauntering further to rest under rosy blossoms that joyfully surround
Frothy brooklets cheer captivating my innate senses,
Sparkling in a newness of spirit, in spring’s elixir to abound!
Humanity awaken and hear spring’s welcome in sounds
Feel her sprightly spirit and cherish her radiant grounds
Seek to indulge your hearts in nature’s dewy bouquets
Lest we miss out on the year’s flamboyant displays
So gather here John and gather here Jane,
In ecstatic cries to enjoy from toddlers to adults plain
Prancing and dancing we shall to the season’s rhythm gain
Childlike gaiety in spring, fostering it’s innocence to reign!!
21st May 2022
© Jeannette D’Souza | Copyright 2024 | jdsouza.uk
© Jeannette D’Souza
Revolving on it’s rugged hinges the gigantic rustic door came to a squeaky halt
Revealing glad customers alighting as if from a Mayfair stall
While eagerly queuing fish eaters hurriedly rushed into it’s empty narrow slots,
Gaily thrusting the dark wooden portal to an abrupt stop
Tumultuous voices soon hailed from the inside as shoppers poured in,
From every corner of the fish market echoed vendor’s vocals a-welcoming!
The jolly known fishmongers each displayed their bountiful pride,
Enticing customers to purchase at their every whimsy stride
Traditional names of fish they ritually recited,
And carefully studied their patron’s enquiring disposition when it all but a lighted
While arrays and multitudes of untold fish in mounds they displayed to behold
Icy creatures ceremonially dressed in slithery scales of blue and grey, and silver and gold!
Experienced pescatarians eagerly lifted their choicest fish’s lids to rhythmically test
For freshness of fish’s gills that was gifted from the plentiful Indian ocean afresh
Following my mum’s trace I tightly held onto her saree then with larger gleaming eyes
Imbibing in all her probing techniques and conscious budgeting under the dimming market lights
Then soon began her eclectic buying, picking up a few irresistible surprises
Some fish to be fried, some to be pickled in jars and others to be curried
Humble seasonal catches were honoured accepting all of nature’s shapes and sizes
Society valued everything for freshness even the crustaceans clawing devices
And to mention catchy music from Boney-M to Abba that was enthusiastically blared,
Fascinating the young and the young at heart livening the facade’s atmospheric air
And grandmas and grandpas spiritedly chat about their bargained purchases,
Inviting onlookers and acquaintances in amicable greetings filled with graces
Arriving from the monumental church outside the market familiar faces too quickly habitually stood,
Extending conversations from mundane chores to lengthy gossips from the community’s neighbourhood
While little innocent faces in open mouthed wonder witnessing the wrapped sea’s produce,
Curiously poked their fingers into the eyeballs and gills learning it’s fishy clues
After enough they impatiently harried parents to elude the market’s piscine smells
As dusky hues emerged in the balmy evening’s billowy spells!
In those days a thriving fish market promoted a community’s affair
Holding families and kins close together over chats and meals to share
Fridays were set apart for religious observances in communities,
Cooking at home fresh fish and sea foods was customary with veg delicacies
Abandoning meat markets towards fish markets the faithful all sauntering a-tread,
On their way supporting local farmers buying from their greener healthier spreads
Oh the taste of fresh fish nothing remotely could compare,
When doused in steaming curry and flavourfully prepared
Those handed down recipes from great ancestors lay secretly in store,
From marinades to curries and crispy fried methods galore
And their aromatic drifting wafts invited in neighbourhood’s friendly ties,
Wowing the morsels of fish prepared in coconut curry that they relished over steamy rice!
Back at home my mum exuberantly prepared our freshest catch,
Marinating it in spices and herbs over redolent cookery family chats
While younger generations playfully entered the kitchen,
To witness, learn and remember tradition’s carefully passed down cuisine
And sampling the ancient tastes truly revived Friday’s humble supper,
It was a family custom to savour dishes and prayerfully hallow together!
Decades passed… and the fish market’s scene soon changed
Bringing in newer trends and fancier stalls with heath and safety reins
Oh how time had moved on making communities feel distant…
As if a wand had wavered over society’s togetherness making it’s progress persistent
The old cobbled narrow alleys with huts and cycles, the banyan trees and cats around the market’s corners all were swiftly cleared
Even the cosy engaging discourses with it’s hovering crowds from church-way disappeared
Leaving nothing of the old ways while paving way for cold edifices,
Tarred streets and ostentatious vehicles parked over bleak cordoned spaces
Fish lovers still poured in to buy fresh fish and remembered those historic favourite recipes
They also sadly recalled the older bygone fraternity that offered their friendly advices…
I paused to fondly reminisce the old folks who’d say, “Thorn stuck in the throat no problem,
Just eat large morsels of rice for the thorn to be swallowed away”…
Now it seems centuries passed after Mums make their way to heaven leaving fond remnants behind,
With memories fading yet the thought of fish dishes bring back joys of a warming kind
And so in newer lands we find brighter prospects and then eventually settle
With fondness narrate to our offspring those days of fresh fish eating and it’s benefitting mettle
When customs disappear, traditions change and newer ones begin
How do we pass on the treasured ancestral learnings and recipes and the goodness therein?
Explaining to these little ears oh how can we make sense…
To distinguish the wholesome fish from the fancy fish fingers neatly mend?
Hoping, Yes!
For only when we encouragingly engage those little hands to prod the real and experiment,
Then will they learn the source of all good things, their humble beginnings and truer ends!
29th March 2022
© Jeannette D’Souza | Copyright 2024 | jdsouza.uk
(dedicated to a passionate cook on her death anniversary- Annie D’Souza, my amazing mum who taught me amongst many things also to cook and savour fresh fish. RIP mama dear ✝️)
© Jeannette D’Souza
Pyrope’s illuminations sustained thy ambitions into alluring dreams
Where humanity was compelled into treacherous devastation unseen
Enticed in it’s lustre thy hunger for power and thrones burned bridges, coercing nations asunder,
Cruelly did thee lunge forth dissecting every race with thy greedy hounding thunder
Forewarnings brushed aside…vales were to lay in tears from tormented decimations,
Horrendous unparalleled cruel appetites within this Pyrope’s civilisation
Pyrope’s illuminations caused the mind’s transmutation
Followers marched in corroding consciences – for insane masters led a prototype generation
Hatred sewn hearts emanated belligerent actions, deeds borne of a baneful kind…,
Prudence and charity all dismissed and to human integrity blind
Liberty lost at stakes while in plastic Glory furnished,
Eyes settling over dominions grasping it’s control, where brotherly love be torn and tarnished…
Pyrope, why did thee gain and not have vanished?
The essence from uniqueness being lost; Thee being thee and Me being me
Devalued the strides of peaceful coexistence and freedom,
Fortunes at hand failed to satiate thy craving and ye sought more
Thy Oppressions spake with threatening alliances no care worthy,
Bringing back the bygone dust of war’s misery
Sanctions on humankind, sanctions abused, empathy drawn on rations
A charter drawn to what- mine is Mine and thine is Mine?
Every living being crawling helplessly under thy yoked tyranny,
This ruthless entity serving it’s lethal avarice, for humanity an imposing malady…
The elephants with tusks contorted at loggerheads in vengeance’s seething wrath,
Trampled and devoured existence and vegetation amass
Transforming victims to black soot under thy foot’s nuclear Midas,
Now young sons lay shrivelled unburied upon mounds of grass
Noxious smoke bathed debris looming higher and lasting for years,
Left sucklings at dead breasts ceaselessly wailing in despondent tears
Pyrope’s desirous spell ultimately brought forth this impending doom
All Earth’s Sunlight blocked now reducing it’s space into a whirling gloom
Destroying the very foundations of life, dispersing ash and disease,
Cowards, comrades and the brave now all lost alike in a frenzied seize,
Oh the ghastly calamity the tragedy, when forewarnings stood justified
Bringing down Sovereigns and deliverers of this sphere on bended knees…
The entirety witnessing extremes of Dark freezing nights turning to blazing days,
Rays that once nourished the surface now setting empires ablaze
Tarry on the mountains ye Lots and ye wives or hurry with children toward the seas,
Nay this be not Sodom even worse nor is this history’s repeating speech
Moaning madness for every kind in the lands,
Is this not thine own greed’s doing…Wallowing in pyrope’s empty dazzle?
Where we be parts of cosmos’s thriving nature not turning it around…
For nature was the entity handed down not to subjugate but to build,
Ye hast taken it for granted to relentlessly yield,
Has Discernment being distorted or escaped altogether from these slaughtering fields?
Strangling with thine hands the gifted fauna and tearing the flora’s mantle,
Leaving no space untouched by it’s instant Midas even the wilderness lays throttled
Lands now parched appear weary from trembling under exploding impacts
Lie they dark and barren, turning back civilisations and green wonders to a ghostly past
No grain to sow and no harvest to grow,
Digging the oceans and coasts for survival to the morrow,
Plunging Murkiness of Years to come with starvation and sorrow
Was nature not to be honoured and be fortified?
Now it lies wasted together with most humankind
Sentencing everything to destruction, was it not seen plainly to thine eyes?
Pyrope’s treacherous sting hath stung
An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth…,How the Mighty have fallen, oh how the Fallen have all fallen….
Pyrope’s illuminations- a virtual reality you served,
This diety hath not given thee wisdom nor love
Closing thy scruples for want thus fostering fear,
Pyrope’s worshipping progeny was then thy end not here?
Far fewer mortals from this inevitable trauma and fate,
Flee towards warmer lands in confusion’s haste
Succumbing to decades of this cloud of smoke they travel and lament
“Oh what have We done to Us, how could this happen”
In anguished minds and stricken fear drawing aside the shroud of terrors,
Cursing and crushing finally then the very roots of thy gluttonous errors…
Alas too often fellowship and peace are easily threatened obliterating innocent victims
By every civilisation’s covetous powers under Pyrope’s enslaving beacon
Now all dreams of greed burying deep under the grim miry clays,
They dig the forsaken grounds and regretting so their afflicted days
Thousand mile years to restore every precious progress and by the day eagerly counting,
Strengthening the frailty of conscience they now value the ancient master’s teachings
With time the conscious relenting hearts in unity will draw nearer,
Building back the destroyed earth by those very hands that once inflicted horrors,
So will they gradually lift up the promising remnants into plain loving bearers!
Now then, all ye remember these engravings in stone
Small Wars leap into Conquests in a twinkling loosing sight to humankind’s existence,
Earthly Powers fuel waste if not executed with a consistency of Prudent direction
While nature’s resources when used wisely lie in faithful resurgence,
Giving the cosmos a chance to grow in it’s radiant abundance
For Greed only serves greed and Wrath returns wrath,
Fake Glory replicates it’s performance and giveth falsehood back,
Yet Acceptance and Tolerance of all race bring in a multitude of grace!
With appreciation a nation’s arduous efforts and talents progress,
Values stand like pillars to community’s thriving success
Then Integrity yields harmony and charity invariably kindles love,
Peace resonates peace, Love begets even more love!!
Above all, Kindness cometh over fairness, and judgements meekly sit under Thy Mercy’s dove!!!
3rd March 2021
© Jeannette D’Souza | Copyright 2024 | jdsouza.uk
© Jeannette D’Souza
Autumn Ruby berries and glossy Ruddy chestnuts smiled to invite nature’s beings
Hushed footpaths along dewy barks winding upwards stretched unseen
Luminous skies revealed the embraced boughs and entwined greys,
While the warming sun nursing my core led me to “The precipice of hope” for days
Feathery silhouettes perched solemnly onto the wavering knotty bends
Calling out in cheerful tunes to their flying friends
Walking in reflection I transcended into a reverie of a spell to unfold;
Those gracefully descending leaves harkened to my soul!- landed they in multitudes draped in russet and bronze, ochres and maroons grandly lined in crimson golds
Oh how their peaceful floating in resplendent robes uplifted my senses
Carrying me up in spirits as they encouraged my advances!
Joyously giggling into this trance I awakened- suddenly being endowed with childlike manner
Redeemed spectator was I at this marvellous show of transcending colour!
Nature presented it’s season’s warm rug to tread on, engaging me-
Caressing my heaviness within myriad tints and lights ; Conversing in deep rustles and soft muffles
Every step telling me a familiar story, of stormy hurdles
Of rewarding successes, of life’s gain and losses, of pleasures and sacrifices…
Winds carried those mysterious leaves as they got swooped up, and lo they summoned in an iridescent sacred shower!
Echoing gently to enjoin; restoring lost hope and fervent faith to uncover…
My gaze rested on them and yet distracted by despondent feelings from within,
Soon reckoned I in submission to The Eternal might of my desire for living…
Vivid memories of childhood years filled my mind
Of enchanted days and spirits sublime!
And yet we fled those years with haste in an eagerness,
Forsaking the essence of life and it’s spirit’s vigour that was boundless
Rushing into the industrious world that would eventually weary our lives, travelling through time so hastily- to invade our consciousness…
I gazed with intention at the expanse in the sky
To eagerly hear celestial words of wisdom and not question why?
Moments passed dampened cheeks that witnessed the mystical radiance
I soon paused to perceive Elysian voices from this glee of a foliage, my thoughts seeking to hear their tender resonance…
“ We must follow distant paths, play our roles to gladly witness this part of our journey’s bend,
Disperse higher, give and glow even brighter; a forgiver the wiser to gain…
Then gather in unison to say our goodbyes, making of ourselves final offerings on stone-paths lain”
Assuredly beaming they continued whispering;
“For this is no end, there are journeys to be made and yet a new beginning, continue
Seeking in prayerful supplication for your best and wishful moments to be-create a-loving”
Gathering thoughts from that earnest counsel and caring aspiration
Wonderingly paused I over to take learnings in breaths from them
Cheerful givers fulfilling their destiny so….
I imploringly offered faith-filled wishes up high and let all falterings go
Almost clambering in dissembled pain toward the peak walking and gasping
I witnessed the red lit Cross once again from that hopeful precipice; humbly gracing the serene skies and radiantly emerging
Once again a heartfelt invoking to the Almighty’s benevolence touched the distant ends
To bring solace and healing, my unseen dreams to amend!
Prayers get answered in Summers, Winters, Autumns and Springs!,- in the heart’s deep hallowed sunsets and risings
They hasten not always, yet in due time they gradually satiate the soul’s desires;
To deeply relight and align, Serving the maker and the creation it’s purpose,
To help faithfully live life in gratitude and an unconditional love to find…
Then should we not stand rooted to help heal our universe, and it’s inspiring nature, and in diligent works and prayers- not witness the Divine!!!
19th November 2021
© Jeannette D’Souza | Copyright 2024 | jdsouza.uk
Noel Rands is our favourite blogger who exudes a vibrant personality and has travelled widely for decades, lived in many exotic countries including India and Hong Kong. His scintillating experiences on travels and journeys while acquainting with some world famous personalities had given him a wealth of positive encounters and fond memories to cherish….
Hope you enjoy reading some of Noel’s original accounts from his travels abroad!!
An introduction to our favourite blogger Noel Rands!
Noel Rands joined Midland Bank in Liverpool aged 16 and is now a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Bankers. His career took him on board the Cunard Atlantic liners (Queen Mary, Queen Elizabeth, Mauretania, Caronia and QE2), travelling as a First Class Passenger but running the Midland Bank branches in First, Cabin and Tourist during the day time and learning to be a gentleman, where he partially succeeded. Later he was their Group representative, Tehran, Cairo, Bombay and then Regional Manager, Asia, in Hong Kong where he took Early Voluntary Retirement. He has acted in films with Jackie Chan, Jeremy Irons, Jean Claude Van Damme, Jet Li and also Aamir Khan (the Indian Blockbuster, Lagaan, where he was a bearded umpire) and has appeared in more than 50 advertisements, for TV and magazines, in India and Hong Kong. He ran an art gallery in Hong Kong for 5 years, traded with China in Activated Carbon, interviewed applicants for Life Policies for US Insurance Companies and set up and ran accounts for a furniture company with factories based in Vietnam and Rajasthan, India.
Currently he is the Secretary of the British Egyptian Society and lives in Croydon with his adopted Indian family. He has two grandsons aged 25 and 20, of whom he is extremely proud.
Recently he has recovered from a triple heart bypass operation. He takes his inspiration from the late composer, Sir Arnold Bax.
We warmly welcome Noel to our website, we are sure his blogs will inspire our viewers/readers toward meaningful insights!
Noel Rands
November 2021
Our destination was a tall grey building with brown shutters and rotting vegetables on the pavements. IN” We went down a side street to a brown door and a little sign “Mother Teresa IN” on the wall outside. Kitty spoke to a young nun inside and we were escorted to small spartan room, containing a plain table and 5 chairs; three pictures were on the wall, a large white Bible in the middle of the table and a ceiling fan overhead. Kitty told us that it was the only one in the home. The nuns slept without them in their rooms; the vow of poverty had been taken that they had taken ensured that they all had the same food as the patients. They had only two uniforms; one on and one in the wash. rose
We sat, Kitty telling us which chair to leave empty. We chatted quietly for a few minutes and then Kitty arose saying “Hello, Mother how are you?” as someone walked through the curtain behind me.
How does one describe meeting a person who is a legend in her own lifetime, who dismisses fame and her own achievements saying it is the Lord working through her? I stood as a tiny old lady walked past me. Much photographed, she shouldn’t have been a surprise; but she was. The main first impression was that she was ordinary; not in an overt sense, just that in a crowd she wouldn’t have stood out. She wore the white robes, trimmed at the edge with blue, of her order. A cross on a pin secured the robe on her left shoulder. I was introduced and she took my hand in her own, big hands and gazed up at me and you had the feeling that, at that moment, you were the most important person in the world to her.
That of course is the secret; it is only when you talk to her, hear that firm but gentle voice, hear the utter conviction of her faith and work that you appreciate the drive and energy. It is not overt. She knows that “The Lord will provide “ and indeed he doesn’t let her down. She spoke of a man coming to see her who needed a special drug for his extremely sick daughter, a drug available only on import. At that moment a benefactor arrived with a selection of drugs as a gift with the very drug and the exact dose at the top of the basket.
We learned of her various homes in India and abroad, of a new home in New York for AIDS victims. Knowing we were British, for our benefit she spoke very kindly of donations from British companies in terms of money and properties. Those were the only names she at the touch of mentioned; no monarchs, no presidents, no celebrities. My friend Michael Bennett spoke of Ethiopia and how one man has started Band Aid; she thought she had met the man concerned in Ethiopia but she couldn’t quite remember. A name isn’t important, it’s the deed that counts. She mentioned walking down a London street, seeing a man sitting in a doorway, a picture of misery; on going up to him and taking hold of his hand, of his face lighting up the touch of another person which had not happened in a long while.
It was easier to help the poor than the rich because she could give the poor something to relieve their suffering, but the rich had everything material. When I asked if she found sympathy and understanding from World leaders, she replied that yes, she didn’t give them any peace until they did!
Her main concern was for the terminally ill, giving them a “beautiful death”. Many arrived embittered at the fate about to befall them and she wanted to give them peace of mind. She said that we were just the pencils, God did all the writing and thinking and she never worried about the enormity of her task.
One note of sadness had been the reason for her recent absence from Calcutta. Two of her sisters, one aged 25 and the other 35, had been killed in an accident in Dehra Dun during the monsoon. They hadn’t needed to go out that night but they had insisted as there was still work to be done. One was killed outright, the other swept away in the river and her body recovered afterwards. Mother Teresa’s main thought was that fortunately the driver who had been saved had a large family so “God is merciful”.
She touched upon waste, how when she flies she asks stewards to give her any leftover food, so she can go on board with one bag and come off with three. Air India and Indian Airlines give her leftover food from flights into Calcutta but she regretted the absence now of foreign airlines. There was waste to an excessive degree in the West which she wanted to utilise if she could.
And that was it. A conversation over almost an hour. A voice firm and gentle, a direct gaze into the four of us when each spoke, an impression of utter conviction and inner peace. One could not but feel humbled at such transparent goodness. She would not allow any photographs but gave each of us a momento, an extract from the Bible. Dear…………(any our name) “See I will not forget you. I have carved your name on the palm of my hand. I have called you by tour name. You are mine. You are precious to me. I love you.” (Signed)
God Bless you. Mother Teresa.
She recited it to us. Michael and I made a donation which she accepted without looking at it; it was the spirit in which it was given that mattered. She never asked but always accepted.
And so we left. She had treated us with the same respect, kindness, patience and understanding she would have treated the highest and the lowest.
We went on to see her home in Prem Dhan. It took 500 patients with separate dormitories for men and women. The patients are taken literally from ten streets; the destitute and the dying, the mentally handicapped, the lost. Most arrive in rags and clothes are found. A nub, round faced, placid and happy showed us around. The overpowering smell was of excretia dulled by disinfectant. Emaciated figures sat on beds, lay on beds, some who were obviously in the ebbing twilight of life. Incongruously a plumpish, long-haired, bearded, Kurta clad Englishman was sitting on one of the beds. It appeared he had been attacked and robbed on the train from Benares, losing money, passport, everything. He had arrived the previous evening and the sister said she could not turn him away.
She showed us the workshops. How they take coconut husks, soak them until they rot, dry
them out and then the local women beat out the fibers and use them as stuffing for mattresses. How newspapers and magazines are collected and the paper recycled and how nothing was wasted. Vegetables are grown in the grounds (of which were once ICI storage sheds) but not enough. She showed us the small chapel and we stood silent, even humbly, at the back during a service for nuns.
Calcutta’s memories for me are varied. The green, the lawns, the temples, the architecture, the huge white memorial building to Queen Victoria (an English Taj Mahal), the slums, the beggars, the people. Mother Teresa (who was Albanian, born in Kosovo in what was Yugoslavia) remarked that if you only saw squalor in Calcutta then you should open your eyes and look again. She had told me that she came to Calcutta originally as a missionary; perhaps God had directed her. The British Deputy High Commissioner had told me that she had placed the Order of Merit, given to her by HM the Queen, on a statue of the Virgin Mary as it was “Our Lady who deserved it”.
Noel Rands
Calcutta, September 1987.
© Jeannette D’Souza
I know for surely He loves me,
For I see His protecting light softly speaking to me!
I know that He is constantly listening, quietly standing there,
Shielding me from every harm I cannot see!
I know that He is there when all the world sees a storm
He keeps me covered under His mantle, unperturbed and strong
Even though all seems but in turmoil around
I feel a peace deep in my being, my mind and beyond!
For I recall a sad time when I sobbed uncontrollably
Calling out to Him from the sunken wet pillow
I could feel His warm touch, softly over my cold hairless head,
Gently gracing my unsettling heart to restore and mend~
~That was the moment in the night I searched around
To see no one there nor did I hear a sound,
Yet I know that He saved me!!
Those times when I thought I could be dead
He lifted me calling me back to life instead
I know that He was there then carrying me
Even through complete loss of hope when I was distraught
Through life’s doubts, inner struggles faced with fear, and distress of loss
He forgave all my past errs….. He healed my illness, my weakness and carried my cross
Oh how He has soothed me, with music soft unknown to my ears
He has brought me out safely, wiping tenderly all my tears!
Sending assurances as I looked up into the sky
With messages to convey His love in clouds of “J” and “Y”
~ Even commanding the wind and weather to calm down….. to help me pass by….
You taught me to embrace those difficult times Oh Lord, skies showing a promising Rainbow
You taught me about death and life, You assigned love within to overflow
You taught me to call out Your name through holy scrolls, and You would appear
Consoling me when times get rough, and bracing me with fortitude to secure
Your hand guides me leading me on to a new way
Your love has opened my heart to all those who fall astray
Your light had rooted me firm even though I could falter
Your faithfulness holding me close always, my saviour and master!
Lord I know that You are interested in every area to see me thrive
Directing my thoughts and words and action and this gift of life
You help me forgive those that go wrong, and strengthen the feeble to warmth
You help me pick up your staff with a renewed fervour so strong
You speak to me in dreams, showing me ways, Preserving me on your path from faltering sways
You defend me and lead me, giving success to all my dreams
You favour me with untold numerous surrounded blessings!
How I yearn to See Your face, with joining hands
To say meaningfully “Thank You Lord”
Even when I did not know You, You still cared for me my awesome Father and God!
Looking back I know that Your love brought me Home, for
To Praise You is my life’s benevolent reward, and to be with You in eternity forevermore my Yahweh God !!!
30 September 2021
© Jeannette D’Souza | Copyright 2024 | jdsouza.uk
© Jeannette D’Souza
The rugged Toiling hands seen an arid day on ploughshares
Sweltering heat making no changes to his course
Mingling deep in chapped clay ceaselessly working through the land
Trampling the hardened soil to loosen with
furrows deepening the expanse, unshaken;
For life hath matched the forehead’s furrowed bands
His land stretched for miles, widespread over the fertile plane
Verdure pastures in plenitude and vegetables and grain
Treasuring the vales and hills and lake he grew
While wandering folks speculated on the natural wonders he knew
Then later travelled he to many a distant lands in search of fortune and favour
Destiny proved otherwise, for the more he pursued man-laid ambitions the more he felt convinced with a life’s yearning fire
Of valuing his green country scenes and ways
Farming life sustained closer to his heart yet even more in serving those purposeful preserving intentions with an unwavering desire!
And beyond his land lay our civilisation’s justification;
Of packed concrete jungles that cared less for it’s indigenous living
Erecting more grids and towers and paved surfaces over forests
Sparing no space nor trace of Mother Nature’s beings
Through decades marked a catastrophic decline in the village life for green farming
And villagers lost their interests for rearing livestock and crop cultivating
Farmers left their communities selling estates and head towards urban trends
And so, Lurers filled their pockets raising lofty edifices for gain
Humbly stood I to witness this lonely farmer proudly holding his stand
To fetch for his younger family less be gruels, earned humbly by his own hands
Tender memories of childhood years swept my mind
With~holding not my steps I clambered down the rocky slopes to find
A long time forgotten kindred spirit from years
And saying hello we dissembled a few tears
Oh how the sunken eyes met with sincere fondness
To cherish the almost erased past of forgotten true richness
I recalled little hands with beaming faces playing in wet marshes along the village taps
And mums keenly watching them while bathing plump toddlers on their laps
Grannies eagerly cooking nourishing supper over smoky earthen pots
Tempting hungry little mouths to line up and savour flavorous mouthfuls
And lo!.. summoning kin to dinners from their red rowed huts
We reminisced trailing exuberantly along rolling tyres, and shaping toys out of mud
Mounting onto our hemp corded swings by the tranquil lake shouting endlessly
Of grand aunts and uncles and their lost family trades
Our cheerful visits to the sweet meat pedlars to hurriedly fill mouthfuls
Playing voraciously Gilly-Danda on the neighbour’s jasmine scented verandah
Then stealthily creeping back into our homes invariably late for supper
We spoke of charming old days when numerous decorated bullock carts packed with gratified Farmers lined the narrow tar streets, setting off for harvesting
Proudly presenting their Bullocks with iridescent tasseled horns at midday dazzling
Villagers donned in brilliant pagadees, dhotis and beaded festive sarees adorning ritual ticcas
And keeping ready every tool in sacks of gunny,
Loaded they the wise old elders together with families and infants
Cramming all together towards the golden fields of crops and honey!
Memories from Years flown by held onto me clinging,
When the closing sun shone bright glowing every peasant’s cheerful face
And the warm rejoicing after crops were gathered echoed miles away
Surrounding the grain spirited folks gathered to open in unison traditional folklores
While feasts from harvest steamed over vermillion fires
Upon feeding everyone and favouring every effort that went in,
They made it a season’s closing festive song and dance to welcome a new beginning!
Afar to be now, village communities had moved away for non-rural pastures and so had I
And nowhere were to be found those farmers or familiar chore gatherings
Nor the tradesmen noisily beating tools in their thatched sheds
Neither the cows parading early in multi hued horns towards meadows
Nor the vibrant and festive zatras of bangles and evoking village folklores
Oh how time had turned people and spaces into a different world
Soon enough leisurely wafting warm aromas swayed the fields
And muffled whispers continued under the cool banyan trees
Cheerful greetings surrounded my ear lobes, and loving folks nudged to feast on traditional spreads
The family and kin and all sat down to partake, thanking God for the day
That brought forth togetherness and happiness, As precious moments sped away
Winds now gathered softening clouds to it’s bosom,
Sweeping up wishes in the air, dispersing sparking gold dust in leaves of crimson
It was time for goodbye and we wished each other well as we parted in reverent praise…
I had not known a farmer of a more greener kind
Cultivating yields with such dedication to humankind
When all throughout sought their own progressive sways
Determined stood an epitome of wisdom besieged with committed genuine ways
Where could we find such worthy humans that were Godlike
Caring for our universe and it’s creatures alike!
Humbly his soul worshipped the very ground he lived on, the trees and the lake
Hoping one day his life could leave his little ones something to emulate!!
Holding on to those gracious insights that a visionary soul had inadvertently given
I smiled into the oblivion reflecting to applaud an honourable living!
Could we leave on worthy footprints of humble living, instil nature’s words of wisdom to our offspring?
Should we be stepping in strides of solidarity by serving and preserving our cosmos and it’s beings?,
Could we restart again… turning back to sowing, planting and reaping?
My last glance of the scene remained to be a hopeful world into memories to be fulfilling!
I remember ~Toiling hands that Never quit when life challenged it’s route,
Toiling hands that sowed seeds with an endearing conscience,
An earnest soul that persevered with a resonating essence
Bringing to us an awakening into a truer vocation of sense!
How promising the ploughing wheels turned…on and on
In rhythm with iron shafts sowing the seeds and burying the weeds forlorn
Heralding a joyful scene of abundance that would unfold in months, to repeat on and on for years, and decades to come!!
September 2021
© Jeannette D’Souza | Copyright 2024 | jdsouza.uk
Until I boarded the Queen Mary in December 1964, for 2 cruises over Christmas and New Year to the Canary Islands, my only experience of regular sea travel was the Wallasey Ferry, the daily joy of travel between Wallasey and Liverpool across the River Mersey. I had been to Dublin on a really awful school trip when I was 15 and had crossed the channel twice for holidays in France, once there on a bicycle to Paris aged 16 and another by car and down to Cannes. However, the Ferry was a regular trip and involved, when the weather was good, the entire upper deck perambulating in a clockwork direction to offer the experience of walking across. As a Sea Cadet I had gone on a conducted tour of the “City of Oxford” and we had finished up in the dining room which, to a 16 year old, was amazing. Crisp white table cloths, sparkling glassware and an array of silver cutlery plus a proper menu. Looking at all the cutlery, a knowledgeable young sea cadet colleague whispered to me in a thick local accent:- “Me Dad has told me about this. You start at the outside and werk your way in!” We worked out also that “Indian Condiments” meant “Salt and Pepper”. This useful information proved invaluable when I sat at our regular table in the First Class Restaurant of “RMS Queen Mary” for the first time.
I had been in awe of the Head of the Department, Bobby Mayne, and grew to respect him. He was so pernickety, a Captain Mainwaring character, and ruled his group of young sailors with a rod of iron. We left the office at 5pm precisely and not a minute before; you watched the clock until the minute hand hit 5. If you made an error at sea he would be down on you like a ton of bricks but would defend you, fiercely, to his superiors. It made me not want to let him down and forfeit his trust. I tried to follow his example. For example, when I got a dressing down from the Assistant Manager at International Division in Manchester for a rather serious error, I accepted it and took to one side the actual perpetrator and said “Roderick Nigel, what the hell did you think you were doing?” That attitude paid off as the staff knew that they could rely on me.
In the department before I was trusted to board a ship, one of my tutors had been the legendary David Garmon Jones; three piece suit, sizeable stomach and a watch chain. David it was, who in the restaurant bar of the “Queen Elizabeth” had described to his 3 colleagues the actress Elizabeth Taylor, who was on board, as “Nothing more than a trollop. Nothing more than a trollop!”” and turned to the man in the next seat at the bar saying “And don’t you agree, Sir?”. He replied “I’m afraid I’m not in a position to comment as I am her Private Secretary”.
On my first trip the “Officer in Charge” was Tony Cramp, Deputy Head of the Department. Tony was extremely handsome, so sophisticated and languid, so different from the fat new boy from Merseyside. I used to look at him in awe and observe the way he draped himself over a chair in the dining room, tried to copy him, failing miserably. It was pointed out to me that on board that I was not “Noel Rands” but “The Midland Bank man” if anything went wrong; a useful lesson for when I became the Midland Bank Group Representative In Tehran, Cairo and Bombay.
Another hurdle, apart from selecting from the enormous selection of food on the menu at lunch and dinner, was the wine list. At home I can’t remember my parents ever buying wine although Algerian wine called “Hirondelle” was not unknown to me. My colleagues pointed out that
“Mateus Rose” was 7/6d (35p) and, if we wanted to go upmarket, we could choose “Mouton Cadet” at 10 shillings (50 pence). I did learn about other wines including “Clover Joe” (Clos de Veugeot) and “Chateau Gruaud-Larose”, neither of which I can now afford. On one trip with Bobby, he ordered Haut Brion which was wonderful but now several £100 a bottle. He was a little surprised at the price even then.
The next challenge was the Captain’s Reception, clad in Black Tie for the 1st time in a suit I owned and not hired, and having to make conversation. I remember meeting Sir Robert Robinson, who had won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1947, and he deserved a further medal for putting up with my inane and uneducated chatter. It was so different from the Wallasey Ferry where chatting to strangers was not looked upon favourably!
I was, of course, the “No 4” (there were 4 of us on the Queens, 3 on the Mauretania and 2 on the Caronia) and so I had no choice on whether to do the Tourist Class bank out and Cabin back or vice versa; the No 3 would decide. On that first trip we were fortunate with the weather; I was not the best of sailors. My next trip was on the Elizabeth, the return trip to New York, followed by a return trip on the Mary. It was so rough! I travelled to New York in Tourist and the office on the Mary can go through an arc of 120 feet when it pitched. (On Sunday mornings we were invited occasionally to the Commodore’s cabin for post religious service drinks. I have seen the bows of the Queen Elizabeth dip below the water!) I had to stop serving from time to time, throw up in the waste bin, and continued counting out US Dollars (Traditionally, 3 x 20, 2 x 10, 2 x 5, 10 x 1) to male passengers, invariably smoking green cigars and completely ignoring my problems. We stopped for lunch at 12noon and my colleague remarked “I went down to see how Noel was getting on, but he looked so awful he made me feel ill so I left him!” Alongside our office on the Mary was the Baggage Master’s office staffed by the wonderful Monty. On the way back on one trip:- “What is that madam, you bought some ‘am in New York! You can’t take ‘am into the UK, madam. It’s not allowed. You give it to me and I’ll get rid of it for you! No, madam, my pleasure” and then to me in a whispered aside “My wife loves a bit of ‘am!” (“am = ham!)
On board we had staff quarters which we used when we boarded and again in New York. However, after we sailed it was over to the Pursers office to see what 1st Class Cabins were available. They were wonderful and I suppose the main reason I have never done a trip on one of the new Liners was knowing I could never afford to travel in the same style of luxury once available to me. We did have the run of the ships and we liked the Caribbean Room in Cabin on the Elizabeth. One trip, I tried to look more sophisticated by not wearing my glasses and, trying to find my colleagues in the Tourist Class Lounge, I saw dimly a group in DJ’s, joined them, and realised I was sitting with the band. They were quite welcoming.
One thing you realised was the warmth in which you were held by all the officers and crew. We were regarded as completely honest (The junior pursers did not believe that we did not take a cut on the rate for ourselves when we were handing out different currencies on cruises. When at the Sunday Morning Church Service they announced a collection for “Seamen’s charities on both side of the Atlantic” I was never sure if a cut was taken from that as well!) It was hammered into us when we started that you treated everyone from the Commodore down to the junior waiter with the same respect; and we did. We would give a cabin party (The No 4’s cabin!) for the pursers, shop girls, Engineers and Radio officers; a lunch time beer for the Bridge Officers (which could involve a game of spoof) and we were invited to the Radio Officers for darts.
There were our own parties on the way out for 1st Class Passengers (Going through Seyds or Dunn and Bradstreet, having got the passenger list from the Pursers office, to find any Midland Bank customers). On a New York Crossing, tact was required and an understanding Bridge Officer to allow us to nip down the Gangway at Cherbourg (Forbidden to passengers) to get some Duty Free (“OK, Noel, if you bring me a bottle of brandy” which usually was Prince Hubert de Polignac). On Board were could draw an allocation but it was never enough to slake the guests thirsts at our cabin parties. Looking back, the allowance we had on board was miserly and the bank did well out of us via our own money. For Cabin and Tourist lunch time parties we could claim “10 shillings” a head, which helped.
One lesson I learned. I had asked “Mrs Goldberg, would you like another Gin and Tonic?” She glared at me and said “Mr. Rands! I never have another Gin and Tonic” Then she smiled and said “But I would like a Gin and Tonic”. One regular at our crew parties was “Big Norah” who ran the shop on Promenade Deck on the Queen Elizabeth, was having an affair with the masseur in the Turkish Baths, and who had a cut glass accent. She would start with a G and T and then another and then…………….. by which time her accent had shifted to Cockney. However, meeting her the following day it was “Noel! Thank you so much for a really lovely party” and the cut glass accent was back!
Tact was required. On the Mauretania I was asked by a passenger (it was a Mediterranean cruise from Southampton) ”Eh lad, what time does boaat get in to Villy-frank-ee”. I replied politely that the Mauretania was due into Villefranche at 10.30am the next day. He turned to his wife and said “Lad (sighhhhhhhh – those were the days!) says we get into Villy-frank-ee at aff past ten”. On a trip on the Elizabeth, sailing from Piraeus to Alexandria, an American passenger was surprised which I declined to change some Greek notes back to US Dollars. I had to explain that they were not bank notes but the entrance tickets to the Acropolis!
I spent 4 years in Atlantic Department (ending with the first voyage, a shake down cruise, on the QE2) and it was my version of going to a university. I was taught how to behave in public, how to treat the Crew and the passengers with courtesy and how to live with 3 colleagues, seldom the same, for trips lasting from 2 to 10 weeks, starting as the No 4 and finishing for 2 years as the Manager – Officer in Charge. I made lasting friendships which continue to this day. It served as a learning process for being a Group Representative in a foreign country; how to converse with Ambassadors and government ministers, how to get respect from your local staff and how to take an interest in your surroundings. (Plus pay better attention to the Arabic. For years I was certain the response was “Sabah El Foul” and not “Fol” May your days be full of Jasmine, not baked beans! Well, I thought it was a local thing!)
One final thing. The Queens used to dock at Pier 92 in New York which was at the end of 52nd street, at the end of which was a bar. The Smoking Room Chief Steward on the Queen Elizabeth told me that 90% of the crew, who might have been on board for 20 years, never saw more of New York than that bar. I like to think that my horizons became a little broader!
Noel Rands
Now, Secretary The British Egyptian Society
© Jeannette D’Souza
Oh How Beautiful could this amazing world be!
Observed the grey haired philosopher chatting over the bystanders to me
I quizzically paused and asked him had he dreamed of it
When happenings on earth were as dreadful as were we
His mystical bearded countenance bore creases from of yore
And at mid day his browned sunken eyes told a story of a hidden score
When not I who was a little cynical there at the park
Abruptly reckoned with him to pause at last
In time and space he said were we justified
with nothing to carry onward or hold onto afterlife
“Yet why should there be so much suffering” he questioned
Yielding just gain by far many were the funny actions of the unawakened
Why was there more Knowledge and a lack of wisdom ?, I queried
Why was common sense swept under when facts were learned
Could an entirety of erudition teach us of a harmony in all living existence?
Should only nature followers carry our earthly spheres’ burden on their shoulders
‘Why was proving an insipid point more forcefully sought than sorting out estranged relationships’ I gasped
Why was Hatred more desired and why not loving deeds of life surpass?
Why was there a longer life time and yet no time for loved ones to give
Could birds of the air teach us more than believers forgive ?
Why had the courses of our natural rivers shrunk
And concrete made canals of entertainment sprung ?
Have we forgotten how to sow and when to reap
Have we completely lost ourselves into obscured constellations deep?
Why could leaders talk of bringing home peace yet go out to battle? cried I
Why could not everyone strive to live for peace instead of fighting eye for an eye?
Had this world of seers lost their track
Can no one see the dead end after technology cracks
“How could I” uttered he “reroute now this flurry multitude of mortals
Who craved for power and fortune, for swollen fame with unceasing self adulation”
Would anyone give heed to his simple old advice and it’s humble course
Where could he find those concerned souls to salve this universe
Further now his gaze sunk as if his conscience had being tested
And thus he began speaking knowing well of his own regrets
Once there was a life of plentitude and dazzle
Of Many nights dining under a canopy of merry snuggles
And later on matters of finance and ciphering became his mettle
Yet not a soul could he give more than seizing to settle
Then out of nowhere did karma turn to be
All gain washed away into oblivion in nothingness stood he
For long dewy summers all his yearnings did die, and oh did a lover flee,
Of fleeting satisfaction did not his wandering soul now seek !
Lost from everything and everyone he travelled far and away
For miles and miles in search of insight into the bleak
Fewer a genuine masters did he encounter as well as confront the gurus that cheat
Far more the dearth of heroes , of fewer fruitful actions could they speak
Looking deep within his soul did Enlightenment strike one day, a final chord with fate
Thus began his truer journey into offering wisdom and healing hate
And so I intently listened deep to his expounded vision
Of humanity choosing to offer their lifetime to selfless devotion
Favouring the long lain paths of genuine consciences and honour
Dedication, sacrifice and solidarity of spirits with a renewed ardour
“Pray continue on “ beseeched I “before time runs away and we inevitably stumble”
Can we turn this ever evolving sea of selfishness from us lost mortals?
Could the eyes of earthlings open up to see ahead it’s ramifications as a last chance
Could we try Keeping differences aside and giving to the universe with a natural stance?
“Resign one’s self to Contentment midst the least of fortunes” quote he
“Rather strive for equal in measure of doing good that was exemplary
And when the world thinks you foolish Just Carry On
With clarity of vision remedying all the wrong” !
“Persevere in sowing seeds of love and awaken the blind
Relentlessly pursue healing purposes for which nature hath assigned
Heed and follow the gentle gestures of celestials
Love being it’s quintessence leaving all sublime”
“Could we turn back our ways” I asked “To times of eons past “
When life was simple and living was not so fast
Where humans sought to live each day lovingly though there be little
By plainly partaking in savouring moments and letting bygones settle
Sunset then gloriously revealed it’s parting and “I must off “broke he,
To find more souls for the sake of universal accord and harmony
With faith, seizing his last days travelling to reveal to our kind
For life here is not eternal and acts of kindness must we leave behind!!
August 2021
© Jeannette D’Souza | Copyright 2024 | jdsouza.uk
© Jeannette D’Souza
Could childhood friendships teach us more
Of truer connections within life’s teachings
Gently sketching indelible perceptions with tenderness
Fostering toward an unseen world yet to unfold
By chance I encountered a shadow one day
Tucked away in loneliness, her eyes yearning to befriend
Humbly stood watching while glowing faces of pupils feast
So timidly hiding her bleak tiffin scarf beneath
Friends seemed rare and none to embrace
Such was the calamity of those poor
Could I join her in tearful lifting cheer
From society’s grasp of superstitious fear
Towards a meek smile I turned
To find apparent gestures of a friendly nod
Something within my heart stirred
And I quickly moved my pace toward untold
My own meagre meal had nothing extraordinary
Neatly wrapped with a doting love I knew
We shared some amiable laughs and food
Softly lifting away tears, it was a true friendship begun anew
Returning home from school was a dread
Yet that day kindled an exhilarating tread
An exciting reflection on pleasant moments
Too much to contain and revealing itself
Daily at class breaks was my stance lingered
To eagerly meet that friend introducing her to our girly huddles
Then hurriedly securing a parapet spot to share some cheer
Adding far many delightful moments of childhood chuckles!
Attending school was a solace now filled with ritual
Sauntering together entwining plaits and enjoying sweets from pedlars
Playing land-water-bridge and shouting our hearts out by the timber posts
All seemed to be even more fun when school gates reopened
Inspiring teachers carved us new dreams
Friendship circles nurtured them to their seams
Our young minds enlightened by devout reverent nuns
Creating a sublime world that transcended visions to ward fulfilment
Seasons run their course and classes changed
Our youthful minds now absorbed to achieve those daunting grades
Roting those last minute details when busy resounding school bells timely called thus
Still hoping that our kindred friendly spirits would never leave us
The morning bells kept pealing as years quickly passed
A decade of academic toil and poverty were over at last
The send off at my alma mater was a poignant one
Friends tearfully parted with mementos, autographs and quoted puns!
What would one give to have the simple days of plaited pig tails in colourful ribbons appear
When recalling those fun days of Hop scotch, and congenial joshing
Of hiding ice gollas and eating hot sweetmeats in oily papers
Dissembling cheeky mouthful grins when teachers appeared!
Now loving friends get older, nuns and teachers cease to be
In our very grown up world far away from childhood friends, with children of our own must we
Redolently narrate those fond days of hearty fun and truer friendships
For none like those years of our childhood friendship’s bliss!
16-07-2021
Alma mater- St Joseph’s Convent High school
Camp Belgaum
© Jeannette D’Souza | Copyright 2024 | jdsouza.uk
We find this often said “food is ubiquitous”, sought after and enjoyed heartily everywhere you go. This idea dawned awakening me one day when I went along for clothes shopping and found cookies being offered there, next inside a mall savouries were sampled…at the grocery store I found cooked food temptingly displayed on shelves to sell, and not to mention the arts and crafts shop too sold nuts and raisins.
In today’s world our media bandwagons an idea portraying food as some mystic charm wrapped in a typical light of well-being, and so much for that you are stuck deciding… is it going to be a tasty meal or a healthy meal today, any enticing idea sells food with economical budgets and hyper marketing.
After all this revelation I wondered “Is it necessary to cook food at all? ….furthermore was I feeding my family right?”
Growing up I thought that everyone cooked, because home cooked fresh food has no additives, preservatives, colour, flavour enhancers, saturated fat, added sugar with heaps of salt packed neatly in a host of chemicals.
Although I knew that “It’s good to know what’s IN your food”, yet did I care about this enough to make that time to cook daily meals for my family from scratch!
Now I do enjoy my “once a weekend takeaway“ albeit I try to order the healthy stuff.
Moving on ….. I asked some of my friends and community members when I started discussions around this topic and found that although the majority did not cook from scratch yet more numbers never cooked.
I generally enjoyed cooking but pursuing and changing careers meant nothing but stress and more stress, with this impact on health together when good food was neglected got me ill until one day I realised I had to change my habits for good and start afresh cooking from scratch.
Someone asked me what this meant, I said that beans on toast was not exactly cooking from scratch…
My mum and gran always kept this phrase repeated around our home“ You can always find someone to clean your home but you cannot find anyone to cook you the food of your taste or choice “ Moving away from home for brighter prospects I later understood what this meant- it is when I started to learn from this phrase that I begun cherishing family recipes and enjoying cooking for well-being.
Thinking back as to when I really started cooking to where I am today, it has taken me time, deep observation and efforts to learn the benefits of food on health, what the joys of eating tasty food can be that could also nourish one’s being!
I had made up my mind to start cooking at home from scratch through the entire week which meant no tinned food, readymade pasta, stock cubes, no additives or added sugar or excess fat…..except counting aside 3 meals to cater for naughty taste buds(-:)
An interesting journey lay ahead soon to begin, making new discoveries, furthermore to deeply acknowledge –
Food is the essence of life itself and good food it’s well-being!!!
In my next blog I will chat about my story into: making a choice of ingredients, focussing on essential organic produce, scrapping all packaged foods from my food list and experimenting newer recipes boldly!
Join me on my wonderful journey of discovering food for health and enjoyment…
© Jeannette D’Souza
My keenly medicinal grandma foraged about for wild berries yet engaging in conversation with the cart man
Soon the day grew warmer….. for dancing sunbeams caught sight of the river, encouraging all to take a refreshing enjoyable dip and then start cooking
As smoke from the fire drifted with light winds into the woodlands, the wafting spicy herby blends mingled amongst wild chicory and bamboo bushes enticing all to lunch.
Granny made her way into the camping site with washed wild jamuns and karwondas nestled in her saree pallu, she arranged them gently into her handy woven leafy banyan bowls
My uncles were roasting fish caught fresh from the river banks , the joy of eating fresh food cooked over open flames was a family ritual by the river banks
The women delightfully served hearty chunks of slow cooked meats and rice onto plaintain leaf plates for all to begin
There was never a tastier meal enjoyed except by the river banks , where the peaceful percolating sounds of water soothed hearts and feathered friends made a pleasing echo chirruping
Soon it was time for a siesta and it seemed as though every being laid their tired limbs calmly down tucked away from the radiant sun only to be tickled by balmy winds
Time passed by as the calmer sun now emitted it’s first blushes of saffron, gold and vermillion in the skies adorning it in celestial splendour, sunset was not far away and the aroma of chai hovered over the dying fire….
My mum and aunt began tying up the tautly dried washing whilst the cart man languidly harnessed the bulls, it was an enchanting magical day for all, but soon to be roused.
In the distance my uncles were seen nervously hurrying down the rivulet gesturing in anguish
As they rushed closer to explain the sounds of roaring lions not far away, the party packed fearfully and rapidly within seconds mounted the cart that began hurriedly home
Within minutes the sun seemed to fade in shadows deeper under the lush arching trees and, the lion’s roaring grew audibly stronger
It was time to rush the already speeding bulls as everyone nervously gulped
With the heavy wagon labouring up muddy hills every being around felt tense under missed silent breaths for fear of every hope diminishing
The clamorous resounding roar seemed closer and even closer….
With tightened grips over cart supports my Granny and all whispered silent prayers gasping and wondering how lucky if they escaped the hungry creatures nostrils.
Cart man and lad were doing their best speeding the animals, even too numbed to feel any brambles that callously brushed them by their noisy cart’s sway….
And knotted tree branches ominously hampered hopes towards safety as they rushed on their way
Time seemed to pass slow and the stories of man eating creatures were haunting to light every passenger’s imagination; the party trembled in despair as the tumultuous roar seemed furlongs away, only to be separated by muddy bogs
The skittish bulls hastily scrambled through the ghats like never before speeding from the lion’s scent not looking twice beyond and,
then emerging from a side way bog did rundown the hill encouraging every charging speed under the masters hands holding control tightly still.
The roaring abruptly halted for at last the passengers caught sight of an open bright road, and thankfully charging ahead for that cheerful sense of civilisation they made out of the deep deep ghats, and now the roaring grew dimmer and dimmer
With grateful hearts in their relief they uttered a prayer in unison that day!!
Even unto her last days my mum recalled this beautiful and thrilling tale…, how a natural world of simple living beside wild life had almost come to an end.
Yet like a timid sheep awaiting eternity to befriend her, she vividly retold this venture scenically as she sunk slowly deeper and deeper, and towards her end.
Eons hath passed it seemed
Her vivid narrations of extraordinary village life and it’s hardships remain deeply within….. ingrained in my mind and heart like some enchanting story and forever it seems!
© Jeannette D’Souza | Copyright 2024 | jdsouza.uk
© Jeannette D’Souza
Dawn appeared gloriously draping it’s shimmering warm light over tall banyan and jackfruit trees, peaking through their abodes keen beaked habitants melodiously chirped awakening noises
Scents of marigolds, champak and hay filled the air, and fresh morning dew danced rhythmically from the palms of golden lit plantain leaves
As the glow brightened the atmospheric aura felt light and mellow… heralding a sunny forecast, a perfect day for a picnic by the washing ghats.
Peeping from beneath some wonderfully tall banana trees was our tattered cosy animal shed; awakened by sun beams probing through- cows, goats, pigs and chicken all jostled out hither thither from their humble patches and to their troughs sped
Our unpretentious thatched family cottage stood prominently attached to our quiet yet proudly standing family run grain mill .
Backing the mill was a coal shed and enveloping it partly there grew our family herb garden harmoniously!
For it must be said that my granny’s Ayurvedic herb garden was held sacredly dear, as a physician she tried to heal every villager from ailments and disease fear, and….She was regarded mystical for those cured there, throngs offered her their respects with produce and offered her a prayer.
Squeaking and rumbling through an obscure muddy pathway a hefty bullock cart on fours came to a halt outside the family verandah
Awaiting it’s passengers the jolly cart man loosened the yokes that harnessed our brilliant pair of burly oxen that donned swirly colourful horns
Meanwhile rummaging sounds emanated from my family cottage, it’s enthusiastic dwellers swiftly carrying out their chores
Whistling tunes and gesturing for more ropes the cart man nodded to a young helper lad… who was enthusiastically feeding the animals
Cart man and the lad spun tuneful melodies, and soon after securing the animals back onto yolks were offered cups of warmly spiced teas.
Resonating sounds from cheerful banter poured out from across the front door post , out came my pair of uncles who humorously piled up laundry onto the wagon cart waving out readily
Until hurriedly came through mum, my gran and aunt; each carrying large earthen pots of raw meats with spices, and all clambered onto the rear of the bullock cart nodding and beaming
Clucking sounds the cart man made initiating the mammoths, who with little sense of urgency began heading their way.
Into the cart wagon squatted the family snugly, they held on to it’s colourful supports much like spectators at a show
The majestic oxen paced up taking it’s passengers across familiar neighbourhood surroundings , beyond the archaic catholic church perched atop peeling , beyond vast expanses of timber wood stacks and then lastly through an open rail crossing
Journeying further-on enrapturing scenes of wild florals unfolded, followed by wild life and deep thickets gliding on in a trance like state.
Energetically the oxen tread down meandering country paths further into dimly lit deeper ghats Light seasonal rains had encouraged viridescent hues emerging under humongous tropical canopies, the air was crispy fresh and darker surrounds all shrouded in green
Gradually emerging thenceforth sunlight eventually trickled onto the brighter luminous forest floor, ….
and surging sounds of the river course gushing grew stronger and stronger holding everyone’s anticipation in spellbound galore.
They were almost there, the river eventually unfurling it’s rivulets lined by shiny boulders, and then…. it splendidly opened it’s mouth into a gushy expanse at the heart of the jungle
What a sight to behold!!! nature revelling in it’s best attire, yet sublimely greeting it’s audience
Tall trees of Mango and Jammun sat towering over brightly lit wild flowers encircling the wide expanse, and basking in their shelter softly tiptoed the bashful forest deer, rabbits and other wild beings !
Not far from this effusive welcome they stopped by some weathered boulders , fastening their bulls and setting them hay
A little further under a quiet nook the family nestled over jute blankets their belongings, moving eagerly the men gathered barks and dried twigs to light camp fire and by the banks the women gaily started on with their chores of washing.
© Jeannette D’Souza | Copyright 2024 | jdsouza.uk
© Jeannette D’Souza
Have you dreamed a dream, of plentitude greens and laurel scenes!
It’s pleasant dreamy aromas floating among the delicate floral fragrant vines
Of charming flamboyant hues encircled within the humble creepers
And dazzling with a dance under sunshine splendour!
Have you dreamed a dream of peaceful pure mists in the morning glory
Of flowing patterns and hazy shapes discerned
Adorned in brilliant kaleidoscopic colours mingling through, among the rays at noon,
Drawing moments of breath in trance you gaze, lest they fade away soon
Have you dreamed a dream of creatures beautifully safe in the cosmos
where chirpy twittering hearts roam free soaring higher
And every little wonderful emerald entwined can be as they be
By silent sunsets whispering peace at the close of day
Have you dreamed a dream that I dream
I whisper to humankind “preserve me”,
With awaiting eyes I persevere, “come” I say “you have less time to return”
Yet it is all that hearts yearn for ,
When time is little as these moments disappear
Sept 2020
© Jeannette D’Souza | Copyright 2024 | jdsouza.uk
© Jeannette D’Souza
Sweet was your smile and tender your words
Your endearing ways and prayers got us comfort
You were close to us especially in times of need
You intently listened to every saddened heart and never missed a soul to lovingly greet.
There was always a hug to share and food galore
And Your WhatsApp messages were truly uplifting giving us cheer
Your generous heart offered goodness in every measure
Charity and kindness you practised at every chance
And softly bestowed on every soul a loving glance!
Your faithful prayers were exemplary through the years
And Your Singing at mass a delight to our ears
Your candid nature, honest advice and softness always gave us hope
A Loving wife, sister, mother, gran and friend you were
Always welcoming with open arms all you held dear!
Swiftly you were gone and to our world a loss
Beloved Memories of you we will cherish
And miss you at every choir gathering, choral and zoom…
We shall treasure your love, affection, fond hugs and candles lit for friends
We remember you fondly our dearest “Loving Christiane”
As we say goodbye to you –
Our choir family “MA”, sister and friend!
© Jeannette D’Souza | Copyright 2024 | jdsouza.uk
© Jeannette D’Souza
“Tonga-wala ! Tonga-wala, jaldi jao jaldi”
(Hurry fast Tonga-man)
Exclaimed in Hindi the amazed child, with trepidation and glee!
How could he ? ..amidst twenty hundred scurrying and pouring
out of the tumultuous station bay
All the Tongas and Tuk-tuks tooting to invite passengers across wet fields of hay!
Not long before Journeying since dawn, doning disheveled hair , dreamy eyes and toys a cuddling,
stepped down from the train two siblings in their sunday attire, behind mum trailing
Rushing out to see the exciting new town that stood in view,
with lined pandals, thatched huts and smaller confectioners anew!
Enjoying the hustle I skid in wet mud getting a little mucky, quickly my hair away from wide eyes plucked-
to see people smiling and greeting loved ones, with garlands and Kumkum in palms cupped!
I watched travellers negotiating through a tiny dingy thoroughfare,
whilst gulping scents of heady fragrances , of sweet jasmine and sun kissed marigolds sweeping the air!
Eager Pedlars, weavers and toy sellers displaying their colourful handicrafts and food,
tempting hungry travellers with their wafting delicious aromas and delightful goods!
Resisting this temptation I glanced at my weary mum
checking her tattered pochette, finding a paltry sum.
Peckish and exhilarated I soon found myself distracted in sounds, sights and smells,
all hitting my head I started to giggle, giggle uncontrollably, until my jaw and cheeks hurt.
It was an atmospheric enchantment for a child of eight!
Treading the muddy path towards the Tonga carriages we scampered,
With bulky luggage, burdensome walking yet unhampered
Hovering canines under wagons noisily hounding us, yet we lept away fearlessly watching buffaloes grazing on in the distant hay
Continuing towards the winding lemon Tonga queue that yolked aged mares and, tightened safe under their master’s gaze.
Our mystically towering Tonga-man in an enchanting turban appeared
Mum began habitually bargaining the ride price that was exorbitantly uttered
It was the practice in those days , of familiar haggling exchanges around in the open..
All lending their own charm in noisy customs draped with passerby’s supportingly gathered
Shying away from them I slipped with my brother onto the large Tonga carriage bewildered!
Mum could haggle no more but to please us for child cheer
Boarded luggage onto the carriage with help from fellow folk near
Off we paced with 8 feet trotting round the bend
Oops oops cried the tongaman for the carriage had almost had its end..
Ambling lopsided with extra luggage and perching on it, a new rainbow feathered friend!
Roadways shrouded in mango trees soon unfolded displaying verdant pastures, a sight to be reminisced…
Villagers passing by expressed their friendliness, further on an array of quaint cottages dotted streets with lively porches covered in striking rangoli patterns
My heart grew warmer as we nodded past children smiling, playing verandah games amidst evening lanterns
Our Tonga impressed them much and, women in bindi peeking out through their curtained doors, covered in vibrant sarees stood beaming.
And soon our Tonga stopped outside a worn old colonial cottage, tucked under terracotta tiles over a green facade
A pleasant grateful feeling arose and to our Tonga-man’s blessing – standing over the Tonga seat triumphantly I cried “our house”
We jumped laughing out of the cart onto the street to find cheerful relatives welcoming,
With so much love to offer and a tray full of supper awaiting!
Dusk approaching fast, we raced thrilled peeping into every corner of our tiny wood laden home, even the attic room,
Joyously abounding to find a cheerful window to sit by and watch the streets lights and sights bloom.
Neither the gloomy weather nor the torrentious rain wet our intrepid spirits!
Making that reminiscent evening a vision of greeting decades down memory lane…
Those first moment impressions of Belgaum whisper childlike gaiety into my heart every time it starts to rain!
Sept 2020
© Jeannette D’Souza | Copyright 2024 | jdsouza.uk
