Will I always be
The man who recites poetry
To young women,
My mind half on poetry,
And half on sinning.
They may admire my poetry,
But I am told
I grow old
And girls who have time
For my rhyme
Will never love me.
Yet they love my poetry
And is not poetry
Part of me?
As I walk the solid path
And pass trees waving in the wind.
I sway, and think of yesterday
When Romans came in wind and rain.
Did they think all will stay
As they made their way
Along This path of passing dreams?
I can not say
But the wind will outlast me
And the swaying tree.
Over the last few years, I have been guilty of allowing my Youtube to languish. However, one of my new year resolutions is to post more frequently on Youtube. I have therefore started to upload more of my poetry onto Youtube over the past couple of weeks. To listen to me reading my poetry on Youtube please visit https://www.youtube.com/@101drewdog/videos. If you enjoy what you hear, do please consider subscribing to my Youtube channel.
At the edge of town
All sound is drowned
By the wind and rain.
The Roman came
And wrote Rome’s name
Here in Britain.
Now I hear the same
Wind and rain.
On my way home
I passed by street lights
On a winter’s night
And thought of glorious Rome
As their temporary sparks
Held back the dark.
Recently I enjoyed a meal with my friend Jeff, during which he quoted from Tennyson’s beautiful poem, “Tears, Idle Tears”. The poem resonates with me and is reproduced below:
“Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,
Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,
In looking on the happy autumn-fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more.
Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail,
That brings our friends up from the underworld,
Sad as the last which reddens over one
That sinks with all we love below the verge;
So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more.
Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns
The earliest pipe of half-awaken’d birds
To dying ears, when unto dying eyes
The casement slowly grows a glimmering square;
So sad, so strange, the days that are no more.
Dear as remembered kisses after death,
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feign’d
On lips that are for others; deep as love,
Deep as first love, and wild with all regret;
O Death in Life, the days that are no more.”
Now I am tired
And think on love and lust.
All that is desired
Must end in naught but dust.
Today, on my birthday
I passed by a fallen tree
Being cleared away.
On my first birthday
The snow came.
I wonder, will it fall again
On the day
That I go away
When seagulls cry I
Feel the emptiness of eternity
In me.
I can not hide
From the all conquering sea.
A poet on his way
On a misty day
Across a road in Britain.
A poem goes unwritten.
K Morris - Poet 