Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Look at my other blog.
I'm thinking of giving up on this blog, much as I like its name, because there seems no point in having two, especially if I post the same things on both. So try http://texts4all.wordpress.com/, 'Malcolm's Weblog'. Thanks for reading!
Monday, March 29, 2010
Love is never simple
In my eighty years I have found that love is never frozen in some ideal shape, no matter how much some people would like to think it can be. Like marriage, it has to be dynamic and flexible, or it will break. It’s a heaving sea, sometimes calm but with a deceptive swell, sometimes stormy, and sometimes a rogue wave comes to swamp our craft.
Love is never simple
Love is never a simple matter of yes or no, do or don’t,
there’s no black or white, no one thing or the other,
no matter how much a victim may demand assurance.
Love is dynamic, ever-changing, growing, sparking,
swerving, swelling, circling, shrinking, creaking, barking!
Chaos is queen in here, throwing anything in the mix
from butterfly wings to full-fledged hurricanes.
If all seems tranquil and you are content that it will last
unchanging through your life, you’re not unlike
a blindfold child walking a cliff edge, oblivious to the drop.
To negotiate this storm and its uncertainties
be like the sailor who knows to loose the sheet when gusts
threaten to overturn his craft, who steers athwart the waves
and watches when the wave approaching from astern
threatens to break and swamp his craft.
And while the sails are drawing well, and by his compass
he is near enough to his desired course, he’s glad,
for nothing’s perfect and to stay afloat and reach
the harbour is his only aim, and quite enough!
© MM 27.3.2010
Love is never simple
Love is never a simple matter of yes or no, do or don’t,
there’s no black or white, no one thing or the other,
no matter how much a victim may demand assurance.
Love is dynamic, ever-changing, growing, sparking,
swerving, swelling, circling, shrinking, creaking, barking!
Chaos is queen in here, throwing anything in the mix
from butterfly wings to full-fledged hurricanes.
If all seems tranquil and you are content that it will last
unchanging through your life, you’re not unlike
a blindfold child walking a cliff edge, oblivious to the drop.
To negotiate this storm and its uncertainties
be like the sailor who knows to loose the sheet when gusts
threaten to overturn his craft, who steers athwart the waves
and watches when the wave approaching from astern
threatens to break and swamp his craft.
And while the sails are drawing well, and by his compass
he is near enough to his desired course, he’s glad,
for nothing’s perfect and to stay afloat and reach
the harbour is his only aim, and quite enough!
© MM 27.3.2010
Friday, March 26, 2010
A welcome
I want to welcome any readers to this blog, old or new. To the poet, a poem is complete and makes perfect sense. But readers without the same background may be puzzled or even bewildered, so in future I am going to try adding a little explanatory text to my poems. It's not easy, on some blogs, to go back and add text to an already posted poem, and it's very time-consuming, so I suppose I can apply this rule only to new posts.
I'd like though, to say something about a poem here that's very important to me. It's called 'The Professor' and it's about A. D. Hope. Hope was professor of English poetry at the Australian National University for many years, and is recognised as one of Australia's top ten poets of all time. He is my 'hero poet', clever, cultured, sklled, writer of the best rhyming poems I know, and also writer of the most erotic short poem I know. ("When Like The Sun', 1968) He was clearly interested in sex, and as professors often do, he took advantage of the prettiest female students. This is clear from mentions in many of his poems. But there was a black side to his life, as I have tried to express in this poem. See what you think.
I'd like though, to say something about a poem here that's very important to me. It's called 'The Professor' and it's about A. D. Hope. Hope was professor of English poetry at the Australian National University for many years, and is recognised as one of Australia's top ten poets of all time. He is my 'hero poet', clever, cultured, sklled, writer of the best rhyming poems I know, and also writer of the most erotic short poem I know. ("When Like The Sun', 1968) He was clearly interested in sex, and as professors often do, he took advantage of the prettiest female students. This is clear from mentions in many of his poems. But there was a black side to his life, as I have tried to express in this poem. See what you think.
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Autumn morning
I trimmed the hedge this morning
clipping its frisky fronds to soldierly precision.
The diosma had burgeoned in the autumn rains
that ended years of drought and killed its weaker stems,
but now it aspired to emulate the trees and hide the house.
This was not to be, and soon the ground was carpeted
with sweet-smelling twigs and leaves that had to go.
While I was clipping, a pretty woman passed on a bike
and gave me such a smile my heart was warmed.
In the sky white spreading lines of condensation trails
marked the paths of aircraft filled, as I imagine,
with glum commuters heading for appointments
in Sydney and Melbourne and Brisbane
(for some were heading north and could be going only there)
and I delighted, not in passengers' boredom and discomfort,
but in pure brush strokes drawn by technology
across the pure blue sky that crowned this lovely Autumn day.
Copyright Malcolm Miller 26 March 2010
Here is a note added after posting this poem here. I love looking at the sky, and of course I have been both astronomer and pilot. Cloud physics makes beautiful shapes, ever changing, and I regularly call up a woman I love who also like to look. We point out intersting formations or contrails we have noticed, I take photos of the more interesting ones. I am no gardener, but I like my diasma hedge and try to keep it tidy. The smiles of passers-by, which I sometimes receive when I am standing at the fence with my cat, Mac, are also satisfying. I always like to see a pretty woman!
clipping its frisky fronds to soldierly precision.
The diosma had burgeoned in the autumn rains
that ended years of drought and killed its weaker stems,
but now it aspired to emulate the trees and hide the house.
This was not to be, and soon the ground was carpeted
with sweet-smelling twigs and leaves that had to go.
While I was clipping, a pretty woman passed on a bike
and gave me such a smile my heart was warmed.
In the sky white spreading lines of condensation trails
marked the paths of aircraft filled, as I imagine,
with glum commuters heading for appointments
in Sydney and Melbourne and Brisbane
(for some were heading north and could be going only there)
and I delighted, not in passengers' boredom and discomfort,
but in pure brush strokes drawn by technology
across the pure blue sky that crowned this lovely Autumn day.
Copyright Malcolm Miller 26 March 2010
Here is a note added after posting this poem here. I love looking at the sky, and of course I have been both astronomer and pilot. Cloud physics makes beautiful shapes, ever changing, and I regularly call up a woman I love who also like to look. We point out intersting formations or contrails we have noticed, I take photos of the more interesting ones. I am no gardener, but I like my diasma hedge and try to keep it tidy. The smiles of passers-by, which I sometimes receive when I am standing at the fence with my cat, Mac, are also satisfying. I always like to see a pretty woman!
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Two Poems
Edge of Space
My creative muse has gone from sight
beyond the boundaries of the known universe
where dark matter and dark energy compete
in galaxy creation beyond the beginnings
of both time and space.
I wait for words to come but there are none
for barren weeks of empty space we'd see
at mere light speed that left the Sun a tiny star
lost among a billiuon others in this one spiral arm
and left us nowhere.
The speed of thought can take me in an instant
to the edge of space, fourteen billion years ago
and in the same moment can format a poem
that, once written down, can last for years.
I'm left with tears.
© Malcolm Miller 10.2.2010
Many Things
you are so many things to me
actress and beauty
courtesan and scholar
friend and best beloved
sharing with me the books
the programs, the sky and the clouds,
your thoughts and questions,
your knowledge and opinions,
embraces and kisses.
my life seems filled with love,
in everything we do it's there
the conversations, the poems,
the songs, the messages,
the ideas, the romantic dance
of hearts and minds
and the problems that disrupt
our world and which we face
each day as best we can.
© Malcolm Miller 23.2.2019
My creative muse has gone from sight
beyond the boundaries of the known universe
where dark matter and dark energy compete
in galaxy creation beyond the beginnings
of both time and space.
I wait for words to come but there are none
for barren weeks of empty space we'd see
at mere light speed that left the Sun a tiny star
lost among a billiuon others in this one spiral arm
and left us nowhere.
The speed of thought can take me in an instant
to the edge of space, fourteen billion years ago
and in the same moment can format a poem
that, once written down, can last for years.
I'm left with tears.
© Malcolm Miller 10.2.2010
Many Things
you are so many things to me
actress and beauty
courtesan and scholar
friend and best beloved
sharing with me the books
the programs, the sky and the clouds,
your thoughts and questions,
your knowledge and opinions,
embraces and kisses.
my life seems filled with love,
in everything we do it's there
the conversations, the poems,
the songs, the messages,
the ideas, the romantic dance
of hearts and minds
and the problems that disrupt
our world and which we face
each day as best we can.
© Malcolm Miller 23.2.2019
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Sunday, November 8, 2009
not yet ready to go!
Despite referring to 'my Memorial Service' in the poem 'the last laugh', I'm not yet ready to leave, if only because I'm still having such a good time. As one accumulates more years, two things stand out as important, and equal; they are surviving, and having fun.
I've had a great deal of fun in my life. I enjoyed my time in the Air Force, especially as I never fired a gun in anger, and as an astronomer I once told some very weighty scientists at a conference that all the fascinating work that they did and published gave me a lot of pleasure, ie, fun.
At an age I won't mention, I fell in love with a beautiful young actress, and though it has been a relatively chaste love, still it has given me more happiness than most people have in a lifetime.
Writing poetry is fun, and seeing it in print is even more fun. Theatre is great fun, and when one is able to act on the stage, that's the greatest fun one have have standing up –
well, almost. And my partner last acted in a wheelchair and didn't have to stand up.
So life has been good to me so far, and long may it continue the same!
I've had a great deal of fun in my life. I enjoyed my time in the Air Force, especially as I never fired a gun in anger, and as an astronomer I once told some very weighty scientists at a conference that all the fascinating work that they did and published gave me a lot of pleasure, ie, fun.
At an age I won't mention, I fell in love with a beautiful young actress, and though it has been a relatively chaste love, still it has given me more happiness than most people have in a lifetime.
Writing poetry is fun, and seeing it in print is even more fun. Theatre is great fun, and when one is able to act on the stage, that's the greatest fun one have have standing up –
well, almost. And my partner last acted in a wheelchair and didn't have to stand up.
So life has been good to me so far, and long may it continue the same!
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