A Perilous Path

A perilous pathway

Look into the blue waters of the Med where sharks

and poisonous fishes swim, where black sea urchins

lurk and jellyfish sting the unwary travellers on their

perilous path south from Maghreb to Mezzogiorno.

There you will find a monstrous human graveyard,

for the sea gives not up its dead to the living, 

and already countless thousand souls are lost 

to the T ocean,  prey of avarice which fed

on the fears of terror stricken refugees who had

nowhere else to hide and no place else to go.

‘Rescue them?’ our leaders cried, ‘Even more 

will come, and of those who come, even more 

will die; we must not facilitate yet more deaths.’

But can we ever trust the sweet voiced serpent,

whose sharp fangs administer a deadly venom?

These are our brothers and our sisters who rest

deep beneath the smiling waves, supine on biers 

of rock and sand, where many more will gather

destroyed by the smug complacent righteousness 

of those now committed to abandon them.

There can be no resolution, no peace, until we

ourselves identify with fugitives and outcasts,

with children who are hungry, and mothers 

persecuted for their faith.  For are we not all

children beloved of the loving creator God?

Jesus said make the stranger welcome in your

home, and show love, not hate, to your enemies.

Thus our hope is founded upon the love of God 

made manifest in the life of Jesus, and in the love

we have for one another.    Amen,  so may it be.

            

                                                                         Naomi

Paul Nash : 4 Dark landscapes

“The Caterpillar Crater” 1917

South east of Ypres, the Caterpillar Ridge,

blown up by thirty tons of ammatol,

a thousand Germans dead but disappeared,

only a massive crater to mark their passing.

Green fields turned ochre by blood and mud,

every tree a broken trunk, every branch

a stunted limb, like a human body 

torn apart by unceasing heavy guns; 

trunks in serried rows, like crucifixes

souvenirs of an army dissolved away.

“Passchendaele Shell bursting” 1918

A man-tree leans back away from the blast, 

its hand with shattered fingers lifted high

against the blitz of brick and piercing shell

flung arching wide, a macabre fountain

sprung from a deep penetration of the earth,

an unholy union of Füllpuver and steel

The sky blotted out, the land is covered

with dirt and debris, trees wasted and bare,

a dark landscape broken and desolate,

reveal the artist’s unending despair.

“The Wire”  1918

Beneath a sky wide pall of noxious fumes 

stands erect a lonely bridegroom, a tree

castrated, splintered phallus wrapped 

in a deadly mantle woven from thick 

strands of entangled wire, barbs hungry 

for blood, symbols of pain and of despair.

Roots spread dry, like a beached octopus

trapped by broken boulders and foul waters,

the tree is captive to this killing ground,

left god-forsaken in its Stygian gloom. 

“We are Making a New World”  1918

Above the brick red, blood red horizon
the sun rises, enervated and white,

into a sky grey with shame, but its rays

touch the edges of the brightly dark hills

and highlight the forest of wasted trees.

Grass is tinged anew with a nascent light,

from the soft water of a crater pool

field mice drink again, children one day may 

play here, small birds sing again, but for now

nothing but an unresponsive emptiness.

                                                                                                                                                                                                 Naomi


"The Wire" 

[This item is available  to share and reuse under the terms 
of the Imperial War Museum's Non Commercial Licence]

 Paul Nash  1918

A choice most cruel

A choice most cruel

What would you do

if you sat hour upon hour, day upon day,

beside the bed of one who begged you to find

an end to their misery and unending pain, but faith

and law were united, and mercy was overwhelmed?

If reason demands but law proscribes compassion,

and faith enjoins that God, the giver of life, alone

may take the broken body and failing spirit

to eternal rest, could you, would you

assist the loved one to die?

If all you are able to do 

is to pray, will you ask God to ease

 the terrible burden of exhaustion and fear 

the dying so often carry and, with a gentle dignity

and calm at last, to allow them to silently slip away?

How then would you feel?  Joy at the end of their

torturous journey or deep sadness that, at the

time of their choosing, there was neither 

means nor courage to walk with them 

to the edge of the abyss?

If reason and law and faith in a merciful 

God were to combine, then might we, as an act 

of pure love, say yes to the pleas of the loved one, 

and so go with them in peace to the gate

of the Kingdom of Love? 

Amen.  So may it be.

Naomi

The Mystery that is Love

The Face of God

We may not see the face of God nor hear his voice,

but we can delight in the wonders of this our world,

our living mirror of a sacred beauty that alone is his.

His voice is heard in the song of ten thousand birds 

and in a roaring waterfall; silent he moves in a breeze 

that riffles through the beach tree’s bronzed leaves.

In his almighty power he rides the skies in the eye

of the storm, yet like new kittens lying secure within

the circle of their mother’s paws, we may safely rest 

in the promise of his tenderness and silken strength.

God’s face invisible, God’s voice unknown, but 

Jesus becomes our paradigm of the loving God,

his teachings marking out our path to paradise,

for he brought to us God’s great commandment:

that we love Him and our neighbour as ourselves.

Tonight the magical stillness of a summer evening 

is broken only by the whispering of lazy waves

and the distant high pitched hoot of a tawny owl. 

Above the bay the full moon hangs softly bright

spreading a delicate path of silver across smoke

blue water, inviting us to look into a far horizon

which, with  Jesus as our guide, will some day 

be the end of our journey.  There, face to face 

at last with God, we may recognise the glorious 

ineffable Mystery that is the essence of his Love.

Naomi                                                   

My Friend Bill

Come, my friend, though you be lost

from my sight, walk now and talk with me. 

My mind’s eye sees you and my heart’s 

ear listens to you, as the same sea 

we both once watched caresses the sand 

at the edge of the Bay, while crying gulls

fly deep again into the copper bright horizon, 

to be absorbed like tendrils  of thin smoke 

disappeared into the kindly dark of evening.

Any man’s death, it was said, diminishes me;

but I know the spirit that lives in every good man

will enrich the lives of of all whom it touches.

My friend Bill was indeed a very good man,

a loyal and loving man whose pleasure

it was to build a raft of quiet friendship

upon which we all may safely sit 

until, we too set free, shall fly into those gentle

welcoming shadows and meet with God. 

Naomi

February Rain

February rain - 2014

I like the soft rain that gently bathes 

my tired skin with liquid silk.

I like the full blown lazy rain softly emptying

its wide spaced drops into the pool

where six humped golden orfe wheel and play, 

timid tadpoles hide amongst the reeds

and pale water lilies shimmer in the gentle shower.

I like the tough regimented squalls that beat

a brisk reveille on rusting tin roofs

of old allotment huts, summoning their owners away

to the comfort of the pub and their noon day pint.

I like the anxious hurrying rain

sweeping undeterred across the high moor, 

flattening the purple heather into a deep carpet,

replenishing warm languorous streams

who sing through the summer 

in an unique rustic chorus with the the watery trill    

of the chic white and black ring ouzel,

and the elegant grey merlin’s imperious screech.

I like the fine mizzle and the silent mists of October

that caress the Fluted White camellia, 

cloak with liquid lace the purple Autumn crocus

and weave a glistening crown around a dark red rose.

But … 

The meandering Jet Stream has plunged deep south, 

and sharply swung north again, like a great cosmic ribbon

swirling madly above the ocean, bundling together

unending storms of bitter rain and cruel gales.

Today’s icy downpour stings skin and eyes,

scythes through the sunshine gold japonica,

shatters the simple beauty of the gentle hellebore,

and pulps the last head of the blue hydrangea.

It brings flood and devastation to land and coast,

houses inundated, winter crops laid waste,

pastures six feet under water, stock drowned.

As rivers undredged burst through their crumbling banks

and old sea walls are swept away by wind and tide, 

power lines fall victims to unremitting storms,

and thousands endure long cold and cheerless days.

While politicians and public servants wrangle,

men and women count the terrible cost

of homes destroyed, livelihoods and lives 

lost to the inevitable coming of this

festival of unholy ruin.

And I begin to see how powerless 

we have become in the face of this, our world’s chaos 

which we ourselves have done so much to cause.

May God and our children forgive us.

Naomi

Where now is the glory?

Kent 2014 - Where now is the glory?    

There is a green place high on the cliff above 

the menacing Goodwins and the sheltering Downs,

a log cabined park, clipped and trim,

but which has still the wild touch

as pale green wild liquorice spreads around

the gardener’s stately hollyhock,

while pungent wild garlic and narrow leaves

of meadow sage line the banks

of a stream which sings softly as it meanders

relaxed through the quiet wood.

There is a copse near the wood’s edge,

which encloses a ragged circle of bright space 

where the morning sun gilds a clump

of late primroses and bathes the flowers

of the tall cow parsley with a dappled radiance.

In the centre of this oasis of light grows

a spear thistle, three feet high, elegant 

in its new budding touched with Tyrian purple 

and long leaves tipped with vicious spines,

a formidable green emperor preparing for war.

Along these same quiet coastal paths, in these same woods

 a hundred years ago through the hot summer of 1914 

came men to survey, to plan, to dig, to build.

Where now the wild liquorice grows, 

are mounds and hollows, slabs of dressed stone.

Was there here a shelter, a trench, 

an emplacement for a gun?

Did the gallant men of the 6th Cyclist Battalion

with rifles and ammunition slung across their backs

patrol these sweet green places?

Stand today beside the handsome barbed warrior, 

turn to the North and let your imagination

listen to the stuttering rattle of a rotary engine,

a limping Sopwith Camel coming into land.

Turn to the South and feel through every part of you

the unceasing shudder of the guns 

merciless bombardment of the green fields 

of France, where the bloodstained earth  turns red, 

and the land itself cries out ‘Here is no glory,

 these are the Plains of Death.’

From the corners of the world they came 

and from this village too, among them

boys too young and men too old to contend 

with the pain, the loss, the mud and the over arching fear. 

In the trenches there was courage and a bleak humour,

compassion and care for the wounded and the weak,

but in No Man’s Land men abandoned, crucified

on the wire, screamed throughout the night,

and in the grey morning dead eyes 

silently yearned for the green fields of Kent. 

Little was gained from four bitter years of battle,

seven million civilians and ten million fighting men died,

twenty million wounded took home little but their wounds.

Widows made destitute pawned their wedding rings 

while crippled soldiers begged in our city streets, 

and the sad hungry orphans of Germany

wept for fathers never returned.

What is there now to celebrate when both victim

and victor were the casualties of this war,

except perhaps its eventual ending?

Very little to glorify, but much to remember,

to respect, to regret, and to learn.