Michael Shepherd - Poems
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Poetry Series Michael Shepherd - poems - Publication Date: 2009 Publisher: Poemhunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive Michael Shepherd(8.4.1929) farmwork; 9-14 teacher; pro-am drama; scholarship to Oxford University to study Anglo-Saxon and English Literature; dropout; backstage Ballets de Paris; industrial journalism; midlife crisis around 25; invoice typist; bookshop assistant; art journalist; book reviewer; small book on Barbara Hepworth,1963; art critic for national newspapers and magazines 20 years; radio and television work; presented to Queen Mother for services to Canadian art; and to Rajeev Gandhi for services to Indian art; Post-graduate Thesis Tutor, Royal Academy of Art 20 years; Selector and Juror Mid-States Art Contest, Indiana; translator and research team for Letters of Marsilio Ficino; obituary writer for The Times; 24/7 carer 7 years; writer/editor of Ficino celebratory volume 1999(see Books page here) now translated into Dutch; political satirist for website, 'Call Me Tony'; proofreader for forthcoming 18-volume Encyclopaedia of Hindu Philosophy; various essays on 50 years of Zimbabwean sculpture; historical context essay for 'Gardens of Philosophy: Ficino on Plato' by Arthur Farndell, Shepheard-Walwyn Publishers,2006, £18.95; Godstow Press in Oxford published 136 sonnets under the title 'Awakening to Myself' in December 2004 (£15 postfree in Britain, contact Godstow Press for overseas postage) . For international payment, see info@ Michael has been a member of the School of Economic Science/School of Practical Philosophy in London for 50 years, and moderates (2008) the Poetry Forum attached to its website. He is currently Text Editor for the 'Hindupedia' encyclopaedia of Hinduism. His latest book on Waterperry is noted below. www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 1 ! 'Great Write...' - Great Reader! Every poem is an invitation for the readers to use their imagination a vehicle licensed to carry passengers who sometimes have a greater imagination than the poet even perhaps get more from the poem than the poet knowingly put in which you must admit if with a slight embarrassment as you read the words of praise is a divine joke and from the divine viewpoint very practical since every reader is an invitation for the poets to match their imagination Michael Shepherd www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 2 ! L O N E L Y l o n e l y on the paper, on the screen all by itself l o n e l y is it, does it think it is, is it happy to be like that is it happy to be, does it hope for company does it enjoy its own company? does it look at itself and say oh look I'm one guarded by two ells that's alright then Shakespeare, yes, was the first to use it, made it up all by himself felt he/we needed it to say something that hadn’t been said before in quite the same way with quite the same sound the sound of lonely he invented more words than any other person ever why was that next time you read it l o n e l y www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 3 you might think of him being lonely or exactly the opposite smiling as he invented it knowing it could be useful smiling at you saying yes I know but I’m here for you Michael Shepherd www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 4 ! S I N Language is a blessing and a curse – sometimes uniting, sometimes dividing, sometimes an arrow, sometimes blown blossoms, misplaced seeds.. How can we of the Western world imagine what it’s like to speak a tongue, as Persians, Hebrews, Aramaics, Arabs are so blessed that they possess – where words remember that they come from One whose word is law, whose word is love; so words are true at every level of understanding: say ‘name’ or ‘kingdom’; ‘bread’; or ‘dust’: a golden ladder from the heaven to earth, from earth to heaven; we as dust beneath the chariot wheel, as it drives over this old potter’s yard; cracking discarded potsherds back to dust, to mud, to clay, to future pots – drive carefully, though, around that standpipe where the grace of water waits to join that fuller’s earth, or rich red clay, in some new pot, which fire will join in turn to give it measured life… so, if we take a word which floats uncertainly between the mind and heart, seeking to put its feet on earth, yet raise its eyes to heaven – like ‘sin’… now there’s a word to stir the mind, to bleed the heart, to chill the gut… language, so the pundits say (naming that which eludes all division) should be true at the literal, the allegoric, the moral, the anagogic – and, let’s add, the universal and divine: www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 5 so where does ‘sin’ put down its feet on earth? Many pulpits have proclaimed, in the easy tones of clerics who don’t expect too much of their suburban congregation, ‘missing the mark’ – assuming Britain still at Agincourt, the target undisputed… The Aramaic has its clue: ‘sin’ translates as ‘unripe deeds’… So to the metaphoric mind (which Western poets, orators, must endeavour to make serve our lacking languages…) This glorious view of ‘sin’: the Sower, with his years of wisdom knowing the fair autumn day, the blessed dawn of Spring, rises early, takes the leather shoulder bag of harvested seed corn, dry stored to hold against its time – breathes the fresh morning air so full of promise, magically natural – strides steady to that field prepared as banquet for the merciful and just; flings, in a gesture time-honoured, almost ritual, the seed spraying out in airy curve out from his cupped palm, cupped as one would care for baby or for wild creature’s deserted offspring… that way, the bed of thorns; this way, a ground too stony in the Palestinian hills; over there, thin soil which weeds are happy with… sin is but deeds sown in the wrong place - even well-intentioned deeds, misplaced, as tyrants and dictators seek to do – or sown at the wrong season's time… www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 6 even, if you must, a seedling apple, picked out of some garden once called paradise.. together, cause, the action, and result: in the moment cast seed touches open earth, in law and love its fate is cast and sealed. Truth must be simple, in its subtlety: ‘sin’ is subtle, simple; earthly, heavenly truth: just - unripe deeds..so throw aside the guilt, the burden, criticism, weariness; just choose a wiser place to sow the seeds of deeds next time? Michael Shepherd www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 7 ! 11.11.: To The Fallen Embattled in that mud - and blood-red poppies; flooded trenches holding 'them' at bay; life or death a coin's flippant toss-up; deafening shellfire near by night and day - for us, these horrors now are others' lives, impossible to truly comprehend; yet in my own mind's state, I recognise these battles are still raging without end: the mud, the clung-to life, the enemy imagined - these, we strive still to invent. Their thoughts, at death's door, lost to memory: 'I love you...' - gone, a family's content. We owe to them to live a life of love as if we were transfused from their own blood. Michael Shepherd www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 8 ! A Grief Ago 'There is no grief which time does not lessen or soften' - so said Cicero, a man so often right; a Stoic, those for whom all life presents a lesson to be learned from, and then, to move on from.. But I wonder about all this: is grief ever lessened or softened? Is it not, perhaps, overlaid in our so various ways? For some, grief framed and falsified to ease that grief; For some, like hyacinths and crocus bulbs, left in a dark cupboard in the autumn of our grief to respond to time, and become at last themselves? gently, gently, the covers pulled over the loving bed, the true, the pure, the lovely painful grief, the memory deep cherished, gently, gently, folded into the cupboards of the heart there to be known, without the door disturbed until the time - 'a grief ago' as Dylan wrote - the cupboard opened only for love's sake without grief...: those carefully folded memories brought out and loved and lived a while... www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 9 not grief, not grief...but the pure memory of grief and behold, life. Michael Shepherd www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 10 ! A Novel Situation She looked not unlike the anti-heroine of her own novels or was it the other way around? mousey but together, neatly dressed in an understated way like her Paris dressmaker mother who'd fled Vienna Though in fact she was a brilliant bluestocking lecturer and trenchant critic who'd embarked, on the side, on novel writing However the British don't like people who do two things well and the critics - mostly men - panned her rotten while the women reserved judgment. She had a standard plot - mousey, together spinster meets possible, quiet Him who might be The One but who turns out too morally wet for Her. But her increasing sublety with variations to this and increasing literary skills won her praise from feminist critics and even a minor prize. I had expressed envious admiration for her trenchant criticism to a colleague; one day the unsolicited word came: she had expressed interest in meeting me..