Sonnets
Here’s a very small selection which will, I hope, give an idea of the range of possibilities the sonnet offers.
Birthday Sonnet
It’s your fiftieth, Paul! So let’s celebrate,
Raise our glasses, sing your praises – and you
For once can listen and luxuriate
As we rate your raita and saag aloo
And those lovely onion bhajis – oh so Tasty, one won’t do. Mouth-watering Sunday roasts
Created with the doors all firmly closed:
Cheers! – another cause for birthday toasts!
May your stories all have perfect ends
May your bread and seedlings rise, be proud
Of double-digging, share music with your friends,
Dance around the furniture, sing your songs out loud
In car or kitchen – but certainly, above all
Have a very happy birthday, Smiler Paul!
Baking
Written for a friend’s mother’s birthday
What is more powerful than a homely smell
Taking you back to moments from the past?
And this aroma’s one that lasts and lasts:
Mum’s cakes just from the oven – all is well.
Laid out upon the kitchen bench, to share,
There might be flapjacks on the cooling tray
Or this might be a chocolate chip bun day,
But no – Victoria sponge! The scent is in the air!
What tales that well-worn Be-ro book could tell;
What marks of careful floury hands it bears,
Corners turned down, a myriad tiny tears
It’s far more potent than a book of spells!
It wasn’t just the chocolate or jam
Or cream, but love you filled them with. Thanks, mum.
We’re the army invisible. We come
When you’re asleep or half awake to clean
Your rooms and corridors, wipe off obscene
Graffiti, swill away the leavings of some
Celebration we would not be party to
Or sweep away the paper trail of notes
You didn’t notice that you’d lost. Hang coats
Back onto hooks, try to make Room 42
Take on a semblance of the sort of place
Where learning might go on. We’ve learned a lot
About your Higher Education: not
To expect too much of learned faces
Who can find a hundred reasons not to give
The small amounts your army needs to live.
In the style of Geoffrey Chaucer
A Bancker there wass and that a worthye man
That since the tyme of bankynge had beganne
Filled full his dayse with toiling by ye screne
And with ye telephone wolde oft be seene
Y-makinge deals with othere banking wights
While keeping certayne thinges well out of sight.
His Porsche he kept well-polishéd and clene
Also his bodye eek well-honed and lene
For in ye jymme he labored whan he coulde
Just as he travailed for his country’s goode:
But though he labored he did nothynge make.
Yet he thoght it wolde be a gross mistayke
If no bonus came in pondes sterlinge
Beyonde his wage and all his other earnynges!