The Pocket -23 Sep 08

Lisa and I on the beach at New Brighton, NSW Australia in September 2008

Geoff Bloom on Animal Rights -10 Sep 08

Link to Geoff's talk on animal rights on ABC Radio National's Perspective

Fu with Nurse

Fu 3 Sep 08

Fu 13 Aug 08

Fu 24 Jul 08

Fu 12 Jun 08

The Horses by Edwin Muir

    

The Horses

            

Barely a twelvemonth after

The seven days war that put the world to sleep,

Late in the evening the strange horses came.

By then we had made our covenant with silence,

But in the first few days it was so still

We listened to our breathing and were afraid.

On the second day

The radios failed; we turned the knobs; no answer.

On the third day a warship passed us, heading north,

Dead bodies piled on the deck. On the sixth day

A plane plunged over us into the sea. Thereafter

Nothing. The radios dumb;

And still they stand in corners of our kitchens,

And stand, perhaps, turned on, in a million rooms

All over the world. But now if they should speak,

If on a sudden they should speak again,

If on the stroke of noon a voice should speak,

We would not listen, we would not let it bring

That old bad world that swallowed its children quick

At one great gulp. We would not have it again.

Sometimes we think of the nations lying asleep,

Curled blindly in impenetrable sorrow,

And then the thought confounds us with its strangeness.

The tractors lie about our fields; at evening

They look like dank sea-monsters couched and waiting.

We leave them where they are and let them rust:

'They'll molder away and be like other loam.'

We make our oxen drag our rusty plows,

Long laid aside. We have gone back

Far past our fathers' land.

And then, that evening

Late in the summer the strange horses came.

We heard a distant tapping on the road,

A deepening drumming; it stopped, went on again

And at the corner changed to hollow thunder.

We saw the heads

Like a wild wave charging and were afraid.

We had sold our horses in our fathers' time

To buy new tractors. Now they were strange to us

As fabulous steeds set on an ancient shield.

Or illustrations in a book of knights.

We did not dare go near them. Yet they waited,

Stubborn and shy, as if they had been sent

By an old command to find our whereabouts

And that long-lost archaic companionship.

In the first moment we had never a thought

That they were creatures to be owned and used.

Among them were some half a dozen colts

Dropped in some wilderness of the broken world,

Yet new as if they had come from their own Eden.

Since then they have pulled our plows and borne our loads

But that free servitude still can pierce our hearts.

Our life is changed; their coming our beginning.

 

Edwin Muir

This Be The Verse by Philip Larkin

This Be The Verse

 

They fuck you up, your mum and dad

They may not mean to, but they do.

They fill you with the faults they had

And add some extra, just for you.

 

But they were fucked up in their turn

By fools in old-style hats and coats,

Who half the time were soppy-stern

And half at one another's throats

 

Man hands on misery to man.

It deepens like a coastal shelf.

Get out as early as you can,

And don't have any kids yourself.

 

Philip Larkin (1922-1985)

Astronomical by Sophie Hannah

Astronomical

 

I tell the girl at Name a Star of course

I know it’s rare, I know she hopes she won’t be asked again.

Requests like mine are hardly likely to become the norm.

Most people will continue to conform,

 

            but I am not most people. I’ve read the rules. I know what’s fair

            and I want to name a star,

            as the blurb says, to show someone I care.

 

The name I have chosen is David Shithead Stubbs Now, can we talk

certificates, star lists, gift sets? Oh, go on, let’s.

 

            I’ve sent my cheque for fifty quid. I have consumer rights.

            She does not even ask me what he did.

 

Do you know how long it took, I say, to choose a slur?

Wanker and arsehole sounded somehow wrong.

Shithead was good but couldn’t stand alone,

since how would David Stubbs or anyone have known

the star was named for him? You see, this means

a lot to me. It isn’t just a whim.

 

I need to know that every night, for ever,

he’ll trawl the skies, wondering: is that the one?

Feet on the ground, he can repent, appeal, achieve, endeavour

but every twinkle of the star I’ve named

will show him he is blamed

permanently and hard for what he’s done.

 

            So, David Stubbs, let’s see how tough you are.

            I am the customer. I’ve paid. You can’t un-name my star.

 

The voice I am speaking to sounds tired. I know

I sound hysterical, a mess,

a shrew it would be foolish to say no to. Well, so be it.

There will be a star called David Shithead Stubbs.

I will lean over balconies to see it.

 

I give her the address.

I want the framed certificate to go to.

 

 

Sophie Hannah

from “Pessimism for Beginners”, Carcanet Press, 2007

 

The Pocket