Moody Sonnets

Shakespeare, born a thousand years too soon,
Lacks the later tongue’s mongrel boon.
Rembrandt, green apprentice at the Black Death’s start,
Finds a dearth of readies for vain, superfluous art.
Bach, arriving a sesquicentenary after,
Displeases Saxon delight in froth and laughter.
Shakespeare the Soviet needs Stalin’s nod
For every word – if not, it’s...firing squad.
Rembrandt, cowed by the Taliban in Kandahar,
Fears all save geometry goes lethally too far.
Bach, at the Mughal court – its culture most fine –

Struggles to fugue with the sitar’s single line.
Shakespeares, Rembrandts, and Bachs live among us today;
But genius, in the wrong place, just wastes away.

(2.3.26) v 1.4

28 February 2026

One Thousand And One Nights

When once more it was the nth night,
The incomparable Shahrazad continued (that she might
Live.) She told of a Baghdad porter, fine foods,
Beauties; three half-blind dervishes, each
With a story: first, fifty steps down from a tomb,
Charred, sinful siblings; second, eye-
brow talk, death from a pomegranate fruit;
Third, a magnetic mountain, a ram-skin suit,
The forbidden last door. A grateful fly-
ing snake doles out to treacherous sisters their doom
As black bitches; at the caliph’s command, the creat-
ures are reverted, and with neat marriages, the fun concludes.
Whether of love or sadness, mercy, rage or fail,
Our lives are all a tale within a tale within a tale.

(28.2.26) v 1.2

22 February 2026

To A Poet A Thousand Years Hence (After James Elroy Flecker)

Like a faithful dog tied up outside a shop,
Flecker’s quatrains wait across the cent-
uries for an unborn, laggard millennial to drop
by. Burnished transport arches bent
Over oceans, high drone squadrons, out-
Burj-ing skyscrapers in a new Sam-
arkand, James cares not for - no doubt.
But alongside such obvious projected analogue glam-
our, a bit has flipped that changes everything. Books
DRM’d to files, future-inscrutable (it’s hard
To read a floppy even now), and it looks
As if literature could be sloppified to death. Marred
By this thoughtless tech, who then can know it?
Will anyone be able to say: “he was a poet”?

(22.2.26) v 1.1

15 February 2026

The Annex

Behind the bookcase, in a precocious Tardis, eight
People hid. Who were they? Beleaguered Jews,
Forbidden to ride the trams, helped at great
Risk, boosted by the BBC one o’clock news.
You escaped by delving deeper, gladly forsook
That mere space for a patch of blue sky.
Noting, Proust-like, every moment’s tic,
Now joyous, now tedious, fierce you would brook
Exactly zero lack of frankness, pry-
ing into yourself, never missing a trick.
Two years later, not yet sweet sixteen,
The SS entrained you eastwards, the wrong liberation.
A bald and scabified body then, you could have been
Old today but for time’s cruel annexation.

(15.2.26) v 1.2

01 February 2026

On Stupidity

Why am I so demonstrably stupid? To wit:
Of the myriad Middle Welsh words I once
Learned, I remember only “arglwydd” – a pit-
iful reward for serried hours of study. Dunc-
ified by time, I muddle now through new
Topics, build on dodgy cerebral sand,
And hope for amelioration – although a slew
Of disproven past optimisms stand
As merciless slapdown to that. If only we
Could slip into wanted knowledge as a pelagic fish
Glides frictionlessly into the deepest sea;
Lordy – what a colossal mistake would be this wish.
Every “aargh” from stubbing your mental toe
On the rocks of incompetence brings wonders to re-know.

(1.2.26) v 1.1

25 January 2026

Laika

Laika, three-year-old street dog, tough

And hardy from surviving Russian frosts, white,

Pretty-faced – chosen for propaganda and TV feeds –

Put through gruelling, cruel even, training, learned

To submit to a tiny cage, suffer rough

Shaking and centrifuge forces, was judged the right

Calm temperament for Sputnik’s untested speeds.

But innocent, trusting little Laika earned

A terrible place in history. Not enough

To be first to circle and to log the first sight

Of earth: the first space death must needs

Be added – no more water, and rising heat turned

The cabin into hell. In her three orbits, and slow

Immolation, did Laika bark for Moscow snow?

(25.1.26) v 1.3

22 January 2026

Man, It’s Been A Laugh

At the end of the road of what was wont to be known
As a lifespan, I find myself still in a burgeon-
ing state of would, whose instantiations have grown
Since birth, encompassing: teddy-bear surgeon,
Tadpole breeder, epiphanic sum
Doer, about-to-burst appendix emergen-
cy survivor, 11+ scholarship plum
Getter, belated pianist, maths-besotted
Undergrad, Wrangler (Senior), dumb
Quantum mechanic, Grantchester scone, jam and clotted
Cream ingester, ham-strung karateka, horse-
Rider, journo, across-Central-Asia-spotted
Wanderer; these and myriad others, without remorse
I look back on. And forward, now, of course.

(22.1.26) v 1.1

18 January 2026

Bach, And Chopin’s Hands

Toying with extreme pieces by phthisic Fred

Chopin, wrapped in a shimmering sonic web,

– His “chromatic embroidery” – showy salon-bred

Fastidiousness painfully sutured into steel

And rubato beyond romanticism, you feel

His slim, spidery hands on yours. Seb

Bach, in absolute contrast, has no fingers:

Agility is coerced into mental hermeneutics. But

Cancrizans or homespun, a beauty abides; it lingers,

Heavenly, bilocating among us, cut

Back to awe-striking cerebrality, heart

And mind still cleaving. How his compostable brain’s

Cells concocted such a height of baroque art

Humbles. Bafflingly, though adamantine, compassion remains.

(18.1.26) v 1.3

11 January 2026

Pushkin’s “What If?”

On his journey to Arzrum (to hell with Tsarist

Bans) Pushkin left scorching Georgia, attained

Heavenly Armenia, and met on the road the bizarrest

Sight: a rough ox-cart that strained

Up a steep hill, grimly conveying

A body Tbilisi-ward, victim of a slaying

By an enraged mob in Tehran (the men said).

Turned out to be his friend, Griboyed-

ov – poet, playwright (“Woe from Wit”), minor

Composer, wounded duellist, and lastly late

Ambassador to the perfidious Persian court. His fate-

Filled exit was “instant and beautiful” – none finer,

Pushkin wrote. But their posthumous meeting was fake,

Just another “what if?” artists make.

(11.1.26) v 1.01