soundofmanywaters

 Epistemological Breakdown, Law and Liberty, Perspectives Epistemological Breakdown Somewhere in the great nowhere Which is mostly where we live now Hear silent thunder, watch the dark flashes Of our war upon our minds. From the freezing North Blizzards of research papers bear Proofs that there can never be anyone At home to read them. From fecund southern jungles Simian hoots and squeals blare Out the triumph of unreason In the strangling dark. Between gibberish and prose Poets have nothing to say So we let off a few fireworks To defy the void. There was once a healer Who presided at the wedding Of soul and substance, word and world But we sacked him. Broken homes bring banishment. We tramp the streets of ransacked cities Littered with scribbled papers, Hooted and haunted. Law and Liberty Symbol of Rolling liberty This wave’s exact curl And dash upon the shore Is no stampede of freedom: Or deeper where the shark Slides silent in the water His fanged tyranny Has not the sea’s licen...

Beauty like a stranger The nightingale's song is a rip in the sullen Stuff that seals our ears The starlight stabs through Cloying custom that curtains Delight from our eyes The love of neighbour A ram battering blockades Around hardened hearts. Come like a stranger Nightingale, starlight, neighbour Sing and shine and love. Happisburgh   That house is gone now That clung to the cliff Over the North Sea's gnawing. There was a lane here, tremulous With goldfinches, their coloratura Gone to join the long drowned church, the lost voices of children and bells. Rustling or roaring, Joan, The sea sounds always called to you And now in the ocean's endless rolling You too are far out under wave. Handsworth Hill: Autumn Many leaves decaying on the tree many shades of yellow, green and bronze many shakings in the shivering  breeze As the breeze to these leaves so the leaves to the steady tree so the tree to the hillside the hill to the earth the earth to the mind of the One. The breez...

10,000 plus views! It was amazing to come back from our summer break in Finland to discover that SoundOfManyWaters has now received so much attention. In June 2025 I was excited to report that SOMW had received 3,000 views. By May 2026 that had grown to 8,000. Now we are in five figure territory! Thank you for taking the time and trouble to visit this blog and check out these poems. I hope that you have found them enjoyable, meaningful and inspiring. However I have suspicions about some of the views. The stats are starting to show strange spikes. All of a sudden, on a single day, there are a couple of hundred views in a country where there has been little or no interest. Why should several hundred people in Vietnam or Singapore or Germany or the US suddenly all decide on the same day to check out my work? I surmise that these views do not come from humans but from bots. My guess is that tech corporations are hunting down text to feed into their large language models so that when a bore...

Remembrance, Red Army Choir, Hand Crafted Remembrance So from your high cross did you see afar in the armour, swords, the boots and horses, the tramp of armies off to another war the flags of battles and the hills of corpses? So did you hear among our taunts and sneers The echoing centuries of rage and hate? the weeping lovers and the mothers' fears, The curses hurled, the ever hardened heart? And when they gave you bitter vinegar could you taste upon parched lips the sting of pain? the mad, the violated, those who  bear sorrows drowned by the victors' idiot song? Finally, when they bashed an iron nail  into each hand, and in your side a spear aimed for your life, could your heart still feel Compassion for the ones who slew you there? An athlete’s sweat, a mother’s pain, are wounds Of love: nothing lives without a sacrifice. Not the bite of nails, it is love that binds Your broken body to this killing place. Red Army Choir This is not a war Rumbled the tank as it crushed a car...

Highland Fling, Michelangelo, Florence, Stained Glass at Harnhill, Dark Lady [An ekphrastic poem is one inspired by another work of art, for example Keats and his Grecian Urn or Auden, in his Musee des Beaux Arts, by the works of Brueghel.] Highland Fling You are not dancing but      Floating Over crossed Scottish swords      Flashing Defiance at gravity      Flouting The drag of mortality      Freeing Your heart from its heaviness      Flaunting The reward of your training      Flying In the gale of the spirit      Flaming Heart, face and hands skyward      Flinging. Your dance is ending, the pipes are      Falling Silent, you rejoin the world of the      Floundering And become again my dad.      Fleeting My glimpse of your sky-flung soul. My dad was a Highland dancer and a very good one, so much so that he became a judge a...

Bottom, A New Orpheus, The Clown Bottom I hope that others look on me as deep, Witty, perhaps, serene and debonair: But I’m known by the company I keep And I’ve got you behind me everywhere. Others I try to approach with dignity To give a good impression to their mind: I turn to go, another view of me Presents – yours is the face I leave behind. My softest paper shows consideration, I faithfully transport you to the loo: Why must you interrupt my conversation And air what hardly passes for your view? Prelates and professors, potentates, Please don’t look down on me for my poor bottom: Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and William Gates, And Taylor Swift - you all know you’ve got ‘em. Almighty Lord, that has made all things well, You know the secrets that we try to hide. You know it’s bad for us when egos swell: You gave us bottoms to bring down our pride. A New Orpheus The Muse is a flighty bird and proud Who stays half hidden in her high cloud, Will not flit down and talk to those Who would be ...