The Cobbler's efforts

[The Cobbler's Apprentice]

Well, I have almost reached the end of my old poems (at least, those that I still wish to share) Two more here. I may find a few more.

Back in Costa's, my therapeutic hideaway from fairly hectic circumstances, at least for a 72 year old looking for a quiet life. Strangely I begin to see that it is within the "hectic" that the grace and true blessings can be found. Then again, a nice cup of cappuccino.... is not to be sneezed at.

The first poem reveals why I never made much upward progress in my office working life. Instead of getting on with my work I would be idling, looking around......

often as I look around me
at odd times of the day
I see people as they might have been
if love had found a way
a hope a chance a maybe
will flicker or a while
a face more used to sorrow
will break into a smile
then the past will catch the present
and a shadow fall once more
to leave the heart so lightly touched
as lonely as before


The second concerns our reaction to the death of those we love. I've sometimes been shocked by what could be called "testimonies of faith" by those touched by the death of a loved one. Once I worked in an office where we had an ardent Christian fundamentalist. Hard core. In fact a kind man with an open genuine smile - demonstrating at least to me what I have said a few times here.....that often we are "saved" in spite of our beliefs rather than because of them. Anyway, this guy told us that his mother was seriously ill. We would get an update now and again. One morning he came in and one guy asked him if there was any news of his mother, was she well. "Yes she has never been better" he said (and I knew what was coming) "She is with Jesus in heaven." Stoic, not a blink. To him, a demonstration of "faith". Whatever he thought it was, the man who had asked him how his mother was was not impressed.

Faith and belief. Opposites. At least as I see it and experience it.

Another "testimony" I remember, of a 12 year old girl of a deeply Christian family who lost her brother. She said she had never shed a tear, that he was in heaven.

Strangely enough, Martin Luther seemed to approach the "middle way" of the Dharma. When he lost his young daughter he said:- "How strange. To know that she is safe with Jesus in heaven yet to feel such sadness.

To me this relates to the story of the zen master who was seen by a novice sitting beside those who had lost a family member, weeping with them. "You of all people" the novice said, "I would have thought would be beyond all this." The master said, between his sobs, "It is this that puts me beyond it."

You see it, know it, or you don't. Finding our true humanity is not, in effect, to deny it; it will never be to betray this world, the only one we have known, for some imagined "other". If you lose those you love, you grieve and weep, not reach for some "belief". The healing, the true grace, is in the tears.

"Jesus wept"

Here is the poem......

Death dissolves with distance
And the questions asked
More academic at the rim
Than at the centres blast

Affect and affectation
Ours until is heard
The answer told by death itself
When our heart breaks in turn.

[The Cobbler's Apprentice]

Well, I have almost reached the end of my old poems (at least, those that I still wish to share) Two more here. I may find a few more.

Back in Costa's, my therapeutic hideaway from fairly hectic circumstances, at least for a 72 year old looking for a quiet life. Strangely I begin to see that it is within the "hectic" that the grace and true blessings can be found. Then again, a nice cup of cappuccino.... is not to be sneezed at.

The first poem reveals why I never made much upward progress in my office working life. Instead of getting on with my work I would be idling, looking around......

often as I look around me
at odd times of the day
I see people as they might have been
if love had found a way
a hope a chance a maybe
will flicker or a while
a face more used to sorrow
will break into a smile
then the past will catch the present
and a shadow fall once more
to leave the heart so lightly touched
as lonely as before


The second concerns our reaction to the death of those we love. I've sometimes been shocked by what could be called "testimonies of faith" by those touched by the death of a loved one. Once I worked in an office where we had an ardent Christian fundamentalist. Hard core. In fact a kind man with an open genuine smile, good to know until the subject of religion came up - demonstrating at least to me what I have said a few times here.....that often we are "saved" in spite of our beliefs rather than because of them. Anyway, this guy told us that his mother was seriously ill. We would get an update now and again. One morning he came in and one guy asked him if there was any news of his mother, was she well. "Yes she has never been better" he said (and I knew what was coming) "She is with Jesus in heaven." Stoic, not a blink. To him, a demonstration of "faith". Whatever he thought it was, the man who had asked him how his mother was was not impressed.

Faith and belief. Opposites. At least as I see it and experience it.

Another "testimony" I remember, of a 12 year old girl of a deeply Christian family who lost her brother. She said she had never shed a tear, that he was in heaven.

Strangely enough, Martin Luther seemed to approach the "middle way" of the Dharma. When he lost his young daughter he said:- "How strange. To know that she is safe with Jesus in heaven yet to feel such sadness."

To me this relates to the story of the zen master who was seen by a novice sitting beside those who had lost a family member, weeping with them. "You of all people" the novice said, "I would have thought would be beyond all this." The master said, between his sobs, "It is this that puts me beyond it."

You see it, know it, or you don't. Finding our true humanity is not, in effect, to deny it; it will never be to betray this world, the only one we have known, for some imagined "other". If you lose those you love, you grieve and weep, not reach for some "belief". The healing, the true grace, is in the tears.

"Jesus wept"

Here is the poem......

Death dissolves with distance
And the questions asked
More academic at the rim
Than at the centres blast

Affect and affectation
Ours until is heard
The answer told by death itself
When our heart breaks in turn.

[The Cobbler's Apprentice]

Sometimes said that the road goes on forever, the journey is home, etc etc, but this particular road has reached its end. A last two poems and my barrel is empty.

The first, I can still remember the incident, window shopping in my hometown and this lady was quite taken by some writing desk in the window. My muse was awoken ( ) and I penned this:-

Oh! What an exquisite desk!" she said,
Gushing away from her husband's hand.
Then "Oh! what a lovely four-poster bed!"
(Later the Ming vase on its stand).

So she continued, voice rising shrill,
Straining to wrench life and death apart,
Using American Express to fill
The empty mansions of the heart.

As someone else once said (not me I hasten to add!) there's only one thing worse than a woman with a mouth and that's a woman with a credit card.....

Quickly onto the next ode, which makes me think of dreams. Some seem to get a lot out of dreams. Interpretation and so forth. My own dreams tend to be fairly mundane. Carl Jung once had a dream when still quite young. Brought up in a fairly restrictive religious home, apparently he had a dream where a gigantic turd dropped down onto a cathedral, crushing it beneath its weight. For Jung, such was the end of organised religions. I'm not surprised!

Anyway, I obviously did have a dream back then and maybe it was conjured up by having tried to suppress the thoughts of the suffering of others. (I seem to remember that there was a dog that followed me to work, a couple of days in a row, a hapless creature)


I'm glad that dog has disappeared,
The one that followed me to work
With limping leg and lonely eyes,
It's coat smeared hard in night-time dirt.

I'm glad that child has disappeared,
It's face and body built to shock,
It's skin stretched tight accross its bones;
I switched the News off, read a book.

Yet they both came back that night
In a dream of a cripple with a twisted knee
Who, pointing with two fingers, begged:-
"Help me"

Maybe we are born for empathy?

Whatever, no preaching intended, but just to finish what has been an enjoyable thread to post:-

"May true Dharma continue. No blame. Be kind. Love everything."

[The Cobbler's Apprentice]

Sometimes said that the road goes on forever, the journey is home, etc etc, but this particular road has reached its end. A last two poems and my barrel is empty.

The first, I can still remember the incident, window shopping in my hometown and this lady was quite taken by some writing desk in the window. My muse was awoken ( ) and I penned this:-

Oh! What an exquisite desk!" she said,
Gushing away from her husband's hand.
Then "Oh! what a lovely four-poster bed!"
(Later the Ming vase on its stand).

So she continued, voice rising shrill,
Straining to wrench life and death apart,
Using American Express to fill
The empty mansions of the heart.

As someone else once said (not me I hasten to add!) there's only one thing worse than a woman with a mouth and that's a woman with a credit card.....

Quickly onto the next ode, which makes me think of dreams. Some seem to get a lot out of dreams. Interpretation and so forth. My own dreams tend to be fairly mundane. Carl Jung once had a dream when still quite young. Brought up in a fairly restrictive religious home, apparently he had a dream where a gigantic turd dropped down a cathedral, crushing it beneath its weight. For Jung, such was the end of organised religions. I'm not surprised!

Anyway, I obviously did have a dream back then and maybe it was conjured up by having tried to suppress the thoughts of the suffering of others. (I seem to remember that there was a dog that followed me to work, a hapless creature)


I'm glad that dog has disappeared,
The one that followed me to work
With limping leg and lonely eyes,
It's coat smeared hard in night-time dirt.

I'm glad that child has disappeared,
It's face and body built to shock,
It's skin stretched tight across its bones;
I switched the News off, read a book.

Yet they both came back that night
In a dream of a cripple with a twisted knee
Who, pointing with two fingers, begged:-
"Help me"

Maybe we are born for empathy?

Whatever, no preaching intended, but just to finish what has been an enjoyable thread to post:-

"May true Dharma continue. No blame. Be kind. Love everything."

[The Cobbler's Apprentice]

Thinking I was finished here but the way of no-calculation is a constant source of surprises. Another poem popped into my head, a dustbin at times (which I call "holistic" on more up-market forums). The poem, prompted I think, by a few rather unsavoury posts of others. Each to their own of course......if others wish to equate new born children, dying unloved in their own excrement, with "demons" that is their business. At least the Buddha seemed to have it right, equating suffering with ignorance (rather than a punishment by some transcendent Being for sin)

Anyway, I'm waffling as usual. I blame the cappuccino.

Here is the poem, dredged up from memory, called "Without a Doubt"

Before the angry questions come
I snatch Belief and strike God dumb.
I use the Rich Man's stock in trade,
The answers that our fathers made
And with such trinkets
All about
Salvation comes
Without a doubt

(An obvious touch of irony at the end, but please don't let me guide anyone's mind..... )

[The Cobbler's Apprentice]

I was thinking that I had reached the end of my old poems, yet there was another that I was reluctant to air. A bit embarrassed by it. Thinking back I was going through my existentialist phase, posturing on about the "absurdity" of it all. Quite funny in a strange sort of way.

Earlier on I was in Costa's (again) and actually began this round of waffling, but then lost the lot in cyberspace - which was possibly for the best. But here I am again. I remember saying that it has to be Costa's and that Starbucks just doesn't do it for me. I think that dates back to when I went to Starbucks with a mate called Marc. They asked for his name to put on his cup and he said it was "Mark with a 'c' ". When he got his cup it had Cark on it. Anyway, moving on to the poem......

Specks of light that mourn and sing
dreaming and remembering.
Specks of light that know they must
write poetry on the cosmic dust,
And see it brushed away with scorn
by rock and wind that's never born,
And know each work of every hand
becomes like Christ's words on the sand.


EDIT:- I actually thought I had aborted the above post......but must have pressed the wrong button!

More to say but maybe another day.

[The Cobbler's Apprentice]

Back in Costa's and another Memo from the Pure Land. As was posted yesterday, most of my waffle was lost in cyberspace. Maybe Reality-as-is has its/his or her's reasons.

It seemed to have to do with a contrast between Faith and belief. I see them as opposed. Faith "lets go" while belief clings. Faith unites, belief divides. I remember in some way also contrasting Faith with what another has called "narcissistic grooming" where by various means we seek to build a "self" we can be pleased with, and if we have belief in God, will get us a pass mark from whatever Deity we imagine to exist. And so, reaching the Pearly Gates we enter with an "of course". Rather than being surprised, even grateful, when the gates open.

I've dug out my old poetry books so now there are more to come. Many I can barely remember writing.

I find sitting here therapeutic. I think I mentioned before about the Samuel Beckett play, "Krapp's Last Tape" where this guy listens to himself as he spoke years before. The current Krapp has lost all connection. I think maybe this can be liberating. If we recognised ourselves then surely we have been building a "self" and, perhaps much worse, even become pleased with it?

Anyway, I found in my two little books a short verse that was written following the Falklands War. Mentioned before, when the wheelchairs were unwelcome. I wrote this after watching the news, another plane landing at the RAF base at Brize Norton with returned servicemen. A tape would be put across to hold back the families, women and children mostly. The soldiers would disembark and at some point the tape would be breached and the little kiddies would run towards their dads. Soon after came another news item, this from Buenos Aires, a funeral cortege for young airmen killed in the conflict. Following the coffins were the mothers, faces torn with grief, wringing their hands.

My poem is inadequate, but thinking back, trying to make some connection for better or for worse, I'm glad I wrote it:-

the faces of grief are on the march
far from where reunions bless
(where sons and daughters are lifted high
by arms returned to tenderness)

Short - there is another verse, but not now.

I think of being "conformed to the world", the NT verse:- "Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind." I would relate the building of a self with "being conformed to the world. " I'm glad that even back then I resisted the "Falklands Spirit" that was said to unite the nation.

The wind blows where it will, trying to trap it and make it our own is to plot a path in what is always, truly, a pathless land. Thomas Merton once spoke of the New Testament as "the wind blowing through the trees". The word becomes Word. Or as Yun-men said, the appropriate statement.

I was intending to post another poem, about ivy creeping around the wall. I saw it in the books I found and could not remember writing it at all.

It made me think of Dogen's observation, that "flowers fade even though we love them, weeds grow even though we hate them."

But luckily, perhaps, no time now.

[The Cobbler's Apprentice]

Not in Costa's today although I do have a take-away. Others above discuss Maya but the coffee tastes good. I'm across the high street in the Oxfam Book & Music Shop, hoping that today we do not get as many customers as last week, when my music and reading were disturbed far too often. Volunteer work is not all it's cracked up to be.

I'm listening to Leonard Cohen, a true poet. I posted his song Anthem up above on Inter-faith, the version with the video of birds and such. Where else could it go? Profound words about forgetting our "perfect offering" and coming to love "as refugees," a beautiful song.

Having discovered my old books of poetry, reading them now I recognise that I was never a true poet. But it does raise the question of just how "egalitarian" Reality is. Is the authenticity of love, or anything else of worth, measured by how well it is articulated in words? Something to reflect upon as we come to know ourselves.

Here is one four line poem I found. An authentic question even if the verse would now be deemed "juvenilia" had I ever achieved anything better.....

Is death the final end of all
Is there no God above
Did truth produce the Kremlin
And lies, Teresa's love?

Another I found was called Church Service. I found it funny. It seems I was never inspired much by such things. It's quite long and will perhaps induce boredom, but I'll tap it out while awaiting the next customer.

Our breath like demons casted out
Our noses pinched by frost and doubt
We faithful wend our Narrow Way
Betwixt the graveyard's clodded clay.
Soon the cold stone church is reached
Wherein the Crucified is preached
Demeanours miserable as sin
With solemn gait we enter in.
Then, sought and found, a frozen pew
We seat ourselves, the Chosen Few
Beneath the stained glass windows glow
Black-bibled all, row on row.
Too soon the vicar comes (with style)
Replete with oily, plastic smile
And all resigned we hear him say:-
"Welcome all, now let us pray"
Heads all bend in pious prayer
The God Man's words fly thick and fair
(Some brethren muse upon Good News
Others contemplate their shoes)
Then heads are raised, the organ booms
Throats are cleared, the first hymn looms
Hymn-book pages softly rustle
Through the flock a gentle bustle
And then all sing of Love Eternal
Voices torn and cracked, infernal
All wondering at God's wondrous ways
That turns such discord into praise.
Watched by the Vicar's gimlet eye
More hymns and prayers pass by and by
Then to his pulpit, proud he goes,
To spout his Sermon's sundry woes.
It's "Woe to this" and "woe to that"
And "woe to those who chit and chat"
It's "woe to those who smile and sing"
Woe to almost everything!
But joy! yes joy! to those who mourn
To those whose yokes are bravely borne.
To everyone now graced by dread:-
"You can all start living once you're dead"
Then down he comes, another hymn
Its words unyielding, stark and grim.
But then at last! an end to woe!
Those Holy Words "You now can go"
We shuffle out into the aisle
Shuffle up it, single file.
Just one thing now to look out for
The silver plate beside the door.
We all approach it in a line
Each fumbling for our smallest coin.
The vicar's eyes speak loud and clear:-
"Please, no Widow's Mites in here"
And so we place a note instead
And passed the vicar proudly tread
And so on through the oak door where
We breathe once more the Lords fresh air.

[sky]

I really enjoyed your Poetry Cobb, especially the last one, it is excellent I actually visualised sitting in the Church Pew....

[The Cobbler's Apprentice]

My own visualisation centred around getting out of the pew ASAP!