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.........The Poetry Of.
................................................ David Ellis
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............... Radio News At Breakfast
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............. It is our silence that's so destructive
............. the ponderous weight of the unspoken,
............. limiting our dimensions to self and us.
............. The radio provides some precious cover,
............. offering a vicarious point of contact.
............. The vocabulary of the disassociated
............. touches only the commonplace; food,
............. children, arranging dreadful holidays.
............. I can't remember when we stopped
............. touching, was it before or after
............. the loving became just a way of life?
............. We care, of course we care, the years
............. have bound us tight to our troubles.
............. But the silence drips, into sadness,
............. and the news is inevitably bad.
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.............. At The Setting Of The Sun
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.............. Can you hear those quiet voices
.............. echoing between towering clouds
.............. and the high cold edge of infinity?
.............. Voices of young men with old eyes,
.............. forever searching dangerous skies.
.............. From Dakota, Devon and Dresden,
.............. united now, whispering in the thin air,
.............. remember, remember, remember."
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.............. Have you seen those smiling faces,
.............. grouped beneath the wings of war?
.............. The porcelain of their youth touched
.............. by the fine brush strokes of fear.
.............. Called to duty by childish dreams
.............. and a brave, unwavering belief
.............. in the bronzed abstraction of nation.
.............. Look at their fragility, and weep.
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.............. Have you visited their quite graves
.............. those obsessively neat white crosses?
.............. The smell of blood and burning flesh
.............. buried deep beneath manicured grass.
.............. They delivered death and embraced it
.............. in all the names of freedom and tyranny.
.............. At the setting of the sun we remember them,
.............. those glorious, winged children of Icarus?
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.............. (A tribute to all the young men who died
.............. in the air-war. 1940 - 1945.)
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.............. Cause To Dream
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.............. Why, he asks, can we not accept love
.............. for what it is, let it stand free of time
.............. and all the commonplace dimensions?
.............. Love has no breadth or depth, no order,
.............. nor can we command its violent tides.
.............. It just connects, and each connection,
.............. fits perfectly into its own time and place.
.............. Love cannot be measured nor enclosed
.............. within the confines of our compass,
.............. for it flows without movement, lights stars
.............. and fills the inner sanctity of atoms.
.............. It whirls with the fury of a tempest
.............. yet holds its fragrance fresh and still
.............. upon the drifting air of our memories.
.............. Love, like light, is woven in the universal
.............. order and gives man cause to dream.
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