Written by
Pam Ayres |
You know this world is complicated, imperfect and oppressed
And it’s not hard to feel timid, apprehensive and depressed.
It seems that all around us tides of questions ebb and flow
And people want solutions but they don’t know where to go.
Opinions abound but who is wrong and who is right.
People need a prophet, a diffuser of the light.
Someone they can turn to as the crises rage and swirl.
Someone with the remedy, the wisdom, and the pearl.
Well . . . they should have asked my ‘usband, he’d have told’em then and there.
His thoughts on immigration, teenage mothers, Tony Blair,
The future of the monarchy, house prices in the south
The wait for hip replacements, BSE and foot and mouth.
Yes . . . they should have asked my husband he can sort out any mess
He can rejuvenate the railways he can cure the NHS
So any little niggle, anything you want to know
Just run it past my husband, wind him up and let him go.
Congestion on the motorways, free holidays for thugs
The damage to the ozone layer, refugees and drugs.
These may defeat the brain of any politician bloke
But present it to my husband and he’ll solve it at a stroke.
He’ll clarify the situation; he will make it crystal clear
You’ll feel the glazing of your eyeballs, and the bending of your ear.
Corruption at the top, he’s an authority on that
And the Mafia, Gadafia and Yasser Arafat.
Upon these areas he brings his intellect to shine
In a great compelling voice that’s twice as loud as yours or mine.
I often wonder what it must be like to be so strong,
Infallible, articulate, self-confident …… and wrong.
When it comes to tolerance – he hasn’t got a lot
Joyriders should be guillotined and muggers should be shot.
The sound of his own voice becomes like music to his ears
And he hasn’t got an inkling that he’s boring us to tears.
My friends don’t call so often, they have busy lives I know
But its not everyday you want to hear a windbag suck and blow.
Encyclopaedias, on them we never have to call
Why clutter up the bookshelf when my husband knows it all!
© Pam Ayres 2012
Official Website
http://pamayres.com/
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Written by
Alphonse de Lamartine |
Towards new and different shores forever driven onward,
Through endless darkness always borne away,
Upon the sea of time can we not lie at anchor
For but a single day?
Oh lake, the year has scarce run once more round its track,
And by these waves she had to see again,
Look! I have come alone to sit upon this rock
You saw her sit on then.
Beneath those towering cliffs, your waters murmur still,
And on their ragged flanks, your waves still beat,
The wind still flings those drops of spray, that last year fell
On her beloved feet.
Do you recall that evening, when we sailed in silence?
Upon your waters a great stillness held;
The only sounds were those of oars that struck in cadence
Your harmonious swells.
Then suddenly, accents that from the earth have perished
Made echoes ring from your enchanted shores.
The waters paid attention, and the voice I cherished
Gave utterance to these words:
“I beg you, sublime hours, pause in your headlong flight,
And time, suspend your race;
Allow us to savor the fugitive delights
Of our happiest days.
“So many souls down here in agony implore you
‘Fly fast!’ For them, flow on.
Carry off with their days their worry and their sorrow;
Forget the happy ones.
“Just a few more moments, I ask — in vain, for time
Eludes me and takes flight.
I tell the night to pass more slowly, and dawn comes
To chase away the night.
“Then let us love! Then let us fill each fleeting hour
With joy and ecstasy!
Man does not have a port; time does not have a shore.
It passes, and so do we.”
O jealous time, why do those moments of drunkenness
Where love flows over us in joyful waves
Have to fly far away from us at the same pace
As our unhappy days?
What? Can we not retain of them at least some trace?
What? Vanished as though they had never been?
Time, that gave them to us, and then took them away,
Won’t bring them back again.
Eternity, unbeing, dim past, profound abyss,
What do you do with the days that you engulf?
Tell me, will you ever return those hours of bliss
That you have stolen from us?
O lake, mute rocks, thick rushes, hidden caves, dark forest,
You whom time spares or can rejuvenate,
Beautiful nature, keep forevermore at least
The memory of that night.
Let it be in your slumber, and in your fierce storm,
And in the features of your laughing banks,
And in those dense black firs, and in that wild scarp
That above your shoreline hangs.
Let it be in the sounds that echo from your borders,
In the fine spray your waves throw to the wind,
And in the silver star that shines upon your waters
And in their depths is twinned.
Oh, may the plangent breeze, the softly sighing reeds,
The balmy fragrance of the air above,
May everything one sees, one hears, one feels, one breathes,
May all proclaim: they loved!
Translated by Peter Shor
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