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Julian Scutts Poem
We decided to turn Paradise into real estate.
Trouble was, we weren’t too sure where to find it,
Though experts had located it somewhere
Slightly west or east (left or right, looking north)
Of a point midway between the Euphrates and the Nile.
According to some, it moved sideways a few inches each year.
Computer systems would relieve us of Adam’s curse,
Which many wanted back as soon as they had been relieved,
And Eve discarded more and more items of covering,
And everything (a forgivable exaggeration)
In the garden (the upkeep of which had to be paid for by taxpayers)
Was lovely (or at least pleasant enough for most).
The Devil, who no longer existed (save as a literary metaphor)
Had been extradited on a drugs smuggling charge
And was last seen heading north.
The Forbidden Tree had been cordoned off by
Security people and no serpents were allowed near.
One day we woke up to discover
That Paradise had absconded in the night.
The more sensational headlines read PARADISE LOST,
But this was watered down in a subsequent official press statement
to read PARADISE MISLAID.
As to its new location, even the pundits failed to agree
Whether and if so, by how much, it had moved left or right.
It was even rumoured that the Devil
Had bribed the Angel at the Gate
and infiltrated the Intelligence Service.
The Ministry of Defence reported that a large flying object
Had appeared as a blob on the radar before slipping off,
And some wag even suggested that this was Paradise in fact.
Adam uttered “What the..” under his breath,
switched off the telly – it was an old war film –
And gave Eve a knowing look.
Eve didn’t fancy an early night,
And the ensuing row
Raised Cain.
Copyright © Julian Scutts | Year Posted 2018
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Julian Scutts Poem
Another Gold
Far from profit’s crass allure,
At a place somewhat obscure,
A poet sweeps his shepherd’s lyre;
He sings of gold, of heaven’s fire.
No. not of gold that Midas stores
Behind fast-bolted treasury doors
But of gold, that, eve and dawn,
Touches sheaves of ripened corn.
More emeralds than all wealth can gain
Has to these eyes the verdant plain.
Without the mind all precious stones
Have lesser worth than dead men’s bones.
The original prompt for the last poem was one I wrote on being requested to resign from a computer company.
Far from profit’s crass allure
At a place somewhat obscure,
Gordon preaches now Cobol.
Fortran and, I believe, Algol,
Unto flocks of Gaelic birds,
Black-faced sheep and long-haired herds.
In Acton’s fleshpots, in his den,
The spotlight first is beamed on Ken.
Beware the luscious woman’s wiles
Or you’ll forget your disks and files.
It would clearly be a sin
To make no mention of dear Lin.
May married bliss attend thy way
And commensurate be thy pay.
Sandra’s performance sets the pace
Robin’s too a similar case.
His hunting prowess earns him fame
In matters that concern big game.
Flower power propels this happy throng
Which means that little can go wrong
As long as Rose your leader be.
May rays of fortune shine on thee
On yon high Olympic mountain
Where Gord and Mary have been scouting.
There beneath the royal wall
Our Ted flogs bangles on his stall.
My ditty now has reached its span
Remember me, the also-ran.
Copyright © Julian Scutts | Year Posted 2017
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Julian Scutts Poem
I am located in a park, where I am contemplating adjacent trees.
One tree in particular has caught my attention.
With each thought I feel ever more at one with this tree.
How can I contemplate trees without becoming one?
Just think what happened to Narcissus, who turned into a daffodil.
Or the nymph Daphne, who became a laurel tree.
What's so bad about being a tree anyway?
Is not it a good thing to put down roots?
But what about the loss of mobility that would follow?
Trees have carefree lives, though.
No taxes, rushing to work, paying bills.
On the other hand in my present state
I need not worry about woodworm, acid rain, being pruned,
woodpeckers or serving the needs of leg-lifting dogs.
And family affairs? Hmm.. Do I want my kids to be nuts?
It's all very well to branch out - in metaphoric terms, that is.
Oh, that board meeting! It’s time to go.
Hey, my limbs are stiff.
I can’t move my trunk. My fingers are green.
Silly thought, no one turns into a tree these days!
Aaaaahhhhh!
Swish, swish. Rustle rustle..
Copyright © Julian Scutts | Year Posted 2017
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Julian Scutts Poem
I'm hardly awake
and I start to quake.
If I should choose
to switch on the news,
a message of doom
deepens my gloom.
From delusion to delusion
a world in confusion
tumbles and stumbles
as everything crumbles.
Then I see Sally
and hope starts to rally.
She's only seven
and a present from heaven.
I then hear a tweet
and sorrows retreat.
The sight of a dove
reminds me of love.
Copyright © Julian Scutts | Year Posted 2020
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Julian Scutts Poem
You are old, Uncle Joseph,
your short stepping gait
has aroused much comment
in the media of late.
My steps may be short
but I still get along.
Like Johnny Walker
I'm still going strong.
You are old, Uncle Joseph.
If I err, please forgive..
Your memory, they say,
somewhat resembles a sieve.
Being forgetful isn't so bad
and let me tell you why.
It often avoids the embarrassment
of having to tell a lie.
You are old Uncle Joseph,
you look like a clown
on certain occasions
when you nearly fall down.
Young man, whatever you say
i can still pull a mighty hard punch,
so why not take an old man's advice
and leave straight away to have lunch.
Copyright © Julian Scutts | Year Posted 2024
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Julian Scutts Poem
Six wives - three Catherines, two Annes and a Jane
were married to Henry in the course of his reign.
An Anne and a Catherine met their end by the axe.
Anne Boleyn was too haughty, Catherine Howard too lax.
Henry's very first wife was Catherine of Aragon,
both pious and faithful, a virtuous paragon.
Producing no sons, she incurred a divorce.
Anne of Cleves followed a similar course.
Her face was spotty; she had bad teeth and bad breath.
Don’t trust a portrait, the wise man saith..
Jane Seymore very sadly died as she gave birth.
Henry's last wife, Catherine Parr, was a woman of worth.
More a nurse than a playmate, she bathed Hal with affection
and did a good job to relieve his dejection.
Envoi
So that's the close of this ditty,
which I think is rather a pity.
No, I'm not the Poet Laureate,
as the Royal Court never saw to it.
If I were paid to do so,
I'd keep writing like Robinson Crusoe.
Copyright © Julian Scutts | Year Posted 2017
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Julian Scutts Poem
No one seemed to take much note at first.
Old-timers on park benches passed a comment or two,
Somebody wrote a letter to the local rag,
but no one (who mattered, that is)
really seemed to mind.
Of course, you will always have
your bellyachers and woolly romantics
with nothing better to do than whine
about the way things are going, -
the loss of bird life, the silenced dawn chorus,
the vanishing English hedgerow,
you know the sort of thing.
The leaves began falling long before autumn.
"Funny," they said, "curious," "that's one for the book."
This was all very interesting for botanists,
environmentalists, chemists and the like.
Such words as "pollution," "soil erosion"
and "deprivation" were bandied about,
but no one was much the wiser though
the experts were agreed on one point.
"Photosynthesis provides the basis of all life."
This was interesting but nothing like
as interesting as the favourite for Ascot,
the football results, the Top of the Pops,
the late night thriller or the FT index.
All that changed.
Foresters and timber merchants became concerned
about the decaying cores of many trees.
The government became concerned, too,
(not so much about the fate of the trees as such
as about the effect the scarcity of wood
was having on the paper industry and inflation).
Then the doom-watchers caught the scent
and there was talk of an imminent ecological collapse,
but the man in the street still
passed it all off as the usual load of rot.
Then Kew Gardens, Epping Forest, Central Park,
the Everglades and the Bois de Boulogne
went the way of all wood.
A tramp, locally known as Nat the Nut,
was found in the village cemetery gibbering,
Before being bundled into an ambulance,
he was heard to say:
"With these very ears I heard 'em groan,
and this is what one of 'em said:
'Tonight we are dying, yew and I,
and the morrow sees us dead.'
And the willows wept in the valleys
and the trees on the hills pined away."
When the harvest failed,
the church bells tolled
for a woe no man could gainsay,
for none doubted then the trees were lost
or held it was only they.
Copyright © Julian Scutts | Year Posted 2017
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Julian Scutts Poem
They said a funny Latin word,
they said that you were dead,
yet merrily you wagged your tail
when I took you to the vet.
You were not kind to chickens,
as well the neighbors know,
or come to that, to ducks and geese,
and yet I loved you so.
Oh, to recall the bygone days
we roamed and roved together,
sometimes when snow lay all about,
sometimes o'er hills of heather.
Our walkies to the liquor store,
our excursions to the bar,
and all those times you led me home
when I couldn't use the car.
At night, I swear, an angel
looms in the purple sky,
and on a gently twinkling leash
you, Lady, lead on high.
Copyright © Julian Scutts | Year Posted 2017
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Julian Scutts Poem
Milton’s Paradise Lost is a book I sometimes dip into. For modern
readers it does not lend itself to a quick browse. It’s pretty clear from the
start who dunnit.
My version in paperback contains insightful explanatory notes.
Apparently “Science” in the Tempter’s words“ O Sacred,
Wise and Wisdom giving Plant, Mother of Science”,* being derived from the Latin verb “scire”, really means what we now understand as “knowledge”.
This note seems to be for the benefit of such innocents who are
unaware of the process of diachronic semantic change, and who
may also entertain misgivings about nuclear power plants.
Newton’s apple might jolt us into considering matters of considerable
gravity.
Today we are concerned more about fallout than with the Fall, more
with the atom than with Adam.
Science is not primarily concerned with moral questions, yet
we have all benefited from science. That science has also
furnished Man with the means of self-extermination and involves environmental pollution on a global scale we must accept as collateral damage, call it what you will.
Science is not primarily concerned with moral questions.
Even though scientific knowledge is based on the axiom that our sensory perceptions, the experiments, observations and theories of science cohere,
being phenomena in one and the same time-space continuum, a scientist
should not be diverted from his or her quest by troublesome thoughts about extraneous factors, be they social, political or moral in nature, that impinge on the awareness of one indivisible reality.
In Milton’s day “science” simply meant “knowledge”.
Milton was concerned with the problem of good and evil, the relationship of God and Man, the conflict between Truth and Mammon, not with the complex realities of our modern industrial high-tech world.
Perhaps cogito ergo sum, that premise of the modern scientific method, also has a moral dimension.
Milton’s Paradise Lost is a book I occasionally dip into.
Copyright © Julian Scutts | Year Posted 2017
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Julian Scutts Poem
William the First was our last king to come uninvited
though invincible armadas have sometimes been sighted.
Foreign kings were imported in cases of doubt.
Native kings had the habit of getting thrown out.
In the War of the Roses none tipped the scales
till the fray was joined by young Richmond from Wales.
A house like the Tudors for to bring to an end
on virgin queens you may safely depend.
Then came the Stuarts, who in Scotland had root,
but being too tactless, they were given the boot.
Though of Orange the house was not without fame,
some Irishmen spit when they hear Billy’s name.
George the First from Hanover as in matters English ill versed;
for affairs of state a state of affairs by no means the worst.
George the Third, however, spoke English quite well,
so Yanks up in arms told the Liberty Bell.
Thus Frenchmen and Dutchmen, Germans and Danes
have made their subjects rack their poor brains.
But the history of monarchs whose accents were poor
holds even today many lessons in store.
At the hustings all parties will promise us aught,
but after elections some memories are short.
“A kink is a man, no less and no more,”
said a very wise king as he sat on the shore.
“Let each of you here, thane or serf, be astute.
Don’t expect me to do what I plainly canute.
Copyright © Julian Scutts | Year Posted 2017
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