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| Tara |
| The Engineer |
| The plums are for enjoying now |
I should have realised that I would never find you
on the beach or at the supermarket
or finding temporary release
with other abandoned souls.
At the cathedrals of Europe
my eyes danced to the architecture,
but within was nothing I sought and
from each I escaped to breathe again.
You were not among the jungles or
canyons or malls of the Americas,
or wandering the wilderness
of the African desert.
Nor were you seen on those snow-swept glaciers
or friendly coral reefs
that have been my pointless playgrounds
for too long now.
Across the vastness of Asia
they know you well
and utter your name in a thousand tongues.
I seek you everywhere
but know not your name,
only the mind from where you came.
And yet,
even now,
today,
within the glass and timber cases
of that dusty corner of Bloomsbury
I have found the signs that I have sought so long -
signs that others have idolized you too -
and,
with joy,
over the hundreds of years
since first I missed you.
How I cried to see that they had
so well conceived your form,
captured your beauty
and,
more joyous,
symbolized your compassion and wisdom.
In searching for you I have aged Earth years,
My mortality showing in my grey beard.
My purpose is no longer that vain immortality
through union and child,
nor reincarnation, which may displace again
but reunion with my nameless goddess,
my companion,
helpmate,
for what may still remain
of eternity.
Let me find you soon
and let me not fall again.
John Whiting
He was a scientist and an engineer.
He had a unique understanding of the physical world.
He could take the gods out of thunder
and the spirits out of will 'o the wisp.
He could read the earth and the sky,
name ten thousand species of fly,
talk for days on fossils and Darwinian theories,
give detailed replies on the obscurest of theories.
He could from terrain, flora and scanty soil data
deduce geological detail and changes in strata.
His knowledge of muon and boson, photon and quark
and particular matter that glows in the dark,
of forces of gravity, the weak and the strong,
on electron theory he could not be wrong.
His discourses on Newton, Einstein and Dalton
were followed by ones on Planck and Galton.
His thoughts were of the universe, black holes and cosmology
which spilled into metaphysics, God and theology.
His world was exciting, rich and complete,
until one day he chanced to meet,
a beautiful woman, with charm and meekness,
who broke him down through his hidden weakness.
She asked what he felt and what he adored
and found at one this richness flawed,
he searched, hesitated, dithered and fumbled,
was lost for words, or so he mumbled.
No one had asked him that before,
they'd wanted to know what he thought and saw.
He crumbled with knowledge that sent him reeling,
that his world was devoid of love and feeling.
John Whiting
Yes here I lie just as you see
content beneath this laden tree
patient for time and gravity
to deliver fruit direct to me.
For days and days the plums rain down
they hit my face, my neck, my crown -
this one is held by my open jaw,
my teeth dug into its fleshy core,
peeling back the fragile skin
the juices stain my bony chin.
Its essence is no use to me,
it came too late
just as you see,
by a month, a year, a century.
There are no muscles to crush its succulence,
no tongue to savour its sweetness,
no stomach to take its goodness
and just this clean and empty cavity
to relish the nowness of plums and gravity.
The plum will decay where it is held -
its stone will fall right through my jaw
and join the ones that fell before
where once I had blue eyes that saw
and a throat
that spoke -
If only I could tell you how -
reach up to that hanging bough -
the plums are for enjoying now.
John Whiting
Published in The Coventry Poetry Prize Millennium Anthology