poetry diary

Ramparts against ebbing light;
clouds like sands.
Is this a fairytale come true
or folly on the beach?

Denying time and space;
towers like hands.
Holding this hill and place;
too much to teach.

Laughter dulls against your stones;
gates like frowns.
Fashion passes by and dies,
silent walls impeach.

Lost in time, waiting for wars,
which passed like thieves.
You can’t move, cannot change;
you’re far beyond my reach.

————

The light and clouds yesterday were fantastic, above the castle walls, and looked just like the pattern you get on beaches, after the tide goes out. (I play tennis next to Warwick Castle most weeks. This time we lost our tennis match 6/0 6/3, but I can’t blame the distraction for that.)

Submitted to Jingle Poetry Potluck. This is one of an occasional series on castles I’ve been doing since last year.

Always there;
embedded in your town,
like the patrician you are
and somehow always have been.

Haughty and magnetic;
drawing people now,
and warriors then,
like a wick –
a wick to war, so apt
to your name
and the role you play.

I like the orange glow at night:
the warm lit walls against the night
reflected in the river;
windows flash and flags implied
on slightly random towers.

Too many windows, though,
to defend –
your power is much more subtle.

You haven’t passed a thousand years
without knowing how to flatter
and adapt:
a twenty-first century castle,
conceived in nine fourteen.

© 2011 Matthew Rhodes

Not sure about this one – I may try some major variants. I play tennis beneath these walls twice a week.

Only the burning remains:
blackened stones and silent rock –
gatehouse to nowhere.

This is a land of half-myth;
rebels and oppressive lords –
lost in leaves and fog.

Reality is stranger;
original democrats –
rioting for votes.

Like Cairo today, they cared
and acted against the odds –
looking for better.

Manicured grass and dark stones;
neither one thing nor the other –
today’s castle sleeps.

Robin Hood was more open;
confronting evil with hope –
he led from the front.

Copyright ©2011 Matthew Rhodes

Nottingham castle was burned down by the citizens of the town in 1832, rioting for the right to vote. I was born and brought up there, so know it well.

Long, dark breaths surround you,
Desecrated, ruined towers.
You came with horses and men;
bent on violence, rape and war.

Drawn in by gentle slopes:
rich rolling curves and soft warm shoulders;
dew-fresh earth, dark and moist;
surf pounding, driving underneath.

Walls built for domination;
erect and proud against the sky.
short-lived all, time caresses:
stones tumble, lie still where they fall.

Quiet hills whisper mists;
absorbing and dissolving strength.
Long, dark breaths surround you,
desecrated, ruined towers.

© Matthew Rhodes 2011

Image

The men who lived here turned to rock,
and fell into the sea.

It seemed a good idea at first,
to build above the surf;

A fortress hewn apart from land,
a playground for the gulls.

Security and peace for all,
he promised and they came.

The waves and cliffs kept out the foe,
and held apart the race.

But soon the greyness of the days,
the rhythm of the foam,

Ate into minds and into hearts,
and memories fell too.

Then women left, and no more came,
and coldly fell the rain.

The men who lived here turned to rock,
and fell into the sea.

© Matthew Rhodes 2011

image

In a place like Kenilworth
you see the character of a country:
a castle built for a single party,
still remembered
after four hundred years.

A queen came here once —
in the days of power

(for a week).

And so did a general,
puritanical,
and not so fond of parties,
or queens,
sixty years later blew down the walls,
drained the lake,
and spoiled the fun —
when the days were earnest

(in an hour).

But not the memory.

People come to see the walls,
not the holes.

And who would build afresh
such castles in the mind?
In these days of quiescence

(with a decade, or two,
of luck, and pain).

Such power persists
through centuries —
time to deal with it?

(Not here, not now).

Not ever —
in a place like Kenilworth.

© Matthew Rhodes 2011

Without the walls, wave-tossed rocks
cry loneliness, even now.

You yearn for sky, I see;
and feel your pain.

So hard to be stone in love
with air – caressed and shadowed;
shaped, smoothed,
and finally –
consumed as dust.

© Matthew Rhodes 2011

Image

Unfeeling stones that sat, grassbound
and sheep-licked, even in Alfred’s day;
touched by light, as they were once
when carted from the hills.

Human hands, still –
then and now through time –
shaping fortresses and fates;
passions turning walls to blood,
and nothing new.

© Matthew Rhodes 2011