Augustus Young       light verse, poetry and prose
a webzine of new and unpublished work


PART THREE

Timor Mortis

 
My days are numbered.
Everyone’s days are numbered.
In a word, in a word…
How many words?
Epitaph 13
 
Being Caesarean
I wasn’t cut out
to be loved.
A boy barbarian,
a teenage lout,
I did without
what others covet.
Still the epithet
on my urn shelf,
won’t let it be known,
if to atone,
I loved myself.
 
Reality Check
 
Certes il est beau de rever a l’éternite.
Mais il suffit a l’honnete homme d’ávoir passe
en faisant son oeuvre’
(Zola)
 
True, it’s nice to dream of eternity
But it’s sufficient for an honest man
to do his work on earth.
 
Life’s Rime Rich
 
I love life but does life love me.
I know it’s planning to leave me.
It doesn’t offer a leave take.
Just a warning (the pills I take).
Life of course is a precious gift.
But it’s true price is not a gift.
To its credit it doesn’t charge.
It pays itself with a discharge.
 
Think Nothing of It
 
Hope is for the birds.
Luck is for losers.
Fear is for afterwards.
Get on with life. Musers,
who know perfect blankness
is a prelude to release
from the thankless
groans,
in peace
pen poems.
 
Such As
At eighty-one
his work done
he alights
for a flight
to kingdom come.
 
But on the way
he keeps at bay
the urge to sign
the dotted line…
so, it’s come-what-may.
 
Poetential’s Signature
 
A Homage to Friedrich Holderlin (1770 – 1843)
 
1.  … I have led a blameless life.
Not quite guilt-free, but I did right
by my enemies. Agenbite.
of inwit buttered my knife.
So, I avoided them instead.
 
I only married one wife
(‘Lack of imagination’, she said).
Getting used to one another
is like being sister and brother.
Still, we grew up and didn’t leave home.
 
I will not be signing this poem.
 
2. Bemusing long into the night,
a would-be perfecting his art,
Blake’s Horse of Instruction was a start.
I got the cart the wrong way round.
And so was stuck in muddled ground.
 
Shaking off the reins (with which to teach),
the horse of Instruction took flight.
I tracked it with a stringless kite.
As heaven was beyond our reach,
we fell to earth from a great height. 
 
Yet, my hunting dog was on course,
and rounded up the loose horse.
I mounted it to ride bareback,
whipping up tropes, spurring the hack
with too forced rhyme till I was thrown.
 
My retriever retrieved a poem
that a rival jibed ‘It’s inane
enough to make you famous’.
But being the plaything of fame
for doggerel wasn’t my game,
 
save, I changed my name to Gus.
 
3. The horse now is an also ran,
its tail tied to an empty can,
and should finish. It won’t be caught  
being wiser than Blakes’s Tiger of Wrath.
For signing in blood, clots don’t run.
 
‘Burning’ isn’t ‘bright’. Ashes come to naught….  
My handicap’s second to none.
 
4, Poesy’s a game that’s never won.
Show-jumping its fences without fault
does not mean a clear-round is called.
With a dodo race the starting-gun
blanks at the end of what’s begun.
 
The abandoned scraps, signed anon,
gave posterity the last laugh.
Scribes tracked them to a woebegone
thrown out of a madhouse for being sane.
Thus, making right reason to blame
 
for airy nothings that could only claim
to be fortune cookies. Worth a laugh.
Still, remembered so well they have
entered common parlance. Years on
these ‘tricks bringing joy’ were to gain
 
a ‘habitation and a name’.
 
5. The fateless gods had found a home
in a treasure throve of stray finds.
Fragments so down to earth whose fame
is existing in other’s minds,
and not in the poet being known
 
Homer to Shakespeare is seen plain
in school when learned off by heart. 
Though forgotten for the most part,
in a moment of inspiration,
a quote comes back out of the blue
 
and everybody thinks it’s you.  

  
A Last Epitaph
 
Having outlived his usefulness,
except a modest legacy,
he spares others further distress,
and took the pills for RIP.

 
The medicals let me spare.
My work in life has been done.
Hand over your loving care
to the less fortunate young.
 
PS
 
The music goes silent.
I hear a sigh
and it’s mine.
I absent
myself. It’s time
to die.