World Cup: summer jam

For Gordon Rickshaw, egregious performance poet. The first line is a quotation from the Taleisin poet, the Red Book in line three is the Red Book of Hergest, one of the four manuscripts in which old Welsh poetry is preserved. And, pace the Welsh, England are through to the quarter finals of the World Cup, having beaten Ecuador 1-0).

I am not a candidate for fame,
posessed with poetry and honest lust
in equal measure: Red Book with a bard-on or just
enough of the bramble ink in my thorny pen
to squeeze out a rhyme now and again
easing melencholy. Get my thrust
in silence. Let me be tender. In love we trust
and in the firm, heart-felt opinion of friends.
I try to keep it together making jam
from berries I have been working; favour the sweet,
the fine, the delicate over the morning glory.
There is no metaphor in this summer story.
After the harvest, round the pub for a treat:
We won! Love the joy and give a damn!


George Roberts
25 June 2006