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Fresh winds, new shores,
Change without thought, change without pause,
And the whole world plunging down the Swanee
Without so much as a Hey Nonny Nonny.

Every day, yes every day,
I open my rheumy old eyes and say
Well stone the crows, are you still here?
You’ve far outstayed your time, old dear.

Only a little decade past
I really thought I was going to last -
Sun grinning bright from day to night
Gaudy and guaranteed to excite.

Eyes on the distant horizon,
Happiest bleeder since Ralph Reader:
Still can’t fathom how it came about
That I who was “in” was so suddenly out.

Rug constantly yanked
From under life. Nothing is banked
In a solid account, interest-bearing.
Threads keep fraying, nap keeps wearing:

The strong stay shears
Off in the grinding-machine of years;
Don’t look now, but you’ve been sold a pup:
While you slowed down, the world just speeded up.

They say “never go back”
But in that “back” may reside what you now lack;
Faces and looks, and you so clever
In a world that was going to last forever.

“Back” bursts with hope -
It’s there you’re given some rope -
Where the juice from the apple is tangy-sweet,
And no-one tells you what you may not eat.

Oh God, another day,
The best slipped away, still the bill to pay,
And pain begins to peep in, seep in,
Build a home in you while you’re sleeping.

Love, hope of love, even lust
Take on a dessicating whiff of dust:
Fresh winds? They’ve lost their savour -
New shores? Do me a favour.

When homeward bound
The terrain changes, slopes up chancy ground,
Known topography is suddenly skewed,
Trees twist in a forbidding attitude,

Rivers, once bright
With kingfishers dim toward the night.
The old homely song of birds
Dulls to the mutter of foreboding words.

So what’s expected,
The pre-valedictory attitude elected?
Simply that Dylan got it right –
We rage against the dying of the light?

Or is the brave refrain
“Steady there chaps,
Brits win their battles uphill in the rain
At the junction of four maps”,

All Spartan and Stoical,
Commendably strong and heroical?
Yet, faced with a real defeat,
I’m normally in the vanguard of the retreat.

Could throw in the towel.
Dose on Diazepam, and one last howl
To curse the rank unfairness of my birth,
Its arrant pointlessness, then quit the earth.

Except to say
The new class three at school today
Tugged at my soul again (they always do)
And sang, and all my griping heart sang too.

Fresh winds, new shores:
Hold on there, teacherman - some things are yours.
Since you are theirs, yours is to nurture them,
These singing ones, who know no requiem.

© Colin Bailey, February 2007