Grooks (2 page)

Put up in a place

where it’s easy to see

the cryptic admonishment

T. T. T.

When you feel how depressingly

slowly you climb,

it’s well to remember that

Things Take Time.

Know what

thou knowest not

is in a sense

omniscience.

I am a humble artist

moulding my earthly clod,

adding my labour to nature’s,

simply assisting God.

Not that my effort is needed:

yet somehow, I understand,

my maker has willed it that I too should have

unmoulded clay in my hand.

Admonitory grook addressed to youth.

The human spirit sublimates

the impulses it thwarts;

a healthy sex life mitigates

the lust for other sports.

Men, said the Devil,

are good to their brothers:

they don’t want to mend

their own ways, but each other’s.

Naive you are

if you believe

life favours those

who aren’t naive.

We glibly talk

of nature’s laws

but do things have

a natural cause?

Black earth turned into

yellow crocus

is undiluted

hocus-pocus.

Simplified.

Everything’s either

concave or -vex,

so whatever you dream

will be something with sex.

to the sun above the clouds.

Sun that givest all things birth,

shine on everything on earth!

If that’s too much to demand.

shine at least on this our land.

If even that’s too much for thee,

shine at any rate on me.

As Pastor X steps out of bed

he slips a neat disguise on:

that halo round his priestly head

is really his horizon.

When people always

try to take

the very smallest

piece of cake

how can it also

always be

that that’s the one

that’s left for me?”

The soul may be a mere pretence,

the mind makes very little sense.

So let us value the appeal

of that which we can taste and feel.