C Richard Miles Poems

Be the strong, firm shoulder
On which I can cry my woes
But not the sullen, soulless shrug
That deals your disregard.
...

Sauntering deep in the woodlands in summertime,
I stroll by streamlets half-dry in the heat,
Wandering. unaware that there would come a time
When I would, terrified, beat a retreat.
...

Grey clouds have hung like threatening theatre curtains in the sky
And thunder shouts its vicious vengeance, loud and long and deep
Till sunshine steals the stage to mop the raindrops that they cry.
Dark skies have gathered round me in the meadow where I lie
...

What will I write of Autumn? I will write
Of wind that strips the twig and bares the branch
And cleaves from trees the leaves that cleaved on tight
All Summer long. I’ll say how they have lost
...

Just let me wander now among the quiet folk
There, in the grassy graveyard, up the winding hill
Above the sleeping village, where they do not speak.
But, in their day, these quiet folk were never still
...

And if they said to me I could just write Four
Last songs, composed like Richard Strauss,
What would this other Richard score?
...

And when retirement came, after fifty years down the mine,
Man and boy, man and boy, boyhood turned too soon into the man
As he had seen things that no teenage child should see, alas,
All there remained was husk, a shell, a dust-dry chrysalis
...

If you’re asking,
There’s no way I’m multitasking:
I’m a man; get it.
So if you ask me to multitask, forget it.
...

And why did he have
A white plastic teaspoon
Tucked, like a cigarette,
Behind his left ear,
...

I long to wangle wonga for a dongle;
I can't hang on any longer unattached.
Don't get me wrong, a struggle, long and strong'll
Mingle with my wrangle to be hatched.
...