The Sinews Of Words

Two poems today – today’s and yesterday’s. I am so grateful for libraries. I have a quiet 10 minutes each Tuesday in Norwich’s Central Library in the Forum before my therapy.

The Sinews Of Words

We build our languages one from the other,
Shapes of history wound around differing
Meanings, similar alphabets, dissimilar
Sounds, glottals and diphthongs and
Palatal scrapes. What says one thing
In Greek has shifted to something more
Confrontational in the west where wars
Always veered from the Homeric ideal
To the brutality of machinery in some
Interpretations.

Some words, though, share sound and
Meaning, and the truth behind the image
Of ideal love and war and heroism, the
Sheer horror of death and torture and
The slow bleeding away of soul. Here,
There is no protagonist because all
Warriors are antagonists, all weapons
Carried to oppose peace. The sinews
Of words and their sentences always
Twist around one simple bloody truth.

R 25/03/2025 14:14 Norwich Library

Were I

Were I to excise all my memories
By some miraculous surgery, I might
Have more space for more thoughts,
More room to make new and newer
Memories.

Were I to whittle my days down into
Five-minute slots, and clear each one
Of things that could waste my time,
I might have more time to do other
Things.

Were I to exclude everything from my
Life, and so declutter my existence, I
Might have the illusion of having regained
Some freedoms I no longer share, but
What would I really have?

…

R 25/03/2025 19:19