Poems
Harry Guest
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Harry Guest was educated at Malvern College and read Modern Languages at Trinity Hall, University of Cambridge. He wrote a thesis on Mallarmé at the Sorbonne. At Trinity Hall he co-edited the poetry magazine Chequer, which continued for eleven issues and published poems by Thom Gunn, Anne Stevenson, Ted Hughes, and Sylvia Plath, though there is no evidence to suggest he met Plath or Hughes. From 1955-66, he taught at Felsted School and Lancing College, and then moved to Japan, becoming a lecturer in English at Yokohama National University. He returned to England in 1972 and was Head of French at Exeter School until his retirement in 1991. A selection of his poetry was included in Penguin Modern Poets 16. He is an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Exeter and was awarded an honorary doctorate (LittD) by Plymouth University in 1998. Apart from his many collections of poetry, he is well known as a translator from the French and Japanese, and has published several novels and non-fiction books including the Traveller's Literary Companion to Japan (1994) and The Artist on the Artist (2000). His translations include a selected poems of Victor Hugo, The Distance, The Shadows (2002) and Post-War Japanese Poetry (with Lynn Guest and Kajima Shôzô, 1972). (Wikipedia)
Now, at 87, Harry is still writing. Facqueuesol is privileged to present, below, an ongoing collection of recent poems which will be added to as time goes by and as the gods allow.
Update: facqueuesol was profoundly saddened to learn of the passing of Harry on 20th March, 2021. The plan for this to have been an ongoing collection has, with the greatest respect, been necessarily adapted to being a short memorial to Harry and his writing.
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Some Jewels Out There
They've found they think those boffins far beyond
our feeble thoughts a brand-new planet formed
by chunks of gems, huge sky-blue rubies dark
red also, rufous sapphires (navy too).
Not sparkling though. Along the voids of space
they'd have to crash (well, land quite carefully)
on Hatton Garden or that town across
the water to a continent we won't
be part of soon since those in charge (such a bunch
of oafs) don't understand geography
or common sense.
Those experts though will toil
to make jewels glimmer, shine, glow, glitter, catch
the light on female ears and often men's
cuffs slyly peeping from tweed sleeves.
We know
most usual rocks and tedious pebbles, how
when splashed they differ splendidly but, if
to walk on pebbly beaches tires the soles,
(our souls can't know fatigue waiting within
the mind and body not to age or fade
away with either) how they glisten in
each rainfall. Millions of decades moved
and smoothed them with wild tides and tempests so
you pick one curved one up or glance with chance
at rock in cliff, stratum or boulder to
admire the single tone of darker black
or almost white, pale yellow too or green
as August foliage sun-tired. And those
which spread an unassorted rainbow striped
from pressures in a long-forgotten merge
of heats beyond our credence once again
offer a different part of what we see
which can't be parted from its histories of
volcanoes, earthquakes, endless grinding, when
our world grew altering, not coherent, to
produce such precious stones to sell and steal.
A Warning to the Furious
There could be no to-morrows should
a wayward asteroid decide
to drop in to that vernal wood
we've often strolled through and collide
with earth so unrelentingly
this planet we've been used to will
find all blanked out eternally.
No time this time for waiting till
things nothing like us start to shape
new breeders like those which replaced
the dinosaurs. No act can ape
that quasi resurrection, paste
a pattern for millennia to
bring out at last the likes of us
who'll paint, compose, sculpt, write and do
what's right and proper with no fuss,
no greed, deceit, scorn, hate or war.
The human race has tried so hard
to wreck what it's been given for
far better usage. That's been barred
by ignorance and cunning yet
so far we've stumbled on. We've made
it somehow, never quite upset
the systems that have been displayed
but thoughtless futures may succeed
in stopping life eventually
though asteroids could do the deed
if noisily more easily.
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this ongoing compilation © Harry Guest 2019
a facqueuesol paperless book 2019