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