Critic Cal

Of all my poems, this might be the one that’s closest to my heart. I wrote it in the aftermath of Christmas 2018, and was chuffed to have it appear in the  Winter 2019 edition of Preach magazine . THIS HOUSE   Oh come, oh come Emmanuel, and hurl Our order into holy disarray: Upend the tables where we wheel and deal, And scatter our accrued prosperity. Awake us, dancer on the dancing deep, From placid slumber; rock the boat; disturb The peace that we content ourselves to keep, And make us see the chaos we transfer. Confound our clarity, cut short our too long Prayers, take back the narrative and heckle Sermons preached to itching ears. Throw down Each stone in every separating wall. Do what you’re here to do … but, come what may, Rebuild the ruins of us, please – and stay.  Carolyn Whitnall, 2019. And then the pandemic. And the stuff of it all got a bit real. And no, I don’t mean any of the following: that “God has done this,” or that I wished f...

When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast state, And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries, And look upon myself and curse my fate, Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, Featured like him, like him with friends possessed, Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope, With what I most enjoy contented least; Sunk in these thoughts, my hapless self despising, I turn for balm to Sonnet Twenty Nine But two-thirds down, I feel my rancour rising... The Bard recants his woe, and says he's fine! Well, thanks a million, Will: my misery Was reckoning on yours for company.  ( Shakes et Cal. And I do apologise... ) So, feeling low, and low on fellow human low feeling, and betrayed thus by the Bard,  Pessoa  beckons -- as companion to my own disquiet I find him quite disquietingly meet: "I question myself but do not know myself. I've done nothing nor will I ever do anything useful to justify my existence. The part of my li...