The Waters of Babylon

The Waters  of Babylon

Why, from the greatest pain, the sweetest music sounds?
It's in the soul's extremes the finest beauty's found.
The mother's tears, the widow's loss, the child's lament.
Have such intensity that only beauty gives a vent.
In oppressive nations the same truth is found.
The harshest gross injustice gives the sweetest sound.
Within the confines of the slave the blues spring forth
And from the tears of Erin haunting melodies have birth.
O Lord why must we weep before we make our song?
And why does beauty need a foil of such wrong?

Peter M. Grinham 5th June 2008

Publish in Island Inspirations 3
Copyright  Peter M. Grinham

Geese

Here is an experiment. A sonnet and free verse dealing with the same subject. I horrify myself by prefering the free verse

The Coming of the Geese 1

I walked beside the mud and salty marsh

And walking, heard a once forgotten sound;

The honking of the geese. Their tone's not harsh

For in their cries their unity is bound.

The gobbling stopped and from the marsh they rose

To make their vee shaped way across the sky.

And as a single soul their way they chose

For each needs each to gain its path on high.

Oh thank You God for geese that rise and call,

The birds that wheel in clear and clean fresh air.

This gift of grace comes with the threatening fall

When frosts prevail and flowers are rare.

It is these sights and sounds within creation

That gives my soul its source of great elation.

Peter M. Grinham 5^th March 2010

The Coming of the Geese 2

It was their calls that reached me first;

Phantasmal yet convivial honking.

They rose as one, yet one by one;

The gaggle now a skein.

Were they a single soul or many?

An alien could not tell.

But with no calculation or scientific operation

They rose a vee as flight demands

Above the glaucous, damp but fecund marshes

And as they rose they caused in me

A state of grateful exultation

For I am but a grub upon the horizontal marsh

Confined to simple observation.

Peter M. Grinham 5^th March 2010

Hopes of Heaven

This is my first, and perhaps my last, attempt at free verse.

One day I  shall shake my body free
like a dog that's soaked.

"You are nothing,
but a pack of cards"
said Alice.

And the trash
and the burdens
shall fly away
and all that remains
will be sweet purity.

February Sonnet

A little longer lies the light, as day
Declines in harmonies of red and blue.
A little sweeter music, robins play
As thoughts of love, despite the cold, come through.
The frozen earth shall not forever hide
The beauties now within its breast concealed,
But through its bars triumphant life must ride,
With green, green spike and pure white drops revealed.
And higher soars my heart, much greater far
Than those great depths of dismal winter's thrall;
The spring now comes. Its coming none can bar.
For this, the grey and cold was worth it all.
And with another spring comes deeper peace.
With greater years, my joy knows sweet increase.

Peter M. Grinham 4th February 2010

Rubaiyat

Rubaiyat for Winter

The rising sun escapes his frozen tomb
And makes the land his light encrusted room,
In which can form a thousand thoughts of spring,
Dispelling dismal doubts of winter gloom.

The frost has left his white and ashen coat.
On every leaf his frigid tale he wrote.
Yet far from being sad I see his skill
In making every twig a thing of note.

The light comes low across the latent land
And strikes the trunks with mellow tone and band.
Within its power there still remains the strength
To change the sleeping plants to something grand.

As frost departs. A tracery remains,
For every tree a fair design retains,
The grey and overburdened pregnant sky
A fearful promise of a change contains.

And whilst the dark has reigned, the God has spread
A virgin's dress o'er patch and summer bed,
And folk from windows have their furtive peep.
The child has joy, but they are full of dread.



For snow has come, a covering for all.
The child delights in things the old appal,
For children joy in sled and snowy romp.
They do not fear the icy slip or fall.

The snowmen and the sledges that I see
Bring thoughts and happy days of youth to me
And in those thoughts a present joy, I gain
A strange nostalgic resurrected glee.


Peter M Grinham 4th January 2010

Note. ( My apologies to those who know more about this than I do)

Rubai is Persian for quatrain, that is a four lined verse. The rhyme scheme is aaba, that is lines one, two and four have the same rhyme. Each line has ten syllables with the alternate syllable stressed. ( iambic pentameter)