Category: POETRY

The Convert Convert

Here is a poem by GK  Chesterton (1874-1936) in celebration of my father, Patrick Simpson Lambert (1924-2008), the most thoughtful man I have ever known, despite his human frailties.    There were many learnings for me through his life that every day still evolve and build and teach. But the most important learning is that of empathy, understanding and stoic acceptance of life’s hard slings; a trait that he himself raged against as he slipped into his own gentle good […]

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If, By Rudyard Kipling

Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) was a so-called Anglo Indian, born in then-named Bombay during the height of the Indian Raj in 1865.  By some contemporary accounts he was  simply another jingoistic imperialist, and some of his views are distinctly off-key, for example he described the Irish as “writing dreary poetry…deprived of love of line or knowledge of colour.”  He was an early friend of Oswald Mosely, and had a visceral hatred of Communism, at the same time believing that the new […]

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The Hunting of the Snark, by Lewis Carroll

Lewis Carroll is the professional pen name of the English Author Charles Dodgson (27 January 1832 – 14 January 1898).  Dodgson is a classic polymath, excelling as a poet, a mathematician, a photographer and a fine-line artist.  His most famous and popular work is Alice’s Through the Looking Glass, though I think I prefer his so-called nonsense poems, Jabberwocky and the Hunting of the Snark. The Snark story comprises eight poems that together form a magical and ever-winding thread.  Carroll […]

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Fern Hill

Dylan Thomas (1914-1953). There is a nice old pub called the Fitzroy Tavern at the bottom of Charlotte Street in Bloomsbury in London. It has a great feel to it but what I particularly like is that on the first floor it has a small room full of books and photographs and drawings dedicated to the memory of Dylan Thomas, who frequently drank there. Thomas was by many accounts a difficult man to live with, but some of his poetry […]

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Hippocrates the neural scientist

The Greeks, or at least some of them, well understood the importance of the brain even if they did not know very much about its inner workings. And the Egyptians before them had a hieroglyph for the brain, the first known recorded reference to the brain being an Egyptian papyrus from the seventeenth century BCE describing a couple of patients who had suffered trauma to the head. The Greek surgeon-philosopher Hippocrates, or at least his translators (1), was a beautiful […]

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Beauty Unbound

(A variation on an incomplete theme i to en) Finding the point in a foggy white cloud, Something, nothing, everything, Cantor mused. Paradise! Thought Hilbert. Enthused, confused. But there’s more to Hilbert John Space, keep apace. One and zero Shannon reused.  It felt replete… Detect, correct – expand.  Command. Turing complete but not complete. Breathless, restless. Not so fast, Gödel felt damned. Clever Schrödinger and his matrix mistress. Bohr in his lab, Heisenberg on the rock. But what does it […]

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Auguries, nauguries

It is strange how the unconscious is always making suggestions. When I was a lot younger, these suggestions were often abrupt, sometimes a little mad and occasionally, I must confess, quite aggressive.  In rare instances – all of which I remember now like they were yesterday – they were sublime.  As in the case when I first set eyes on my beautiful and lovely wife. These days my id’s suggestions are gentle, guiding and numerous. This morning’s waking suggestion was […]

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To stop and stare

Here is a poem to think by, written by the Welsh poet William Henry Davies (1871 – 1940).  Davies spent much of his life on the road, literally and even wrote a book called Diaries of a Supertramp  (No he was not a member of the ’70s band, though there is a link there I think). It seems that Davies was one of life’s great observers, watching the world unfold with a quizzical eye and a wandering mind.  Even though […]

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The Land of Nandynor

And and Nand and Or and Nor Carry the the bit-blue note What’s it all for? What’s it all for? Asked the owl and the cat in their pea-green boat To make a gate and find the way Said the new man in New J, said the new man in New J Build it up blow it up, do what may Catch of the day catch of the day. Up and down, in and out Here and there where and […]

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