Parabola

Year after year the princess lies asleep

Until the hundred years foretold are done,

Easily drawing her enchanted breath.

Caught on the monstrous thorns around the keep,

Bones of the youths who sought her, one by one

Rot loose and rattle to the ground beneath.

But when the Destined Lover at last shall come,

For whom alone Fortune reserves the prize

The thorns give way; he mounts the cobwebbed stair

Unerring he finds the tower, the door, the room,

The bed where, waking at his kiss she lies

Smiling in the loose fragrance of her hair.

That night, embracing on the bed of state,

He ravishes her century of sleep

And she repays the debt of that long dream;

Future and Past compose their vast debate;

His seed now sown, her harvest ripe to reap

Enact a variation on the theme.

For in her womb another princess waits,

A sleeping cell, a globule of bright dew.

Jostling their way up that mysterious stair,

A horde of lovers bursts between the gates,

All doomed but one, the destined suitor, who

By luck first reaches her and takes her there.

A parable of all we are or do!

The life of Nature is a formal dance

In which each step is ruled by what has been

And yet the pattern emerges always new

The marriage of linked cause and random chance

Gives birth perpetually to the unforeseen.

One parable for the body and the mind:

With science and heredity to thank

The heart is quite predictable as a pump,

But, let love change its beat, the choice is blind.

‘Now’ is a cross-roads where all maps prove blank,

And no one knows which way the cat will jump.

So here stand I, by birth a cross between

Determined pattern and incredible chance,

Each with an equal share in what I am.

Though I should read the code stored in the gene,

Yet the blind lottery of circumstance

Mocks all solutions to its cryptogram.

As in my flesh, so in my spirit stand I

When does this hundred years draw to its close?

The hedge of thorns before me gives no clue.

My predecessor’s carcass, shrunk and dry,

Stares at me through the spikes. Oh well, here goes!

I have this thing, and only this, to do.

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Bat’s Poetry Page – more poetry by Fledermaus

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Batty Writing – the bat’s idle chatter, thoughts, ideas and observations, all original, all fresh

Poems in English 

• Sonet 42 by William Alexander by William Alexander
• Sonet 41 by William Alexander by William Alexander
• Sonet 4 by William Alexander by William Alexander
• Sonet 39 by William Alexander by William Alexander
• Sonet 38 by William Alexander by William Alexander
• Sonet 36 by William Alexander by William Alexander
• Sonet 35 by William Alexander by William Alexander
• Sonet 34 by William Alexander by William Alexander
• Sonet 33 by William Alexander by William Alexander
• Sonet 32 by William Alexander by William Alexander
• Jonathan: The First Booke by William Alexander by William Alexander
• IX: Some Verses: This Day Design’d To Spoil The World of Peace by William Alexander by William Alexander
• IV: Some Verses: To The Author by William Alexander by William Alexander
• III: Some Verses: To M. Michaell Drayton by William Alexander by William Alexander
• Elegie IV: On The Death of Prince Henrie by William Alexander by William Alexander
• Doomes-Day: The Twelfth Houre by William Alexander by William Alexander
• Doomes-Day: The Third Houre by William Alexander by William Alexander
• Doomes-Day: The Tenth Houre by William Alexander by William Alexander
• Doomes-Day: The Sixth Houre by William Alexander by William Alexander
• Doomes-Day: The Ninth Houre by William Alexander by William Alexander

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Doska or the Board – write anything

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Qwant – the best search engine for searches in French, German as well as Romance and Germanic languages.

Ecosia – a search engine that supposedly… plants trees

Duckduckgo – the real alternative and a search engine that actually works. Without much censorship or partisan politics.

Yahoo– yes, it’s still around, amazingly, miraculously, incredibly, but now it seems to be powered by Bing.

 

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