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Ron Price
01-11-2005, 08:46 PM
:santasmil PARTLY UGLY

Sweet are the uses of adversity
Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head.
-Shakespeare, As You Like It.


There is a certain solemnness
That enters late at night;
perhaps if I only went to bed
my world would stay more bright.

Partly it is just fatigue
after a day of zest
with energies pouring out
as I try to give my best.

Partly it’s a reflection on myself,
my world and life
with a stream of sadness
coming in sometimes
like a heavy knife.

Partly, too, it’s a simple polarity;
one can not stay on high
and zip about quite endlessly
until the day you’re going to die.


Ron Price
8 July 1995
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THE THICK OF THE HUDDLE


‘Sensation and watchfulness in itself’-a total experience suffused by awareness-is, I believe, what Blake meant by ‘spiritual sensation’; and it is as near as we shall get to a definition of Imagination-the means and instrument by which, in man, that which is creative creates itself. -J. Middleton Murry, Shakespeare, 1936.

Before ultimate silence these poems at home:
I’ve seen them coming for years--the pace, the tone,
the notes, the range. Strident life’s raging chatter
I’ve kept at a distance and so I’ve got fatter.
Those who come onto my personal stage
need me somehow or want to engage.
I rarely seek out neighbours or friends,
but rejoice in the life He willingly sends.
Perhaps it’s just choice, a quiet eye
that broods and sleeps, some inward sigh.
Perhaps I take the endless words
that I have gathered like the birds,
cut out notes here and long bars there,
a trifle sharp, a trifle too bare.

A planet swarming with hords and herds,
teaming with life and plenty of nerds,*
requires some points of silence and thought,
some intensest feelings with words sought
quite explicitly to tell of the tale
of an ineffable life far beyond the pale.
And the adventure right here in fine detail,
fed by some radiance sent in the mail,
past the chaos streaming through life,
with a curb and a rudder to cluster the strife
and the throng from some nethermost fire;
out of the thick of the huddle beauty springs
higher and higher and higher and higher!

Ron Price
28 December 1995

* An Australian term for a fool.
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