Five poems by Peter Kocan:
1 . “To a Woman Reading The Wind in the Willows“
2. “Name”
3. “Cathedral Service”
4. “The Social Workers”
5. “Them and Us”
To a Woman Reading The Wind in the Willows
Peeping through the door an inch ajar,
I see you curled-up with your favourite book.
I wonder where precisely now you are,
What green, familiar, friendly path you took—
Ignore them, the neurotic and the driven,
Who’d say your book’s a trivial escape.
What harm if an imagined land is given
A simpler ethos and a gentler shape?
What fitter story could a grown-up find
Than one which makes uncomplicated sense
Of things like being brave and being kind,
Of virtues so important and immense?
And just as stories help the young rehearse
Their courage at the level they can bear,
They do the same for us—except we’ve worse
Than boogies in the shadow of the stair.
Our Wildwood is truly dark and deep,
And no adult who knows it will deride
The fact you find it comforting to keep
Ratty and Mole and Badger at your side.
© Peter Kocan
Name
The name ‘Wendy’ was invented by a little girl who died at the age of six.
Margaret Henley never knew
Her singular achievement,
So little time there was between
The birth and the bereavement.
She never knew how wide and far
Her baby-talk would carry,
The future of the funny name
She told to J.M. Barrie.
She said her special word and then
Departed, never knowing
How many little girls would bear
The name she was bestowing.
She only added to the world
One unique and harmless touch.
How many glittering careers
Contributed as much?
© Peter Kocan
Cathedral Service
I’m only here because I wandered in
Not knowing that a service would begin,
And had to slide into the nearest pew,
Pretending it was what I’d meant to do.
The tall candles cast their frail light
Upon the priest, the choir clad in white,
The carved and polished and embroidered scene,
The congregation numbers seventeen.
And awkwardly I follow as I’m led
To kneel or stand or sing or bow my head.
Though these specific rites are strange to me,
I know their larger meaning perfectly—
The heritage of twenty centuries
Is symbolised in rituals like these,
In special modes of beauty and of grace
Enacted in a certain kind of place.
This faith, although I lack it, is my own,
Inherent to the marrow of the bone.
To this even the unbelieving mind
Submits its unbelief to be defined.
Perhaps the meagre congregation shows
How all of that is drawing to a close,
And remnants only come here to entreat
These dying flickers of the obsolete.
Yet when did this religion ever rest
On weight of numbers as the final test?
Its founder said that it was all the same
When two or three were gathered in his name.
© Peter Kocan
The Social Workers
Hyenas will encourage a stampede
To see which ailing zebra falls behind.
They’re nature’s social workers, and inclined
To feel most altruistic when they feed.
© Peter Kocan
Them and Us
And still the elites betray us every day,
Despite the fact that they need hardly bother,
For they’ve discovered many an easy way
Of prompting us to betray each other.
© Peter Kocan
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