Practical Ethics
(lines 41-109)
Once, when the plasterer was young, he said,
before he’d even gained a skillset, led
by war’s great claim to power, he’d joined the fight
and disembarked in France to strive for right.
His regiment, bombarded each long day
while battling field by field on foot: soft prey
for enfilading small arms fire, for tanks
and raining mortar shells, their bloodied ranks
cut down by injuries, mortalities
and fractured will, all old normalities
far blown to bits, inert upon the cordite air;
the very soil their enemy, sown
with guileful mines... In one small group, alone,
he’d charged a hedge to claim a hard-won field.
His NCO roared loud that all must yield.
Our plasterer-to-be surveyed the corn
that waved chest-high, gold filigree soft worn
by dread Persephone, held close by trees
on each sequestered side: a square to seize
for the advance. Commands roared forth again.
A pause… They watched, alert… until the grain
but lightly stirred, vague movements in mirage—
while, out of sight, two armies’ fell barrage
informed the sky that mortals claimed the earth,
and to the earth each shortly would return—
…a trembling of the filigree… a hand…
then two, soft rising… Across the field he scanned…
the goddess, stricken, rippling her fine dresses
to hide each humbled foe, soft acquiesces
with slow grief to thunderous human strife,
and, in shy deshabille, reveals the life
that she has held in trust, as men’s hands rise
in trembling pairs, war-grimed, with wearied eyes,
their weapons tossed from sight, an endless prize,
till, wordlessly, all plead beneath the skies.
He tries to estimate the number caught,
but can’t, for they spread wide, outnumber thought:
so many men stand poached in one chance swoop,
too much to swallow for their tiny group.
What shall we do? he asks the NCO,
remembering that by Convention no
dire harm may come to captured serving men.
How can we round them up? The goddess then
keeps watch while
(continues)
He tries to estimate the number caught,
but can’t, for they spread wide, outnumber thought:
so many men stand poached in one chance swoop,
too much to swallow for their tiny group.
What shall we do? he asks the NCO,
remembering that by Convention no
dire harm may come to captured serving men.
How can we round them up? The goddess then
keeps watch while his incumbent boss, perhaps
but few years older than himself, and taught
by war to make decisions, paused in thought,
considers what their options are. Her field
soft shimmers as she awaits to count the yield
of finest crop she will receive this day.
The corn floats wide, yet, like an alleyway
enclosed and dark and short, his choice lies stark:
round up their catch with his scant troops, embark
on thinning out his men and risk that hands
now raised will drop and seize the trampled land’s
discarded, fratricidal tools of steel
and turn hard victory to fatal loss;
or tear the moral codebook up and live
that life called free in others’ deaths, and give
another certain day to those he leads.
The goddess languidly with patience reads
his calculating mind while our man sweats
and each man stranded in her corn regrets
forever that this bloody world’s events
have swept him to his present broken tense.
We round them up? No, lift your guns and shoot
and leave no man alive. Thus falls the fruit
of many mothers’ loves strewn in her stores,
her golden skin soaked red.
Paul Rapley 2025 (continues)
#poemsabout #NeverAgain #KeepWriting
Thanks, as always, to @alanparrywriter.co.uk
@thebrokenspine.co.uk
#poetrycommunity #poetry #PoetsWhoSupportPoets #PoetsOfBlueSky
![rip tiredness
tired of searching, lugging, peering, failing,
nagged by certainty that if he found it,
or if they, discovering themselves
to him, through half-dreamt chance, by half-remembered
waking, longing, long-abandoned planning,
buried deep within forgotten books;
or crushed beneath a pile of magazines
long semi-read while meaning drained away;
or dwelling with a creche of much-loved toys
whose lovers, grown and gone, had bid adieu;
or furniture awaiting skilled repair
and warm return to rooms that never were;
or, trapped within soft piles of sleepless blankets,
confidants of truth to aid his quest;
or relics from the homes of hard departed,
promising solutions to life’s puzzles
only if he’d brave his torch to read them;
or, tucked beyond in some far crevice,
out of reach, denying his spent grasp,
he lay in darkness under his dark roof.
[…]
slipping the ripper between the flat slates,
its flat body subverting their reign of opacity,
feeling its nose tap against the old nail,
he adjusted its tooth to engage in the darkness
and pulled out the nail…
[…]
…and began his ascent
to the light and the sky and his future beyond…
[…]
Paul Rapley 2025 #NoFuture](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:2ugcsqyptxe35rvxhyom3udo/bafkreib6ojafuzb7ka24gjbqjy4a7cnxd3kimjvew7gzijtsxsmipjl5pi)
![Falling in
According to the gazetteer
of some part of our hemisphere
[not known for being insincere
nor knowingly to interfere
with facts—nor be a profiteer
from fables she might overhear
from any passing balladeer]:
one night a lonely grenadier
[born long years past in Leicestershire—
his mother, a famed scrutineer
of cheeses; father, profiteer
from porky pies, the domineer
of heists throughout the biosphere—
who’d made the choice to disappear,
escape their dump and volunteer
for service—be it fusilier
or musketeer or bombardier
or pontonier or pistoleer
or even sun-soaked cameleer—
and, trained to use the troposphere
to launch grenades in Aboukir,
in Naples, Spain and Agadir
(wherever the high puppeteer
would deign to send each pioneer
beneath the burning lithosphere)]
while passing through the aerosphere
in thick clouds with his brigadier,
three swordsmen and a muleteer
(no mules), clothed in thin cassimere,](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:2ugcsqyptxe35rvxhyom3udo/bafkreiatyickikjoce7j4zol3bdz7h3wuyodxglkfwmj45gc2l6uevug74)
![darkness, light, passion
For shame! For shame! Lock up the mad cat!
Red. Pink. Crimson. Mahogany.
No jail was ever more secure.
Rain beating, wind howling, fireplace blank
violent tyrannies, proud indifference, plain aversion
darkening deposits in my mind’s turbid well
courage sinking cold into the coming night…
Outside, a swift-darting beam, unrecognised [from the burning oil of a whale, perhaps]
the herald of some coming vision from another world
head hot, heart thick, the rushing of wings in my ears
in terror i hear my cry…
there was a stranger in the room
soothing conviction of protection and security
more tenderly than ever before, i felt raised, upheld
before the warm fire and a friendly flame [from the combusting fat of sheep, no doubt]
before he went out, and then the fire and the flame
A loud bell ringing
in bitter cold the girls up and dressing
evincing fortitude under wintry privation
night irked out by feeble glimmers [from the ignited pith of grease-dipped rushes, for sure]
water frozen in the pitchers
i let down the window and look out
behind us, the town
to judge by the number of its lights [from volatile components of coal, distributed, in main]
a place of considerable magnitude](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:2ugcsqyptxe35rvxhyom3udo/bafkreif4hmdej6k6bwh22udobir34y625mzxik7g465lvhvzvwzhz6ul7y)
