Dear toddling child sweet blessedness find
Grace, joys, success, fulfilment await you
In earthly garment of body and mind.

Mother and child, God bless you both and bind,
With tendrils of dear devotion twine you
The sublime Will of the Creator kind.

You and yours by the Most High sealed and signed
To serve Him only, fulfilment find you
In earthly garment of body and mind.

Wean him as he waxes: God’s Word remind,
Show you daily the Path He points to do
The sublime will of the Creator kind.

Heavenly powers and streams support you,
Sun, rain, meadows, all nature delight you
In earthly garment of body and mind
The sublime Will of the Creator kind.

John Clinton

Sweet nothings we exchange are not empty sounds,
They’re the most perfect phatic communion,
They’re the things that make us light up and laugh.

Who wedges between us finds divine wrath,
No enough sufficient condemnation,
It’s what makes you my perfect other half.

Eliot would poetize, Oscar Wilde
Would prose us, we our own inspiration,
They’re the things that make us light up and laugh.

What I lack you have in abundance. Staff
And lamp, you steady my mind’s commotion,
It’s what makes you my perfect other half.

Juno, Minerva, Diana, Venus,
Vesta. Your own virtues’ composition,
Goddesses that make me light up and laugh,
It’s what makes you my perfect other half.

John Clinton
Oct. 2012

After injustice and wrong comes right
After the fools and the mad come the sane
After darkness comes everlasting light.

In the beautiful morning’s lovely light
I will hold you in my arms once again
After arduous day comes restful night.

Oh sweet heart you are my sweet delight
The cool balm that eases away my pain
After darkness comes everlasting light.

The world is awry, sages lose their sight
Mad men and clowns hold sway, seek their own gain
After arduous day comes restful night.

The canker worm is an ordinary blight
Heal this sick world, woman, soap it free from stain
After arduous day comes restful night
After darkness comes everlasting light.

John Clinton

In grief the soul’s consolation is the stars,
It lives each wakeful moment inwardly,
Gains in fortune and adversity but mars
Not life’s great benefice by outwardly
Reaching for the transient image alone.
We germinate, take root, shoot, flower and fruit till grown
To fullness, sturdy as the oak or apple tree;
Each passing phase itself: child, man, ancient, will be.
We share the unblemished fruits of full fulfilment,
The spirit of man, it strives to make atonement.

John Clinton.
August 2012

The wrack
Thrown up by the sea,
Sea-salt-sun-dried-windy-sweet wrack,
Thrown up by the sea;
One wants to sniff the air. Didn’t we?
How went we first to that shore?
I still go there to capture something more
Of you.
Habits of the soul don’t die easy.

Though sometime since then – parted
I still feel the gentle swing of you in my thoughts.
Habits of the soul don’t seem to die at all.

John Clinton

“Let’s go walking you and I,” he said.
“Beneath the roof of stars,
Beneath the majestic shadows
Of the trees,” she said.
“You are a spring of life to me,” he said.
“You are a strong anchor for me,” she said.
“The trees heard us
As they towered into the stars,” he said.
“The stars looked down upon us
As we walked joyfully beneath them,” she said.

John Clinton

On the way back, the local Yobs wanted some but I refused.

 Going in at the gate, the bottle Slipped from my fingers

and smashed.

In the red Tizer and glass-shard puddle, my child’ eyes,

Wide and round with dismay, read REVENGE.

After more pleading and another trip To the Off Licence,

At last I sat down to enjoy my Tizer.

It was like drinking tepid water! There was simply no tang to it.

My Tizer just wouldn’t taste!

It had been my fault, Or at least, that of my butter fingers.

A certain spontaneity had been lost.

John Clinton

Everyone in the village was looking forward to the end of the dry season.
For a week, night after night, sheet lightning had raced to and fro over the southern
skies. There was a change in atmosphere. The nights were not so harsh, cold
and dry. The rains would begin soon. The long dry season had been the ultimate
test of everyone’s patience. People had been openly short with their tempers,
the stress was made worse by the general exhaustion. It was trying
for all, all the more because it was a farming community. The abundance or
dearth of rain meant a lot to them.
It was a Saturday night and Olu had done a straight four hours of writing in his study. His method was to have bursts of creativity in which he would write
getting down everything he had to say and thereafter, pulling things together or
straightening things out. Further work was done at more leisure: He had talks with his publisher, criticisms from family members and suggestions from just about any one who had or claimed to have literary interests or some knowledge of the subject he was working on or simply an interest in writing in general.
Olu shut down his P.C., and put away his files, manuscripts, C.D.s, D.V.D.s
books and index cards and cleared his desk. He shot a final glance over his study and switched off the light. He was looking forward to a time of conviviality with friends.
Walking towards the gate he acknowledged the presence of the security
guard, he sniffed the air hoping to smell its humidity, he gazed up at the sky
looking for his favourite constellation among the stars. His mood was
expectant, his work was making good progress, he was making a name for
himself as a writer, in a year or two he would be able to retire from
government service.
Olu was almost out of the gate when Bose called him from indoors.
“Olu!” she yelled. “Come in here a minute!”
He felt stalled. Bose’s voice carried far into the night. Wasn’t she
getting rather querulous of late? It was the weather, the uninterrupted dust,
the heat and dryness had made her so, just as it had made everyone in the village.
“Olu!” she cried. “Hurry up for goodness sake!”
Olu was disinclined to hurry but he closed the already opened gate and
went up the garden path. At the front door, he turned and faced the night.
A cool, humid gust of wind brushed his cheek. “It’s going to rain. Tonight,” he
said to himself. He was glad. He and Bose had been planning to devote more
time and money to the business of gardening. The garden had a lot of
flowering shrubs and flowers but they wished to make a rock garden with
a pool and a fountain. There were lilies of several varieties and a whole range of
other plants: purple ides; red, pink and orange hibiscus; miniature roses; white
and yellow dahlias and yellow oleanders. His favourites, however, were
the bougainvilleas, poinsettia, the pink and yellow busy dizzies,
Begonia with its red leaves; white lollipop, pride of India, pride of
Barbados and queen of the night. There were plenty others which they had collected over the years.
“What’s up love?”
“The cat. He won’t go out.”
“The cat? You mean you brought me in because of the cat? A mere cat? And it’s not even a cat. You should learn to call things by their proper names. It’s a kitten, not a cat, a kitten.”
“Look! I didn’t call you in to argue with you. Just get the cat out!”
Bose felt he was trying to make her seem ridiculous in her own
eyes. He was always doing it. She fretted and fretted over it. “But one day,” she thought, “the tables would be turned. Then he would see.”
Both husband and wife wore openly the badge of bitterness. They had been married three years and were still without an issue. They had lived through all the disillusionment, the revelations about the real character of their partner without discovering that in life it was necessary to make compromises and concessions. Both were nostalgic about their past, their courtship, the first year of their marriage, but hated the present and the demands it made on them. They were still quite young. Olu was six years older. It would have be a pity to see their marriage break up. That was the opinion of close friends. They had made such a great team, they had made such a fine impression on others and they had seemed so well suited to one another at the beginning.
However, after a year or so the magic of romance had flown away. Every little thing seemed to cause some disagreement somehow. Olu had been a last child and consequently spoiled by both parents and all his elder siblings. Even as a young adult he craved for attention and always wanted to have his own way. There were things he took so naturally that it baffled him why Bose should see anything wrong in it. When growing up for instance he had never been called on to do housework. His mother was a housewife par excellence and the people employed by her did everything. He never washed dishes after meals, he had never been called on to wash even his own clothes or go shopping; his sheets went to the laundry and every week he came home from school to find his bed freshly made as it was every day. Money was never a problem, he had never been taught to save. At school it had been just about the same. The ‘dorms’ were swept, the beds were made, the grounds were maintained and the meals were served up not by the students but by the employees of the school.
Bose, however, had had a strict upbringing in a family of seven in which she was a middle child but the eldest girl. And they had done everything for themselves. When Olu came home from work he expected to have a chilled beer waiting for him; if there was washing to do it was Bose that did it. In all it was the garden which had preserved their marriage for it was the only point of contact where they pulled together. When he was interested in anything he worked with a will and seldom failed to produce the best results. He reasoned that as breadwinner he had every right to do what he wanted after a long day of work. At the beginning Bose hoped that he would change under her influence but the longer they were married the more plain to them it seemed that they could never stay married much longer. Then the mutual bickering began and they were surprisingly vehement in their quarrels. Olu could simply not understand why Bose “Hated him so much!” while the rest of the world considered him to be a “Capital fellow”: he was charming and revered by all – except his wife, and that galled him all the more.
His greatest cross was the contempt with which Bose regarded poverty. True enough, Olu came from a well off family. Even though he was spoiled there was one saving grace in his upbringing, which at the same time worsened his relationship with his wife: he believed that all human beings had a potential for good and should have respect accorded to them. This belief manifested itself in a cheerful manner in his dealings with their employees at home and their poor neighbours. This drove Bose practically up the wall and she would go on talking about it for days on end. She sighed and soughed asking why she had married a man who was a fool, an idealist who had no common sense. Even worse was that she thought he was wasting time writing in his study instead of making money with contracting and she had many examples of men who she would hold before him as instances of what a man should be. This lack of support from her hurt him to the quick, for he wrote for her and the children that he hoped she would bring him. He wrote so as to prepare a solid financial basis for them later on. He knew what he was doing and it pained him that she did not appreciate it.
“Where is the cat anyway?” he asked gruffly.
“In the sitting room,” she replied, hardly concealing her irritation.
For the next ten minutes Bose stood aside giving the orders. Olu, who had gone into the sitting room, dealt with the kitten.
The problem was not the animal but the heavy furniture that it could hide under or inside. Olu, being a tall bulky person, couldn’t avoid colliding with various bits of furniture. One moment it would be his shins, the next moment the back of his head. He often had to crouch low or lie flat on the carpet to see where the creature was hiding. When he found it again he would lounge at it but it scampered off in another direction. He then had to move large pieces of furniture to get at it. The scene was becoming farcical: Bose directing him at the top of her voice which was going up steadily to a wavering falsetto. He bent on discovering a new depth of obscenity at each foray. The kitten meowing with the heart-rending cry of an animal in its extremity. The whole scene was looking hopeless when Olu at last stood up to his full height and folded his sleeves higher up than already.
“Right!” he said. “Enough of this!”
Somehow he succeeded in cornering the creature. He lounged and grabbed it with his large hands that closed tightly over the little ball of fluffy fur with its two liquid green eyes. He seemed no longer too care about whether it lived or perished. But he didn’t know what he was asking for.

What was it that was so absolutely fascinating in that moment? What was it that was so bizarre? Was it the blood? The blood was dark. It ran over his hand, ran down his fingers and trickled onto the carpet. The artificial light from the bulb made it look stark and vivid. Olu stood looking at it drip from his finger. The kitten must have bitten him. It didn’t seem to hurt him but to him it seemed a lot of blood. He looked at it as if he had never seen blood before let alone his own blood. Yet it wasn’t the blood that was important. It only acted as a pivot for his thoughts. The frustration of three years of unhappy marriage had reached its culmination. His disappointments, the shattered illusions, the regret, the guilt, the self recrimination, the anxieties and the feeling of having been cheated out of something that was his by right but which life had denied him. He had been brought up to believe he was something special and as an adult he had continued to believe that he was something special. And the one who had brought him to question this assumption was the very person who he expected should stand beside him. And he hated her for it. Otherwise what was the use of the vows and pledges they had made when he took her up to the altar. It was she. His wife was to blame for everything. It was all her fault. He stayed there looking at the blood trickle. An eternity passed. It was she. Yes. She was to blame for everything. Then he turned to look at her fully. His face became distorted with rage. He stretched the whole length of his arm in her direction and screamed at her.
“Woman! Look what you have done!”
A thundering silence followed. The woman said nothing. She knew that what had just happened was trivial but at the same time she knew that this was not the time for laughter. But that was what she wanted to do. Just laugh. At the same time she was terrified. She dared not say anything frivolous or untoward. The anger of her man made her hold back any expression of any kind. After what seemed a long time, Olu walked out. He walked out blindly as if in a daze. She stayed where she was. She still wanted to laugh but she also wanted to cry. In fact she didn’t know what she wanted. And the cause of all this, the kitten, had in the meantime rushed down the corridor and into the garden. But it wasn’t the kitten’s fault. What had the kitten got to do with it? It was just another occasion like others preceding it. It was only that this time it was worse. Things had certainly come to a head. As they would again. Perhaps it was time to think about things. Time to think the whole thing through. Time to take stock. High time to see whether there was anything to be done. Maybe it was her fault after all. Perhaps they were both to blame. Most of all herself. She went to the front door and closed it. Then she went to take a look at the blood and the carpet. After cleaning up she went to bed.

Olu would always remember that night. Years later, sitting comfortably with both hands resting on the arms of an armchair, he could see the definition of four fading lines leading from wrist to knuckle. And then remembering his life since that night he would smile. It was a time when he had mellowed. His marriage with Bose was working well. They had had children and the children had grown up and were independent and had families of their own. His reputation as a writer was established, he was read widely read and the future looked promising. And it all began that night thirty years before.

That night there had been a great cloudburst. A heavy storm with high winds and drenching rain. Most of the villagers were awake. They had had to batten down anything that was loose enough to be carried away by the wind. Others had furniture to move away from leaking places in the roofs, many of which were thatched. Some trees had been torn down by the wind and in one case the whole roof belonging to a large warehouse was tipped over like a sheet of paper upside down. Olu and Bose too had counted the hours that night till dawn. There had been a sort of reconciliation for she had waited up for him. They had lain awake listening at first to the mighty squall, the rushing wind, to the drumming of the rain on their roof, listening to the thunder and bright flashes of lightning; they too had waited anxiously as the rain gave way to an electrical storm. They were still awake when the dawn began to creep into their curtained bedroom. At sunrise the sun cast a copper ray over the horizon heralding a cool but bright day. The atmosphere was clean and people exchanged greetings or smiled at strangers. Nature was celebrating a rebirth and everyone felt it and joined in the celebration. It had been a great catharsis and the blessing had come with a bounty. It had come with a benediction. The rains had begun.

John Clinton
1998