THE FLYING SAUCER

'UFO' (Peter Turosq)

When I was younger, my grandmother, Mrs Gertrude Timmins, told me of how, one evening many years earlier, she and other members of her family had stood in her bedroom watching three brightly-coloured UFOs circling back and forth for quite a while in the skies over their home in Wednesbury, West Midlands, before eventually flying away, never to return. Not having seen a UFO myself, I had to content myself by imagining how it might be if I ever did do so.

THE FLYING SAUCER

Through the night-time’s spangled valleys
My enquiring eyes raced far,
Still enchanted by the beauty
Of each twinkling evening star,

When a hazy gleam surged outwards
From a chasm deep in Space.
And its eldritch light grew brighter,
Darting swiftly ‘cross my face –

Like a stream of glowing fingers
Chasing softly through my hair
In a multicoloured spectrum
‘Mid the evening’s breathless air.

Then the gleam became a halo
Spinning slowly through the sky,
As the moon cast ghostly shadows,
Sinking ever down to die.

Soon a shape became apparent
In this strange, unearthly glow.
Now a humming sphere, it circled,
As its light began to grow,

In a luminous suffusion,
Till, when slowly gliding by,
I could feel its eerie presence
Probing deeply through my eyes.

And I sensed at once that, there, some
Strange intelligence looked down,
One that watched with eyes unblinking
O’er the sombre, sleeping town.

Then the phosphorescent globule
Glided silently away,
In a cosmic orb of aura
Through the heavens draped in grey,

Till its weird, fluorescent image
Faded slowly from my sight.
And my eyes were left to wander
Through the shadows of the night.

But that alien aurora
Still cast shivers o’er my face,
As I gazed in spellbound wonder
Through the catacombs of Space,

In the fear that one dark night it
Will return amid the gloom,
Like a strange, unearthly phantom
From the abysses of Doom.

A PHANTASIA OF GHOSTS AND ILLUSIONS

The following poem owes its creation to a very curious snatch of conversation that I happened by chance to overhear one day on the radio, in which the speaker was contemplating whether it might be that many of the people that we casually pass by without interaction or see only from a distance are nothing more than ghosts, mere phantoms. And so, from this remarkable muse, sprang ‘Phantasia’ (constituting, incidentally, the longest single sentence to appear in any of my writings!).

A PHANTASIA OF GHOSTS AND ILLUSIONS

Hear the echo of a lifetime
Doomed forever more to last,
Or a murmur drifting backwards
From the theatres of the past,

Whirling softly through a vortex
Spinning deep in silent Space
Like a whirlpool in the heavens,
Or an eye within a face

Gazing outwards, yet unseeing,
Pale as Dawn’s auroral birth
From the snowy dreams of slumber
Shrouding velvet, verdant Earth,

Like an unseen clock vibrating
As its lifetime ebbs away,
While its fingers trace the seconds
Of another unborn day

Through the silhouettes cast downwards
From the shadows of the stars,
Now a host of winging phantoms
From a distant world afar,

Flitting slowly through the evening
As the planets e’er rotate,
Each a windmill in a spiral
On a shining, spangled plate

Spinning outwards e’er to nowhere
In their orbit round their lord,
While lugubrious crescendos
Chase like half-forgotten chords

In a lonely helter-skelter
Through the avenues of Time;
They – the spheres’ eternal music –
Lacking syllables or rhyme,

Drifting downwards through the starlight
Lest their meaning fades away
To a ghost upon the moorlands
Of an evanescent day

Ever seeking ‘midst the future
For a future of its own,
As the souls of Past and Present
Soar like cloudlets to the throne

Of a duplicated kingdom
On Time’s unknown, farthest side,
Where their memory still lingers,
Round its universe to glide,

While they merge with more illusions –
None is real, for none can be
In this pseudo-world of Shadow
Cast from vacant Destiny

Like a set of footprints chasing
After footprints of their own,
Or a pool’s encircling ripples
Running rings around a stone;

Yet their messengers are present
In a hundred other lands,
Groping ever through their darkness
Like a metamorphic hand,

E’en within our crowded suburbs
‘Midst their noisy, raucous hosts,
Who could guess that most are shadows,
Mindless images, just ghosts?

DREAMS OF NATURE

I wrote this poem as a paean of praise to Nature – and, indeed, to Supernature, even Ultranature, perfect Nature beyond humanity’s normal sensory perceptions – and to its glory through all eternity, as personified by Perpetua.

DREAMS OF NATURE

Through sleepy vales of pastel green
I passed, one Summer morning;
‘Neath dreaming skies of blissful blue
Reborn with Daylight’s dawning,
While faraway the ocean’s roars
Still echoed long from silent shores.

And on I strolled, ‘neath golden clouds,
Past dancing, crystal fountains
That leapt and sang in sparkling joy
From lilac, snow-capped mountains
Like diamond stars with lucent glee,
And blessed by Immortality.

And through the skies the sun was drawn
By two emblazoned horses
That raced along a burnished trail –
Two crimson, fiery forces
With streaming tails like scarlet lyres,
And scorching eyes like dancing fires.

Still on I passed through glades of trees –
Tall, silver dendroids gleaming
Like astral arcs with spangled boughs,
And fragrant flowers beaming,
Pulsating light in fragile streams
Like cloudy, half-forgotten dreams.

Ah, Nature! Truly thou art here,
Amidst thine own perfection,
In this, thy world of unborn dreams,
For who could give correction
To this, thy realm, and thine alone,
Which Time’s own seeds could not have sown.

And meadows flecked with sleeping flowers
Lay far into the distance –
For Nature gave them love of Life,
The will for their existence –
Exuding sweet, enchanting scent
That zephyrs’ drifting murmurs sent

Across the cerulean hills
To kiss the mauve reflections
Of pool and lake in lilac groves,
Translucent, clear perfections,
Each rippling long, with violet torqued,
As turquoise swallows skimmed and hawked.

And here I see thou dwellest too,
Perpetua, my dearest,
Whose eyes reflect the vales of Space
Like pools of beauty clearest.
For here thou too can seek release,
For here alone thou findest Peace.

Ah, Peace! I see thy figure bright –
A slender, tranquil maiden
Amidst the elvish vales and woods,
All intricately laden
With gauzy webs of spider-thread
In rippling green and blushing red.

So look into the western skies
And see her shadow shining –
A smiling face with deep blue eyes
As pure as Heaven’s lining.
And there, amid the clouds above,
A Sign is born – a snowy Dove.

Perpetua – all knowest thee –
Celestial, immortal –
Who passes e’er through Space’s door,
Through Time’s eternal portal,
To other worlds concealed from all,
Till all receive the Shining Call.

And from the rainbow’s golden end
The souls of Colour fluttered
In evanescent cloudy drifts,
As ageless mountains muttered
‘Neath shattered brows of crumbling stone,
As old and pale as whitened bone.

And all around lies Space, supreme –
A vacuum dark, unending –
Which bore thee once, Perpetua,
To send thy spirit wending
From wells of Time to strange new worlds
Where dormant Life would be unfurled.

And so, as star steeds raced in joy
Across their twinkling haven,
I took my leave of Nature’s bliss
‘Neath darkened mountains graven.
For Time is swifter still, it seems,
And past are all my Nature dreams.

For now I wake, once more alone
Amidst my own surrounding.
Yet still within my sleepy eyes
The star steeds’ souls are bounding.
And still, Perpetua, I see
Thee shining far ahead of me.

Yea, ever will I see thy face
Before my life’s ambition,
As e’er wilt thou personify
My lifetime’s expedition,
Till I no more this world shall see,
For, yea, thou art Eternity.

STONEHENGE

No-one who has visited Stonehenge, as I first did a decade or so ago, can fail to be impressed by its aloof, stark grandeur, embodying a remote agelessness that effortlessly transcends the tedious minutiae of our modern-day world – hearkening back instead to an unimaginably distant time, yet quite conceivably lingering on, unblemished, long after we have vanished elsewhere, leaving behind a dead, desecrated planet to this ancient monument’s silent, eternal vigil.

STONEHENGE

Like a ring of empty windows
‘Neath the mirrors of the sky,
Draped in silhouettes of Silence
As the evening’s phantoms die

In the hush of newborn dawnings
From the clouds each hung in sleep,
While the moon sinks down to slumber
And the stars so softly weep.

But these pinnacles of Shadow
Notice not those tears of dew,
Theirs is Past alone – not Present –
From which long ago they grew

Changing ne’er, as if forgotten
By the sentinels of Time,
While the winds breathe murmured echoes
Like a stream of ghostly chimes

Through their empty arching doorways
To the meadows of the Past,
For their pagan ring of darkness
Seems forever more to last,

Like a cold, unending nimbus
Where the sun has never shone.
And their ancient chill still lingers
As their dismal forms stretch on

In a mesmerising circle,
Like a world removed from all,
While the years flit by, pale shadows
‘Neath their stony, rugged walls.

They have watched the silver starships
Glide away through silent Space,
Growing fainter every moment
Till they passed beyond their face.

And behind, a dying planet
Drew its last polluted breath
‘Neath a shroud of radiation
‘Ere it sank away to death.

Yet these sombre tombs of Silence
Lingered still though all had gone,
Penetrating through the darkness
As their forms stretched ever on.

They – alone – who could not crumble;
They – alone – who could not die;
Still persisting, silhouetted
‘Gainst a vacant, empty sky.