Just Think of It

Albert Einstein, or some such genius or other,
once stated that no known force can exceed
the speed of light, and we now know that
it takes, for example, one billion years for light
to travel from one particular distant star
all the way here to our shining earthbound eyes.

But what happens, I wonder, when we consider
the speed of thought? When I merely think of
that same star, my thought can journey
all that staggering distance and back again
in a timeless flash, whereas in this instance
light takes a billion years one way only.

Moreover that same star, which might embody
ten million times more mass than our own
sun, is now by the power of thought alone
burning no less brightly inside my brain which is
not much bigger, say, than a Christmas pudding.

Is there perhaps some undetected paradox here?
Or have I just hit upon a kind of amazing new law
that may help us for the first time to grasp the entire
layout of the universe and unify its disparate fields?

That star of mine is still shining. Just think of it.

Milton Loved Satan

More than any other character
to be found in Paradise Lost.

For all his preached puritanical
and seemingly saintly morality

His so-called good characters
are as dull as concrete icons.

But his devils, all fallen angels, are
depicted in the most enchanting colours

Which makes me wonder if,
like me, he would have much rather

Come out with a great sigh of relief
and lived a life of blatant sensuality.

I think perhaps that more than half of
my tyrannical finger-wagging virtue is

Derived from a kind of entrenched envy
that I never dared to be honest enough

To walk in the world without a mask
and wear my slavering heart on my sleeve.
 

In Just Think of It, his first collection for over twenty years, Gavin Bantock proves that he has not grown tame. His many years in Japan have enriched his perspective when writing about life in Britain; he is also an acute observer of Japanese life from an Englishman’s point of view. In his verse the clarity and simplicity of Japanese art combine with vivid (and often provocative and outlandish) imagery, as he writes with wit and precision on such subjects as the king crab, the speed of thought, and the proper place to read poetry: the lavatory.