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Anachronistic Chaucer
When April showers, forecast on TV,
delayed our pilgrimage to Canterbury,
an eating house, clept Hooters, we espied
beside a leafy glade where we could bide
our time in revelry and intercourse.
Unto a cycle rack each tied their horse
and entered Hooters, where a comely wench
cried: “Welcome! Here’s a menu! Take a bench!”
They served no grog, nor mead, instead a beer
of yellow hue, called ‘lager’, brought us cheer,
as did the serving maids, whose scant attire
set every male pilgrim’s heart afire.
Then came the food, beef patties sheathed in bread
and Frankish fries. Upon this fare we fed
until the rain abated for the day
and GPS could guide us on our way.
first published in The Spectator
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A Spring Triolet
Come spring, the world’s a kinder place,
farewell to frost and spiny rime,
across the meadow mad hares race.
Come spring, the world’s a kinder place,
for Nature wears a verdant face
and relegates Old Father Time.
Come spring, the world’s a kinder place
hailing Earth’s rebirth sublime.
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Spring in the Sahara
Spring lasts one day across this desert land;
Saharan cold begets Saharan heat
as drizzle, like a sprinkling from the hand
of Nature moistens shoulders, heads and feet.
A whiff of damp pervades the arid air,
the elongated shadows and the chill
of dawn diminish daily, till a tear
that cleaves the gauzy clouds lets rainfall spill.
The nightly bat migration’s at an end.
With palms stripped clean of dates they seek a cave
and huddle in the dark, while sparrows lend
their chorus to a dirge at winter’s grave.
The sun no longer tilts at rise and set,
but climbs up quick and straight till summer’s met.
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Paul A. Freeman is the author of Rumours of Ophir, a crime novel which was taught in Zimbabwean high schools and has been translated into German. In addition to having two novels, a children’s book and an 18,000-word narrative poem (Robin Hood and Friar Tuck: Zombie Killers!) commercially published, Paul is the author of hundreds of published short stories, poems and articles.
Paul, what a great titillating rendition of Chaucerian story telling set in modern times with humor intrinsic in the rhymes. Chaucer would be proud. Springtime in the Sahara seems to reflect your own experience with the brevity of its appearance!
I’m sure Chaucer would have appreciated Hooters. Not sure he would have appreciated spring here in the Sahara, though.
Thanks for reading and commenting, Roy.
Paul, this is an excellent triple play, as we Yanks say about baseball. The anachronistic Chaucer is deftly comic, especially in its mix of medieval and modern (I loved those “Frankish fries”); and “A Spring Triolet” is a perfectly polished little gem.
The closing sonnet manages to give a detailed and accurate description of the very short Saharan spring. The syntax in each quatrain is elegant, and the rhymes are perfect. It’s as if the speaker were a meteorologist with a profound literary flair!
The three poems are excellent in themselves. But they also show what English poetry can still do, if it ignores the absurd precepts of free verse formlessness and modernist ideology.
I must say, I submitted these poems at different times, and Evan decided to put them all together – as always, a deft move from Evan, as with my favourite Canterbury Tales picture.
As you could tell, Joseph, each poem took quite a while to compose, with numerous reviews. I’m therefore doubly glad you liked them.
Thanks for reading and commenting.
“Anachronistic Chaucer” was inspired! Clever stuff, and it provided a much-needed chuckle. Nice work.
To be able to give someone a chuckle, especially these days is a great compliment.
Thanks for reading and commenting, David.
Good stuff, Paul. I admit I was cracking up at your Anachronistic Chaucer!
That one was fun to write, Cynthia. It was a competition piece and took until the day before deadline before I took metaphorical pen to paper. Sometimes competition topics seem almost impossible until you force yourself to sit down and switch off the outside world.
Thanks for reading and commenting.
Thank you Paul for these three gems. All lovely in their different way. Really appreciating spring here in the UK at the moment. The world does indeed seem ‘ a kinder place’ .
I’m not the biggest fan of triolets, Maria, but the topic, spring, had me remembering all the poems and tropes and trying to avoid cliche as much as possible.
Thanks for reading and commenting.
Paul, your re-imagined echoes of Chaucer’s Tabard Inn as our contemporary Hooters (there’s one 12 miles away) are superb. And both are (or were) real eating houses that your imagination works around. The descriptive vocabulary of your pilgrims is delightful.
In “Spring Triolet,” I particularly like the use of “relegates.” My custom is to say “relegate something to something else,” practically requiring an indirect object. But you are correct that the verb alone means, “exile [direct object] to an inferior position or status.” And that direct object is not Winter, but Old Father Time himself. What wonders Nature works in spring, “to make the world a kinder place.”
The details of “Spring in the Sahara” are impressive. Spring is almost always shorter than spring lovers might like, but you do justice to that one day in the desert. Words well done!
Glad you liked the poems, Margaret.
As probably noticed before, I have a soft spot for Chaucer and if given the chance like to incorporate his pilgrims in all kinds of poetic shenanigans.
With triolets there’s so little leeway (maybe I’m just naturally longwinded) while juggling with repeated lines, but for once I was happy with the result – maybe I’ll have another go, sometime.
Spring in the Sahara was sparked after all the spring poetry appeared on the SCP site, so I decided to write about springtime here at the back end of the Sahara.
Thanks for reading and commenting.