From the category archives:

Poetry

23 April 2010

I have a photograph of the canal in Bath by the door leading out of my living room, taken the day after my husband died. A house reflected in the canal. The real house windows are dark… no lights on… but the reflection has windows blazing with light from the setting sun. It reminds me [...]

Read the full article →

20 April 2010

Thumbnail image for 20 April 2010

I love my friend Anthea’s paintings. Three pictures, illustrations of my two books Myths of the Sacred Tree and Crystal Legends. I went to Santorini with her in 1990. I climbed a volcano with her, and watched the sunset over the Aegean Sea , and walked through an ancient Minoan town, and brooded on whether [...]

Read the full article →

Icon of Mother and Child – Child Holding a Golden Ball

Mary’s son holds a golden sphere – the world in pure light. Past, present and future – poised in the palm of his hand. Mary’s son holds the Light that was before the light – the Light that was before Mary – but not before her son. Mary’s son lifts the golden sphere and throws [...]

Read the full article →

Containment

Contained in flesh are we? No. No! Contained in the unimaginable sphere of God’s love. No small thing our cares, our fears until touched by this touch. This key turns us from our fears and turning frees us. Now we know that we are known… and cared for. Small are we? No. No! Each fills [...]

Read the full article →

On Holding a Russian Icon

Touching this icon flesh dissolves and our true containment contains us. What was great to us before now shrinks and the small and disregarded seed, the secret and abiding meaning of our lives, expands. With God’s all-seeing eye we see and seeing know. In His hands we rest and in His heart are blessed.

Read the full article →

Revelation

  The dangerous seeing eye is poised to strike at darkness. No mild recognition, but terror, as meaning leaps to meaning like lightning on iron mountains.    Words slit    in revelation. The crust of long-accustomed thought    shatters and an unfamiliar landscape    is revealed. Published in The William Blake Birthday Book (ISBN 9780956199904)

Read the full article →

Life Story by Moyra Caldecott

LIFE STORY Life is woven out of stories… warp and weft the threads interplay and interact. Mind stories lying in bed at night reshaping the day’s events… reading… listening… watching… Stories shape and colour the fabric of our dreams and memories. Words and images flux and flow… change… reform… and give illusion of reality. Who [...]

Read the full article →

False Investment

Thumbnail image for False Investment

(a poem Moyra wrote in 1946) The bank has gone insolvent and is closing now. The heavy brass doors shut. The people shout in vain against the pillrs of the vestibule. The gods are sending out the bills and we can’t pay. Too late we see it was a false invenstment. We stand and stare [...]

Read the full article →

The anniversary of a death

A poem from The Breathless Pause by Moyra Caldecott The anniversary of a death Trying to reconstruct a person on the anniversary of his death you must enter the labyrinth of memory with its twisting and its turning, its sudden shocks, its false starts and its blind alleys, and its sudden revelations of what you [...]

Read the full article →

While I was wasting the day

A poem by Moyra Caldecott, from The Breathless Pause: While I was wasting the day While I was wasting the day the grass was growing, daisies opening, sunflowers pushing up tall stems. While I was wasting the day the bee pushed its way into a hundred foxgloves and went home tired. Now the light fades. [...]

Read the full article →

The net of pearls

A poem by Moyra Caldecott, from The Breathless Pause: The net of pearls Reality is not a straight line from past to future through the present… but a network of inter connections going every which way. When we recognise the nodes sitting in a garden at dawn, watching little finches, or flowers opening, a pearl [...]

Read the full article →

Swan

A poem by Moyra Caldecott, from The Breathless Pause. Leaving the pond and the gentle water weeds a swan rode the ocean. At first, because it was evening and mirror still, not knowing the fathoms of deep and restless currents stirring beneath its poised white weight, it rested easily, on smooth silver. But then – [...]

Read the full article →

Dare Darkness Grab Us

A poem by Moyra Caldecott, from The Breathless Pause: Dare Darkness Grab Us Shivering on a very small earth, the night sky formidable with stars, we pull the comforting blanket of our love over us, and, curled together, dare Darkness grab us and Time scatter us. Dare Darkness Grab Us Shivering on a very small [...]

Read the full article →

Revelation

A poem by Moyra Caldecott, from The William Blake Birthday Book (ISBN 978-0956199904). Revelation The dangerous seeing eye poised to strike at darkness. No mild recognition, but terror, as meaning leaps to meaning, like lightning on iron mountains. Words split in revelation. The crust of long accustomed shatters and an unfamiliar landscape is revealed.

Read the full article →

Moyra at St James Wine Vaults, Bath

Moyra Caldecott will be one of the featured poets on 30th October 2009 at St James Wine Vaults, 10 St James Street, Bath BA1 2TW. “What a Performance” is an evening of poetry, story-telling, and music and songs. Please go along — the more the merrier. Although Moyra will be attending, friends will be reading [...]

Read the full article →

Full Moon

A poem by Moyra Caldecott, from The Breathless Pause. Sleeping with the silver disk of the full moon on my forehead… light shining through the thick bone. Watch how it glints on mind mirrors, Scatters shadows, and seeks at last, the tiny seed thought that waits for birth.

Read the full article →

Multi-Dimensional Time: Part 1

A talk given by Moyra Caldecott to the Wessex Research Group, Bath, UK on 9 September 1999. When Grethe asked me to give this talk she suggested I should speak about the coming millennium. My reaction to this was one of dismay. Even way back then, in early spring, I was already tired of hearing [...]

Read the full article →

On Myths and Legends of Africa: Part 4

The White Bird At a still pool in the Kalahari A hunter stoops to drink. The mirror surface Flashes with white light As wings spread to rise. He looks up But already the bird Has flown. Nothing in sight But a measureless sky. The red dust of the earth, Thorn bushes And the stark skeletons [...]

Read the full article →

Lost in Translation: a poem by Moyra Caldecott

From thought to speech so much is lost in translation. More so now that I am old. I reach for words to illuminate the landscape of my mind, but a fog comes down and obscures everything…

Read the full article →

The Breathless Pause

Thumbnail image for The Breathless Pause

Moyra Caldecott has been writing poetry for many years, and has had many poems published in magazines and anthologies. She has frequently read her poems at venues in London and the West Country. She was a member of the Dulwich Group in the 1960s and 70s, and in 2005 she was made an honorary Bard [...]

Read the full article →