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Category: River

318 • Somme

318 • Somme

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Alas for my ptarmigan, pTom
Who expired in a ptrench on the Somme.
Though he fought ptooth and claw
Through the pterrors of war
He was ptaken, at last, by a bomb.

Friday 13th traditionally flushes out people’s tales of bad luck and trouble. Our contribution here – which incidentally revisits a couple of well-received My Dog Errol themes (Pet Elegies, and Tales of the Riverbank) – also provides a worthy billet for the plague of silent Ps that has infested our escritoire in recent days.

285 • Jordan

285 • Jordan

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There’s just one more applicant: Gordon,
Well-equipped for the post of church warden.
A total abstainer,
He’s drunk wine in Cana,
And once dipped his nose in the Jordan.

We’re in real danger, here, of seeing a thoroughly unsuitable candidate appointed to a responsible office, thanks to the shortsighted – or perhaps wittingly bogus – recommendations of a silver-tongued sponsor.

126 • Tagus away

126 • Tagus away

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John Fowles tried to finish ‘The Magus’,
But his typewriter fell in the Tagus
And a young Portuguese
Who seemed eager to please
Suggested a trip to Las Vegas.

Many readers will have puzzled over the famously indeterminate ending of Fowles‘s once-trendy tome: perhaps he became distracted, as suggested above?

[No more river-rhymes from me, now. Too many people have drowned, the big book I’ve been copy-editing is off to Thames and Hudson, and – with the aid of various Telescreens – I’ve started a fresh job, joining an as-yet unfamiliar team (for as long as I can endure it).]

124 • Missouri position

124 • Missouri position

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Though His sea-walking record still stands
Christ’s rivals haunt various lands:
The Bishop of Newry
Has crossed the Missouri
Not once, but three times … on his hands.

Of course there are those who regard the original miracle as a piece of trickery, one that crossed the shaman/showman boundary. It’s nonetheless dispiriting to read of high officials in the Church – however skilled in circus-craft – setting out to upstage the Nazarene in so meretricious a fashion.

121 • The Ouse

121 • The Ouse

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As the cops drag a corpse from the Ouse:
‘Look Sarge, it’s all covered in clues!’
‘Wrong. The arm says “Suzanne”,
But it’s clearly a man.’
‘Right! We can’t trust a bloke with tattoos.’

This little cameo might suggest that The Boys in Blue — for all their open-mindedness, emotional intelligence and forensic acumen — haven’t quite got their heads around Gender Fluidity yet.

119 • Rhône

119 • Rhône

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Hats off to my patient Aunt Joan
Who taught me to play the trombone,
Or rather, she tried,
Dropping hints from the side
While I bobbed up and down in the Rhône.

No amount of patience on an instructor’s part will produce measurable progress in a pupil unless the overall circumstances are conducive to pedagogy. The informal teaching scenario here, and the diffident mode of inculcation, would garner scant praise from those who are paid to criticize professionals at work.

117 • Rhine recovery

117 • Rhine recovery

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I was casting my pearls before swine
When the fattest one fell in the Rhine.
Two nuns in Cologne
Fished it out with a drone,
But more by good luck than design.

Like many a parable, this poem probably answers more questions than it asks. In terms of title I toyed with ‘The Pearl Fishers’ and ‘The Pig Fishers’ but decided that either would be thoroughly misleading. In any event, the point is proven: one man’s miracle is another man’s coincidence.

115 • Euphrates (Volga)

115 • Euphrates (Volga)

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So sorry to read that dear Katy’s
Just drowned in the mighty Euphrates.
Her twin sister Olga
Was drowned in the Volga,
But that was way back in the Eighties.

Some would see the hand of ‘Fate’ in this double accident; others would suspect a genetically-governed recklessness where powerful currents are concerned. Equally, it could all be entirely meaningless.

113 • Beard of Avon

113 • Beard of Avon

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A scholar writes: ‘Is it not weird
How Shakespeare’s portrayed with a beard?
The Sweet Bard of Avon
Was always clean-shaven.
At least, that is how he appeared.’

The reasoning of this ‘scholar’ does not reward protracted scrutiny. It pleases self-styled experts to wreathe their heroes in mystique, such as the belief that Shakespeare was born and died on 23 April, for which no firm evidence can be found.

112 • Isis

112 • Isis

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At Oxford I’d very few vices
And strove to avoid any crisis
Unlike AJP Taylor,
The soi-disant ‘sailor’,
Who scuppered my punt on the Isis.

While we’ll never know whether Taylor sank this vessel deliberately, we can be quite certain that, even in the golden days of the Twentieth Century, any man of letters attracted gossip and rumour. Today, it would be threats of hanging or violation at the very least.

110 • Niger

110 • Niger

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Adrift on the old river Niger,
Just me and the prophet Elijah
And a Woman in White
Who likes watching men fight –
So we take it in turns to oblige her.

Some ‘Sunday fools’ still believe spirits move among us, and a few, perhaps, suppose that they’re prepared to conspire with mortals in illogical, Lawrentian pacts. But what we’re really investigating here is the troubling, antiquated trope of Objectified Woman as Muse. Perhaps she is a spirit too?

109 • Frankie and Connie

109 • Frankie and Connie

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‘Come sailing?’ said Frankie to Johnny.
‘Why not?’ he said. ‘Can I bring Connie?’
As old ballads tell us
When F. got quite jealous
That picnic went right down The Swanee.

‘This story has no moral, this story has no end. This story only goes to show that there ain’t no good in men’. ‘No, nor women neither.’ It all hinges on the word ‘jealous’. No doubt tabloid readers will judge Bisexual Temptress Connie the guiltiest of the three.

107 • Seine

107 • Seine

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I was raiding a wreck in the Seine,
Just me and two badly-dressed men.
They began to perspire
And my snorkel caught fire:
I’m not going to risk it again.

Arguably today’s adventurers fall somewhat short of the swashbuckling bravado that distinguished our childhood heroes. Alas, that we were so easily duped, from the cradle.

105 • Ribble

105 • Ribble

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In her self-designed submarine, Sybil
Has been dredged from the depths of the Ribble.
When the river burst in
Through its rice-paper skin
It was very much more than a dribble.

Characteristic press prejudice ensures that this tragedy of the female pioneer, engulfed in her own creation, is much less widely reported than, say, the sinking of RMS Titanic, a male creation with similar design faults.

103 • Orinoco communion

103 • Orinoco communion

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We scattered your ashes, dear Yoko,
On the tides of the great Orinoco.
Then we stood on the bank
Where we mournfully drank
One very small cup of cold cocoa.

Strangely our culture dignifies rivers with names, and admiring soubriquets such as ‘great’. But here that adjective serves to minimise the status of the departed, as does the meagre potation, shared among an unspecified number of mourners.

102 • Colorado fading

102 • Colorado fading

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We watched our blind bailiff from Boulder,
(As old as the hills, if not older)
Half the night, as he swam
Round and round, at the Dam,
Growing colder and colder and colder.

By definition the Colorado is colorful, but this must have been a dull scene, and the average Joe or Joanne would have packed up and gone home on such a chilly evening. We must admire the moral courage if those who resisted any temptation to intervene as a well-liked character attended to the final actions of his career.

100 • The Thames Look

100 • The Thames Look

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My effortless elegance stems
From standing so long in the Thames,
Where my girdle and gown
Have been stained sewage-brown
And the narwhals have nibbled my hems.

It takes vision and courage to pursue such a strategy of self-abasement and neglect; but great discoveries in Art (and Fashion) often arise serendipitously from a background of dismal privation.

099 • Tea on the Lea

099 • Tea on the Lea

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When Gandhi set sail on the Lea
And fancied some tadpoles for tea
The beadle of Broxbourne
Brought five pints of frogspawn
And charged but one single rupee.

Jesus’s supposed UK excursion is celebrated in song all over Britain (‘And did those feet‘ etc); whereas Gandhi’s teatime outing on a relatively-obscure Thames tributary is commemorated only in this five-line fragment. Likewise the generosity of Hertfordshire officialdom.

097 • Clyde

097 • Clyde

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I lived with my bellicose bride
Not far from the mouth of the Clyde.
Our little oil-rig
Felt surprisingly big
For somewhere with nowhere to hide.

The past-tense ‘lived’ in this brief statement is ominous. Any bride might be bellicose, having so egregious a dwelling foisted on her by matrimony: yet no hint of blame attaches to husband in the poem – rather, he merely personifies the expectation of a violent dénouement.

Glancing back, I notice Rivers of the World has become a bit of theme at My Dog Errol: this is the ninth and, let’s hope, last instalment.

095 • Yangtze Kiang

095 • Yangtze Kiang

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As I drift down the Yangtze Kiang
I shall scream about Sturm, and then Drang.
If the onlooking horde
Fails to cheer, or applaud
They shall hear a yet harsher harangue.

Anyone remember the days when a troubled youth could devote a sophomore vacation to exhibitionistic acts of existential self-exorcism? The Chinese ‘hordes’ didn’t listen for long, it has to be admitted.

093 • Mississippi

093 • Mississippi

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One year, as an unemployed hippie,
I swam down the great Mississippi.
I enjoyed it a lot
’Cos at times it was hot
Though, at others, decidedly nippy.

Now that we mayn’t venture further than our own back yards, it’s painful to recall the days when a youth could spend a couple months in unreflective, self-indulgent doggy-paddling. Though the great Mississippi had all the fragrance of a sewer, it has to be admitted.

091 • Zambesi

091 • Zambesi

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From the source of the mighty Zambesi
My swim to the coast looks so easy.
(When euphoria palls
The Victoria Falls
May turn me a trifle more queasy.)

Each human individual is trapped at the centre of their world; of course, the cause for queasiness here is not the loss of one foolhardy adventurer’s life, but the outright death of the river, precipitated by humanity’s dithering over the climate crisis.

089 • Saint Lawrence

089 • Saint Lawrence

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On his water-skis, down the St Lawrence,
Hurtled John, the Archbishop of Florence;
First his wires became crossed,
Then his halo got lost.
Soon he gave himself up to the torrents.

Factually this new river-piece may seem problematic, fraught as it is with lies and nonsense. Symbolically, however, we find The Baptist succumbing to the immersion on which his fame rested, and note in passing how the foolhardy loss of any churchman’s reputation (cf the halo, above) habitually presages self-extinction.

087 • Irrawaddy

087 • Irrawaddy

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By a weir on the wide Irrawaddy
I wrestled a square-headed squaddie.
From this wild waterfall
To the Bay of Bengal
It will bear what remains of his body.

Rivers! It’s all too easy to them as rubbish-chutes. A shallow trench could have been dug for the defeated soldier’s corpse, to mitigate the impact of its decomposition on the marine environment.

085 • Danube

085 • Danube

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One night on the island of Lupa
A guillemot fell in a stupor.
On the Danube, I guess
There was no NHS
So I trust someone contacted BUPA.

The British set great store by their ‘NHS’ (National Health System), and this piece explores what will happen when — post-Covid, no doubt — they sell it down the river to US capitalist interests. The difference? One pays for BUPA.

081 • Tiber

081 • Tiber

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A mermaid emerged from the Tiber
To force me to feast on raw fibre;
Since I, like Rasputin,
Gorge only on gluten
Her fad did not gain a subscriber.

Our Roman week must surely end here. Food fads are one thing, food fascism another. A bearded charlatan may be outwardly less appetising than a Diving Belle, but at least the controversial Russian kept his dietary irregularities to himself.