Dear child, let’s play a game. Come here, crouch down,
and place your tiny hands upon the ground
to feel the salted sand beneath your skin.
That outer layer of your inner world
is very thin, and will get thinner still
as years pile up on years, but never mind –
you’re young, and age is for the aged ones,
and time for you still measures out in joy
and tears and wonder, day on day on day,
and size is relative at best. So much
will come along and go away with time,
your life an hourglass, the top still full
but trickling slowly downward nonetheless;
you’re still so small, the world is oh-so-big,
and how I hope to see it all anew
again, as seen and felt afresh by you,
your eyes alight and hungry for it all!

So: look out there, where waves dance up and down,
and tell me what you see. Not much? So true!
But don’t just look through distance, look through time
to see the past – not deep as dinosaurs,
but just a handful-hundred years or so.
It’s Fifteen Forty-Five, and Henry Eighth
is fearful of the French invading here
(a war, like most such wars, which was at heart
an argument about who got to claim
the work and taxes of the normal folk,
a game of thrones in which we’re merely pawns –
and not so much has changed in that respect).
Now, Henry was all get-stuff-done-and-build,
and forts were very much his sort of thing:
protection, yes, but part of playing king
is making statements, setting down your mark.
And so he had his men construct a fort,
a box of stone with walls and ramparts: traps
for men in ships with mayhem on their minds.
But then, before they’d finished, from the swell
of summer’s tides at dawn, the French attacked!
They crossed the Channel in two hundred ships,
two thousand men all gunning for the fort,
still incomplete, the builders not yet done.

The French, they didn’t win (I’m not sure why,
to tell the honest truth) and went away.
The workmen carried on, the fort was built,
the war was won (or lost – depends which side
you take) and Henry died, as all kings do.
(They’re only human beings, after all.)
The years flowed by, the tide licked up and down
the castle’s walls, and made them soft and weak,
which isn’t very useful in a fort.
Alliances and politics had changed
(and so had war), the French were less a threat
than someone else (I’m not sure who). And so
it was the castle walls were all knocked down,
the stone reused elsewhere, the site left bare,
abandoned – given over to the sea.
My point, dear child, is not to make a mock
of kings, not even Henry Eighth. (I could,
and sometimes do.) But look: in Henry’s case
you can’t accuse the guy of sitting back
and letting life unfold for sake of fear
that what he did might fall a little short.
As mortal as he was – as you and I –
he made his moves, and made them fast and bold.

My dearest child, the point I mean to make
is that you’ll try then fail, or try then win –
and even when you win, it mightn’t last
beyond the first bright rush of holy joy
completion brings. Temptation sings a tune
(like sirens, if you know your Odyssey)
of torpor, tells you not to even try:
why bother, if the things you make will die,
and so will you? But that’s the wrong way round.
The tree still falls; the question of the sound
is answered by the other trees, who’ll say
“we felt it – that’s enough”. The forests know
that life-and-death’s the loop that lets them grow,
that kings and heroes cannot do their work
without their soldiers, builders, farmers, clerks.
The large is built up slowly from the small,
and every castle-tree must someday fall.

Now let’s get down to earth, let’s touch the truth – 
no matter if the sand is wet, who cares?
For did you know that once upon a time
this sand was rocks and mountains, far away?
That time and tide wore down those mountaintops
and crushed them into something close to dust?
It’s true! The large becomes the small with time,
the small becomes the large... this Earth was made
from distant stars exploding into rust,
and so were you, you too are made of stars,
the salt-red ocean underneath your skin
is full of tiny bits of stars – don’t laugh!
I wouldn’t lie to you, it’s what we are,
all people, good or bad, or strong, or weak,
are stars – and don’t forget it, much as life
may tempt you so to do when things go wrong.
‘Cause time is ocean’s waves, and life’s a beach,
and all our castles merely piles of sand –
but don’t despair! The power left to each
of us is here, right here, within your hand.

So kneel – but not to gods, nor kings, nor men.
To time we bend the knee, and take the gift
of time to make a shape, to make our mark,
not knowing if or how that mark will last.
‘Cause nothing lasts forever – sad but true.
The waves of time will crush our rhymes
and castles, yes, they will – but don’t despair.
For meaning is a moment we can take
and cling to tightly when the world’s awash
with rage and loss, and we feel oh-so-small.
So kneel – and sink those tiny human hands
into the sand, which once was mountains tall,
and make it shape a mountain once again.
Perhaps the sand remembers what it was;
perhaps your hand remembers how it felt
to raise a wall against the sea, against
the French, against the patient tides of time.
For that is all that human hands have done,
and all that they can do: make shapes of sand,
of rock or air, or ink upon a page.
(This is my castle, made of words, for you.)

There will be times you’ll face this fact and feel
that nothing’s to be done, that all is lost.
But other times – and let this be the first! –
that feeling will be wind to fill your sails:
if nothing lasts, and every fortress fails,
and every mountain crumbles into sand,
then every moment, poem, every shape
we make is glory: dreamings brought to life.

Embrace this momentary act! Admit
the truth of life, which is mortality,
and so defy the tyranny of time.

Now say the magic words: “shall we begin?”

#

(for Jasmine)