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‘i will’ she said
and the sky turned yellow with delight
‘i will’ he said
and the sky turned yellow with delight .....
...... ‘i will’ he sighed
and pulled the faded saffron curtains
from the sky
‘promise me you’ll write from time to time’
‘i will’ he shook
her hand sadly
and walked out in the rain
These words of deceipt, subterfuge and sadness provide as good a place as any to start. An extract of a thing called ‘poem of determination’, they were some of the very first words of mine to enter the public domain. They appeared in an obscure poetry magazine that has no doubt long since ceased to exist. And there is an added poignancy about these lines in that, when they were published, they were attributed to the wrong author. So this is also an opportunity to put the record straight after all these years: For what they’re worth, the words are irrefutably mine.
They were written during my student years in London - longer ago than I care to remember. In the intervening years, I trod the mill of corporate life in various places - but mostly Switzerland, where I settled many years ago - until I reached a point at the end of the last millenium when I’d had enough. I quit so I could start the next thousand years a free and independent spirit. And all the while, unlike the man in the poem - who we all know will never keep his promise – I’ve continued to write from time to time.
Largely for myself, but also for my kids. Two years ago I published the first of these children’s stories: Tales of Grin – The Magic Opening Chord. It’s a kind of modern Alice in Wonderland as the Brothers Grimm might have seen it – which might explain why one UK bookseller considered it “too horrid for children”. An extract appears here under Faded Saffron Curtains and other extracts in the SF and Fantasy section, but there is also much more to be found on the Tales of Grin website.
The second of these stories should be published before too long, and an extract of this will probably also be posted here in due course.
- Location:
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Switzerland
- Primary occupation:
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Translator
- Dream occupation:
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Telephone repairman
- I like:
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Things too numerous to mention
- Favorite writers:
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Graham Greene - he should have got the Nobel Prize
- Favorite books:
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The next one
- Favorite music:
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Lamonte Young's Well Tuned Piano
- Favorite movies:
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Der blaue Engel
- Favorite quote:
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Poetry is what gets lost in translation - Robert Frost
- Gender:
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male
- Religion:
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none