56 Wind Over Tide

Reading:

Wind Over Tide

A gale is whipping up a real commotion.
Choppy waves on water brown with peaty run-off
From the streams on Bodmin Moor and thickened-up 
With soil from farmers’ fields, not to speak of toxic leachings 
From spoil left there when Devon Great Consuls packed it in,
All washed down by days of heavy rain. In stronger gusts, 
White horses prance a dozen miles from the open ocean. 
‘Wind-over-tide’ in winter storm as southerly blasts 
Meet a river in spate at its fullest ebb. 
Why it bothers to blow I don’t know. For all the noisy disturbance 
As the wind huffs and puffs, the tide flows on in defiance.

When I regard my one-time academic life, I see this as metaphor: 
Lots of surface noise but things went on as they had before.
Consumers shopped as ever; power still lay with the banker;
Tat flowed into the Sea of Catastrophe all the more.
Ah, they said, what did you expect? No use charging in head-on.
Don’t waste your breath in trying to resist the tide of money. 
Come in at a tangent. You may achieve some shift however tiny.
But I’ve never been much use as a flanker. 

What I need is something truly cunning: that subtle angle where 
Quantum paradox comes into play. If I could line up the issues there
I could apply the full strength of a magnetic personality
And on the instant I’d achieve superconductivity:
Ideas entangled in some intellectual double-layer graphene
That would alter the flow of history with no resistance
At all. Ah!  If only life was like that magic carbon stuff!
Alas, I know well enough the futility of persistence
In lost causes. My portfolio of them is full to bursting.
And metaphors are no use to those thirsting for a better way.
As it is, I’m left with a muddy river on a windy day. A dismal scene.