Game of Never

(Picture courtesy of NASA)

This first poem (on this blog) is my pride and joy. Through my late teens I had tried to master regular iambic verse. This was the first effort I was satisfied with.

It started as a mental exercise looking for words that sum everything up. Hence "Life", then "Death". Then I came up with the sad word that, at death, all is "Forgotten". Now I started writing, on a piece of card...

Some time later a fellow Huddersfield student, I think it was Ralph Chamberlain, presented me with that very card. I had dropped it at his house party! Close-shave: my best effort nearly lost forever, forgotten! I wrote it down properly and typed it out. Later it went onto computer.

Some time in the 1990s I was waiting for a Chinese Takeaway at "The Phoenix" in Cleethorpes (on Hardy's Road). There I saw a newspaper advertisement by Forward Press, asking for poems for a new anthology. So I sent them three poems, including "Game of Never". They chose another poem: one now called "Girl Eyes"! Didn't get that. Still, I sent "Game..." to a publisher once called "National Library of Poetry". So, it is in print, plus also on various online sites. In 1997 I added two more lines, for a positive ending. I Note my father sadly passed away a few days after those lines were added. Here is the poem:

GAME OF NEVER

Life-Death Forgotten, Never Was;

Time, matter whirling, empty Space.

Love, merely hunger, drives us On;      

Self, ever lonely, rots apace.

God, faintly ruling, far away,

Sees sinful, lusty liars pray.

Vague faceless ocean,

Blackest Light;

Nothing tells us What is Right.

Life is but a Game we Play;

Death no more than End of Day,

Forgotten.

                 (Yet Remembered,

With Hope).

Paul Butters

(First Drafted 22\4\1971)

(13\6\97: "Yet Remembered... added)


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