Listen to the poem here
Life is an outbreak of Hungarian measles
by which I mean the diagnosis never was
nor will be found in scrolls or textbooks.
When life comes round, however much you
had been looking out for it, it never is
quite what you did expect. It might turn out
to be a German rhapsody, a game of
Russian whispers or Chinese roulette
Best not to bet on anything. At least not yet.
Life, famously we have been told, is just a dream,
a tale told by an idiot, an in-between until
the long-term comes. Some people prod
us all the time insisting that life is a gift
(but not, ironically, the Christmas kind,
because the box, which no one keeps,
states clearly in unblinking ink
the shop can take it back whenever it wants).
They’ve said it’s an occurrence taking place
when you’re not there. We’ve also been
reminded it’s a carnival, four seasons
all at once, or else a song to sing.
(sometimes it comes out
doo bee doo bee doo
though usually it is relentless
me-me me-me me-me-me-me
me).
So many people in so many ways
so many times have told us what life is.
I think they’ve proved beyond all doubt
life is the magic suitcase we’d all like:
whatever you chuck in it fits,
so that life also is
a blink, a drink, a pot of ink,
a map on which the place-names
have all been scratched out,
a learning curve drawn by a dog chasing its tail.
and bingo called with numbers yet unthunk.
It’s very easy, see, to churn out these comparisons,
almost like life itself some buttery days.
on which it seems to be a piece of cake.
(Baked 4.5 billion years ago – perhaps it’s past
its sell-by date, but still amazing all the time).
And then some nights, when we bang
painfully into it
we suddenly are reminded
life is a sheep-sized question mark
hanging at head height in the dark.
Concussions of this kind
enstrange your mind:
you easily can be convinced
life is a mouse without a ticket
riding on the London underground,
a wheezing luminous accordion,
a haul of wriggling wishes caught inside
a fishing net, a ladder trying on the sky,
a game of ping pong played by orang utans
with gongs upon a plank which twangs:
ker-PLUNK, buh-DOING, buh-DUNK,
buh-DOING, ker-PLUNK, buh-DONG.
It is a waltzing, beery billabong
in which we float, concocting drunken
metaphors to try to catch life’s flow,
which flows and flows and keeps on flowing through.
(Our weltanschaungs all have serious leaks.)
“Thank you for less than nothing,” some may say,
“that’s all bizarre … eccentric … contradictory.”
Which is my point:
life is just so
(and also isn’t).
If there’s one thing which life most is,
it is an epic Odyttey.
It has so many sides to it
the more you look at them
the less it all makes sense.
Some things are like that.
Take history, perhaps.
Stock markets too.
I’m also thinking of the universe
as well as you.
Phillip Hill 2025
(if you like this poem try these:
Un regalo. Una Oddity (un senso per l’udito, due per l’occhio!) nella canicola di luglio.
“Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
a medley of extemporanea,
And love is a thing that can never go wrong,
and I am Marie of Romania.”, diceva Dorothy Parker. Ciao Phillip!
This poem really resonates. Thanks Phillip!