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These poems are now to be found with illustrations by Lucy Kempton on www.compasses-lucyandjoe.blogspot.com/ My other blog is http://www.bestofnow.blogspot.com/

Handbook for explorers 12

You'll wonder, in time, if it's been worthwhile:
The search for gentians in rocky crevices
Or epiphytic orchids beneath high jungle
Canopies, where jaguars hunt; species
After species, that have to be defined,
Under a microscope or in a tube,
Listed in tables, signed and countersigned,
Reduced to figures you must square or cube
To reach conclusions, which seem to make sense.
But amid the reckoning and statistics
(Shadows on surfaces where nothing sticks),
You'll want to turn back to the present tense,
To find new co-ordinates and refrain
From doing what you did before, again.

Handbook for Explorers 11

When, in time, you come down from the mountain,
You may seem to people to be a god
Or his prophet, gifted to relieve pain;
Or else the vanguard of a horde
Of preachers, who scatter their convictions
Like viruses. You'll just want a few friends
To exchange views with, or find reasons
For another drink. But understanding ends,
Before it has begun. They'll bring you gifts,
Not from kindness, but to compensate
You for the poisonous air that shifts
Across a land, where all are bred to hate.
There's nothing to be done that can deter
Their frantic genius for guile and war.

Handbook for Explorers update

To the reader who enquired about further poems in the sequence, thank you for your comments. That is what I am trying to do. There are 40 more sonnets to come, which thanks to some response, I am now encouraged to post. Joe

Handbook for Explorers 10

Getting lost's the better part of getting there;
The other half's not knowing where you were
At first; or what it is you may discover -
God's word or a herb that'll provide a cure
For broken bones or dislocated minds -
As darkness wraps up the mountain face
Where you flounder, and contrary winds
Give loose advice; and confused, you tread space
And, falling, wonder how long until
You land; find, not oblivion but snow
To cushion you, and then guess you're still
Alive in a dead world of ice and rock,
At whose heart lurk new secrets to unlock.

Handbook for Explorers 9

Each foot's a mile, each minute a day;
In each harsh breath you feel and hear shingle
Heaving up the shore; at each crest you stay
A while, look back to see nothing at all
But mist close in around you, like a valve
You've come through; each crest a peak, peak a crest
Above it. And above that the sky's black cave
Spewing from its mouth long skeins of mist.
Best not to think much about getting there
Just to keep climbing, your mind empty,
Expecting no reward but the joy and rush of fear
As you get closer to the ever widening sky.
Then at the true summit, you stop at last
Lost in the clouds till, curtains drawn apart,
You see, as though in the future of the past,
A climpse of light and somewhere else to start.

Handbook for Explorers 8

Here there'll surely be a fresh obstacle:
A beckoning mountain face, bleak and sheer
That will leave no option but a frontal
Assault; and the need both to be there
And to have climbed it, and find a place to love
Beyond it, where beans and potatoes grow,
Such as all fucked up explorers dream of,
But which few of then will ever know.
For you there is no choice: you must move on,
Over mountains and through clouds, with just one
Consolation: everything you've known
Or possessed (when, warmed by the rising sun,
You step lightly upon your chosen track)
Is either in your head or on your back.