Spring song

In silence. Cleverly

A beachball growing mushroom horns
Is abroad, intent on killing
All the world’s eight billion souls.
You sense a tickle in your throat.

Turning blue,
ICU.

Multi-coloured and well taught in vile
Biology, malice intent,
It wafts its way and randomly
Prescribes our liquid punishment.

Cough and phlegm,
Death pro tem

Months pass and Do we? May we? see
A blessed end to breathlessness?
Not so, we are misled again;
The ball has spawned a spikier son.

Mirage seen,

No vaccine

And those with lungs serene and clear
Suspect the sneaking dark unknown
Aware of its intelligence,
Its lack of motive, Jahweh-like.

It comes. Lo!
And you go.

Were we so very bad? Every
One of us? To face this cull?
This spider’s web of plastic tubes,
This end without a sweet goodbye?

Ask yourself.
Ask yourself.

Now in newer clothes

This sonnet first saw the light of day in Tone Deaf on Remembrance Day (US: Veterans' Day) in 2015. The date is irrelevant to the subject matter.

I should never have exposed it to critical comment. Like Richard III it came into this world "scarce half made up". I blushed to re-read the second quatrain which was so determinedly allusive even I, the author, found it impenetrable. Amazing, there were 12 comments which I didn't deserve. All were far too kind.

I was commenting on Marly Youmans' blog, The Palace at 2am, and, on impulse, I chucked in this sonnet, albeit without that deadly second quatrain. Marly too was kind. I vowed to re-write the quatrain and to polish up the remainder. This is the result. If you find it bad I can only say it was once much worse. And that Marly is not to blame.

Sonnet – Ecstasy but not quite
“Keep a light hopeful heart.
But expect the worst.”
Joyce Carol Oates

When was the best time? I am asked,
Given my face's arid lumps and lines
Suggest that confidence has long since past
And dropped this cowpat - dry dull dreck - behind.

What can I say? My best is yet to come?
The sentiment of any greeting card.
A child? That so-called ripe and blessed plum
The middle-classes hold in high regard.

Not yet, the realist says, nor is it due,
There is no best,there's only similar.
It’s where you’re standing in the righteous queue,
Prate prophets reading from apocrypha.

For me it comes and goes as clarity,
A newish line that fits exquisitely.

Marly - Salutations

In religion, some literary tastes and politics I’m Marly Youmans’ polar opposite yet it doesn’t seem to matter a damn. She doesn’t blog much now but earlier I was tempted into long comments at The Palace at 2 AM to which she always conscientiously replied. For me a window on an entirely different and civilised way of life with strangely Faulknerian roots. We both write novels (she much more professionally) and that was a bond.

I bought Marly’s The Book of The Red King, suspecting it might not be my cup of tea, poems written by Fool en route to the Red King’s palace. I’m not into myth/fantasy and my fictional characters include a former production manager at a washing machine manufacturer. Not social realism y’unnerstand, but slightly gritty.

However in my sere, yellow and almost-dropping-off years I write verse. Marly’s good at that except hers is poetry. Red King may emerge as a narrative but in the interim I’m treating her poems as separate entities. Looking for what races my motor. Plenty does. It’s not exactly news but Marly loves words:

And beauty – golden perianth,
Blown glass, the bending trees
A marble fairy on a plinth.

But they don’t have to be exotic

The water let him down. It took him in
The water waved his hair as if with love
Cold lensed against his eyes as if to show...

Marly’s eclectic in this cento (ie, a patchwork)

A different kingdom, whole words apart (Proust)
Voices in the waves always whispering (Dickens)
And murmuring of boughs, and sleepy boughs (Yeats – a Marly trade mark)

Edges into my Schubertian world with The Miller’s Son

The arms are strange, almost a pair of legs
Borrowed from a horse...

And there’s The Twelfth-night Fool but I’ve run out of...

Villanelles vanquished

A man's a man for a'that. Don Patterson, poet and wit

I came very late to poetry, within the duration of this blog. Others – Joe Hyam, Lucy – encouraged me and now I seek out poetry, but in a timid way, conscious I carry L-plates and always will.

Don Paterson is a well-regarded British poet (Queen’s Medal) though I was unaware of this. At Hay Festival he offered: What is a Poem? I had just endured a dull hour on education, never a good idea for someone whose education “never took”. I needed reviving.

Paterson stepped up to the lectern and peered into the dark auditorium. In a thick Scottish accent he said, “Ye might all as well be a set of Great Auks.” Astounded, I laughed out aloud. Others were more tentative. But within a few minutes laughter was our common coin and I curse myself for not taking notes.

Especially when he damned the villanelle, a tortuously complex verse form (And yes, Paterson and I know all about “Do not go gentle...”). Under guidance I wrote a VILLANELLE some years ago and determined never to write another. Patterson was my man.

As well as jokes he also uttered this: “Prose evokes: the well-chosen word describes the thing as if it were present. But poetry persists in its attempt to invoke, to call down its subject from above, as if there were no ‘as if’ at all.” And much more.

I picked up Paterson’s new 732-page book, The Poem. Lyric, Sign, Metre, handsomely priced at £25, and joined the signing queue. I mentioned to him I was done with villanelles and he had justified my decision. He wrote: “To Roderick. Glad to sanctify your purging. Don Paterson.”

Leaving I said, “And thanks for proving poets can be serious without being solemn.” He roared Scottishly and was, I think, pleased.

Twinges

Three connected sonnets on the
Egocsue answer to sciatica
(See the pic)

With pain like this who needs an enemy?
Pain that rejects all thought, all sleep, all time,
A mindless spite of masculinity.
To hang this tyrant male would be no crime

I knew his cracking rack ten years ago
And now he’s back with more unwonted powers
His brand burns deep and leaves a poignant glow,
The futile ashes of my sterile hours.

If I’m to function in this half-lit life,
To make a fist of doing what I ought
I need to force him into open strife
Then feed him on his testes ripped apart

‘Twil be a slangy, coarse, ignoble war,
With many an f and c to salt the gore.
-------
I lie flat-floored, my hips the angled shield
Above an arch defined by upright thighs
And horizontal calves. A battlefield
Where pain will duke it out with mass surprise.

Where I’m observer, referee, and prize,
The rules, the judge and keeper of the scores,
The fan who shouts that pain’s a bunch of lies,
Doubting echoes of all that that implores.

I pause and find my torments equalised
About my torso and my lower limbs
He feints towards to my calf, a scorching scythe
But borrows pain from all his former sins.

I wait, time passes and the calf retires,
A chance to bank up my offensive fires
------
Balloons of lesser pain attempt to scour
My nerves. Yet from another viewing point
I feel him flinch, retrench, advance once more,
His spite less sharp, his assets almost spent.

Time slows, my senses numb, an ebbing tide
Of erstwhile misery slides back in space,
And groans become the sweeter sound of life,
Has optimism left its hiding place?

Is pain a useful raw material?
A tool? A clamp to hold the narrative?
The stuff of verse to make a villanelle?
The simple heart of an indicative?

Is pain love’s other, darker kith and kin,
Part proof that we’re alive, and feel, and sin?

Blog-parted

I’ve given up verse but not doggerel. Below is a lament for Tone Deaf’s shrunken contacts list and should be sung to Pete Seeger’s most famous tune.

Lacrimosa dies illa

Where do all the bloggers go,
Self-extinguished?
Where do all the bloggers go,
Tomb-stones away?
Where do all the bloggers go?
To the new reality,
Faces that smile at them,
Words in the here and now.

Far beyond our dialogue,
Self-restricted.
To the land of give and take,
Handshakes? Here's mine.
Welcome raw immediacy,
Touch and sight available,
Humans not cyber code,
Breaths on each brightened cheek.

What must we remainers do,
Writing for survival?
Burdened by longevity,
Word-length is time.
Take the time and build on time,
Make-believe eternity,
Pick from the tones to heart,
Sing out with fervency.

Variations on an old theme

The News Reader
or
Does this make things clearer?

Some day when Kim Jong-Un acts childishly,
And purple clouds obscure the Golden Gate,
As heat and death flow down Ol’ Sixty-Six,
And Napa grapes show strange maturity.
When mutants shag high flies at Candlestick,
And bats out-number folk at San Berdoo,
As I routinely turn on News at Ten
And note apocalypse proclaimed by you.

Oh you, all textiles to your neckless chin,
Poached-egg eyes to lend a false solemnity,
Left arm outstretched to prop your gravitas,
Decay delayed with thickened maquillage.
A stuffy herald for our piping times,
World’s end described in awe-free, wearied words,
“We’ll analyse,” you say, but dust is dust,
And Bridgend lilt can only bring more dust.

As Californians curl up and fry,
We’ll need a Milton or a Stratford Will,
Instead there’s you and “What’s your sense of this?”
Dulling the edge of death with Gelusil.
This end, our end, should be both dark and grand,
An austere welcome to oblivion,
More than a kiosk and a rubber stamp,
More than the forming of an ordered queue.

And when your chalk-stripe suit is touched with flame
Will light obliterate more of the same?

Too tired to read it yourself? Click HERE and I'll do it for you.

DIY deferred and a sad note

A much-used electrical socket in the lounge succumbs to maltreatment and needs replacing. These days I regard DIY as a pestilence and my reactions tend to proceed at the speed of the Rhone Glacier. But hey! No need! Grandson Ian has electrical training. And I am well equipped with the necessaries.

Immediately The Law Of Inadequate Preparation sets in. For what looks like a ten-minute job, I hand over half a dozen tools and sit down to watch. By the time ninety minutes have elapsed the lounge carpet is strewn with afterthoughts, not least a vice, a power drill, a small suitcase full of drill bits, two sizes of file, a Stanley knife, a truly tiny screwdriver, a roll of masking tape and scissors!

Even so I'm still in a good mood. Ian had previously accompanied me to B&Q to buy the replacement socket and his sharp eyes noted socket technology has marched on.  The front plate now costs £10 but it's worth every penny. Note those two small dark slots: they're USB sockets.

No longer will youthful visitors at Christmas face an ever-expanding trawl of Chez Robinson to find unused power points where their Iphones and Ipads may safely graze. I'm almost tempted to replace the front plates on several more sockets. Almost.

KEN HYAM. Sad news arrives via Lucy that Joe’s younger brother, Ken, has died suddenly of a heart attack. Almost exactly two years after Joe died. Over the decades I met Ken on a mere handful of occasions but latterly his emails have been a powerful presence. Ken was an excellent poet and as a voluntary kindness he watched over the fledgling verse I’ve posted on Tone Deaf and provided endless informed encouragement. I shall miss him for the most selfish of reasons.

The compliment dilemma

 

Compliments are hard work; it's easier - alas - to be nasty.

The vocabulary associated with compliments is parched, over-familiar and lazy. The impulse to compliment may be sincere, but the end-product may look as if it had been assembled in a factory. Hmmm, says the recipient, instead of Wow! The sentiment need not be original but it must be originally expressed.

I don't attract many compliments, one reason being I raise unpopular subjects like this. Sarky bugger, people think, and they're right. Actually, that can be read as a sort of compliment but only by a sarky bugger.

I had ten minutes to go before the final episode of  a heartless French political drama series on telly. I pulled out a poetry collection and from it fluttered a card written by the person who had given me the used book. Here's an extract:

"I like this but don't need to keep it, and thought his voice sounded a bit like yours in certain places... or maybe I find him a bit too dry and clever for me."

That word "voice" is carefully chosen. No attempt to suggest that my barely finished stuff in any way resembles the poet's ultra-professional work. Only that I share an attitude with the poet who, I must confess, is somewhat cynical. Not wholly likeable.

This is nevertheless a compliment. The writer has flattered me by getting to know my little ways and is unafraid to be honest about them. Knows me well enough for that too. Since I own up to being cynical and often unlikeable how could I grumble? Truth can be received in different ways.

There are two further qualifications. The phrase "a bit like" ensures I don't get too big-headed. And I'm left to speculate about the indirectness of "dry and clever".

As I say, compliments are hard work.

PS: "Sarky" is knowingly sarcastic. And, no, I will not identify the poet.

Ambushed by age

Ron above, RR below, many years ago

On Friday something old and odd.

Ron lives up North  and had just attended a funeral service at Hereford Cathedral. I'd picked him up in the car and we were off to a rural pub.

A long-time, tenor-voice chorister, and still influenced by the cathedral's music, Ron burst into Jerusalem along the Belmont Road. I joined him once he'd lowered the pitch. We knew each other's habits having started out in journalism in the early fifties with the same newspaper group in Bradford.

Jerusalem despatched, Ron now switched to a black-humoured rock-climbing song based on the tune of Carry Me Back To Green Green Pastures. He and I had both attended Outward Bound Mountain School and had subsequently climbed together. So I sang along too.

We reached the final verse:

Lay down my head towards old Gimmer,
My feet towards Bowfell,
A chunk of granite for my headstone,
An ice-axe to sound my knell.

I winced at the misplaced stress in those last two lines. Rubbishy verse.

Tectonic plates shifted in my mind. I turned to Ron: "Didn't I write that song?" He nodded.

I'd completely forgotten. Was glad I had.

Comes and goes

Hogarth: The Shrimp Girl

Sonnet – Ecstasy but not quite

“Keep a light hopeful heart.
But expect the worst.”
Joyce Carol Oates

When was the best time? I get asked,
Assuming from my face of lumps and lines,
That joy and confidence have long since passed
And, like a cowpat, left dull dreck behind.

The Sun replies it’s surely yet to come,
Recalling what he’s read on calendars;
Childbirth is often cited as the plum
By those who covet middle-class applause.

Not yet, the realist says, nor is it due,
No best, no better, only similar.
It’s where you’re standing in the righteous queue,
Prate prophets reading from apocrypha.

For me it comes and goes as clarity
When something newish fits exquisitely.

Intimations of the NHS

Eighty And Beyond

Just take your time and draw breath down those moist
Pink freeways, access to that chemistry,
That Canaan in your lungs, where air not wine
Becomes the life-sustaining stimulant.

Yes, do it now, experience again
That well-won ease, that swelling benefit,
That key to zestful continuity
Which conjugates the living present tense.

Once in my health, those lost uncaring days,
I woke in bed, mad with an urge to stand,
For lying rhymes with dying and I’d not
Book passage in a horizontal plane.

Air was in short supply. No, that’s not true,
I was denied its superfluity.
It seemed my inner pipes were shrinking down,
To pinholes through my physiology.

And in this state I found that more meant less,
When I breathed hard, less went to where it ought,
And harder still brought nothing in return
Except the prospect of oblivion.

Panic and patience, rarely neighbourly,
Were forced to get along. And I was forced
To take my air in meanly measured sips
Despite my need for more encouragement.

Sips became gulps of freely flowing air:
Relief, but clouded with predictive gloom.
Was this the open door through which I’d pass,
Fighting the closures in a losing war?

Yet gloom can be a spur, I shrugged and sniffed.
It is the door; I can’t be different.
All those who pass have simply qualified,
And death is breath that never made the tide.

Time refashioned

Beth mentioned Mary and the Annunciation to me. I, an atheist, googled and was reminded of - touched by - Mary, troubled by Gabriel’s awful announcement. Who would not be troubled? I’ve secularised the ending here without, I hope, entirely corrupting it. A timid feint towards vers libre

Dreaming, wishing

A table, sturdy, quite a craftsman’s job,
Supports a cruse of oil in which a flame,
Gutters an orange glow which circulates
Uncertain circles on the heat-baked floor.

Light to inform the evening’s minor tasks  
A rest from daytime’s harder labouring,
More fit for finer fingers and an eye
That understands the lines of warp and woof.

A linen apron needing TLC,
Roughed by the surfaces of plain-cut beams,
Slit by a blade that slipped against a knot,
The wood’s not what it was ten years ago.

It’s woman’s work to make good manly flaws,
A carpenter must choose a useful wife,
And Mary takes the needle in her stride,
Nipping the thread off with an expert bite.

Another hole to darn, her head is bent,
As plangent words fill corners of the room.
With talk of greetings, blessings soon to come,
A child, a son, a kingdom without end.

Mary’s a’feared, is calmed, told not to fear,
Yet worries still about this motherhood.
For who’s to darn and meet her husband’s needs,
As he works wood to pay for infant food?

Raising her head she sees embracing light,
With power that suffocates the oil-cruse flame,
That steers the needle’s point through linen cloth,
That threads the hitch that says the work is done.

Light to proclaim the shades of right from wrong,
To prove the how and why of intellect,
To stem the tide of brutish ignorance,
To point the way to new equality.

You wanna know why? Here's why

Outdistancing the wingèd chariot
A blogger who'd run out of steam
Like many was given to dream,
Saw himself the new Brad,
Muscle-clad, golden lad,
Then fell back to earth with a scream.

Surveying himself in the glass,
Blotch-faced and unbearably crass,
Realised life's unfair
When one's looks have gone: Where?
And all that remains is an ass.

It's time to resort to disguise,
Discard truth in favour of lies,
When time goes too quickly.
Forget being sickly,
Write novels, in fact fiction'lise.

NOTE: These are limericks and are not serious. They're also easy but, because of that, you gotta get the syllables right. That is:

A - 8
A - 8
B - 6
B - 6
A - 8

Get them right and you're allowed a treat: thus the apostrophe in the last line.

Glum

Jacques 2015
A threnody

.................................Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything. 
                                           As You Like It

Sans teeth? Up front I have a tiger’s grin
Warning the world of catlike treachery.
My molars absent or a trifle thin,
At teatime I'm reduced to flummery.

The eyes are new, thanks to the NHS,
Distant horizons resting on my nose.
Enjoying this new state of forwardness
The future I ignore as otiose.

As long as I can note the gamay grape,
And thus avoid the crus of Beaujolais,
I’d say my taste buds were in perfect shape
While others slurp in vinous disarrary.

But sans the rest of it? An awful rub.
Lacking the rhyme to charm a feminist,
To sing in tune, to dominate a pub,
To run, to bike, to ski, to kiss/be kissed.

Lacking much more: to master langue francaise,
To be admir’d for having slender gams.
Devoid of power to readily amaze
The split infinitive comedians.

To grab all Tories by their smooth lapels
And teach them kindness, if I must by rote,
To tap their tops and generate hells bells,
To fill a bath and see if they may float.

So much to do that never will be done,
Teeth, eyes and taste are really not enough.
I’m overtaken by oblivion
I wish I had been made of sterner stuff.

The end’s the end, we cannot but accept
Our failings and our hasty negligence.
The times we laughed but truly should have wept,
For Jacques was right, and life’s a pestilence.

Neat and/or necessary

As well as things that are merely expensive (esp. the Neff oven and hob) our kitchen is host to items that say: Clever!

● The blade on this potato peeler is loosely mounted. Thus it follows the contours of the potato and does the job twice as quickly. But imagine starting out to design it. How long before you thought: Aha, a loose blade!


● More expensive is the Brabantia touch-bin. Touch the lid and it springs open. Clever-ish. What's odd is subsequent expectation. I visit younger daughter, OS, try to discard a bottle cork, touch the bin lid. It doesn't open, doesn't have that feature. I am conditioned by a waste bin.

● The knife sharpener was damned expensive: a conventional steel embedded with the dust of industrial diamonds. Hard, see; it's the knife blade that wears and thus becomes sharper. Knives only last for ever if they remain blunt; see them as consumables.

● The flour jar (sits in the window sill) has a neat clip and is made of transparent plastic. Thus lighter and less of a levered strain on VR's shortish arm. What's that you say? Glass is more pleasing. So is cocaine.

● Not so much clever as downright essential: wall-mounted dispensers for film wrap and foil. Cooks who tear crudely from the loose roll are ignoring their intellectual birthright.

JOE’S NUDGE
Leaves, summer’s coinage spent, golden are altogether whirled,
sent spinning, dipping, slipping, shuffled by heavy-handed wind,
shifted sideways, sifted, and in swarms made to fly
spent sun-flies, gorgeous tatters, airdrift, pinions of drift

At first I thought surely Gerard Manley Hopkins, the rhythmic word-sound man. But then I had my doubts. The trick is to make it seem you’re playing with words, but there’s hard discipline here. And the scansion isn’t easy.

R.E. Warner (b. 1905) 

WHOOPS!! I find I posted this poetry extract as recently as last year. What can I say? Soon, a walk to the supermarket will be an adventure. 

Irony

Sonnet: On re-visiting 10 Gordon Terrace

So that’s the wretched house that once contained

A bedded child, awaiting, expectant,

To capture murmurs of a love disdained,

My father’s sin, my mother's discontent.

I feared their talk might stumble into deeds,

A curse, perhaps a rupture, leaving me,

A child still influenced by infant needs,

Given to tears and sensed redundancy.

Talk became deeds and then mere silent space,

A couple cut in halves, all comfort flown,

For me a taint of undeserved disgrace,

The withered hopes of youth ungrown.

Older, among the bones of memory,

I ironise adult complacency

Painful politics

Voted today, but with a heavy heart. I believe masochism will affect the result and I've never favoured self-harm.

Five years ago the Tories inherited national debt at record levels, due to reduced national income and Labour's decision to bail out the banks. And thus was born a golden ideological opportunity that even Mrs Thatcher was denied. Austerity would be the watchword and would be achieved by dismantling the state.

How do you dismantle a state? By cutting employment, services and benefits most of which help the poor and the needy. Thus the last five years.

Austerity hurts and is unfairly distributed. But do you know what? - the more unpalatable the medicine the more the patient imagines it's doing good. Too many  UK citizens are now doggedly habituated to austerity even though there are alternatives. Too many will mark their cross today saying, in effect, whip me harder so I can do my bit.

While others will successfully avoid the whip altogether, welcoming the reborn Middle Ages.

JOE'S NUDGE
I tried to peg out soldierly, - no use!
One dies of war like any old disease.
The bandage feels like pennies on my eyes.
I have my medals - Discs to make eyes close.

Almost any tiny evocation of WW1 (I'm guessing here) causes my throat to contract. The screw tightens when the speaker fails to complain. War a disease - why didn't I think of that? Medals used in that way - why not? And how well slang works in the first line.

Wilfred Owen (Who else?)

A wart on what?

Stella (See my list of members) is eloquent about things with little cash value but which are linked to someone close, now dead. Her mother's embroidered table-cloths, for instance.

VR speaks authoritatively: "Those could never be thrown away."

Our problems are different. Twice I've tried to store vegetables, mineral water, beer and soft drinks in the garage in a space-efficient yet accessible manner. I've over-bought the systems: stackable plastic drawers (see pic), knocked-down fabric drawers. VR wants these redundancies gone but parsimony makes me drag my heels. The items are hardly used, they cost money - recently.

The other problem is less tractable, buried in my psyche. Some years ago I bought an exercise bicycle which I kept in the shed. Initially MP3 music stemmed the boredom, then the complete (ie, 22 CDs) audio version of Ulysses - the ideal counterpoint to mindless labour. Ill health interrupted my exercises, the effects departed slowly and I never resumed. (Meanwhile VR tried Ulysses and was charmed.) Now VR wants to see the back of the bike. There's the money of course (£200) but much more is the admission of defeat. I am, as they say, a wart on the arse of progress.

JOE’S NUDGE
Shut, shut the door, good John! fatigued I said:
Tie up the knocker, say I’m sick, I’m dead.
The Dog-star rages! Nay, ‘tis past a doubt,
All Bedlam, or Parnassus, is let out:
A veritable gallimaufry of punctuation, taken as usual from The Poet’s Tongue, an anthology where poems and their authors are listed separately. For the moment I no more know the author than you do. One cannot imagine what follows; one suspects it isn’t serious; yet one is transported by the vigour of expression. Vigour is enough, here; it’s a poem.

Alexander Pope

Take care, you're leaking

To waste time is to admit that that part of our life is meaningless. Shocking! - for time is a non-renewable resource and we cannot know how much we've been allocated.

You know what? Such truisms  are a waste in themselves. Time is lost as a matter of course.

Has your electric kettle got an external tube indicating the level of water within? Good. You choose to boil water for a cup of Bovril. Afterwards is there water left in the tube? If so, you wasted time and electricity.

Your mind is rotting and you opt for Huw Edwards disgorging the News At Ten. You turn on the telly and watch the last ninety seconds of Mrs Brown's Boys. A programme you truly loathe; you could have reflected on Augustine of Hippo's prayer: "Grant me chastity, but not yet." A minute and a half passes irretrievably.

Your computer is slow to boot up. Rather than use Defrag and/or CleanDisk you contemplate your hankie, trying to decide if it should go into the wash. Eventually returning it to your pocket.  What's more you always knew it was dirty.

Ever read an Agatha Christie? And you, a self-confessed intellectual!

Purgatory awaits – only sipping whisky to drink and a video loop of George W. Bush Jr's campaign speeches.

JOE'S NUDGE

Saint Peter sat by the celestial gate;
His keys were rusty, and the lock was dull,
So little trouble had been given of late;
Not that the place by any means was full.

Third line’s rather terrible - as broken-backed as any mountain. But it's meant to be fun, the clue being "by any means". Perhaps English fun.

Byron (Gosh! It looks like I was wrong).