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Facing The Four Horsemen:
Exploring Male Mysteries Through Times of Change and Crisis
A Residential Workshop for Men
with William Ayot and Simon Roe

Somerset
Open to the general public
Feb 26th Sunday – Thursday March 2nd 2023
CLICK FOR INFO https://therapyandcounselling.co.uk/facing-the-four-horsemen/
NB THE EARLY BOOKING DISCOUNT ran out on 1st November
but for people who let us know they attended the War and Soul talk
we are extending the early booking discount until
midnight on 21st Novmber 2022
Email juliet@therapyandcounselling.co.uk for a payment link to get the early booking discount

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An Online Workshop with Simon Roe
Lives of Quiet Desperation: Therapeutic Work with Men.

Aimed at therapists, but the public are also welcome
Dates 1 & 2 Dec 2022, or 23 & 24 March 2023, or June 1 & 2 2023
https://therapyandcounselling.co.uk/lives-of-quiet-desperation-1st-and-2nd-december-2022/

BOOKS BY WILLIAM AYOT

BOOKS – Click here for info.
NEW – KINDLE EDITION OF Re-enchanting the Forest is coming out in a kindle edition in the next 2 weeks. If you’d like us to send you details please email juliet@therapyandcounselling.co.uk and put ‘Kindle RTF’ in the subject line and we will notify you when it is ready.

SIGN UP WITH WILLIAM FOR INFO ABOUT COURSES
https://williamayot.com/sign-up/

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POEMS

Anthem for Doomed Youth

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
….— Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
….Only the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells;
….Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,—
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
….And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

What candles may be held to speed them all?
….Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.
….The pallor of girls’ brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
….And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

Wilfred Owen

The Russian

“The Russians had few doctors on the front line.
My father’s job was this: after the battle
Was over, he’d walk among the men hit,
Sit down and ask: ‘Would you like to die on your
Own in a few hours, or should I finish it?’
Most said, ‘Don’t leave me.’ The two would have
A cigarette. He’d take out his small notebook—
We had no dog tags, you know— and write the man’s
Name down, his wife’s, his children, his address, and what
He wanted to say. When the cigarette was done,
The soldier would turn his head to the side. My father
Finished off four hundred men that way during the war.
He never went crazy. They were his people.

He came to Toronto. My father in the summers
Would stand on the lawn with a hose, watering
The grass that way. It took a long time. He’d talk
To the moon, to the wind. ‘I can hear you growing’—
He’d say to the grass. ‘We come and go.
We’re no different from each other. We are all
Part of something. We have a home.’ When I was thirteen,
I said, ‘Dad, do you know they’ve invented sprinklers
Now?’ He went on watering the grass.
‘This is my life. Just shut up if you don’t understand it.’”

Robert Bly
Morning Poems

Things to Carry with You as You Leave the Ruins

First, bring your careful animal body
To test the ground as it shifts beneath you,
Your six strong senses to get you through the night,
The sinew and muscle you took for granted,
Your red-raw hands, your gut, your heart,
The wrathful snarl, which shocked you once,
That now, like a tyger could save your life.

Next, pack the sweetness of all that is gone
The gallery of smiles, the faded images
From the dog-eared scrapbooks of tribe and kin,
Left in a corner, long forgotten —
The silly songs, the half-remembered melodies,
the tired jokes and indulgent groans,
The lingering imprint of a hand on your cheek,
A tender reminder of your attendant dead,
And the kindness in those who did such harm.

Remember the smell of your own rich soil,
The scent of its trees, their leaves and needles,
The stones you kicked that seemed to have no value
That now you’d give gold to hold in your hand.
And as you hear the rumble of distant collapse,
Far away and fading as you take your leave,
Be mindful too that there was once a joy
In every waking and every morning
That you were witness to, albeit unaware.
That you were at home in your part of the world,
That you were beloved of the spirits of place.

© William Ayot

On the Green

They were rare enough in them days,
once in a while to the Manor or the Vicarage,
but on the Green you might never see a telegram
from one year’s ending to the next —
until that morning after Passchendaele.
It was late in the year and a mist hung over the village,
wreathing the ponds and the giant elms. A tank engine
was panting by the halt, while down at Water End
the very last otter hereabouts lay pining for her mate.

I don’t know how it fell to him, but the Vicar carried them,
all of them. Maybe the Post Office tipped him the wink,
though it could have been his sense of service,
so many unable to read a word, telegram or no.

I was boiling an egg. My Albert, and his brother Wilf,
had sent my sister Ellen and I an egg cup each from Arras:
silver plate with a little coat of arms. We’d taken to
boiling an egg once a week — religious like, for luck.
I turned the timer, and saw the Vicar leaving Mrs Wackett’s,
moving sharpish for such a big man. I could have sworn
he was up to no good, but he was doing his duty, by his lights.

Next it was Queenie, whose Ted was so good with sweet peas
and dahlias. Then Alice, who dropped him the prettiest curtsey;
Mrs Saul the gamekeeper’s wife; Edie Potter, Nellie Weaving,
poor old Annie Englefield; Mrs Wren whose red velvet curtains
were drawn in mourning before he’d left her gate;
Mrs Jeeves who offered him tea because he looked so poorly;
and Dolly — Dolly who let the side down,
who howled like a vixen and tore at her clothes.
The Vicar worked his way round the Village Green
cottage by cottage and woman by woman: wives, mother’s,
even sweethearts: a vicar always knows who’s sweet on who.

I was frozen like Alice, still stuck in her curtsey,
when he turned and walked up our little brick path.
By the time he got to Ellen, he was whey-faced and puffing.
I wanted to say something kind but it wasn’t a time for kindness.
Who’d a thought it, I said by way of conversation,
a whole village in one morning.

My egg-cup’s brass now, the plate’s wore off with wear.
Albert loves his eggs — with soldiers — eats one every day,
but Ellen’s is as silvery as the day Wilf sent it to her.
Two things my sister won’t have in her house: the first is eggs — she
just can’t abide them — the second’s any talk of God.

© William Ayot

Tears on the Drum

For R.B.

We are standing together, my long-lost brother and I,
On the sloping deck of a holed and dying luxury liner.
We are sharing a fine cigar because we have no jokes.
He is talking about the grandfathers who went before.

Today I understand how these proud men,
Lonely and afraid, could rise up smiling
In far-off, strange, unhallowed places
With mud on their tongues and tears on the drum;

How they could gather, to pick sweet poppies,
The red, red poppies, and when they were gathered,
To walk together, into the morning,
The misty morning and die together.

We need to weep awhile, my long-lost brother and I
But we both know the score — there’s never the time.
So we wave once more at the distant boats. Then
We smile, hold hands, and walk down into the water.

William Ayot
The Inheritance
published by P S Avalon

For the Fallen
(excerpt)

“They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.”

By Laurence Binyon