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How many successful businessmen do you know who began their
careers as aspiring poets and writers?
Before Mark Allen, Chairman of the Mark Allen Group, became
a novice journalist in Sheffield , he was
already a poet of great promise.
From his early poem, Hopes:
Waiting as the gears grate
for the amber light to change
to green, and hoping that
the journey will be fruitful…
Mark has fulfilled his hopes, beyond all expectations. The
journey has indeed been fruitful, but at the age of seventy-four, he shows no
signs of retiring or giving up the good fight.
At times, the journey was difficult, the struggle challenging in the extreme, and he suffered from bouts of disillusionment. He wasn’t always
riding the waves, as can be understood from this extract from Should We Say Hell To It All:
Yesterday we were born.
Tomorrow we shall die.
Today is spent in weighing-out
The profit and loss,
The pro’s and con’s,
And drinking tea to urinate
Such is our sandwich life…
The poems I like best are about Somerset
From Somerset
The country of tranquillity
where I reside
drinking my cider in quiet pubs…
And from a later poem, Christmas
2002
My sister gives us
a book on Castle Cary.
I sweep through the pages
looking for clues.
I see pictures of snow
and I think of those
overhanging hedges in South Cary
which we passed on the way to school,
cascading images of youth…
I look for a pattern, a synergy,
that gives me a present as well
as a past. I look for my friend,
peering out of the pages,
strumming his guitar,
wearing a half-wicked smile.
He is not there. Both he and I are anonymous
witnesses to the past…
When Mark was (on rare
nostalgic occasions), ‘transported’ back to those innocent, idyllic times in Somerset
Where we listened
to Elvis’ music,
potted billiard balls
and weaved
our childish dreams…
Acting a little out of character, Mark recently did a sky-dive for charity. It wasn’t really out of character, of course, because
Mark has always been a courageous risk-taker, with a canny sense of a good
business-deal, alongside a strong social conscience.
I will end by quoting some memorable lines from an early
poem of which he is most proud. It is called Illumination:
If I have held the world
too tightly in my tactless hands
and hoped to squeeze it
like an orange,
it was because I was
too young to love
or that I loved too rashly…
If I have hoped unwisely
Please forgive me for my hoping
-it was because I loved the world
Too much, because I was too selfish
In my love.
Like a sculptor I have carved
my life, but never thought
the stone could be so hard…
Mark’s friends look forward to the time when he has a little
more leisure to publish his poems and a novel on which he’s been working for
some years. As Chairman of a large business (or group of businesses), we
suspect that, even in 2018,
“Today is spent in weighing-out
The profit and loss,
The pro’s and con’s…”
Mark has recently announced that his company has acquired
all the assets of the Rhinegold Group.
More announcements to follow, I'm sure!
Links:
Mark Allen, a poem (age 13) from The Hazlegrove Dolphin:
Mark and Sue
Mark Allen, Back to School!
Cricketer
Jazz-man
Cricketer
Jazz-man
Relaxing on Paxos
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