
About the poet
Tom Vaughan is a former British diplomat. His novel No Second Prize, based on his experience in post-colonial Zimbabwe, was published by Andre Deutsch in 1993.
Tom’s poems have been published in several magazines and anthologies. One of his poems, Proposal, first published in Orbis, was included in the BBC series/anthology Essential Poems (to Fall in Love with). Beltway Blues, from Tom’s Envoy collection, was included in the Songs of Love and Loss cycle by painist/composer Sir Stephen Hough, premiered in a Wigmore Hall concert on 2 January 2023, sung by Nicky Spence.
In the words of Helena Nelson of the HappenStance Press, which published a short selection of his poetry in 2010 and a longer collection – Envoy – in 2013, Tom’s poems demonstrate that ‘elegant formalism and contemporary style can still go hand in hand’.
HappenStance Sampler
The Mower
I cut the grass again today.
It took three hours, but now I know
that man was made his lawn to mow.
It’s smooth enough to play croquet.
The shorn blades smell of long ago.
I cut the grass again today.
I’m basking in the afterglow.
I sit and sip a beer, although
under my feet it starts to grow.
Envoy
The poems in Envoy reflect Tom’s experience overseas, commenting (often with barbed wit) on people, places and the moral ambiguities of diplomatic life. His deepest concern is with the guilt carried by those whose decisions—however much they may or may not be justified—mean the death and injury of others. But the only certainty for all of us, as he concludes in Via Dolorosa, is that ‘suffering / is in the end / all we can share’.
You can download an e-copy of Envoy here.

Pact
If I spy on you
and you spy on me
you won’t know how much I know
and vice versa – i.e.
we’ll have to assume
no secret’s secure
and therefore plot nothing
too nasty!
I’m sure
you’ll agree: it makes
perfect sense –
it’s like trusting each other
(though at greater expense . . .).
Some Poems of Tom Vaughan
Kipling
when you dismiss
as dreams, your hopes
when sex is lust
when you come back
from years and years
because you’re lost
to find your home
bulldozed, your past
peopled by ghosts
when you can’t sleep
and ache for hours
in self-disgust
when nations break
like waves on rocks
when what’s unjust
parades as law
when there’s no god
you dare to trust
when the heavens are bronze
when the earth is iron
when the rain is dust
know that you’ve seen
things as they are
know too you must
even while you mock
his old-school If,
remain steadfast
Published in HQ Poetry Magazine number 61, June-August 2023
Brittany
for Roland
Who am I to tell you, but
please think of it this way
today becomes tomorrow, which
will soon be yesterday
and life is long and life is short
while every spinning star
switched on and will switch off, without
being conscious what they are
but you and I can cogitate
till kingdom come, although
whether or not it ever will
we know we’ll never know
and suffering goes on and on
with no apparent end
just ancient short-term remedies:
a book; red wine; a friend
with whom to walk along the beach
and swim far out to sea
and celebrate how good it is
to live in Brittany.
Published in Snakeskin 310, September 2023
Swot
It’s time to hunker down and swot
with coffee as my only friend
and each dawn closer to the end
which in the distance I can spot:
the happiness which lies ahead
when I’ll have passed with flying colours
and on a day unlike all others
will saunter through the streets instead.
I won’t be bored, I tell myself:
the world will sparkle, and the hours
will sprinkle down in golden showers.
I won’t need anything – my wealth
will be the knowledge I’ll forget
and which I haven’t learnt as yet.
Published in Snakeskin 310, September 2023
Connoisseur
How long there’s been this distance
between us, I don’t know
but we go on together
with a seamless outward show
and perhaps I now love you more
deeply (even if it’s true
I often feel alone –
no doubt it’s the same for you)
because I know you’re brave
and generous and kind
and the thought of hurting me
wouldn’t cross your mind
though nevertheless you do
by the way you bustle on
or those evenings passed in silence
you seemingly withdrawn
and what if this is it –
the only happiness
we had a right to hope for
back when we both said yes
and maybe what matters isn’t
how we fail, but how we build
on failure, and slowly, surely
can learn, becoming skilled
at valuing each other
giving conscious consent
to each new day together
content to be content
and trusting, praising, caring
not because we’re who we were
when we first met, but simply
as real-world connoisseurs.
Published in Poetry Salzburg Review, No 40 Summer 2023
Montaigne
I wish we’d met before you died
400 years ago
to compare the bitter world you knew
with the bitter world I know.
Of course, some things have changed since then –
your gravelle could be cured
and we’ve conceived more ways to kill
than cannons or the sword –
but I guess you’d find us much the same,
a Friday afternoon job,
self-sure, self-seeking, self-deceived,
self (you’d own up!) absorbed
with friendship just as rare as when
you lost the soulmate who
would be your standard as you judged
me unread, shallow . . . though
I hope you’d spare an hour or so
while I laboured to explain
why the words you thought time-limited
for some of us remain
a refuge, like your library,
if a challenge too, a call
to live unsolved and unafraid,
unfooled and unenthralled.
Published in HQ Poetry Magazine number 61, June-August 2023
Storytime
Won’t you tell us a story
it doesn’t have to be true –
a train with a tantrum,
a well-behaved phantom –
anything will do.
Please tell us a story
pretending you were born
in a land overseen
by five Kings and a Queen
who play cards with a unicorn.
Surely you know a story
so long it has no end –
drop us unarmed in danger
to be saved by a stranger
who becomes an exceptional friend.
We’ve heard about a story
of a witch with a terrible spell
making children grow old
and paying them in gold
to forget every story you tell.
So please, tell us a story –
if you don’t, others will.
And they’ll want us to be
their infantry
when they move in for the kill.
Won’t you tell us a story –
it doesn’t have to be true –
we’ll believe what you say
without giving away
that we’ll soon stop believing in you.
First published in Dream Catcher 35, July 2017
Lucky
In Memory of Albrecht Haushofer, author of the Moabit Sonnets, killed 23 April 1945
I
I’ve never had to stand up to some fascist
bully, or to camp out in a square
protesting against the blood-soaked dictator
who runs my country. No cocksure imperialist
controls my state; no simplistically earnest
missionary insists I learn a prayer
to another god than mine; no doctrinaire
ideologue has me on his blacklist.
I’ve never waited in a cold, damp cell
for the dawn when faceless men will drag me out
to the noose, or the firing squad. No brutal lout
has tortured me for days until I tell
the lies he wants to hear. I merely scout
the freedom of my chosen prison: doubt.
II
These days, who’s at the country’s helm? The bland
leading the bland . . . Dull politicians whose
bedtime reading is opinion polls,
so spin-controlled and focus-grouped they blend
into a compound breed. Their foes, the closed
minds of ISIS; the bureaucratic fools
who’ve messed up Europe; Putin. Each day’s news
threatening their imagined Disneyland.
But then, I’ve never tried to argue for
my own invented world, or made a stout
defence of my beliefs, or sought the clout
to shape my people’s destiny. Unsure
of all such certainties, I merely scout
the prison of my chosen freedom – doubt.
First published Acumen 84, Jan 2016
Are You An English Gentleman?
Are you an English gentleman
who always sees things through?
Are you an English gentleman
regular and true?
Are you an English gentleman
whose life of quiet despair
seen from the outside, looks to be
reliably square?
Are you part of the landscape
with a firm handshake,
understated savoir-faire?
Are you an English gentleman
avoiding the public glare?
Are you an English gentleman
unflappable under fire?
Annoyingly self-possessed,
genetically a squire?
Are you an English gentleman
never, never late?
Are you an English gentleman
completely out of date?
Are you an English gentleman
unable to cope
with foreign parts and feminists –
have you become a joke?
Politically incorrect
an existential retrospect
a species under serious threat –
are you an English gentleman
bewildered but bespoke?
Are you an English gentleman
although there’s no such thing?
Are you an English gentleman
whose timer has gone ping?
Are you an English gentleman?
If so, hang on old chap –
let’s dine out at my club tonight
and talk a load of crap.
First published in Time to Kill Sparrows: A Kaleidoscope of Verse by Diplomats and their Families, 1999. Also published in HappenStance Envoy, 2013
Poetry publishers
LINKS
Some of Tom’s poems have been published in the following online publications:
- Snakeskin online poetry magazine A monthly poetry webzine edited by George Simmers.
- Lighten Up Online The quarterly light verse webzine founded by Martin Parker and edited by Jerome Betts.
Get in touch with Tom here