Today's poet

[freckle]

Mmmmmm............

And Did Those Feet In Ancient Time

And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England's mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God
On England's pleasant pastures seen?

And did the Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among these dark satanic mills?

Bring me my bow of burning gold!
Bring me my arrows of desire!
Bring me my spear! O clouds, unfold!
Bring me my chariot of fire!

I will not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand,
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England's green and pleasant land.

William Blake

[Alf]

Spirit Of Fell Running.

The fresh air flows past me,
Setting my senses afire,
With the multitude of smells and sounds,
It's such joy to be in the hills running,
Being one with the nature,
That i am a part of,
These are my elysian fields,
Amongst the bogs, hills and tarns,
Of this fair land.

By Herakles.

Loved that one Herakles

[Alf]

I lived with visions for my company
Instead of men and women, years ago,
And found them gentle mates, nor thought to know
A sweeter music than they played to me.
But soon their trailing purple was not free
Of this world's dust, their lutes did silent grow,
And I myself grew faint and blind below
Their vanishing eyes. Then THOU didst come—to be,
Beloved, what they seemed. Their shining fronts,
Their songs, their splendors (better, yet the same,
As river-water hallowed into fonts),
Met in thee, and from out thee overcame
My soul with satisfaction of all wants:
Because God's gifts put man's best dreams to shame.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

[Mossdog]

Sonnet XI

I crave your mouth, your voice,your hair.
Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets.
Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day
I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps.

I hunger for your sleek laugh,
your hands the colour of a savage harvest,
hunger for the pale stones of your finger nails,
I want to eat your skin like a whole almond.

I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body,
the sovereign nose of your arrogant face,
I want to eat the fleeting shades of your lashes,

and I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight,
hunting for you, for your hot heart,
like a puma in the barrens of Quitratue.

Pablo Neruda

[Old Whippet]

Well....I was wondering if Harry's middle 'H' is for Hiawatha. Just got a glimpse into the life of the great man today.

The Song of H Hiawatha Howgill

On a hillside stood a quarry
Mighty quarry full of lorries.
In the valley slept a parish
Tranquil parish, green and sleepy.
In that parish dwelled a maiden
Feisty lady grimly seething
At the thunder of the lorries
And the dust clouds and the scarring
Of the hillside by the quarry
Angry maiden of the farmhouse
With the might of Parish Council
Fought with letter and with placard
Swore to stop the nearby earthworks.
At the quarry stood a fellow
Tall and lean and full of busy.
Leader of the lorry people
Master of the excavation.
Villain of this mountain idyll
Target of the placard people.
Til one day a wand’ring poet
Over hill and vale came strolling.
Resting at the local hamlet
Drew a crowd of his disciples.
Rugged miners of the hillside;
Tender maidens of the Parish
Gathered in the place of Dufton
Joined by love of strangers poems
Forgot the conflict of the granite
And the battle of the limestone.
Thus the story of two people;
Leaders of the warring factions
Drawn together by the poet
Heads towards a brighter future…..

[Hes]

Some great stuff on here lately. I wish I'd had more time to read and post but life is getting in the way of the forum!

I liked DT's haiku and Mossy's Neruda struck a few chords. OW's latest Hiawatha inspired poem is very funny! I've just bought a couple volumes of poetry from a second-hand bookstore and will post a few asap.

[N-dubya]

I've just seen the general studies thread so thought this poem was more than apt

You May Turn Over and Begin

'Which of these films was Dirk Bogarde
not in? One hundredweight of bauxite

makes how much aluminium?
How many tales in The Decameron?

General Studies, the upper sixth, a doddle, a cinch
for anyone with an ounce of common sense

or a calculator
with a memory feature.

Having galloped through but not caring enough
to check or double-check, I was dreaming of

milk white breasts and nakedness, or more specifically
virginity.

That term — everybody felt the heat
but the girls were having none of it:

long and cool like cocktails,
out of reach, their buns and pigtails

only let out for older guys with studded jackets
and motorbikes and spare helmets.

One jot of consolation
was the tall spindly girl riding pillion

on her man's new Honda
who, with the lights on amber,

put down both feet and stood to stretch her limbs,
to lift the visor and push back her fringe

and to smooth her tight jeans.
As he pulled off down the street

she stood there like a wishbone
high and dry, her legs wide open,

and rumour has it he didn't notice
till he came round in an ambulance

having underbalanced on a tight left-hander.
A Taste of Honey. Now I remember.

Simon Armitage

[Harry H Howgill]

You star!

That is a great little story there. It really made me laugh. I will from this day hence only respond when addressed as "leader of the lorry people".

See you tomorrow

Harry

Well....I was wondering if Harry's middle 'H' is for Hiawatha. Just got a glimpse into the life of the great man today.

The Song of H Hiawatha Howgill

On a hillside stood a quarry
Mighty quarry full of lorries.
In the valley slept a parish
Tranquil parish, green and sleepy.
In that parish dwelled a maiden
Feisty lady grimly seething
At the thunder of the lorries
And the dust clouds and the scarring
Of the hillside by the quarry
Angry maiden of the farmhouse
With the might of Parish Council
Fought with letter and with placard
Swore to stop the nearby earthworks.
At the quarry stood a fellow
Tall and lean and full of busy.
Leader of the lorry people
Master of the excavation.
Villain of this mountain idyll
Target of the placard people.
Til one day a wand’ring poet
Over hill and vale came strolling.
Resting at the local hamlet
Drew a crowd of his disciples.
Rugged miners of the hillside;
Tender maidens of the Parish
Gathered in the place of Dufton
Joined by love of strangers poems
Forgot the conflict of the granite
And the battle of the limestone.
Thus the story of two people;
Leaders of the warring factions
Drawn together by the poet
Heads towards a brighter future…..

[Harry H Howgill]

What a great story. Takes me back a bit.

I've just seen the general studies thread so thought this poem was more than apt

You May Turn Over and Begin

'Which of these films was Dirk Bogarde
not in? One hundredweight of bauxite

makes how much aluminium?
How many tales in The Decameron?

General Studies, the upper sixth, a doddle, a cinch
for anyone with an ounce of common sense

or a calculator
with a memory feature.

Having galloped through but not caring enough
to check or double-check, I was dreaming of

milk white breasts and nakedness, or more specifically
virginity.

That term — everybody felt the heat
but the girls were having none of it:

long and cool like cocktails,
out of reach, their buns and pigtails

only let out for older guys with studded jackets
and motorbikes and spare helmets.

One jot of consolation
was the tall spindly girl riding pillion

on her man's new Honda
who, with the lights on amber,

put down both feet and stood to stretch her limbs,
to lift the visor and push back her fringe

and to smooth her tight jeans.
As he pulled off down the street

she stood there like a wishbone
high and dry, her legs wide open,

and rumour has it he didn't notice
till he came round in an ambulance

having underbalanced on a tight left-hander.
A Taste of Honey. Now I remember.

Simon Armitage

[Mossdog]

A Walk

My eyes already touch the sunny hill.
going far ahead of the road I have begun.
So we are grasped by what we cannot grasp;
it has inner light, even from a distance-

and charges us, even if we do not reach it,
into something else, which, hardly sensing it,
we already are; a gesture waves us on
answering our own wave...
but what we feel is the wind in our faces.

Rainer Maria Rilke