Today's poet

Fell poets at the Olympics?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-11674308

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Originally Posted by dominion

Fell poets at the Olympics?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-11674308

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I will be taking part in the 20 km Ode http://i592.photobucket.com/albums/t...gebit/grin.gif

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Originally Posted by L.F.F.

This afternoon in the office there was a bit of commotion, a rumbling sort of sound as if a heavy trolley was being pushed down the ailse. It turned out someone had had a fit and an ambulance was on its way.

A while later, I was coming back from the toilet and I looked over at where it'd happened. I couldn't see the man, he was laying at the end of a bank of desks, but I could see the paramedic lady leaning over him.

It brought to mind the poem below. Strange that he was lying there while all around him people got on with the mundane things we do here.

Musée des Beaux Arts

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on

W.H. Auden

ps, maybe google the painting, The Fall of Icarus by Breughel. It helped me to understand and enjoy the poem.

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Auden rocks doesn't he? Brilliant choice LFF with an interesting preamble :-)

The Promise of Trees
by Lucy Berry

In flaming colour and umber murmur
of terracotta-rusted glamour
we speak our sunset-streaked vermilion valour
of wordless dying.

In city streets and ducal parkland,
on urban squares and heath and moor
we make again the promise which we pledged each year before:
that dying is…. nothing

Trust us.
This mere one fire failing, solely, one greenness-ailing
is the great-cycle, grand-sadness of one season’s farewell bidding
phoenix foliage ridding
our sturdy selves of another verdant year
the sloughing, shrugging, shedding of the necessary tear

Trust us;
this amber-plumed, ochre pyre
is heart to the promise we give;
that we die and are mourned and are lost.
But that next year we live.

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Originally Posted by Mossdog

The Promise of Trees
by Lucy Berry

In flaming colour and umber murmur
of terracotta-rusted glamour
we speak our sunset-streaked vermilion valour
of wordless dying.

In city streets and ducal parkland,
on urban squares and heath and moor
we make again the promise which we pledged each year before:
that dying is…. nothing

Trust us.
This mere one fire failing, solely, one greenness-ailing
is the great-cycle, grand-sadness of one season’s farewell bidding
phoenix foliage ridding
our sturdy selves of another verdant year
the sloughing, shrugging, shedding of the necessary tear

Trust us;
this amber-plumed, ochre pyre
is heart to the promise we give;
that we die and are mourned and are lost.
But that next year we live.

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Thats a great poem Mossy, really enjoyed it http://i592.photobucket.com/albums/t...ebit/Cool2.gif

I have a couple of Silver Birch trees in my garden I can see through my front window and they track my year as I look forward to bud break, leaf break and then their green canopies as I follow them through to leaf fall when I always feel a bit of a sense of loss
(and a bit of a pain when I have to clean up the leaves :D )

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Originally Posted by freckle

Auden rocks doesn't he? Brilliant choice LFF with an interesting preamble :-)

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Glad you and Alf enjoyed it. Yes, I do think W.H. Auden wrote some amazing poems.

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Originally Posted by Alf

How to Die

Dark clouds are smouldering into red
While down the craters morning burns.
The dying soldier shifts his head
To watch the glory that returns;
He lifts his fingers toward the skies
Where holy brightness breaks in flame;
Radiance reflected in his eyes,
And on his lips a whispered name.

You’d think, to hear some people talk,
That lads go West with sobs and curses,
And sullen faces white as chalk,
Hankering for wreaths and tombs and hearses.
But they’ve been taught the way to do it
Like Christian soldiers; not with haste
And shuddering groans; but passing through it
With due regard for decent taste.

Siegfried Sassoon

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I'm not that familiar with anything by Siegfried Sassoon, but if you like his poetry, and Wilfred Owen's, I can definitely recommend a good film called Regeneration about them. Maybe that's for the Tonight's Film thread, but it's sort of half and half! Really good film.

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Originally Posted by dominion

Fell poets at the Olympics?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-11674308

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I loved his quote...

"I've always believed in aiming high and attempting the impossible - otherwise I wouldn't have gone into poetry."

I didn't get him until I found out he had a wonderful sense of humour.

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Originally Posted by L.F.F.

I'm not that familiar with anything by Siegfried Sassoon, but if you like his poetry, and Wilfred Owen's, I can definitely recommend a good film called Regeneration about them. Maybe that's for the Tonight's Film thread, but it's sort of half and half! Really good film.

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Yes I have seen that I think L.F.F. they are in the same hospital aren't they?

This is one of Sassoon's most famous poems and when I searched the poetry thread I found that Hanneke had posted it last November :cool:

Suicide in the Trenches (1917)

I knew a simple soldier boy
Who grinned at life in empty joy,
Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,
And whistled early with the lark.

In winter trenches, cowed and glum,
With crumps and lice and lack of rum,
He put a bullet through his brain.
No one spoke of him again.

You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye
Who cheer when soldier lads march by,
Sneak home and pray you'll never know
The hell where youth and laughter go.

Siegfried Sassoon

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Originally Posted by freckle

Er Harry I have a bone to pick with you!...you neglected to mention that you have only gone and won the BOFRA championships again! You are way too modest for your own good, but then, thats probably what we love about you!

Well done Harry! :thumbup:

our little star!

x

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Hey! Really well done Triple H - FANTASTIC!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!