That made me chuckle. One of these days I'll start re-fuelling before I get nauseous. The race is organised by a fellow called 'Scoffer' after all.Quote:
Originally Posted by Alf
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That made me chuckle. One of these days I'll start re-fuelling before I get nauseous. The race is organised by a fellow called 'Scoffer' after all.Quote:
Originally Posted by Alf
Nice one Alf and well done at Borrowdale. As my old sergeant in the maroon machine used to say 'What would you rather be or a wasp';)Quote:
Originally Posted by Alf
Brilliantly trumped by OW and Alf there :-). Like the Borrowdale poetry theme idea. Perhaps race reviews should always take that form? Sorry to hear about the wasps Alf :-(
All quiet on the Poetry thread front tonight
http://i592.photobucket.com/albums/t...Tumbleweed.gif
A bit of 1st WW poetry :
Returning, We Hear the Larks
Sombre the night is.
And though we have our lives, we know
What sinister threat lurks there.
Dragging these anguished limbs, we only know
This poison-blasted track opens on our camp-
On a little safe sleep.
But hark! joy-joy-strange joy.
Lo! heights of night ringing with unseen larks
Music showering on our upturned list'ning faces.
Death could drop from the dark
As easily as song-
But song only dropped,
Like a blind man's dreams on the sand
By dangerous tides,
Like a girl's dark hair for she dreams no ruin lies there,
Or her kisses where a serpent hides.
Isaac Rosenberg
Or is it?.......................well granted it is now morning!Quote:
Originally Posted by Alf
Alf this is simply gorgeous I particularly like the notion of a blind's mans dreams dropping on the sand......beautiful :-)
i know this is dark but sometimes it is good to contemplate darkness if only to appreciate the light...i think a combination of alf's last post and seeing the world at war last weekend on tv (purely by accident) and some consequent discussions reminded me of primo levi...oh and the fact that i am reading the road by cormac mccarthy...
Reveille
In the brutal nights we used to dream
Dense violent dreams,
Dreamed with soul and body:
To return; to eat; to tell the story.
Until the dawn command
Sounded brief, low
'Wstawac'
And the heart cracked in the breast.
Now we have found our homes again,
Our bellies are full,
We're through telling the story.
It's time. Soon we'll hear again
The strange command:
'Wstawac'
Primo Levi
evening all...glass of wine in hand and a fine dinner awaits, life (sometimes) is sweet :closed:
Christina Rossetti
Up-Hill
Does the road wind up-hill all the way?
Yes, to the very end.
Will the day's journey take the whole long day?
From morn to night, my friend. But is there for the night a resting-place?
A roof for when the slow dark hours begin.
May not the darkness hide it from my face?
You cannot miss that inn.
Shall I meet other wayfarers at night?
Those who have gone before.
Then must I knock, or call when 'ust in sight?
They will not keep you standing at that door.
Shall I find comfort, travel-sore and weak?
Of labor you shall find the sum.
Will there be beds for me and all who seek?
Yea, beds for all who come.
Some more statistics on 15 August 2010Fell Poets Society has 9,221 posts: started 18 Oct 2009; 301 days old, has 30 posts per dayQuote:
Originally Posted by XRunner
Todays Training has 9,336 posts : started 2 Jan 2007, 1,321 days old, hs 7 posts per day
Fell Ponies has 9,214 posts: started 4 Oct 2007; 1,046 days old, has 9 posts per day
Quiet Round Here has 26,814 posts: started 3 Jan 2007;1,320 days old, has 20 posts per day
Well I made myself a curry but no wine just a cup of http://i592.photobucket.com/albums/t...bit/drink1.gif .Quote:
Originally Posted by freckle
I do like Christina Rossetti's poems and I know she was quite a religious lady which I suspect is what this poem is about?
I was looking for a "happy" Thomas Hardy poem but I couldn't find one so I will have to stick with the old doom and gloom I'm afraid :) I do like the way he builds up each stanza full of optimism and then delivers the "sucker punch" in the final line. :cool:
During Wind and Rain
THEY sing their dearest songs--
He, she, all of them--yea,
Treble and tenor and bass.
And one to play;
With the candles mooning each face....
Ah, no; the years O!
How the sick leaves reel down in throngs!
They clear the creeping moss--
Elders and juniors--aye,
Making the pathways neat
And the garden gay;
And they build a shady seat....
Ah, no; the years, the years;
See, the white storm-birds wing across!
They are blithely breakfasting all--
Men and maidens--yea,
Under the summer tree,
With a glimpse of the bay,
While pet fowl come to the knee....
Ah, no; the years O!
And the rotten rose is ripped from the wall.
They change to a high new house,
He, she, all of them--aye,
Clocks and carpets and chairs
On the lawn all day,
And brightest things that are theirs....
Ah, no; the years, the years;
Down their carved names the raindrop plows.
Thomas Hardy
August's Confusion.
Dear grey August
Why so dull
Have you lost your way
Take your mind back to memories
Of many a sun filled day
Dear grey August
Full of cloud
How come you're filled with storm
Take us back to the good old you
When blue skies were full of warm.
By Me! x
Well done MG, I share those thoughts, though it wasn't too bad today just a pity I was in work.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mountain Goatess
This reminds me of a hawk I was watching at the weekend but it wasn't the least interested in me :)
Hawk Roosting
I sit in the top of the wood, my eyes closed.
Inaction, no falsifying dream
Between my hooked head and hooked feet:
Or in sleep rehearse perfect kills and eat.
The convenience of the high trees!
The air's buoyancy and the sun's ray
Are of advantage to me;
And the earth's face upward for my inspection.
My feet are locked upon the rough bark.
It took the whole of Creation
To produce my foot, my each feather:
Now I hold Creation in my foot
Or fly up, and revolve it all slowly -
I kill where I please because it is all mine.
There is no sophistry in my body:
My manners are tearing off heads -
The allotment of death.
For the one path of my flight is direct
Through the bones of the living.
No arguments assert my right:
The sun is behind me.
Nothing has changed since I began.
My eye has permitted no change.
I am going to keep things like this.
Ted Hughes
How wonderful! good to see you back on the thread MG and with some original work :-) xQuote:
Originally Posted by Mountain Goatess
I love the darkness of this Alf, very reminiscent of the Crow stuff he did....what is the connection with birds and death for ted hughes i wonder?Quote:
Originally Posted by Alf
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEUolGiGPgU
interesting reading X runner! i wonder if we shall make 10, 000 and if so if I could obtain some kind of honourary retirement package?Quote:
Originally Posted by XRunner
from The Rag Rug
by Ted Hughes
Somebody had made one. You admired it.
So you began to make your rag rug.
You needed to do it. Played on by lightnings
You needed an earth. Maybe. Or needed
To pull something out of yourself-
Some tapeworm of the psyche. I was simply
Happy to watch your scissors being fearless
...
Whenever you worked at your carpet I felt happy.
Then I could read Conrad's novels to you.
I could cradle your freed mind in my voice,
Chapter by chapter, sentence by sentence,
Word by word: "Heart of Darkness,"
...
I dreamed of our house
Before we ever found it. A great snake
Lifted its head from a well in the middle of the house
Exactly where the well is, beneath its slab,
In the middle of the house.
A golden serpent, thick as a child's body,
Eased from the opened well. And poured out
Through the back door, a length that seemed unending-
...
Quote:
Originally Posted by freckle
Sorry my dear, you are a life member. There is no escaping now. :-)
:)) aw thanx harry !Quote:
Originally Posted by Harry H Howgill
Quote:
Originally Posted by freckle
Good choice freckle and probably not too difficult to guess Sylvia Plath is making the rug :)
Quote:
Originally Posted by freckle
I am not an Eagles fan but this came to mind "you can check out anytime you like but you can never leave" :D
Once a fell poet, always a fell poet :cool:Quote:
Originally Posted by Alf
The statistician spends his days,Quote:
Originally Posted by XRunner
In figuring out the many ways,
In which a standard error can,
Enclose by bars the average man.
And having thus imprisoned him,
Perhaps at some researcher's whim,
Can with the same chicanery,
Enlarge the bars and set him free.
Or better yet, within the sample,
Locate some points with girth so ample,
That if by "choice" they were discarded,
Man and hypothesis are safeguarded.
random poem nicked off the internet :rolleyes:
Plato, despair!Quote:
Originally Posted by Stolly
We prove by norms
How numbers bear
Empiric forms,
How random wrong
Will average right
If time be long
And errors slight;
Error is boundless.
Nor hope nor doubt,
Though both be groundless,
Will average out.
another random poem nicked off the internet.
indeed!Quote:
Originally Posted by Derby Tup
still listening to simon armitage's voice on bbc 4...i find it altogether soothing...
anyway...here is a poem
After Apple-Picking
Robert Frost
My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still,
And there's a barrel that I didn't fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn't pick upon some bough.
But I am done with apple-picking now.
Essence of winter sleep is on the night,
The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.
I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight
I got from looking through a pane of glass
I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough
And held against the world of hoary grass.
It melted, and I let it fall and break.
But I was well
Upon my way to sleep before it fell,
And I could tell
What form my dreaming was about to take.
Magnified apples appear and disappear,
Stem end and blossom end,
And every fleck of russet showing clear.
My instep arch not only keeps the ache,
It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.
I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.
And I keep hearing from the cellar bin
The rumbling sound
Of load on load of apples coming in.
For I have had too much
Of apple-picking: I am overtired
Of the great harvest I myself desired.
There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,
Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.
For all
That struck the earth,
No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble,
Went surely to the cider-apple heap
As of no worth.
One can see what will trouble
This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.
Were he not gone,
The woodchuck could say whether it's like his
Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,
Or just some human sleep.
ps i enjoyed x runner and stolly's tooing and frooing
Aye lass, it takes me back to Dufton.Quote:
Originally Posted by freckle
He has a great turn of phrase and a dry sense of humour.
i am feeling the need for another fell poet do.....badly !Quote:
Originally Posted by Harry H Howgill
perhaps on the anniversary of the thread starting!
Trapped
don't undress my love
you might find a mannequin:
don't undress the mannequin
you might find
my love.
Charles Bukowski
All this Simon Armitage outdoors stuff and freckle's apple picking has made me look for something rural to post :)
Sonnet 81
HE may be envied, who with tranquil breast
Can wander in the wild and woodland scene,
When Summer's glowing hands have newly drest
The shadowy forests and the copses green;
Who, unpursued by care, can pass his hours
Where briony and woodbine fringe the trees,
On thymy banks reposing, while the bees
Murmur "their fairy tunes in praise of flowers;"
Or on the rock with ivy clad, and fern
That overhangs the ozier-whispering bed
Of some clear current, bid his wishes turn
From this bad world; and by calm reason led,
Knows, in refined retirement to possess
By friendship hallow'd - rural happiness.
Charlotte Smith
utterly sublime! is it just me or is this a bit sensous ol alf, with its references to the "whispering bed" and "tranquil breasts"....aye, its probably just me like :w00t:Quote:
Originally Posted by Alf
51.
Today unsuspectingly
I stumbled upon an old race number
Deep in the cavity of last year’s handbag...
In the dried up lipstick and billion receipts
Ah yes, number 51,
I remember you.
A by accident,
A for the very first.
A walk in the rain, not the best race preparation
A whole lot of fear and history in the making
and the ending and the creating.
Number 51,
the random embodiment of
Inevitability, rain, cold, the hills and
You.
Excellent freckle :cool:Quote:
Originally Posted by freckle
To an athlete dying young
The time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.
To-day, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.
Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields where glory does not stay
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.
Eyes the shady night has shut
Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears:
Now you will not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honours out,
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died before the man.
So set, before its echoes fade,
The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
And hold to the low lintel up
The still-defended challenge-cup.
And round that early-laurelled head
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girl's.
Alfred Edward Housman
I sat watching Out of Africa with Stef this afternoon and this is featured in the film. It's the first time I've seen it since its release in 1985 and it was much better than I remembered :)
Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
by A.E. Housman
Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.
Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.
And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.
(only another XLI poems to recite from A Shropshire Lad)
this is really moving DT...thanx for posting :-)Quote:
Originally Posted by Derby Tup
nice choice x runner.....by the same authorQuote:
Originally Posted by XRunner
XVIII
Oh, when I was in love with you
Then I was clean and brave,
And miles around the wonder grew
How well did I behave.
And now the fancy passes by
And nothing will remain,
And miles around they'll say that
I Am quite myself again.
Quote:
Originally Posted by freckle
I keep finding race numbers, down the sides of my car seats, holding places in my fixtures book or reading book. Some have been reused this time as scrap paper to hold race travel information. I try and remember which race and how I did but often I can't . Its a good subject for a poem :cool:
I enjoyed the Housman poems and DTs selection (I like the new avatar by the way DT)
I have just been informed my laptop is being replaced as my manager wants us all to have a better spec one. So I will be saying goodbye to this one in a couple of weeks:
Good little laptop
As your screen began to fade & flicker
And I shut you down & closed your cover
I knew all you needed was a little rest
I am so sorry for putting you to the test
But I cannot get through a day without you
You know how much I need you in all I do
You knew I would just die without your light
Good little laptop you gave me such a fright
Tia Maria
This always reminds me of my next door neighbour who is a bit of a keen mower but there the comparison ends :)
The Man Into Whose Yard You Should Not Hit Your Ball
each day mowed
and mowed his lawn, his dry quarter acre,
the machine slicing a wisp
from each blade's tip. Dust storms rose
around the roar: 6:00 P.M., every day,
spring, summer, fall. If he could mow
the snow he would.
On one side, his neighbors the cows
turned their backs to him
and did what they do to the grass.
Where he worked, I don't know
but it sets his jaw to: tight.
His wife a cipher, shoebox tissue,
a shattered apron. As if
into her head he drove a wedge of shale.
Years later his daughter goes to jail.
Mow, mow, mow his lawn
gently down a decade's summers.
On his other side lived mine and me,
across a narrow pasture, often fallow;
a field of fly balls, the best part of childhood
and baseball, but one could not cross his line
and if it did,
as one did in 1956
and another in 1958,
it came back coleslaw -- his lawn mower
ate it up, happy
to cut something, no matter
what the manual said
about foreign objects,
stones, or sticks.
Thomas Lux
Don't Let's Talk About Being in Love
Don't let's talk about being in love, OK?
- about me being in love, in fact, OK?
about your bloated face, like a magnolia;
about marsupials,
whose little blunted pouches
I'd like to crawl inside, lips first;
about the crashing of a million waterfalls
- as if LOVE were a dome of glass beneath a lake
entered through a maze of dripping tunnels
I hoped and prayed I'd never be found inside.
At night I dream that your bedroom's crammed with ducks.
You smell of mashed-up meal and scrambled egg.
Some of the ducks are broody, and won't stand up.
And I dream of the fingers of your various wives
reaching into your private parts like beaks.
And you're lying across the bed like a man shouldn't be.
And I'm startled awake by the sound of creaking glass
as if the whole affair's about to collapse
and water come pouring in with a rush of fishes
going slurpetty-slurpetty-slurp with their low-slung mouths
Selima Hill
Or in the words of the Everly Brothers/Nazareth "Love Hurts" !
Quote:
Originally Posted by Alf
Oooooo gosh Alf I do like this, very dark and brilliant! the imagery of the waterfalls crashing and passing through a maze of dripping tunnels....then the slupperty slurp fish.....an uncomfortable but brilliant read!
Poem written in the street on a rainy evening
Brain Pattern
Everything I lost was found again.
I tasted wine in my mouth.
My heart was like a firefly; it moved
Through the darkest objects laughing.
There were enough reasons why this was happening
But I never stopped to think about them.
I could have said it was your face,
Could have said I'd drunk something idiotic,
But no one reason was sufficient,
No one reason was relevant;
My joy was gobbled up by dull surroundings
But there was enough of it.
A feast was spread; a world
Was suddenly made edible.
And there was forever to taste it.
That's lovely Freckle. How are you doing? xQuote:
Originally Posted by freckle
Aw thanx for asking..i am ok surviving! running not so good and life crazy with good and bad bits abound...but overall the future is bright the future is freckled!...sooooooo glad to hear that the MG s on the up, you doin simonside again this year?Quote:
Originally Posted by Mountain Goatess