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That made me laugh Mossy! thank god someone like your good self is here to bring us all down on a sunday night!!!! :w00t:Quote:
Originally Posted by Mossdog
my gosh crowhill you have been working hard in more ways than one! thanks for posting all 3 poems (within a poem), great stuff!
i like this poem even though it doesn't really fit my mood at present which is indeed quite chipper, never mind tomorrow is monday so i am sure i will be miserable as sin again then!
After Love
Afterwards, the compromise.
Bodies resume their boundaries.
These legs, for instance, mine.
Your arms take you back in.
Spoons of our fingers, lips
admit their ownership.
The bedding yawns, a door
blows aimlessly ajar
and overhead, a plane
singsongs coming down.
Nothing is changed, except
there was a moment when
the wolf, the mongering wolf
who stands outside the self
lay lightly down, and slept.
Maxine Kumin
Meditation on a pedal.
If only time could be frozen
Great icicles of love would dangle
From the ruby beaters
and passers by would exclaim
“How odd to be frozen,and smiling with it
mid july, on two hybrids”.
That is totally magnificent - thank you - really fun to read.Quote:
Originally Posted by crowhill
Excellent narrative poem again crowhill :cool:.
Is it a joint effort from Mr & Mrs crowhill by any chance ? :D
I liked that one freckle and Mossy's Plath poem suited my post race mood nicely :rolleyes:Quote:
Originally Posted by freckle
Temptation
Call yourself alive? Look, I promise you
that for the first time you’ll feel your pores opening
like fish mouths, and you’ll actually be able to hear
your blood surging though all those lanes,
and you’ll feel light gliding across the cornea
like the train of a dress. For the first time
you’ll be aware of gravity
like a thorn in your heel,
and your shoulder blades will ache for want of wings.
Call yourself alive? I promise you
you’ll be deafened by dust falling on the furniture,
you’ll feel your eyebrows turning into two gashes,
and every memory you have – will begin
a Genesis.
Nina Cassian
No - she has far more constructive things to do with her time than drifting around with her head in the clouds! :D I'm putting my injury enforced lay-off to good use.Quote:
Originally Posted by Alf
Thanks for the kind comments. I wish my O' Level English teacher had been as appreciative!Quote:
Originally Posted by Mossdog
Procedure
Jo Shapcott
This tea, this cup of tea, made of leaves,
made of the leaves of herbs and absolute
almond blossom, this tea, is the interpreter
of almond, liquid touchstone which lets us
scent its true taste at last and with a bump
in my case, takes me back to the yellow time
of trouble with bloodtests, and cellular
madness, and my presence required
on the slab for surgery, and all that mess
I don't want to comb through here because
it seems, honestly, a trifle now that steam
and scent and strength and steep and infusion
say thank you thank you thank you for the then, and now
Who invented work:sneaky:
On a hill i sit,
My dog, happily rolling in sh*t,
Miles done and more to go
Take a deep breath, and get up slow,
Off we trot, the pooch comes grottily,
Could do this all day, if i won the lottery!
Loved Crowhill's 3ppp's poem, hope the injury clears up soon mate.
Time, Real and Imaginary - An Allegory
mostly By Samuel Taylor Coleridge (I am surprised we haven't posted this poem before!)
On the wide level of a mountain's head,
(I knew not where, but 'twas some faery place)
Their pinions, ostrich-like, for sails out-spread,
Two lovely children run a fell race,
A sister and a brother!
This far outstripp'd the other;
Yet ever runs she with reverted face,
And looks and listens for the boy behind:
For he, alas! is blind!
O'er rough and smooth with even step he passed,
And knows not whether he be first or last.
I know it's not the kind of poetry we post on here, and I know it's well past Wimbledon now, but I heard this read by the poet at Ledbury and it is so funny (and clever) I had to post it here.
thwok
By Matt Harvey
a game in the life
bounce bounce bounce bounce
thwackety wackety zingety ping
hittety backety pingety zang
wack, thwok, thwack, pok
thwikety, thwekity, thwokity, thwakity
cover the court with alarming alacrity
smackety dink, smackety dink
boshety bashity crotchety crashety
up loops a lob with a teasing temerity
leaps in the air in defiance of gravity
puts it away with a savage severity
coupled with suavity
nice
15-love
(reaches for towel with a certain serenity)
bounce, bounce, bounce, bounce
thwack, thwok, plak, plok
come to the nettety
bit of a liberty
quickly regrettety
up goes a lobbity
hoppety skippety
awkwardly backwardly
slippety trippety
tumble & sprawl
audible gasps…
15-all
(opponent asks how is he?
courtesy, nice to see
getting up gingerly
brushity thighsity
all, if you’re asking me
bit big-girls-blousity)
bounce bounce bounce
whack, thwok, plik, plok
into the corner, then down the linety
chasety downity, whackety backety
all on the runnity, crossety courtety
dropety vollety – quality, quality…
… oh I say what impossible gettery
no, umpirical rulery – nottety uppity –
oooh – doesn’t look happety
back to the baseline
muttery muttery muttery muttery
30-15
bounce, bounce, bounce,
thwacketty OUT
bounce, bounce, bounce,
thwacketty BLEEP
2nd serve
bounce, bounce, bounce,
thwacketty – slappity
thwackety thumpity
dinkety-clinkety, gruntity-thumpity
clinkety
thump!
30-all
fistety pumpety, fistety pumpety COME ON!
quiet please
bounce, bounce, bounce,
thwacketty thwoketty
bashetty boshetty
clashety closhety
OUT!
what?
lookaty linety, lookaty line-judge
line judge nodity
wearily query
umpire upholdery, indicate inchery
insult to injury
give line-judge scrutiny
face full of mutiny,
40-30
back to the baseline
through gritted teethery
muttery mutiny mutiny muttery
bounce bounce bounce
thwak, thwok, thwak, plok
thwakety plik, thwoketty plak
to-ity fro-ity fro-ity to-ity
slowity quickety quickety slowity
turnety headety, headety turnity
leftety rightety leftety rightety
seems like we’ve been here a bloomin eternity
rightety leftety rightety leftety
topety spinnety, backhandy slicety
lookety watchety, scratchety bottity
fabulous forehand, backhandy slicety
furious forehand, savagely slicety
fearsome ferocity, vicious velocity
bilious backhand – blasted so blistery…
…half a mile out but that line judge is history
OOOWWWWWWWWT!
GAME
new balls please
One the other hand we do post this kind of poem, and this is by Robert Frost one of the Dymock poets based not so very far from Ledbury.
There was an exhibition of stitched textiles associated with the festival on the theme of "moon rainbow" associated with "Iris by Night", although confusingly not all the pieces were moon rainbow based, some had chosen e.g. "The Road not Taken" another Frost classic.
Here is Iris by Night, as I'm sure The Road not Taken has appeared on here before.
One misty evening, one another's guide,
We two were groping down a Malvern side
The last wet fields and dripping hedges home.
There came a moment of confusing lights,
Such as according to belief in Rome
Were seen of old at Memphis on the heights
Before the fragments of a former sun
Could concentrate anew and rise as one.
Light was a paste of pigment in our eyes.
And then there was a moon and then a scene
So watery as to seem submarine;
In which we two stood saturated, drowned.
The clover-mingled rowan on the ground
Had taken all the water it could as dew,
And still the air was saturated too,
Its airy pressure turned to water weight.
Then a small rainbow like a trellis gate,
A very small moon-made prismatic bow,
Stood closely over us through which to go.
And then we were vouchsafed a miracle
That never yet to other two befell
And I alone of us have lived to tell.
A wonder! Bow and rainbow as it bent,
Instead of moving with us as we went
(To keep the pots of gold from being found),
It lifted from its dewy pediment
Its two mote-swimming many-colored ends
And gathered them together in a ring.
And we stood in it softly circled round
From all division time or foe can bring
In a relation of elected friends.
Ha ha...I like this a lot.
I've said it before and I'm going to say it again....there isn't a 'type' of poem that is posted or any unwritten (or written) restrictions regarding what is posted on the thread...there's been all sorts, even biscuit porn limericks. I think some of us just have favourites that we post and repost because we enjoy them or they fit a mood so maybe it might seem that certain types of poems get posted (trawl some of the archives and you'll see that there really has been everything possible). I, for one, will post whatever I like unless I think it would upset or offend anyone so I hope you don't feel restricted Stevie.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Stevie
Quote:
Originally Posted by Stevie
I didn't know Frost had spent some time in England so thanks for educating me there
Stevie. I loved the "Thwok" poem as well :D
Evening Walk
You give the appearance of listening
To my thoughts, O trees,
Bent over the road I am walking
On a late summer evening
When every one of you is a steep staircase
The night is slowly descending.
The high leaves like my mother's lips
Forever trembling, unable to decide,
For there's a bit of wind,
And it's like hearing voices,
Or a mouth full of muffled laughter,
A huge dark mouth we can all fit in
Suddenly covered by a hand.
Everything quiet. Light
Of some other evening strolling ahead,
Long-ago evening of silk dresses,
Bare feet, hair unpinned and falling.
Happy heart, what heavy steps you take
As you follow after them in the shadows.
The sky at the road's end cloudless and blue.
The night birds like children
Who won't come to dinner.
Lost children in the darkening woods.
Charles Simic
Wow...I really do love this Alf.:) It has such a gentleness to it and then there is the slightly macabre bit about the 'huge dark mouth'.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Alf
i agree , i love the personification of the trees who appear both soothing and slightly sinister, i like a paradox! great choice alf...really enjoying this thread as a consumer rather than contributor, but now...is that really the time? BED!Quote:
Originally Posted by Hes
I found a book in a charity shop the other day and it is a collection of love poems by women from the past five centuries to the present. Its really sad but I liked this one very much...
from Last Testaments
Before she walked into the river
and didn’t come back,
the woman who couldn’t remember
the day of the week
or the faces of her children,
made a list of all the men
she’d ever loved,
left it for her husband by the coffee pot,
his name on the bottom,
underlined twice
for emphasis.
Lorna Crozier
On a cheerier note... :)
Who has not seen their lover
Walking at ease,
Walking like any other
A pavement under trees,
Not singular, apart,
But footed, featured, dressed,
Approaching like the rest
In the same dapple of the summer caught;
Who has not suddenly thought
With swift surprise:
There walks in cool disguise,
There comes, my heart.
.....The Avenue by Frances Cornford (1886-1960)
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hes
just caught this before i switched off the puter......lush, lush, lush! thanks hes, killer last line
That's what I thought too. Just loved it. Off to bed too, night Freckle.xx
Quote:
Originally Posted by freckle
Pike
Pike, three inches long, perfect
Pike in all parts, green tigering the gold.
Killers from the egg: the malevolent aged grin.
They dance on the surface among the flies.
Or move, stunned by their own grandeur,
Over a bed of emerald, silhouette
Of submarine delicacy and horror.
A hundred feet long in their world.
In ponds, under the heat-struck lily pads-
Gloom of their stillness:
Logged on last year's black leaves, watching upwards.
Or hung in an amber cavern of weeds
The jaws' hooked clamp and fangs
Not to be changed at this date:
A life subdued to its instrument;
The gills kneading quietly, and the pectorals.
Three we kept behind glass,
Jungled in weed: three inches, four,
And four and a half: red fry to them-
Suddenly there were two. Finally one
With a sag belly and the grin it was born with.
And indeed they spare nobody.
Two, six pounds each, over two feet long
High and dry and dead in the willow-herb-
One jammed past its gills down the other's gullet:
The outside eye stared: as a vice locks-
The same iron in this eye
Though its film shrank in death.
A pond I fished, fifty yards across,
Whose lilies and muscular tench
Had outlasted every visible stone
Of the monastery that planted them-
Stilled legendary depth:
It was as deep as England. It held
Pike too immense to stir, so immense and old
That past nightfall I dared not cast
But silently cast and fished
With the hair frozen on my head
For what might move, for what eye might move.
The still splashes on the dark pond,
Owls hushing the floating woods
Frail on my ear against the dream
Darkness beneath night's darkness had freed,
That rose slowly toward me, watching.
Ted Hughes
Wonderful Hes. As Freckle says the last line really does it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Hes
Hughes does animals well doesn't he. A master of the art. Thanks for posting it DT. Isn't there an anthology of Ted Hughes animal poems?Quote:
Originally Posted by Derby Tup
Speaking of animal anthologies there is also The Poetry of Birds anthology complied by Tim Dee and Simon Armitage. I don't own it but a bit of surfing turned up a few of the poems in it including this one:
The Windhover by Gerard Manly Hopkins
To Christ Our Lord
I caught this morning morning's minion, king-
dom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird, – the achieve of, the mastery of the thing.
Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!
No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion.
Neutral TonesWE stood by a pond that winter day,
by Thomas Hardy
And the sun was white, as though chidden of God,
And a few leaves lay on the starving sod,
--They had fallen from an ash, and were gray.
Your eyes on me were as eyes that rove
Over tedious riddles solved years ago;
And some words played between us to and fro--
On which lost the more by our love.
The smile on your mouth was the deadest thing
Alive enough to have strength to die;
And a grin of bitterness swept thereby
Like an ominous bird a-wing....
Since then, keen lessons that love deceives,
And wrings with wrong, have shaped to me
Your face, and the God-curst sun, and a tree,
And a pond edged with grayish leaves.
For a Birthday
by THOM GUNN
I have reached a time when words no longer
help:
Instead of guiding me across the moors
Strong landmarks in the uncertain out-of-doors,
http://articles.latimes.com/images/pixel.gif
Or like dependable friars on the Alp
Saving with wisdom and with brandy kegs,
They are gravel-stones, or tiny dogs which yelp
Biting my trousers, running round my legs.
Description and analysis degrade,
Limit, delay, slipped land from what has been;
And when we groan My Darling what we mean
Looked at more closely would too soon evade
The intellectual habit of our eyes;
And either the experience would fade
Or our approximations would be lies.
The snarling dogs are weight upon my haste,
Tons which I am detaching ounce by ounce.
All my agnostic irony I renounce
So I may climb to regions where I rest
In springs of speech, the dark before of truth:
The sweet moist wafer of your tongue I taste,
And find right meanings in your silent mouth.
fishing...now that sounds like a relaxing past time...
The Song Of Wandering Aengus
by: W.B. Yeats
I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.
When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire a-flame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And some one called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.
Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.
Yeats and Hardy :cool: Good choices freckle! I hadn't realised Donovan had used these lines in a song.Quote:
Originally Posted by freckle
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQUT6mS0eY8
That's a big space Alf, was something supposed to go in there!?Quote:
Originally Posted by Alf
There was an embedded video in it Stevie. It might not have had time to load while you were viewing it?Quote:
Originally Posted by Stevie
Lovely stuff! I can recommend the cd 'Now and in Time to Be' which is a compilation of different singers and bands who have used Yeats's poems in their songs. My favourites are Sinead Lohan singing 'The Fish' and the Waterboy's 'Stolen Child'.
Happy Birthday to our very own Old Whippet!! Hope you have a lovely day. :)
Been thinking about dogs and their incredible sense of smell and hearing and I found this:
What The Dog Perhaps Hears
by Lisel Mueller
If an inaudible whistle
blown between our lips
can send him home to us,
then silence is perhaps
the sound of spiders breathing
and roots mining the earth;
it may be asparagus heaving,
headfirst, into the light
and the long brown sound
of cracked cups, when it happens.
We would like to ask the dog
if there is a continuous whir
because the child in the house
keeps growing, if the snake
really stretches full length
without a click and the sun
breaks through clouds without
a decibel of effort,
whether in autumn, when the trees
dry up their wells, there isn't a shudder
too high for us to hear.
What is it like up there
above the shut-off level
of our simple ears?
For us there was no birth cry,
the newborn bird is suddenly here,
the egg broken, the nest alive,
and we heard nothing when the world changed.
On the theme of Yeats, this has been posted a few times and its probably become a bit overexposed but I still think it is moving and beautiful:
He Wishes For The Cloths Of Heaven
by William Butler Yeats
Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
Well as Hes has paved the way for a W. B. Yeats repeat night I will just repost one of my all time favourites.
The Second Coming
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
W.B. Yeats
That is a lovely poem. It really gets you thinking. I wonder how much we can not see and hear due to our human limitations of the senses.Quote:
Originally Posted by Hes
Barkley.
Wandering lost through the Tennessee night,
The sound of trees flow my gentle breeze,
Once more atop a briar filled peak waiting for the light,
Sun up over mountain ridge puts my mind at ease.
I find my true self within this Southern proving ground,
The peaks and blackberry thorn sleep deprived demon pouring scorn,
Snow and rain hit me hard knock me down upon this rock strewn mound,
A new me was discovered today thank you Barkley i am reborn.
The Worker's Song by Dropkick Murphys.
Yeh, this one's for the workers who toil night and day
By hand and by brain to earn your pay
Who for centuries long past for no more than your bread
Have bled for your countries and counted your dead
In the factories and mills, in the shipyards and mines
We've often been told to keep up with the times
For our skills are not needed, they've streamlined the job
And with sliderule and stopwatch our pride they have robbed
We're the first ones to starve, we're the first ones to die
The first ones in line for that pie-in-the-sky
And we're always the last when the cream is shared out
For the worker is working when the fat cat's about
And when the sky darkens and the prospect is war
Who's given a gun and then pushed to the fore
And expected to die for the land of our birth
Though we've never owned one lousy handful of earth?
All of these things the worker has done
From tilling the fields to carrying the gun
We've been yoked to the plough since time first began
And always expected to carry the can