Oh dear..now look what you've started Freckle! Been thinking about this on-and-off all day now! Is it true do you think? What does he really mean?:w00t:Quote:
Originally Posted by freckle
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Oh dear..now look what you've started Freckle! Been thinking about this on-and-off all day now! Is it true do you think? What does he really mean?:w00t:Quote:
Originally Posted by freckle
I am really not sure now you mention it! Like you I thought this poem reflects the pain involved attaching to someone (letting oneself go to the extent that the boundaries between what is "you" and "I" becomes blurred to "us") and that he was saying that with such love there is inevitably the fear of loss...but this last line...i'm not sure... perhaps he is saying that if you really love someone you have to be prepared to let them go? but...mmm...that sounds cheesy and oversimplistic like the line of a song and i think i am more than likely missing something a lot more subtle....not sure mossy, but i shall embrace the uncertainty and ponder further!Quote:
Originally Posted by Mossdog
an after thought....i wonder if he means can it really be love if when it is lost you are so melancholic you feel unloved?
Aye, tis a conundrum! And letting someone go isn't quite the some as waving goodbye to your love for them either, which I would of thought you'd never let go as it, well, just is - but hey whadda I know! Heading up Crossfell tomorrow (yikes today!) so I'll ponder some more on route. Night night.Quote:
Originally Posted by freckle
Mad Girl's Love Song
"I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan's men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
I fancied you'd return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)"
Sylvia P
brilliant plath choice mossy...hope no "arbritary blackness" gallops in today!
The White Room
charles-simic
The obvious is difficult
To prove. Many prefer
The hidden. I did, too.
I listened to the trees.
They had a secret
Which they were about to
Make known to me,
And then didn’t.
Summer came. Each tree
On my street had its own
Scheherazade. My nights
Were a part of their wild
Storytelling. We were
Entering dark houses,
More and more dark houses
Hushed and abandoned.
There was someone with eyes closed
On the upper floors.
The thought of it, and the wonder,
Kept me sleepless.
The truth is bald and cold,
Said the woman
Who always wore white.
She didn’t leave her room much.
The sun pointed to one or two
Things that had survived
The long night intact,
The simplest things,
Difficult in their obviousness.
They made no noise.
It was the kind of day
People describe as “perfect.”
Gods disguising themselves
As black hairpins? A hand-mirror?
A comb with a tooth missing?
No! That wasn’t it.
Just things as they are,
Unblinking, lying mute
In that bright light,
And the trees waiting for the night
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scheherazade
Good choice that Mossy, they had her picture on University Challenge last night and noone could identify her :thunbdown: (apart from me :D)Quote:
Originally Posted by Mossdog
Great image that freckle :cool:Quote:
Originally Posted by freckle
The Happiness
There's a happiness, a joy
in one soul, that's been
buried alive in everyone
and forgotten.
It isn't your barroom joke
or tender, intimate humor
or affections of friendliness
or big, bright pun.
They're the surviving survivors
of what happened when happiness
was buried alive, when
it no longer looked out
of today's eyes, and doesn't
even manifest when one
of us dies, we just walk away
from everything, alone
with what's left of us,
going on being human beings
without being human,
without that happiness.
Jack Hirschman
Forum says "There are currently 41 users browsing this thread. (1 member and 40 guests)"
That must be a record - where did these 40 guests come from and why are they here!?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Stevie
They might be bolstering themselves up with a bit of inspirational poetry before heading for the picket lines?
The Miners Strike (remembered 25 years later)
It feels like a hundred years ago, or it could just be last week
When they stood on a freezing picket line and history took a turn
When communities refused to die or turn the other cheek
And what did we learn, eh? What did we learn?
For a year the pit wheels stood stock still,
And money dwindled, then ran out
But collectivism's hard to kill
And if you stand and listen, you'll still hear them shout...
But what did we learn, eh? What did we learn?
It feels like just a week ago, or it could be a hundred years
When the police vans charged with their sirens on through the silent weeping streets;
And they cooked and marched and argued through a mist of pain and fear
And a shut down pit's a symbol of depression and defeat
So what did we learn, eh? What did we learn?
The past is not just Kings and Queens, it's those like me and you
Who clashed with a woman at Number 10, who had to stand and fight
Cos when your way of life's being smashed to bits, what else can you do?
As the pickets braziers glow and smoke in the freezing Yorkshire night;
What did we learn, he? What did we learn?
Buy frozen peas where the braziers burned
What did we learn? What should we learn?
Ian McMillan
The Bungler
You glow in my heart
Like the flames of uncounted candles.
But when I go to warm my hands,
My clumsiness overturns the light,
And then I stumble
Against the tables and chairs.
Amy Lowell
(who would have thought it...a poem about love and clumsiness!:) )
Made me laugh that Hes, they don't call it 'falling' in love for nowt:wink:Quote:
Originally Posted by Hes
From the Telephone
Out of the dark cup
Your voice broke like a flower.
It trembled, swaying on its taut stem.
The caress in its touch
Made my eyes close.
Florence Ripley Mastin
:)Too true Steve, all that going weak kneed and faint...its a dangerous business.
Quote:
Originally Posted by stevefoster
Aye, as they used to say in 'Hill Street Blues' Let's be careful out there...............they missed out the 'enjoy' bit though, you only live once, unless your James Bond:)Quote:
Originally Posted by Hes
It is time to post this one by Simon Armitage. I heard him read this at Mytholmroyd when he was doing his Pennine Way walk and daily readings. The geographical closeness to Luddenden and the fact that the woman who had organised that reading (on behalf of the Ted Hughes Society) was a librarian herself made the poem particularly relevant. I'm sure the librarian organiser had nothing to do with the librarian in the poem!
Full Moon
It's midnight in Luddenden,
midnight in Luddenden,
midnight in Luddenwhen
all of a suddenden
here comes a shape in a cloak and a hood.
They're holding hands in Luddendenfoot
and there's trouble in Luddenden,
trouble in Luddenden,
Luddenden, Luddenden, Luddendenfoot.
Luddendenfoot, Luddendenfoot,
they're forming a circle in Luddendenfoot,
but the frumpy librarian's really a witch
who's bedding a druid from Hebenden Bridge -
hubble and bubble there;s trouble in Luddenden
trouble in Luddenden,
Luddenden, Luddenden, Luddendenfoot.
Luddendenfoot, Luddendenfoot,
they're closing rank in Luddendenfoot.
Round the back of a hut
a goat gets killed with a woodenden clubenden,
chickens are slaughtered,
Catholics are neutered,
the queen of the covenden
working up phelgm with soya milk bubblegum
gobs on the grave of the great and the goodenden
curses the vicars
of Mixenden, Illingworth, Warley and Ovenden.
Look, Mother, look,
in the locked-up, blacked-out community centre
they're burning a book. Nothing is sacred -
they're writhing and shaking, they're stark bollock naked
they're painting their genitals green and magenta,
they're veggies as well but they're eating placenta
they're all in a huddleden
daubing themselves with henna and mudenden,
here comes the knife and here comes the bloodenden.
Call for the cops -
there's trouble in Luddenden,
trouble in Luddenden,
trouble tonight and it's double in Luddenden,
Luddenden, Luddenden, Luddenden, Luddenden,
Luddenden, Luddenden, Luddenden, Luddenden,
Luddenden, Luddenden, Luddendenfoot.
I enjoyed that Stevie it fairly rattles along doesn't it. Luddenden, who would have thought ? :rolleyes:Quote:
Originally Posted by Stevie
lovely hesQuote:
Originally Posted by Hes
What the Chairman Told Tom
Poetry? It’s a hobby.
I run model trains.
Mr Shaw there breeds pigeons.
It’s not work. You dont sweat.
Nobody pays for it.
You could advertise soap.
Art, that’s opera; or repertory—
The Desert Song.
Nancy was in the chorus.
But to ask for twelve pounds a week—
married, aren’t you?—
you’ve got a nerve.
How could I look a bus conductor
in the face
if I paid you twelve pounds?
Who says it’s poetry, anyhow?
My ten year old
can do it and rhyme.
I get three thousand and expenses,
a car, vouchers,
but I’m an accountant.
They do what I tell them,
my company.
What do you do?
Nasty little words, nasty long words,
it’s unhealthy.
I want to wash when I meet a poet.
They’re Reds, addicts,
all delinquents.
What you write is rot.
Mr Hines says so, and he’s a schoolteacher,
he ought to know.
Go and find work.
Basil Bunting
I am still reading Edna Millay's biography she really was a one off :cool:
The Return
Earth does not understand her child,
Who from the loud gregarious town
Returns, depleted and defiled,
To the still woods, to fling him down.
Earth cannot count the sons she bore:
The wounded lynx, the wounded man
Come trailing blood unto her door;
She shelters both as best she can.
But she is early up and out,
To trim the year or strip its bones;
She has no time to stand about
Talking of him in undertones
Who has no aim but to forget
Be left in peace, be lying thus
For days, for years, for centuries yet,
Unshaven and anonymous;
Who, marked for failure, dulled by grief,
Has traded in his wife and friend
For this warm ledge, this alder leaf:
Comfort that does not comprehend.
Edna St. Vincent Millay
I like that Alf. I don't know much about her but she wrote one of my favourite poems about loss and grief.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Alf
I Heard a Bird Sing
I heard a bird sing
In the dark of December
A magical thing
And sweet to remember.
We are nearer to Spring
Than we were in September,
I heard a bird sing
In the dark of December.
- Oliver Herford
DECEMBER by John Clare
GLAD Christmas comes, and every hearth
Makes room to give him welcome now,
E’en want will dry its tears in mirth,
And crown him with a holly bough;
Though tramping ’neath a winter sky,
O’er snowy paths and rimy stiles,
The housewife sets her spinning by
To bid him welcome with her smiles.
Each house is swept the day before,
And windows stuck with ever-greens,
The snow is besom’d from the door,
And comfort crowns the cottage scenes.
Gilt holly, with its thorny pricks,
And yew and box, with berries small,
These deck the unused candlesticks,
And pictures hanging by the wall.
Neighbours resume their annual cheer,
Wishing, with smiles and spirits high,
Glad Christmas and a happy year,
To every morning passer-by;
Milkmaids their Christmas journeys go,
Accompanied with favour’d swain;
And children pace the crumping snow,
To taste their granny’s cake again.
The shepherd, now no more afraid,
Since custom doth the chance bestow,
Starts up to kiss the giggling maid
Beneath the branch of misletoe
That ’neath each cottage beam is seen,
With pearl-like berries shining gay;
The shadow still of what hath been,
Which fashion yearly fades away.
The singing wates, a merry throng,
At early morn, with simple skill,
Yet imitate the angels song,
And chant their Christmas ditty still;
And, ’mid the storm that dies and swells
By fits—in hummings softly steals
The music of the village bells,
Ringing round their merry peals.
When this is past, a merry crew,
Bedeck’d in masks and ribbons gay,
The “Morris-dance,” their sports renew,
And act their winter evening play.
The clown turn’d king, for penny-praise,
Storms with the actor’s strut and swell;
And Harlequin, a laugh to raise,
Wears his hunch-back and tinkling bell.
And oft for pence and spicy ale,
With winter nosegays pinn’d before,
The wassail-singer tells her tale,
And drawls her Christmas carols o’er.
While ’prentice boy, with ruddy face,
And rime-bepowder’d, dancing locks,
From door to door with happy pace,
Runs round to claim his “Christmas box.”
The block upon the fire is put,
To sanction custom’s old desires;
And many a fagot's bands are cut,
For the old farmers’ Christmas fires;
Where loud-tongued Gladness joins the throng,
And Winter meets the warmth of May,
Till feeling soon the heat too strong,
He rubs his shins, and draws away.
While snows the window-panes bedim,
The fire curls up a sunny charm,
Where, creaming o’er the pitcher’s rim,
The flowering ale is set to warm;
Mirth, full of joy as summer bees,
Sits there, its pleasures to impart,
And children, ’tween their parent’s knees,
Sing scraps of carols o’er by heart.
And some, to view the winter weathers,
Climb up the window-seat with glee,
Likening the snow to falling feathers,
In Fancy’s infant ecstasy;
Laughing, with superstitious love,
O’er visions wild that youth supplies,
Of people pulling geese above,
And keeping Christmas in the skies.
As tho’ the homestead trees were drest,
In lieu of snow, with dancing leaves;
As tho’ the sun-dried martin’s nest,
Instead of i’cles hung the eaves;
The children hail the happy day—
As if the snow were April’s grass,
And pleas’d, as ’neath the warmth of May,
Sport o’er the water froze to glass.
Thou day of happy sound and mirth,
That long with childish memory stays,
How blest around the cottage hearth
I met thee in my younger days!
Harping, with rapture’s dreaming joys,
On presents which thy coming found,
The welcome sight of little toys,
The Christmas gift of cousins round.
The wooden horse with arching head,
Drawn upon wheels around the room;
The gilded coach of gingerbread,
And many-colour’d sugar plum;
Gilt cover’d books for pictures sought,
Or stories childhood loves to tell,
With many an urgent promise bought,
To get to-morrow’s lesson well.
And many a thing, a minute’s sport,
Left broken on the sanded floor,
When we would leave our play, and court
Our parents’ promises for more.
Tho’ manhood bids such raptures die,
And throws such toys aside as vain,
Yet memory loves to turn her eye,
And count past pleasures o’er again.
Around the glowing hearth at night,
The harmless laugh and winter tale
Go round, while parting friends delight
To toast each other o’er their ale;
The cotter oft with quiet zeal
Will musing o’er his Bible lean;
While in the dark the lovers steal
To kiss and toy behind the screen.
Old customs! Oh! I love the sound,
However simple they may be:
Whate’er with time hath sanction found,
Is welcome, and is dear to me.
Pride grows above simplicity,
And spurns them from her haughty mind,
And soon the poet’s song will be
The only refuge they can find.
lovely Alf...these few lines of millay's have a certain resonance for me at the moment....Quote:
Originally Posted by Alf
My candle burns at both ends
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends -
It gives a lovely light.
SIMPLE
A break in the clouds. The blue
outline of the mountains.
Dark yellow of the fields.
Black river. What am I doing here,
lonely and filled with remorse?
I go on casually eating from the bowl
of raspberries. If I were dead,
I remind myself, I wouldn’t
be eating them. It’s not so simple.
It is that simple.
Raymond Carver
The last section of the narrative poem 'Renascence' written by Edna Millay when she was 19.
The world stands out on either side
No wider than the heart is wide;
Above the world is stretched the sky,—
No higher than the soul is high.
The heart can push the sea and land
Farther away on either hand;
The soul can split the sky in two,
And let the face of God shine through.
But East and West will pinch the heart
That can not keep them pushed apart;
And he whose soul is flat—the sky
Will cave in on him by and by.
The full poem has 214 lines so following link attached for that.
http://www.bartleby.com/131/1.html`
Stick Your Head in the Copier
Let the light seep into your eye sockets,
your pores. Illuminate your hair
with a flash as bright as Vegas.
And you, the you that is not you, the inverse of you,
will be tacked on every cubicle wall
as a reminder of courage. She took a chance, they'll say.
Stuck her head into the jaws of the great machine.
(It terrifies all of us, its mysterious appetites
and blinking impartations.)
Of course, you may simply be tossed
into the wastebasket, which gorges from nine to five
on a bleached coleslaw of trees.
Or recycled into a romance novel,
teeming with breathless heiresses and dark-eyed suitors,
your cracked lips and shadow hair barely recognizable.
In any case, you'll have felt the light in your veins.
For a moment, you'll have glowed like a saint.
Jessica Goodheart
Thanks for posting this Mossdog, it is interesting. I like the idea that the copier has a mind and soul of its own. Well there has to be some reason copiers behave so badly!
I loved your Raymond Carver poem too. "It's not so simple. It is that simple."
I like the the Edna Millay poems you have posted Alf. This section does read as though it was written by a younger poet, there is a kind of innocence in the attempted worldliness that seems to come from attempting to capture grand ideas with simple rhymes.Quote:
Originally Posted by Alf
Glad you enjoyed/found interesting Stevie - there's been some great poems posted on here recently, by Alf, Hes, Freckle, yourself and others, I really appreciate the eclectic mix too.Quote:
Originally Posted by Stevie
i liked this, good to remember that things could be worse!Quote:
Originally Posted by Mossdog
Some beautiful choices on the thread recently from one and all and I agree with Mossy that it is good to have such an eclectic mix
Here is a poet I hadn't really across before...
Request to a Year
by Judith Wright
If the year is meditating a suitable gift,
I should like it to be the attitude
of my great- great- grandmother,
legendary devotee of the arts,
who having eight children
and little opportunity for painting pictures,
sat one day on a high rock
beside a river in Switzerland
and from a difficult distance viewed
her second son, balanced on a small ice flow,drift down the current toward a waterfall
that struck rock bottom eighty feet below,
while her second daughter, impeded,
no doubt, by the petticoats of the day,
stretched out a last-hope alpenstock
(which luckily later caught him on his way).
Nothing, it was evident, could be done;
And with the artist's isolating eye
My great-great-grandmother hastily sketched the scene.
The sketch survives to prove the story by.
Year, if you have no Mother's day present planned,
Reach back and bring me the firmness of her hand.
Woman to child
Judith Wright
You who were darkness warmed my flesh
where out of darkness rose the seed.
Then all a world I made in me;
all the world you hear and see
hung upon my dreaming blood.
There moved the multitudinous stars,
and coloured birds and fishes moved.
There swam the sliding continents.
All time lay rolled in me, and sense,
and love that knew not its beloved.
O node and focus of the world;
I hold you deep within that well
you shall escape and not escape-
that mirrors still your sleeping shape;
that nurtures still your crescent cell.
I wither and you break from me;
yet though you dance in living light
I am the earth, I am the root,
I am the stem that fed the fruit,
the link that joins you to the night.
That's a very powerful image captured in that last verse freckle. The child separating from the mother's body but always being linked to it. The true meaning of life? :cool:Quote:
Originally Posted by freckle
A bit of Byron. Reading Childe Harold's Pilgrimage is a bit like painting the Forth Bridge, when you finally get to the end you are ready to start again.
What deep wounds ever clos'd without a scar?
The heart's bleed longest, and but heal to wear
That which disfigures it; and they who war
With their own hopes, and have been vanquish'd, bear
Silence, but not submission: in his lair
Fix'd Passion holds his breath, until the hour
Which shall atone for years; none need despair:
It came--it cometh--and will come--the power
To punish or forgive--in one we shall be slower.
Lord Byron
Alf you are some reader! I am imagine your home is a very eloquent place to be! Liked the last line of this verse something enigmatic and slightly out of reach...Quote:
Originally Posted by Alf
I saw your post on Simonside freckle so have a good run tomorrow (and Hes and anyone else reading this and doing the race). I am staying closer to home for my run.Quote:
Originally Posted by freckle
A sonnet from "the guvnor" to finish off with.
Night all :D
"I cry your mercy-pity-love! -aye, love!"
I cry your mercy—pity—love!—aye, love!
Merciful love that tantalizes not,
One-thoughted, never-wandering, guileless love,
Unmasked, and being seen—without a blot!
O! let me have thee whole,—all—all—be mine!
That shape, that fairness, that sweet minor zest
Of love, your kiss,—those hands, those eyes divine,
That warm, white, lucent, million-pleasured breast,
Yourself—your soul—in pity give me all,
Withhold no atom’s atom or I die
Or living on perhaps, your wretched thrall,
Forget, in the mist of idle misery,
Life’s purposes,—the palate of my mind
Losing its gust, and my ambition blind!
John Keats
love it alf! mr keats certainly was a passionate and wise gentleman if this is anything to go by!Quote:
Originally Posted by Alf
here is one by blake...
The Sick Rose
by: William Blake (1757-1827)
ROSE, thou art sick!
The invisible worm,
That flies in the night,
In the howling storm,
Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy;
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.
PS Simonside was lush perhaps we will see you next time? hope your run today was nice
I didn't get out today in the end freckle :thunbdown: Did they have the Christmas lights/music up in the wood at Simonside ?
The Cheese Room
Here it is, on the back of the menu.
How, instead of a pudding, an extra fiver
will buy you the choice of the Cheese Room.
It shines in the corner, a treasury,
the moony glow of the cheeses walled round
with glass. As soon as she sees it, she's lost.
Before anyone spots her, she strips,
soaks a sari in buttermilk, wraps herself up
and goes in. She shivers to think of the air
full of spores, the shag-pile that fluffs
on things that slip your mind for a moment –
green islands on milk, jam lidded with wool.
A couple who've paid to pick slices of Reblochon,
Vignotte, Manchego, tap on the glass;
they can't believe how she stands,
drenched in whey, her hair wet to strings.
How she touches the rinds – dusted
with charcoal, or soft, that hidden-flesh bloom
you get on a Brie. There's the tightness
of smoke in some of the cheese, the fissured
and granular rock of a Parmesan split
into wheels. Then the diners lose interest,
return to their claret. Despite how oddly
she's dressed – the flimsy sarong,
the milky place where the muslin pulls into
the crack of her arse – perhaps they assume
she's some kind of expert assessing
the cheese? But she won't even taste,
pulls the cheesecloth over her face
and curls up on the floor. She's happy
to wait, passive like milk, for the birth,
for the journey from death into food.
Judy Brown