I've got one of those! There are some real gems on this thread but it can be a bit hard work trawling back to find them at a later date so I've cut and pasted a few into a doc too :)
Quote:
Originally Posted by that_fjell_guy
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I've got one of those! There are some real gems on this thread but it can be a bit hard work trawling back to find them at a later date so I've cut and pasted a few into a doc too :)
Quote:
Originally Posted by that_fjell_guy
Have you heard Betjeman's album of poems called Banana Blush? It is an odd thing but I love it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by that_fjell_guy
No, Ive only got the 'Britain' one. I meant to get a couple, I noticed 'Banana Blush' when I was checking who the music was by. I think I'll get it!!
The doc's really handy, much easier to find and its all stuff I like.
A Blackbird Singing
It seems wrong that out of this bird,
Black, bold, a suggestion of dark
Places about it, there yet should come
Such rich music, as though the notes'
Ore were changed to a rare metal
At one touch of that bright bill.
You have heard it often, alone at your desk
In a green April, your mind drawn
Away from its work by sweet disturbance
Of the mild evening outside your room.
A slow singer, but loading each phrase
With history's overtones, love, joy
And grief learned by his dark tribe
In other orchards and passed on
Instinctively as they are now,
But fresh always with new tears.
R S Thomas
Going
There is an evening coming in
Across the fields, one never seen before,
That lights no lamps.
Silken it seems at a distance, yet
When it is drawn up over the knees and breast
It brings no comfort.
Where has the tree gone, that locked
Earth to the sky? What is under my hands,
That I cannot feel?
What loads my hands down?
Philip Larkin
Nice one Alf - really enjoyed it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Alf
On the Day of Nixon's Funeral
It's time to put the aside the old resentments; lies,
machinations, the paranoia, bugs in telephones,
the body bags, secret bombings, his sweaty upper lip,
my cousin Arnie, too dumb to go to school,
too virtuous to confess he'd give blow jobs
for nothing at the Paramount, so he lost a leg
in Da Nang. Now it's time for amnesiacs to play
Beethoven's Eroica by Nixon's casket.
To applaud his loyalty, to grant a few mistakes,
to honor his diplomacy, him and his pal Kissinger
who bombed the lush green paddies of Cambodia.
And now for a few lyric moments as I wait patiently
for my fiftieth birthday. Wood ducks decorate the pond
near this farmhouse, and in the marsh I've spied
a meadow lark, a fox, a white-tailed hawk who soars
above the Western Mountain peaks. Oh, I'm in love
with the country all right. So I can forget my friend
Sweeney, who shot Congressman Lowenstein
because the radio in his tooth insisted on it.
I remember the march on the Pentagon in purple,
a proud member of the Vegetarian Brigade. I was drugged,
as many of us were drugged, as my parents
were drugged by a few major networks, by a ranch house
and an Oldsmobile. I once spit on Hubert Humphrey,
threw a brick through Dow Chemical's plate-glass door.
I wrote insane letters to Senators, burying them
in moral rectitude: I got a response from one:
Senator Kennedy — the dead one — whose office wrongly
argued for slow withdrawal instead of Instant Victory.
I remember Tricky Dick in Nineteen Fifty-three:
I'm eight years-old, frightened and ignorant,
lying down before my parents' first TV: my aunts
and uncles sitting in a circle, biting their nails,
whispering names of relatives awaiting trial, who,
thanks to Nixon, lost their sorry jobs. You can see why
I'd want to bury this man whose blood would not circulate,
whose face was paralyzed, who should have died
in shame and solitude, without benefit of eulogy or twenty-one
gun salutes. I want to bury him in Southern California
with the Birchers and the Libertarians. I want to look out
my window and cheer the remaining cedars
that require swampy habitats to survive. To be done
with shame and rage this April afternoon, where embryonic
fiddleheads, fuzzy and curled and pale as wings,
have risen to meet me. After all, they say he was a scrappy man,
wily and sage, who served as Lucifer, scapegoat, scoundrel,
a receptacle for acrimony and rage — one human being
whose life I have no reverence for, which is why I'm singing now.
Ira Sadoff
Charlotte Brontë in Leeds Point
From her window marshland stretched for miles.
If not for egrets and gulls, it reminded her of the moors
behind the parsonage, how the fog often hovered
and descended as if sheltering some sweet compulsion
the age was not ready to see. On clear days the jagged
skyline of Atlantic City was visible—Atlantic City,
where all compulsions had a home.
"Everything's too easy now," she said to her neighbor,
"nothing resisted, nothing gained." Once, at eighteen,
she dreamed of London's proud salons glowing
with brilliant fires and dazzling chandeliers.
Already her own person—passionate, assertive—
soon she'd create a governess insistent on rights equal
to those above her rank. "The dangerous picture
of a natural heart," one offended critic carped.
She'd failed, he said, to let religion reign
over the passions and, worse, she was a woman.
Now she was amazed at what women had,
doubly amazed at what they didn't.
But she hadn't come back to complain or haunt.
Her house on the bay was modest, adequate.
It need not accommodate brilliant sisters
or dissolute brothers, spirits lost or fallen.
Feminists would pay homage, praise her honesty
and courage. Rarely was she pleased. After all,
she was an artist; to speak of honesty in art,
she knew, was somewhat beside the point.
And she had married, had even learned to respect
the weakness in men, those qualities they called
their strengths. Whatever the struggle, she wanted men
included. Charlotte missed reading chapters to Emily,
Emily reading chapters to her. As ever, though, she'd try
to convert present into presence, something unsung
sung, some uprush of desire frankly acknowledged,
even in this, her new excuse for a body.
Stephen Dunn
Take bread away from me, if you wish,
take air away, but
do not take from me your laughter.
Do not take away the rose,
the lance flower that you pluck,
the water that suddenly
bursts forth in joy,
the sudden wave
of silver born in you.
My struggle is harsh and I come back
with eyes tired
at times from having seen
the unchanging earth,
but when your laughter enters
it rises to the sky seeking me
and it opens for me all
the doors of life.
My love, in the darkest
hour your laughter
opens, and if suddenly
you see my blood staining
the stones of the street,
laugh, because your laughter
will be for my hands
like a fresh sword.
Next to the sea in the autumn,
your laughter must raise
its foamy cascade,
and in the spring, love,
I want your laughter like
the flower I was waiting for,
the blue flower, the rose
of my echoing country.
Laugh at the night,
at the day, at the moon,
laugh at the twisted
streets of the island,
laugh at this clumsy
girl who loves you,
but when I open
my eyes and close them,
when my steps go,
when my steps return,
deny me bread, air,
light, spring,
but never your laughter
for I would die.
Pablo Neruda
you being in love
will tell who softly asks in love,
am i separated from your body smile brain hands merely
to become the jumping puppets of a dream? oh i mean:
entirely having in my careful how
careful arms created this at length
inexcusable, this inexplicable pleasure-you go from several
persons: believe me that strangers arrive
when i have kissed you into a memory
slowly, oh seriously
-that since and if you disappear
solemnly
myselves
ask "life, the question how do i drink dream smile
and how do i prefer this face to another and
why do i weep eat sleep-what does the whole intend"
they wonder. oh and they cry "to be, being, that i am alive
this absurd fraction in its lowest terms
with everything cancelled
but shadows
-what does it all come down to? love? Love
if you like and i like,for the reason that i
hate people and lean out of this window is love,love
and the reason that i laugh and breathe is oh love and the reason
that i do not fall into this street is love."
ee cummings
How exquisite...such a long time since i have visited the thread (sadly) but what a wonderful reminder of why i should...i have never come across this one how utterly lovelyQuote:
Originally Posted by Mossdog
Interesting this. Makes you want to look into this stuff more. Reminds me of Gil Scott Heron's H2Ogate Blues, and one of Kurt Vonneguts books 'Jailbird'Quote:
Originally Posted by Alf
So you want to be a writer?
if it doesn't come bursting out of you
in spite of everything,
don't do it.
unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don't do it.
if you have to sit for hours
staring at your computer screen
or hunched over your
typewriter
searching for words,
don't do it.
if you're doing it for money or
fame,
don't do it.
if you're doing it because you want
women in your bed,
don't do it.
if you have to sit there and
rewrite it again and again,
don't do it.
if it's hard work just thinking about doing it,
don't do it.
if you're trying to write like somebody
else,
forget about it.
if you have to wait for it to roar out of
you,
then wait patiently.
if it never does roar out of you,
do something else.
if you first have to read it to your wife
or your girlfriend or your boyfriend
or your parents or to anybody at all,
you're not ready.
don't be like so many writers,
don't be like so many thousands of
people who call themselves writers,
don't be dull and boring and
pretentious, don't be consumed with self-
love.
the libraries of the world have
yawned themselves to
sleep
over your kind.
don't add to that.
don't do it.
unless it comes out of
your soul like a rocket,
unless being still would
drive you to madness or
suicide or murder,
don't do it.
unless the sun inside you is
burning your gut,
don't do it.
when it is truly time,
and if you have been chosen,
it will do it by
itself and it will keep on doing it
until you die or it dies in you.
there is no other way.
and there never was.
Charles Bukowski
It has been a bit quiet on this thread recently. A reworking of John Masefield's 'Sea Fever' by Edna St. Vincent Millay?
Inland
People that build their houses inland,
People that buy a plot of ground
Shaped like a house, and build a house there,
Far from the sea-board, far from the sound
Of water sucking the hollow ledges,
Tons of water striking the shore,—
What do they long for, as I long for
One salt smell of the sea once more?
People the waves have not awakened,
Spanking the boats at the harbour's head,
What do they long for, as I long for,—
Starting up in my inland bed,
Beating the narrow walls, and finding
Neither a window nor a door,
Screaming to God for death by drowning,—
One salt taste of the sea once more?
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Apparently dead sheep in poems are a metaphor for guilt.
Dead sheep
There’s a dead sheep – swelling by the hedge
a woman standing by the cottage door,
a ghost
waiting for her man.
What should she do?
The sheep is dead with lamb wedged deep inside her.
Night creeps in
she lights the lamp
and paces.
The sheep is heavy
on her conscience now.
A female presence,
a legacy
of treachery from long ago.
Anne Foxglove
Then there's lots of guilt amidst the hills of the Eastern Lakes!Quote:
Originally Posted by Alf
On a more colourful note - aren't the buttercups simply magnificant this year?
Buttercups and Daisies
I never see a young hand hold
The starry bunch of white and gold,
But something warm and fresh will start
About the region of my heart; -
My smile expires into a sigh;
I feel a struggling in my eye,
'Twixt humid drop and sparkling ray,
Till rolling tears have won their way;
For, soul and brain will travel back,
Through memory's chequer'd mazes,
To days, when I but trod life's track
For buttercups and daisies.
There seems a bright and fairy spell
About there very names to dwell;
And though old Time has mark'd my brow
With care and thought, I love them now.
Smile, if you will, but some heartstrings
Are closest link'd to simplest things;
And these wild flowers will hold mine fast,
Till love, and life, and all be past;
And then the only wish I have
Is, that the one who raises
The turf sod o'er me, plant my grave
With buttercups and daisies.
Eliza Cook
I really enjoyedthis Alf especially as I will shortly be moving very close to the sea (fingers crossed!) ....i am hoping to visit more regularly now that things are finally settling down for me!Quote:
Originally Posted by Alf
"Boogie Street"
Leonard Cohen
O Crown of Light, O Darkened One,
I never thought we’d meet.
You kiss my lips, and then it’s done:
I’m back on Boogie Street.
A sip of wine, a cigarette,
And then it’s time to go.
I tidied up the kitchenette;
I tuned the old banjo.
I’m wanted at the traffic-jam.
They’re saving me a seat.
I’m what I am, and what I am,
Is back on Boogie Street.
And O my love, I still recall
The pleasures that we knew;
The rivers and the waterfall,
Wherein I bathed with you.
Bewildered by your beauty there,
I’d kneel to dry your feet.
By such instructions you prepare
A man for Boogie Street.
O Crown of Light, O Darkened One…
So come, my friends, be not afraid.
We are so lightly here.
It is in love that we are made;
In love we disappear.
Tho’ all the maps of blood and flesh
Are posted on the door,
There’s no one who has told us yet
What Boogie Street is for.
O Crown of Light, O Darkened One,
I never thought we’d meet.
You kiss my lips, and then it’s done:
I’m back on Boogie Street.
A sip of wine, a cigarette,
And then it’s time to go . . .
----------------------------
"I am your man" by Slyvie Simmons- new autobiography of Leonard Cohen...I have mixed feelings about his work sometimes finding it a tad cheesy sometimes enjoying its poetic quality, listening to slyvie simmons on radio 6 it sounds like he leads an interesting life wouldn't mind reading the book at some juncture
Quote:
Originally Posted by freckle
I have fond memories of 'Bugis Street' in Singapore in the mid seventies before they sanitized the place and spoiled it :thunbdown:
I won't include the poem/song about the place :rolleyes:
This one is from Durham lass Elizabeth Barratt Browning for all you dog lovers out there. 'Flush' was the name of her Cocker Spaniel but I am not sure how it got that name unless it was particularly fastidious with its personal hygiene :D
Flush or Faunus
You see this dog. It was but yesterday
I mused, forgetful of his presence here,
Till thought on thought drew downward tear on tear;
When from the pillow, where wet-cheeked I lay,
A head as hairy as Faunus, thrust its way
Right sudden against my face,--two golden-clear
Large eyes astonished mine,--a drooping ear
Did flap me on either cheek, to dry the spray!
I started first, as some Arcadian
Amazed by goatly god in twilight grove:
But as my bearded vision closelier ran
My tears off, I knew Flush, and rose above
Surprise and sadness; thanking the true Pan,
Who, by low creatures, leads to heights of love.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Ahhhhhhhhhh....I want one :( But will have to wait until life is a bit steadier alas.Quote:
Originally Posted by Alf
Quote:
Originally Posted by freckle
Hi stranger. Yes, Cohen has always conjured up lugubrious booze-ladened late nights for me, but perhaps that's my ignorance of his fuller oeuvre. Can see a spell of Youtube listening beckoning. I do like some of the above lines tho.
After Apple-Picking
By 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.
Poppies on the Wheat
Along Ancona's hills the shimmering heat,
A tropic tide of air with ebb and flow
Bathes all the fields of wheat until they glow
Like flashing seas of green, which toss and beat
Around the vines. The poppies lithe and fleet
Seem running, fiery torchmen, to and fro
To mark the shore.
The farmer does not know
That they are there. He walks with heavy feet,
Counting the bread and wine by autumn's gain,
But I,—I smile to think that days remain
Perhaps to me in which, though bread be sweet
No more, and red wine warm my blood in vain,
I shall be glad remembering how the fleet,
Lithe poppies ran like torchmen with the wheat.
Helen Hunt Jackson
The Lonely Farmer
Poor hill farmer astray in the grass;
There came a movement and he looked up, but
All that he saw was the wind pass.
There was a sound of voice on the air.
But where, where? It was only the glib stream talking
Softly to itself. And once when he was walking
Along a lane in spring he was deceived
By a shrill; whistle coming through the leaves;
Wait a minute, wait a minute-four swift notes;
He turned, and it was nothing, only a Thrush
In the thorn bushes easing its throat.
He swore at himself for paying heed,
The poor hill farmer, so often again
Stopping, staring, listening, in vain,
His ear betrayed by the heart's need.
R.S. Thomas
I was descending from Ingleborough towards Whernside the other evening and there was a group of swifts circling the rock face below.
soaring below me
as if holding their breaths
the swifts are silent
I'm used to the screaming, it was quite eerie.
I have heard that Stolly can get a bit excitable at times :rolleyes::DQuote:
Originally Posted by Hes
Birding at the Dairy
We're searching
for the single
yellow-headed
blackbird
we've heard
commingles
with thousands
of starlings
and brown-headed
cowbirds,
when the many-
headed body
arises
and undulates,
a sudden congress
of wings
in a maneuvering
wave that veers
and wheels, a fleet
and schooling swarm
in synchronous alarm,
a bloom radiating
in ribbons, in sheets,
in waterfall,
a murmuration
of birds
that turns
liquid in air,
that whooshes
like waves
on the shore,
or the breath
of a great
seething prayer.
Sidney Wade
:thumbup: that made me laugh out loud!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Alf
I really love this Alf. It's always good to come here and find something that I've not read before and there are some beautifully evocative lines in it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Alf
Yes, that's weird!Quote:
Originally Posted by Hes
I've 'got' 4 baby swallows in my stone shed - they're BRILLIANT and make me smile constantly with their puffed out chests, can-do attitude and tendency every evening to line up shoulder to shoulder on the rafters.
There's no stoic like an old stoic :D
The Old Stoic
Riches I hold in light esteem,
And Love I laugh to scorn;
And lust of fame was but a dream,
That vanished with the morn:
And if I pray, the only prayer
That moves my lips for me
Is, "Leave the heart that now I bear,
And give me liberty!"
Yes, as my swift days near their goal:
'Tis all that I implore;
In life and death a chainless soul,
With courage to endure.
Emily Brontë
LET IT BE HUSHED
by David Raikes (d.21.4.1945)
Let it be hushed; let the deep ocean close
Upon these dead. Others may laud their parts,
Raise monuments of marble in their names.
But we who flew with them and laughed with them,
We other crews who, living side by side,
In outward contacts slowly came to know
Their inmost parts, would rather leave untouched
The wound we healed, the love we buried there.
These men knew moments you have never known,
Nor ever will; we knew those moments too,
And talked of them in whispers late at night;
Such confidence was born of danger shared.
We shared their targets, too; but we came back.
Lightly we talked of it. We packed their kit,
Divided up such common useful things
As cigarettes and chocolate, rations stored
Against a rainy day that never came.
‘And they cast lots among them!’ Someone said,
‘It was a pity that he wore his watch;
It was a good one, twenty pounds he said
He paid for it in Egypt. Now, let’s see,
Who’s on tonight. Ah, Taffy – you’ve a good one!
You’d better leave it with me.’ And we laughed.
Cold were we? Cold at heart. You get that way.
Sometimes we knew what happened; how they crashed.
It was not always on the other side.
One pranged upon the runway, dipped a wing,
The navigator bought it, and the gunner.
The other two got out, a little shaken.
Bob crashed when doing an air test, just low flying
– At least they think it was, they couldn’t say.
The plane was burning fiercely when they found it;
One man thrown clear, still living, but he died
On way to hospital. The loss was ours, –
Because I shared an aeroplane with Bob.
We had to get another D for dog.
And some did not come back. We never knew
Whether they lived – at first just overdue,
Till minutes changed to hours, and still no news.
One went to bed; but roused by later crews,
Asked ‘Were they back yet?’ and being answered ‘No’,
Went back to sleep.
One’s waking eyes sought out the empty beds,
And ‘Damn’, you said, ‘another kit to pack’;
I never liked that part, you never knew
What privacies your sorting might lay bare.
I always tried to leave my kit arranged
In decent tidiness. You never knew.
But that is past. The healing river flows
And washes clean the wound with passing years.
We grieve not now. There was a time for tears,
When Death stood by us, and we dared not weep.
Let the seas close above them, and the dissolving deep.
A bit of WH Auden. Hope everyone has a good weekend (I sound like a radio DJ signing off).
Have a Good Time
‘We have brought you,’ they said, ‘a map of the country;
Here is the line that runs to the vats,
This patch of green on the left is the wood,
We’ve pencilled an arrow to point out the bay.
No thank you, no tea; why look at the clock.
Keep it? Of course. It goes with our love.
We shall watch your future and send our love.
We lived for years, you know, in the country.
Remember at week-ends to wind up the clock.
We’ve wired to our manager at the vats.
The tides are perfectly safe in the bay,
But whatever you do don’t go to the wood.
There’s a flying trickster in that wood,
And we shan’t be there to help with our love.
Keep fit by bathing in the bay,
You’ll never catch fever then in the country.
You’re sure of a settled job at the vats
If you keep their hours and live by the clock.’
He arrived at last; it was time by the clock.
He crossed himself as he passed the wood;
Black against evening sky the vats
Brought tears to his eyes as he thought of their love;
Looking out over the darkening country,
He saw the pier in the little bay.
At the week-ends the divers in the bay
Distracted his eyes from the bandstand clock;
When down with fever and in the country
A skein of swans above the wood
Caused him no terror; he came to love
The moss that grew on the derelict vats.
And he has met sketching at the vats
Guests from the new hotel by the bay;
Now, curious, following his love,
His pulses differing from the clock,
Finds consummation in the wood
And sees for the first time the country.
Sees water in the wood and trees by the bay,
Hears a clock striking near the vats:
‘This is your country and the hour of love.’
..and a nice bit of Auden too :thumbup:Quote:
Originally Posted by L.F.F.
Today is the anniversary of Hopkins's birth. So I am having a beer or two :D
It was a hard thing to undo this knot
It was a hard thing to undo this knot.
The rainbow shines but only in the thought
Of him that looks. Yet not in that alone,
For who makes rainbows by invention?
And many standing round a waterfall
See one bow each, yet not the same to all,
But each a hand's breadth further than the next.
The sun on falling waters writes the text
Which yet is in the eye or in the thought.
It was a hard thing to undo this knot.
Gerard Manley Hopkins
Its time I distanced myself from the bollock scratching thread :rolleyes:
The Lane
Some day, I think, there will be people enough
In Froxfield to pick all the blackberries
Out of the hedges of Green Lane, the straight
Broad lane where now September hides herself
In bracken and blackberry, harebell and dwarf gorse.
To-day, where yesterday a hundred sheep
Were nibbling, halcyon bells shake to the sway
Of waters that no vessel ever sailed ...
It is a kind of spring: the chaffinch tries
His song. For heat it is like summer too.
This might be winter's quiet. While the glint
Of hollies dark in the swollen hedges lasts—
One mile—and those bells ring, little I know
Or heed if time be still the same, until
The lane ends and once more all is the same.
Edward Thomas
Haiku about the futility of Haikus
I don't like Haikus
I think they are futile things
They are too restrict........
:thumbup:
Quote:
Originally Posted by TurboTom
Nice Hopkins and Thomas posts Alf! I haven't been on here for ages but am still reading poetry when I get a chance. Not writing much though, just the occasional haiku.
I like this one from Kathleen Jamie:
Halfling
Bird on the cliff-top
the angle of your back
a master-stroke:
why should kittiwakes
plunge at your head
with white shrills?
You're only just falling
from your parents' care,
They've dared slope off
together, to quarter
the island's only glen
leaving you sunlit, burnished,
glaring out to sea,
like one bewildered.
Some day soon you'll
topple to the winds
and be gone, a gangrel,
obliged to wander
island to mountain,
taking your chances -
till you moult at last
to an adult's mantle
and settle some scant
estate of your own. Already
the gulls shriek Eagle!
Eagle! - they know
more than you
what you'll become.