Printable View
Baby swallows are ace aren't they? You're very lucky to have them in your shed. I get them lined up on the telephone wires outside my spare bedroom window and have spent many happy times looking out on them as they get fed by their parents.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mossdog
Thanks for posting Hes, I like Kathleen Jamie's work :thumbup:Quote:
Originally Posted by Hes
The Land of Nod
From Breakfast on through all the day
At home among my friends I stay,
But every night I go abroad
Afar into the land of Nod.
All by myself I have to go,
With none to tell me what to do--
All alone beside the streams
And up the mountain-sides of dreams.
The strangest things are there for me,
Both things to eat and things to see,
And many frightening sights abroad
Till morning in the land of Nod.
Try as I like to find the way,
I never can get back by day,
Nor can remember plain and clear
The curious music that I hear.
Robert Louis Stevenson
Sad news about the death of Seamus Heaney, a very fine poet and author. I have a collection of his poems and his translation of Beowulf.
Probably my favourite poem of his written after the death of his mother.
When all the others were away at Mass
When all the others were away at Mass
I was all hers as we peeled potatoes.
They broke the silence, let fall one by one
Like solder weeping off the soldering iron:
Cold comforts set between us, things to share
Gleaming in a bucket of clean water.
And again let fall. Little pleasant splashes
From each other’s work would bring us to our senses.
So while the parish priest at her bedside
Went hammer and tongs at the prayers for the dying
And some were responding and some crying
I remembered her head bent towards my head,
Her breath in mine, our fluent dipping knives–
Never closer the whole rest of our lives.
Seamus Heaney
Miracle
Not the one who takes up his bed and walks
But the ones who have known him all along
And carry him in -
Their shoulders numb, the ache and stoop deeplocked
In their backs, the stretcher handles
Slippery with sweat. And no let-up
Until he's strapped on tight, made tiltable
And raised to the tiled roof, then lowered for healing.
Be mindful of them as they stand and wait
For the burn of the paid-out ropes to cool,
Their slight lightheadedness and incredulity
To pass, those who had known him all along.
Seamus Heaney
You just beat me to it, Alf.
I recall attending a packed reading by him at Cambridge in about 1977.
Few great poets are also nice people. He seemed to be one of the few.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIzJgbNANzk
This one of his is lush. Blackberry picking as a lesson in life :cool:
Blackberry-Picking
Late August, given heavy rain and sun
For a full week, the blackberries would ripen.
At first, just one, a glossy purple clot
Among others, red, green, hard as a knot.
You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet
Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it
Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for
Picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger
Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam-pots
Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots.
Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drills
We trekked and picked until the cans were full
Until the tinkling bottom had been covered
With green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned
Like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered
With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard's.
We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre.
But when the bath was filled we found a fur,
A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache.
The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush
The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour.
I always felt like crying. It wasn't fair
That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot.
Each year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would not.
Seamus Heaney
River by Carol Ann Duffy
Down by the river, under the trees, love waits for me
to walk from the journeying years of my time and arrive.
I part the leaves and they toss me a blessing of rain.
The river stirs and turns consoling and fondling itself
with watery hands, its clear limbs parting and closing.
Grey as a secret, the heron bows its head on the bank.
I drop my past on the grass and open my arms, which ache
as though they held up this heavy sky, or had pressed
against window glass all night as my eyes sieved the stars;
open my mouth, wordless at last meeting love at last, dry
from travelling so long, shy of a prayer. You step from the shade,
and I feel love come to my arms and cover my mouth, feel
my soul swoop and ease itself into my skin, like a bird
threading a river. Then I can look love full in the face, see
who you are I have come this far to find, the love of my life.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mossdog
Nice choice Mossy. I am going to see Carol Ann Duffy reading her poems at the end of the month at our local 'Literary Festival'. I also have a ticket for Simon Armitage's reading the night before as well which I am looking forward to.
Storm Ending
Thunder blossoms gorgeously above our heads,
Great, hollow, bell-like flowers,
Rumbling in the wind,
Stretching clappers to strike our ears . . .
Full-lipped flowers
Bitten by the sun
Bleeding rain
Dripping rain like golden honey—
And the sweet earth flying from the thunder.
Jean Toomer
Quote:
Originally Posted by Alf
Ah yes. Wish I was going to see her too. She seems to be 'doing the rounds' and is reading in B'ham this Thursday evening, so I'm told. Anyway, enjoy Alf.
Complete class act. SuperbQuote:
Originally Posted by nippersmith
JCC was on at Ilkley Literary Ferstival last year and was ace! Bongo's Trousers might have been the highlightQuote:
Originally Posted by Mark Smith
I bet that was brilliant. I saw him in Nottingham when I was 18 and will never forget it. It's interesting to see the Arctic Monkeys adapting I Wanna Be Yours. Not bad actually. I wanted to hate it!Quote:
Originally Posted by Derby Tup
For all the cows out there. They have been getting a bad press recently :D
Fetching cows
The black one, last as usual, swings her head
And coils a black tongue round a grass-tuft. I
Watch her soft weight come down, her split feet spread.
In front, the others swing and slouch; they roll
Their great Greek eyes and breathe out milky gusts
From muzzles black and shiny as wet coal.
The collie trots, bored, at my heels, then plops
Into the ditch. The sea makes a tired sound
That's almost stopping though it never stops.
A haycart squats prickeared against the sky.
Hay breath and milk breath. Far out in the West
The wrecked sun founders though its colours fly.
The collie's bored. There's nothing to control...
The black cow is two native carriers
Bringing its belly home, slung from a pole.
Norman MacCaig
For all the symbolic cows out there as well :D
The Lost Heifer
When the black herds of the rain were grazing,
In the gap of the pure cold wind
And the watery hazes of the hazel
Brought her into my mind,
I thought of the last honey by the water
That no hive can find.
Brightness was drenching through the branches
When she wandered again,
Turning sliver out of dark grasses
Where the skylark had lain,
And her voice coming softly over the meadow
Was the mist becoming rain.
Austin Clarke
Hey diddle diddle the cat had a fiddle.
R. Shlong, 2013.
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. Just right for this evenings run over Hardberry Trig and the views west towards Crossfell.Quote:
Originally Posted by Alf
Safe Sounds
You like safe sounds:
the dogs lapping at their bowls;
the pop of a cork on a bottle of plonk
as your mother cooks;
the Match of the Day theme tune
and Doctor Who-oo-oo.
Safe sounds:
your name called, two happy syllables
from the bottom to the top of the house;
your daft ring tone; the low gargle
of hot water in bubbles. Half asleep
in the drifting boat of your bed,
you like to hear the big trees
sound like the sea instead.
Carol Ann Duffy
Nice choices Mossdog and Alf.
Moon Compasses
I stole forth dimly in the dripping pause
Between two downpours to see what there was.
And a masked moon had spread down compass rays
To a cone mountain in the midnight haze,
As if the final estimate were hers;
And as it measured in her calipers,
The mountain stood exalted in its place
So love will take between the hands a face...
Robert Frost
Been a while.... but a recent glut of races and some very close inter-club rivalries inspired my first poem for months. Hope it rings true for folks, esp those who have people in their club and local racing scene who they regularly do battle with!
Race Day
Colour coded clubmates huddle
stretching limbs in preparation
and truths in compensation
in case things do not go well
in today’s athletic quest
number on vest
target in head
beat Bill today, put last week to bed
get under forty minutes dead
and ‘don’t go out too fast’
you tell the lads and lasses that you don’t want coming past
but there’s no falling for the ruse
the red mist sees to that
when the mayor shouts Go!
and off you pelt knowing that this can’t go on
but hoping Bill blinks first
and you hang on to the last
recovering to shake his hand
in the dire straits of the tired funnel
and pass him the half-full polystyrene cup
that marks our private trophy
that’s mine for at least a week
when we do it all again
in some other near flung car park
or some far flung mountainside
That's really excellent OOP - thank you for sharing. It captures the spirit of your fell running quest so well. And yet, how strange, to me the experience of fell running is so very different (no better, no worse, just different)and shows the vast wealth of experience this sport/life style is able to offer.
This is a bit lengthy, but it captures the full spirit for me of so much that takes me to the fells again and again.
Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, On Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour. July 13, 1798
Five years have past; five summers, with the length
Of five long winters! and again I hear
These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs
With a soft inland murmur.—Once again
Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,
That on a wild secluded scene impress
Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect
The landscape with the quiet of the sky.
The day is come when I again repose
Here, under this dark sycamore, and view
These plots of cottage-ground, these orchard-tufts,
Which at this season, with their unripe fruits,
Are clad in one green hue, and lose themselves
'Mid groves and copses. Once again I see
These hedge-rows, hardly hedge-rows, little lines
Of sportive wood run wild: these pastoral farms,
Green to the very door; and wreaths of smoke
Sent up, in silence, from among the trees!
With some uncertain notice, as might seem
Of vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods,
Or of some Hermit's cave, where by his fire
The Hermit sits alone.
These beauteous forms,
Through a long absence, have not been to me
As is a landscape to a blind man's eye:
But oft, in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them,
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart;
And passing even into my purer mind
With tranquil restoration:—feelings too
Of unremembered pleasure: such, perhaps,
As have no slight or trivial influence
On that best portion of a good man's life,
His little, nameless, unremembered, acts
Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust,
To them I may have owed another gift,
Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood,
In which the burthen of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world,
Is lightened:—that serene and blessed mood,
In which the affections gently lead us on,—
Until, the breath of this corporeal frame
And even the motion of our human blood
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul:
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things.
If this
Be but a vain belief, yet, oh! how oft—
In darkness and amid the many shapes
Of joyless daylight; when the fretful stir
Unprofitable, and the fever of the world,
Have hung upon the beatings of my heart—
How oft, in spirit, have I turned to thee,
O sylvan Wye! thou wanderer thro' the woods,
How often has my spirit turned to thee!
And now, with gleams of half-extinguished thought,
With many recognitions dim and faint,
And somewhat of a sad perplexity,
The picture of the mind revives again:
While here I stand, not only with the sense
Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts
That in this moment there is life and food
For future years. And so I dare to hope,
Though changed, no doubt, from what I was when first
I came among these hills; when like a roe
I bounded o'er the mountains, by the sides
Of the deep rivers, and the lonely streams,
Wherever nature led: more like a man
Flying from something that he dreads, than one
Who sought the thing he loved. For nature then
(The coarser pleasures of my boyish days
And their glad animal movements all gone by)
To me was all in all.—I cannot paint
What then I was. The sounding cataract
Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock,
The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,
Their colours and their forms, were then to me
An appetite; a feeling and a love,
That had no need of a remoter charm,
By thought supplied, not any interest
Unborrowed from the eye.—That time is past,
And all its aching joys are now no more,
And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this
Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur; other gifts
Have followed; for such loss, I would believe,
Abundant recompense. For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
The still sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue.—And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods
And mountains; and of all that we behold
From this green earth; of all the mighty world
Of eye, and ear,—both what they half create,
And what perceive; well pleased to recognise
In nature and the language of the sense
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
Of all my moral being.
Nor perchance,
If I were not thus taught, should I the more
Suffer my genial spirits to decay:
For thou art with me here upon the banks
Of this fair river; thou my dearest Friend,
My dear, dear Friend; and in thy voice I catch
The language of my former heart, and read
My former pleasures in the shooting lights
Of thy wild eyes. Oh! yet a little while
May I behold in thee what I was once,
My dear, dear Sister! and this prayer I make,
Knowing that Nature never did betray
The heart that loved her; 'tis her privilege,
Through all the years of this our life, to lead
From joy to joy: for she can so inform
The mind that is within us, so impress
With quietness and beauty, and so feed
With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,
Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men,
Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all
The dreary intercourse of daily life,
Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb
Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold
Is full of blessings. Therefore let the moon
Shine on thee in thy solitary walk;
And let the misty mountain-winds be free
To blow against thee: and, in after years,
When these wild ecstasies shall be matured
Into a sober pleasure; when thy mind
Shall be a mansion for all lovely forms,
Thy memory be as a dwelling-place
For all sweet sounds and harmonies; oh! then,
If solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief,
Should be thy portion, with what healing thoughts
Of tender joy wilt thou remember me,
And these my exhortations! Nor, perchance—
If I should be where I no more can hear
Thy voice, nor catch from thy wild eyes these gleams
Of past existence—wilt thou then forget
That on the banks of this delightful stream
We stood together; and that I, so long
A worshipper of Nature, hither came
Unwearied in that service: rather say
With warmer love—oh! with far deeper zeal
Of holier love. Nor wilt thou then forget,
That after many wanderings, many years
Of absence, these steep woods and lofty cliffs,
And this green pastoral landscape, were to me
More dear, both for themselves and for thy sake!
BY WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
I had a great weekend at our first local literary festival. It was a big success so I hope it will return next year. Simon Armitage and Carol Ann Duffy were excellent. Simon Armitage showed a lot his work he has written for TV over the years while Carol Ann Duffy did a more traditional reading which she managed well despite a sore throat. Both readings were sold out.
This is a protest poem she wrote when Royal Mail announced they didn't want Counties putting on addresses anymore. Just to rub it in the last line is borrowed from Adlestrop by Edward Thomas.
The Counties
But I want to write to an Essex girl,
greeting her warmly.
But I want to write to a Shropshire lad,
brave boy, home from the army,
and I want to write to the Lincolnshire Poacher
to hear of his hare
and to an aunt in Bedfordshire
who makes a wooden hill of her stair.
But I want to post a rose to a Lancashire lass,
red, I'll pick it,
and I want to write to a Middlesex mate
for tickets for cricket.
But I want to write to the Ayrshire cheesemaker
and his good cow
and it is my duty to write to the Queen at Berkshire
in praise of Slough.
But I want to write to the National Poet of Wales at Ceredigion
in celebration
and I want to write to the Dorset Giant
in admiration
and I want to write to a widow in Rutland
in commiseration
and to the Inland Revenue in Yorkshire
in desperation.
But I want to write to my uncle in Clackmannanshire
in his kilt
and to my scrumptious cousin in Somerset
with her cidery lilt.
But I want to write to two ladies in Denbighshire,
near Llangollen
and I want to write to a laddie in Lanarkshire,
Dear Lachlan …
But I want to write to the Cheshire Cat,
returning its smile.
But I want to write the names of the Counties down
for my own child
and may they never be lost to her …
all the birds of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire...
Carol Ann Duffy
I really enjoyed this O-O-P! Mastering the start-line bullshit is one of the most important tasks for any aspiring fell runner.
Quote:
Originally Posted by OneOffPoet
Glad you liked it :) I think fell racing is the high octane end of the spectrum which inspired this poem. When I'm out on my own in the fells it's a very different beast, much like what I think you're alluding to, ie an energetic form of meditation. I'd be lost without that too. In fact, I feel a part two coming on....Quote:
Originally Posted by Mossdog
OW, I do love a bit of start line BS ;) Most of it is kidding oneself more than one's competitors! I like to think its a bit of an art form :)
The Truth of the Matter
I’m not here for a bit of fun
This is not a training run
Not a single thing wrong
My ankles are strong
Fully fit
Ready for it
Start quickly
Run til I’m sickly
And on no account will I just enjoy this one.
How good to see some new and original fell poetry on here. Well done Oneoff and OW! You've got me thinking about my own experience of the startline. It is so different to my solo meditative runs or weekend runs with Stolly. At Edale Skyline I stood there thinking 'why I am I doing this? I feel sick with nerves!' but I loved the race. The challenge and pitting myself against myself. It'd be great to sum it up poetically. Not sure if I could though.
or as you said at this years Blaydon..."I think I might win this one" !Quote:
Originally Posted by Old Whippet
this is quite something Mossdog, I like the safe sounds too...
Safe Sounds
You like safe sounds:
the dogs lapping at their bowls;
the pop of a cork on a bottle of plonk
as your mother cooks;
the Match of the Day theme tune
and Doctor Who-oo-oo.
Safe sounds:
your name called, two happy syllables
from the bottom to the top of the house;
your daft ring tone; the low gargle
of hot water in bubbles. Half asleep
in the drifting boat of your bed,
you like to hear the big trees
sound like the sea instead.
Carol Ann Duffy[/QUOTE]
Tree
A priest from another land
Fulminated
Against heather, stones and wild water.
Excommunicated the clouds
Damned the wind
Cast the bog pools into outer darkness
Smote the horizons
With the jawbone of emptiness
Till he ran out of breath —
In that teetering moment
Of lungs empty
When only his eye-water protected him
He felt
Heaven and earth moving.
And words left him.
Mind left him. God left him.
Transfigured, bowed —
The lightening conductor
Of a maiming glimpse — the new prophet
Grasped a cry
Ted Hughes
"I'll just enjoy this one....". Brilliant. Right up there with, "I'll just get round". Great stuffQuote:
Originally Posted by Old Whippet
The Sluttiest Sheep in England
that never
Get their back ends docked. Who
Doctors their wormy coughs? Maggots
Bring them down in quarry dead ends
And the fluke reigns.
They get by
On the hill subsidy. Splash-black faces
Of psychotic mashams, possessed
By their demonic agates. They clatter
Over worthless moraines, tossing
Their ancient Briton draggle-tassel sheepskins
Or pose, in the rain-smoke, like warriors -
Eyes of the first water
Stare from perfunctory near-bald
Skulls of iguana
Like eyes trapped in helmets -
This lightning-broken huddle of summits
This god-of-what-nobody-wants
In his magnetic heaven
Has sent his angels to stare at you
In the likeness of beggars.
Ted Hughes
Mad Girl's Love Song
Slyvia Plath
"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.)"
That made a nice counterpoint to the Hughes poem freckle :DQuote:
Originally Posted by freckle
I was reading 'Remains of Elmet' again the other night. The first time I read the book I had hardly ever visited the Calder Valley but since then I know most of the area intimately from running in and around it.
Me and Heptonstall have a lot in common :rolleyes:
Heptonstall
- old man
Of the hills, propped out for air
On his wet bench -
Lets his memories leak.
He no longer calls the time of day
Across to Stoodley, soured on that opposite ridge.
And Stoodley has turned his back
On the Museum silence
He ignores Blackstone Edge -
A huddle of wet stones and damp smokes
Decrepit under sunsets.
He no longer asks
Whether Pecket under the East Wind
Is still living.
He raises no hand
Towards Hathershelf. He knows
The day has passed
For reunion with ancestors.
He knows
Midgley will never return.
The mantel clock ticks in the lonely parlour
On the heights road, where the face
Blue with arthritic stasis
And heart good for nothing now
Lies deep in the chair-back, angled
From the window-skylines,
Letting time moan its amnesia
Through the telegraph wires
As the fragments
Of the broken circle of the hills
Drift apart.
Ted Hughes
Sylvia's turn again.....
The Rabbit Catcher
It was a place of force—
The wind gagging my mouth with my own blown hair,
Tearing off my voice, and the sea
Blinding me with its lights, the lives of the dead
Unreeling in it, spreading like oil.
I tasted the malignity of the gorse,
Its black spikes,
The extreme unction of its yellow candle-flowers.
They had an efficiency, a great beauty,
And were extravagant, like torture.
There was only one place to get to.
Simmering, perfumed,
The paths narrowed into the hollow.
And the snares almost effaced themselves—
Zeros, shutting on nothing,
Set close, like birth pangs.
The absence of shrieks
Made a hole in the hot day, a vacancy.
The glassy light was a clear wall,
The thickets quiet.
I felt a still busyness, an intent.
I felt hands round a tea mug, dull, blunt,
Ringing the white china.
How they awaited him, those little deaths!
They waited like sweethearts. They excited him.
And we, too, had a relationship—
Tight wires between us,
Pegs too deep to uproot, and a mind like a ring
Sliding shut on some quick thing,
The constriction killing me also.
Sylvia Plath
Survivors
No doubt they'll soon get well; the shock and strain
Have caused their stammering, disconnected talk.
Of course they're "longing to go out again,"--
These boys with old, scared faces, learning to walk,
They'll soon forget their haunted nights; their cowed
Subjection to the ghosts of friends who died,--
Their dreams that drip with murder; and they'll be proud
Of glorious war that shatter'd all their pride ...
Men who went out to battle, grim and glad;
Children, with eyes that hate you, broken and mad.
Siegfried Sassoon
CRAIGLOCKART,
Oct. 1917.
Goodbye (1942)
So we must say Goodbye, my darling,
And go, as lovers go, for ever;
Tonight remains, to pack and fix on labels
And make an end of lying down together.
I put a final shilling in the gas,
And watch you slip your dress below your knees
And lie so still I hear your rustling comb
Modulate the autumn in the trees.
And all the countless things I shall remember
Lay mummy-cloths of silence round my head;
I fill the carafe with a drink of water;
You say ‘We paid a guinea for this bed,’
And then, ‘We’ll leave some gas, a little warmth
For the next resident, and these dry flowers,’
And turn your face away, afraid to speak
The big word, that Eternity is ours.
Your kisses close my eyes and yet you stare
As though god struck a child with nameless fears;
Perhaps the water glitters and discloses
Time’s chalice and its limpid useless tears.
Everything we renounce except our selves;
Selfishness is the last of all to go;
Our sighs are exhalations of the earth,
Our footprints leave a track across the snow.
We made the universe to be our home,
Our nostrils took the wind to be our breath,
Our hearts are massive towers of delight,
We stride across the seven seas of death.
Yet when all’s done you’ll keep the emerald
I placed upon your finger in the street;
And I will keep the patches that you sewed
On my old battledress tonight, my sweet.
Alun Lewis