Yes well I am rather looking forward to having "fresher" legs than my other team mates......that means they will only be ten paces ahead as opposed to 25!!!!!
can't wait to catch up! :-)
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Just read this....
rhyming arse with grace (as in coup de grace) ....reminds me of the friendly banter between my northern daughters, who correctly pronounce bAth and their southern cousins who foolishly say bARth.
As you see, no post dies on its arse on the poetry thread. Welcome aboard!
This is one of my favourite John Clare poems. (though not a very summery sonnet ;))
Emmonsail's Heath in Winter
I love to see the old heath's withered brake
Mingle its crimpled leaves with furze and ling,
While the old heron from the lonely lake
Starts slow and flaps its melancholy wing,
An oddling crow in idle motion swing
On the half-rotten ash-tree's topmost twig,
Beside whose trunk the gypsy makes his bed.
Up flies the bouncing woodcock from the brig
Where a black quagmire quakes beneath the tread;
The fieldfares chatter in the whistling thorn
And for the haw round fields and closen rove,
And coy bumbarrels, twenty in a drove,
Flit down the hedgerows in the frozen plain
And hang on little twigs and start again.
John Clare
I can't remember if any Tony Harrison stuff has been posted but here is a goodun from him about his father.
Marked with D.
When the chilled dough of his flesh went in an oven
not unlike those he fuelled all his life,
I thought of his cataracts ablaze with Heaven
and radiant with the sight of his dead wife,
light streaming from his mouth to shape her name,
'not Florence and not Flo but always Florrie.'
I thought how his cold tongue burst into flame
but only literally, which makes me sorry,
sorry for his sake there's no Heaven to reach.
I get it all from Earth my daily bread
but he hungered for release from mortal speech
that kept him down, the tongue that weighed like lead.
The baker's man that no one will see rise
and England made to feel like some dull oaf
is smoke, enough to sting one person's eyes
and ash (not unlike flour) for one small loaf.
Tony Harrison
I will give everyone else a clue Harry (not that i knew what one was the first time I read it ) :D
http://i592.photobucket.com/albums/t.../bumbarrel.jpg