Today's poet

[Harry H Howgill]

Business bought the athletes out
With gold medals and role models
Drugs and media and national pride
Why join in when you can watch it on TV?
So out of the stadiums!
Into the hills!
Out of the armchairs!
Onto the fells!
Staggering through mud and peat
Gasping breaths and sucked-in cheeks
Bogs like lead to clutch your feet
Through the rivers, over peaks
So out of the stadiums!
Into the hills!
Out of the armchairs!
Onto the fells!
Studmarks next to summit heather
Everything suddenly comes together
No audience viewing-figures
Just you against yourself
So out of the stadiums!
Into the hills!
Out of the armchairs!
Onto the fells!

[Al Fowler]

Brilliant!

[Harry H Howgill]

Compass, whistle, cagoul, map
Count your steps along the track
To checkpoint one
Checkpoint two
Checkpoint three and back
Compass bearing sou-sou-west
Choose the route you think is best
Judging distance, pace and line
Head and feet to cut the time
To checkpoint one
Checkpoint two
Checkpoint three and back
Checkpoint one
Checkpoint two
Checkpoint three and back

[Harry H Howgill]

There's pedal bikes and motor bikes
And now they're riding mountain bikes
Up and down and out of town
Over, under, through, around
I ride my little bicycle, I ride it to the top
No red lights or traffic signs to tell me when to stop
There's racing bikes and motor bikes
And now they're riding mountain bikes
Up and down and out of town
Over, under, through, around

[Old Whippet]

Harry H H - you're on a roll.
I have a fantasy. I collapse exhausted at the edge of Sprinkling Tarn and the following unfolds:
La Belle Dame Sans Merci, 1819

Oh what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.

Oh what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
So haggard and so woe-begone?
The squirrel's granary is full,
And the harvest's done.

I see a lily on thy brow,
With anguish moist and fever-dew,
And on thy cheeks a fading rose
Fast withereth too.

I met a lady in the meads,
Full beautiful - a faery's child,
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.

I made a garland for her head,
And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;
She looked at me as she did love,
And made sweet moan.

I set her on my pacing steed,
And nothing else saw all day long,
For sidelong would she bend, and sing
A faery's song.

She found me roots of relish sweet,
And honey wild, and manna-dew,
And sure in language strange she said -
'I love thee true'.

She took me to her elfin grot,
And there she wept and sighed full sore,
And there I shut her wild wild eyes
With kisses four.

And there she lulled me asleep
And there I dreamed - Ah! woe betide! -
The latest dream I ever dreamt
On the cold hill side.

I saw pale kings and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
They cried - 'La Belle Dame sans Merci
Hath thee in thrall!'

I saw their starved lips in the gloam,
With horrid warning gaped wide,
And I awoke and found me here,
On the cold hill's side.

And this is why I sojourn here
Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.

[freckle]

great poetry tonights guys...that last one took my breath away, amazing old whippett !....it was so ethereal.....and HH you certainly are on a roll!....brilliant!...can't wait for tomorrow's thread...

Here is my last offering of the day a poem by DH Lawrence entitled "Dog Tired"

If she would come to me here
Now the sunken swaths
Are glittering paths
To the sun, and the swallows cut clear
Into the setting sun! if she came to me here!

If she would come to me now,
Before the last-mown harebells are dead;
While that vetch-clump still burns red!
Before all the bats have dropped from the bough
To cool in the night; if she came to me now!

The horses are untackled, the chattering machine
Is still at last. If she would come
We could gather up the dry hay from
The hill-brow, and lie quite still, till the green
Sky ceased to quiver, and lost its active sheen.

I should like to drop
On the hay, with my head on her knee,
And lie dead still, while she
Breathed quiet above me; and the crop
Of stars grew silently.

I should like to lie still
As if I was dead; but feeling
Her hand go stealing
Over my face and my head, until
This ache was shed.

[Stevie]

ps just reading "the tender place", by ted hughes, (birthday letters)....interesting to see his interpretation of events....

http://poemaseningles.blogspot.com/2...der-place.html

ppps have you read the bell jar? i have read most of it but can't quite get to the end...

The Tender Place was well found Freckle! I haven't read it before - it counterbalances Tulips really well.

I have got a copy of the Bell Jar but not read it yet.

[Stevie]

Here is one by Seamus Heaney. I have a book of his at work, it sometimes works wonders to read it at lunchtimes, the earthiness and slowness of Heaney is a welcome release from my working day of meetings, reports, plans and deadlines etc.

Personal Helicon
for Michael Longley

As a child, they could not keep me from wells
And old pumps with buckets and windlasses.
I loved the dark drop, the trapped sky, the smells
Of waterweed, fungus and dank moss.

One, in a brickyard, with a rotted board top.
I savoured the rich crash when a bucket
Plummeted down at the end of a rope.
So deep you saw no reflection in it.

A shallow one under a dry stone ditch
Fructified like any aquarium.
When you dragged out long roots from the soft mulch
A white face hovered over the bottom.

Others had echoes, gave back your own call
With a clean new music in it. And one
Was scaresome, for there, out of ferns and tall
Foxgloves, a rat slapped across my reflection.

Now, to pry into roots, to finger slime,
To stare, big-eyed Narcissus, into some spring
Is beneath all adult dignity. I rhyme
To see myself, to set the darkness echoing.

Seamus Heaney

When I first read this particular one my brain was pretty fried and I had to read it twice before it made any sense (simple as it seems now), and then the Heaney magic started working on me.

[Hanneke]

Exactly Freckle! We had to read and analyse La Bell dame sans Merci at school, so I remember it well...

Particularly lioed the last phrase of the Heany poem:

I rhyme
To see myself, to set the darkness echoing.

Doing some work at the moment, but be sure a poem will flit through my mind at some stage today!

Am loving this thread, thank you Freckle

[Mountain Goatess]

There is poetry in these hills
On a Summer morn
It sings through weedy fields
And whispers in the corn

There is poetry in these hills
Especially in the fall
Through the voice of whipoorwills
I hear its beauty call

There is poetry in these hills
On long winter eves
When the wind whispers 'let me in'
And howls around the eaves

And the warm fire hisses
'You will not get in
With your cold wet kisses
Thou icy winter wind'

There is poetry in these hills
Not written down in rhyme
But in rabbit tracks on snowy fields
And the barks of white spruce pine.