Today's poet

[#bob#]

Charlie Charlie, chuck, chuck, chuck
Went to bed with three white ducks
One died,
Charlie cried,
Poor little Charlie, chuck, chuck, chuck

[Mossdog]

Two anonymous fragments from The Manyoshu, a compilation made for the imperial court by the master poet Yakamochi.



WAITING
I wait and wait. He does not come.
The wild geese coldly cry.
The night grows late and yet more late

And, from a freezing sky,

The wind blows hard. It turns to ice

The snow upon my sleeves,

And ground-frost hardens to a crust

Of frozen grass and leaves.

On such a night he'll never come.

How could he come? Instead,

Hoping at least I'll dream he came,

I shiver back to bed.


WINTER WAITING

Is he here? Is he back? I asked them:

No one seemed to know.

I ran outside to look for him

As fast as I could go,

Into an empty courtyard

And the sibilance of snow.

What a find! Really apposite given the weather forecasted too. Thanks for posting.

[Mossdog]

Near

Far, we are near, meet in the rain

which falls here; gathered by light, air;
falls there where you are, I am; lips
to those drops now on yours, nearer …

absence the space we yearn in, clouds
drift, cluster, east to west, north, south;
your breath in them; they pour, baptise;
same sun burning through to harvest
rainfall on skin, there, far; my mouth
opening to spell your near name.

Carol Ann Duffy

[Einar]

Thanks for your comment Mossdog. For various reasons I'm a very infrequent visitor to these pages, but usually really enjoy all the contributions from all the regulars. Keep up the good work!

[Alf]

Feel like we need a bit of Plath, with all that bloody sadness and the atrocious outrage in Paris yesterday.


Poppies In July

Little poppies, little hell flames,
Do you do no harm?

You flicker. I cannot touch you.
I put my hands among the flames. Nothing burns

And it exhausts me to watch you
Flickering like that, wrinkly and clear red, like the skin of a mouth.

A mouth just bloodied.
Little bloody skirts!

There are fumes I cannot touch.
Where are your opiates, your nauseous capsules?

If I could bleed, or sleep! -
If my mouth could marry a hurt like that!

Or your liquors seep to me, in this glass capsule,
Dulling and stilling.

But colorless. Colorless.

You can almost hear her shouting out that line "Little bloody skirts"

[Alf]

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Wendell Berry

[Alf]

This ones from a local lad Edwin Waugh. Its pretty wild up there at the moment.

Oh the Wild, Wild Moors


I.
My heart's away in the lonely hills,
Where I would gladly be—
On the rolling ridge of Blackstone Edge,
Where the wild wind whistles free!
There oft in careless youth I roved,
When summer days were fine;
And the meanest flower of the heathery waste
Delights this heart of mine!
Oh, the lonely moors, the breezy moors,
And the stormy hills so free;
Oh, the wild, wild moors; the wild, wild moors,
The sweet wild moors for me.
II.
I fain would stroll on lofty Knowl,
And Rooley Moor again;
Or wildly stray one long bright day
In Turvin's bonny glen!
The thought of Wardle's breezy height
Fills all my heart with glee,
And the distant view of the hills so blue
Bring tears into my e'e!
Oh, the lonely moors, the breezy moors,
And the stormy hills so free;
Oh, the wild, wild moors; the wild, wild moors,
The sweet wild moors for me.

III.
Oh, blessed sleep, that brings in dreams
My native hills to me;
The heathery wilds, the rushing streams,
Where once I wandered free!
'Tis a glimpse of life's sweet morning light,
A bright angelic ray,
That steals into the dusky night,
And fades with waking day!
Oh, the lonely moors, the breezy moors,
And the stormy hills so free;
Oh, the wild, wild moors; the wild, wild moors,
The sweet wild moors for me.

Edwin Waugh

[Mossdog]

This ones from a local lad Edwin Waugh. Its pretty wild up there at the moment.

Oh the Wild, Wild Moors


I.
My heart's away in the lonely hills,
Where I would gladly be—
On the rolling ridge of Blackstone Edge,
Where the wild wind whistles free!
There oft in careless youth I roved,
When summer days were fine;
And the meanest flower of the heathery waste
Delights this heart of mine!
Oh, the lonely moors, the breezy moors,
And the stormy hills so free;
Oh, the wild, wild moors; the wild, wild moors,
The sweet wild moors for me.
II.
I fain would stroll on lofty Knowl,
And Rooley Moor again;
Or wildly stray one long bright day
In Turvin's bonny glen!
The thought of Wardle's breezy height
Fills all my heart with glee,
And the distant view of the hills so blue
Bring tears into my e'e!
Oh, the lonely moors, the breezy moors,
And the stormy hills so free;
Oh, the wild, wild moors; the wild, wild moors,
The sweet wild moors for me.

III.
Oh, blessed sleep, that brings in dreams
My native hills to me;
The heathery wilds, the rushing streams,
Where once I wandered free!
'Tis a glimpse of life's sweet morning light,
A bright angelic ray,
That steals into the dusky night,
And fades with waking day!
Oh, the lonely moors, the breezy moors,
And the stormy hills so free;
Oh, the wild, wild moors; the wild, wild moors,
The sweet wild moors for me.

Edwin Waugh

Both of these poems resonant very strongly with my own sentiments Alf. Really a delight to read them.

[Mossdog]

THE HUSH OF THE VERY GOOD

By Todd Boss


You can tell by how he lists
to let her
kiss him, that the getting, as he gets it,
is good.
It’s good in the sweetly salty,
deeply thirsty way that a sea-fogged
rain is good after a summer-long bout
of inland drought.
And you know it
when you see it, don’t you? How it
drenches what’s dry, how the having
of it quenches.
There is a grassy inlet
where your ocean meets your land, a slip
that needs a certain kind of vessel,
and
when that shapely skiff skims in at last,
trimmed bright, mast lightly flagging
left and right,
then the long, lush reeds
of your longing part, and soft against
the hull of that bent wood almost im-
perceptibly brushes a luscious hush
the heart heeds helplessly—
the hush
of the very good.

[Mossdog]

Lessons in the Orchard - Carol Ann Duffy


An apple’s soft thump on the grass, somewhen
in this place. What was it? Beauty of Bath.
What was it? Yellow, vermillion, round, big, splendid;
already escaping the edge of itself,
like the mantra of bees,
like the notes of rosemary, tarragon, thyme.
Poppies scumble their colour onto the air,
now and there, here, then and again.



Alive-alive-oh,
the heart’s impulse to cherish; thus,
a woman petalling paint onto a plate –
cornflower blue –
as the years pressed out her own violet ghost;
that slow brush of vanishing cloud on the sky.



And the dragonfly’s talent for turquoise.
And the goldfish art of the pond.
And the open windows calling the garden in.



This bowl, life, that we fill and fill.