Today's poet

[stevefoster]

24 cans of Strongbow, £10 in Tesco, poetry to my ears and wallet

[Mossdog]

Look! This is supposed to be a poetry thread.

I'm detecting a distinct lack of moroseness. Too ruddy cheerful by half. So let me throw in our Sylvia again - there's always a sting factor somewhere in her verse - even the ones that you think are going to be happy.

So try this:

Love Letter

Not easy to state the change you made.
If I'm alive now, then I was dead,
Though, like a stone, unbothered by it,
Staying put according to habit.
You didn't just toe me an inch, no--
Nor leave me to set my small bald eye
Skyward again, without hope, of course,
Of apprehending blueness, or stars.
That wasn't it. I slept, say: a snake
Masked among black rocks as a black rock
In the white hiatus of winter--
Like my neighbors, taking no pleasure
In the million perfectly-chiseled
Cheeks alighting each moment to melt
My cheek of basalt. They turned to tears,
Angels weeping over dull natures,
But didn't convince me. Those tears froze.
Each dead head had a visor of ice.

And I slept on like a bent finger.
The first thing I saw was sheer air
And the locked drops rising in a dew
Limpid as spirits. Many stones lay
Dense and expressionless round about.
I didn't know what to make of it.
I shone, mica-scaled, and unfolded
To pour myself out like a fluid
Among bird feet and the stems of plants.
I wasn't fooled. I knew you at once.

Tree and stone glittered, without shadows.
My finger-length grew lucent as glass.
I started to bud like a March twig:
An arm and a leg, an arm, a leg.
From stone to cloud, so I ascended.
Now I resemble a sort of god
Floating through the air in my soul-shift
Pure as a pane of ice. It's a gift.


Ahhhhhh. Lovely really.

[freckle]

Ha ha!....mossdog if you wanna feel bleak listen to the following from the lady herself!.....discussing her father, the object of her misery and muse for her art.....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hHjctqSBwM

Han- good to hear the haikus
Merry-good evening! great minds think a like, i posted the same poem as you! hope you are well!

off to contnue wrapping the passy the parcel one (everyone is a winner here so with each layer adding various sweeties....i digress, again!!!)



ps mossdog i really liked the poem is it from ariel? i don't have my copy handy....

[Mossdog]

Thanks Freckle, what a great link, especially the final lines..."daddy, daddy, you bastard I'm through".

Eeeeh I feel reet melancholic now. A pail of ice-water over my naturally sunny disposition.

Back now to hear some more.

[Mossdog]

Forgot to say - Love Letter is from her Collected Poems 1960.

[Hanneke]

You want dark? You want serious? You want depressing? You want harsh reality? Something one should never ever joke about?

Suicide in the Trenches...

I knew a simple soldier boy
Who grinned at life in empty joy,
Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,
And whistled early with the lark.

In winter trenches, cowed and glum,
With crumps and lice and lack of rum,
He put a bullet through his brain.
No one spoke of him again.

You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye
Who cheer when soldier lads march by,
Sneak home and pray you'll never know
The hell where youth and laughter go.

Obviously, by the great war poet Siegfried Sassoon

[freckle]

thanks han...great poem i love SS he spoke for a great swathe of powerless and forgotten young men, no joke at all.....

[Old Whippet]

Good heavens! is this what you get up to when I've been away. Well it's just started raiining, so feast on this misery!

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Carrion Comfort


NOT, I’ll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee;
Not untwist—slack they may be—these last strands of man
In me ór, most weary, cry I can no more. I can;
Can something, hope, wish day come, not choose not to be.
But ah, but O thou terrible, why wouldst thou rude on me
Thy wring-world right foot rock? lay a lionlimb against me? scan
With darksome devouring eyes my bruisèd bones? and fan,
O in turns of tempest, me heaped there; me frantic to avoid thee and flee?

Why? That my chaff might fly; my grain lie, sheer and clear.
Nay in all that toil, that coil, since (seems) I kissed the rod,
Hand rather, my heart lo! lapped strength, stole joy, would laugh, chéer.
Cheer whom though? the hero whose heaven-handling flung me, fóot tród
Me? or me that fought him? O which one? is it each one? That night, that year
Of now done darkness I wretch lay wrestling with (my God!) my God


Not a happy fellow your Hopkins. Should have taken up fell running.

[Derby Tup]

In Flanders fields the poppies grow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, stil bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved,
and now we lie In Flanders fields.
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep,
though poppies grow
in Flanders fields

John McCrae

[Multiterrainer]

As we start a new month i'm sure its not all going to be as grim as this:

November By Thomas Hood

No sun--no moon!
No morn--no noon!
No dawn--no dusk--no proper time of day--
No sky--no earthly view--
No distance looking blue--

No road--no street--
No "t'other side the way"--
No end to any Row--
No indications where the Crescents go--

No top to any steeple--
No recognitions of familiar people--
No courtesies for showing 'em--
No knowing 'em!

No mail--no post--
No news from any foreign coast--
No park--no ring--no afternoon gentility--
No company--no nobility--

No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease,
No comfortable feel in any member--
No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees,
No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds,
November!