Well there was I thinking the references to poets, mountains, Eastern men (Derby Tup!) couldn't be anything else but your words.Originally Posted by Old Whippet
Just goes to show what you can read into a few simple words now doesn't it!
Well there was I thinking the references to poets, mountains, Eastern men (Derby Tup!) couldn't be anything else but your words.
Just goes to show what you can read into a few simple words now doesn't it!
Good evening! Thanks for the comments re Anne Michaels. I have posted a couple of her poems on this here thread already...the good news is that I can now repeat them all again and as she is my favourite...that will be very enjoyable.
She wrote the novel Fugitive Pieces and her latest book is called The Winter Vault. I thoroughly recommend her collections of poems 'The Weight of Oranges', 'Skin Divers' and 'Miners Pond'. I'll just find the text for Ice House. It is brilliant. It is a poem written from the viewpoint of Kathleen Scott, Robert Falcon Scott's widow. I defy you not to cry.
Ice House
"I regret nothing but his suffering."
--Kathleen Scott
Wherever we cry,
it's far from home.
At Sandwich, our son pointed
persistently to sea.
I followed his infant gaze,
expecting a bird or a boat
but there was nothing.
How unnerving,
as if he could see you
on the horizon,
knew where you were
exactly:
at the edge of the world.
You unloaded the ship at Lyttelton
and repacked her:
"thirty-five dogs
five tons of dog food
fifteen ponies
thirty-two tons of pony fodder
three motor-sledges
four hundred and sixty tons of coal
collapsible huts
an acetylene plant
thirty-five thousand cigars
one guinea pig
one fantail pigeon
three rabbits
one cat with its own hammock, blanket and pillow
one hundred and sixty-two carcasses of mutton and
an ice house."
Men returned from war
without faces, with noses lost
discretely as antique statues.
accurately as if eaten by frostbite.
In clay I shaped their
flesh, sometimes
retrieving a likeness
from photographs.
Then the surgeons copied
nose, ears, jaw
with molten wax and metal plates
and horsehair stiches;
with borrowed cartilage,
from the soldiers' own ribs,
leftovers stored under the skin
of the abdomen. I held the men down
until the morphia
slid into them.
I was only sick
afterwards.
Working the clay, I remembered
mornings in Rodin's studio,
his drawfuls of tiny hands and feet,
like a mechanic's tool box.
I imagined my mother in her blindness
before she died, touching my face,
as if she still could
build me with her body,.
At night, in the studio
I took your face in my hands and your fine
arms and long legs, your small waist,
and loved you into stone.
The men returned from France
to Ellerman's Hospital.
Their courage was beautiful.
I understood the work at once:
To use scar tissue to advantage.
To construct through art,
one's face to the world.
Sculpt what's missing.
You reached furthest south,
then you went futher.
In neither of those forsaken places
did you forsake us.
At Lyttelton the hills unrolled,
a Japanese scroll painting;
we opened the landscape with our bare feet.
So much leaned by observation.
We took in brainfuls of New Zealand air
on the blue climb over the falls.
Our last night together we slept
not in the big house but
in the Kinsey's garden.
Belonging only to each other.
Guests of the earth.
Mid sea, a month our of range
of the wireless;
on my way to you. Floating
between landfalls,
between one hemisphere and another.
Between the words
"wife" and "widow."
Newspapers, politicians
scavenged your journals.
But your words
never lost their way.
We mourn in a place no one knows;
it's right that our grief be unseen.
I love you as if you'll return
after years of absence.
As if we'd invented
moonlight.
Still I dream of your arrival.
That is beautiful Hes, thanks for sharing that. Imagine writing and publishing that. Now that IS being open.I love you as if you'll return
after years of absence.
As if we'd invented
moonlight.
Cardinal Newman's great Poem of Compassion:
Softly and gently, dearly-ransomed soul,
In my most loving arms I now enfold thee,
And o'er the penal waters, as they roll,
I poise thee, and I lower thee, and hold thee.
And carefully I dip thee in the lake,
And thou, without a sob or a resistance,
Dost through the flood thy rapid passage take,
Sinking deep, deeper, into the dim distance.
Angels to whom the willing task is given,
Shall tend, and nurse, and lull thee, as liest;
And Masses on the earth, and prayers in heaven,
Shall aid thee at the Throne of the Most Highest.
Farewell, but not for ever! brother dear,
Be brave and patient on thy bed of sorrow;
Swiftly shall pass thy night of trial here,
And I will come and wake thee on the morrow.
Farewell! Farewell!
Click on this link for the oratio
Last edited by XRunner; 22-11-2009 at 12:11 AM.
I mentioned yesterday that I bought a book from a local author from 1923. He wrote some lovely stuff about the Lakes, well it turns out that he didn't just wander round the meadows looking at the daffodils...
I’ve seen the fields at Flanders,
The Somme’s grey chalk ravines,
The glow of burning Ypres,
The mines of red Messines:
I’ve heard the cannon thunder
And the sniper’s bullet wail:
But now it’s all a dream to me -
I’m home at Silverdale.
It’s fine to live in Peace time,
And most of all in Spring,
When thrushes whistle love songs
And plover’s on the wing:
But still I hear the Voices
Of friends in brave ‘Fourteen’
“Remember us: we still live on –
The Spirits of ‘Fourteen.’”
G. Basil Sleigh
It was especially moving as Silverdale is just down the way from me here and is such a beautiful and tranquil place. How different from his other experiences. Fine poetry, and certainly powerful.
Last edited by Harry H Howgill; 22-11-2009 at 12:40 AM. Reason: my space bar is on the blink
Thanks for that XRunner. I've just been reading up on Cardinal Newman after this post and have learnt a lot.
Good stuff. I can't imagine what it must be like for anyone returning from war and it must be very strange to be in a soothing place of beauty after witnessing so much horror.
It was quite a contrast to the start of his book. As far as I have found out it is the only one he published. I must have only looked at the first half of the book in the shop as it is filled with Lakeland scenes,which was the reason for buying it. It was quite a contrast to find such a bleak second half, but none the less rewarding to read. I've had such an easy life.
Last edited by Harry H Howgill; 22-11-2009 at 12:39 AM.
Hes, loved the Scott verse. Very moving as you said, especially the blind mother and:
...........Floating
between landfalls,
between one hemisphere and another.
Between the words
"wife" and "widow."
Poacher turned game-keeper
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