Today's poet

[Harry H Howgill]

That's fabulous OW. I hadn't spotted the finish coming either. Brilliant.

oh dear...the devil makes work for idle hounds....

Funny old place
this poetry thread
where poems are crafted
presented and read

Tentative offerings
modestly proffered
generous responses
enocouragement offered

Days in the mountains
imagined or real
depicted in colour
with poetic zeal

Flora and fauna
moorland and hill
blood sweat and tears
all grist to the mill.

Yet scratching the surface
is there a subtext?
beneath the veneer
an emotional vortex

Of turmoil, longing,
frustration and yearning?
Sometimes this thread
is so hot it's burning

Closer inspection
suggests a dual purpose
for the purveyors
of fell running verses

It's clearly both playground
for rhymers and punners
but also a knocking shop
for frustrated fell runners

[freckle]

A little bit of Rilke before bed:

Progress

And once again the depths of my life rush onward,
as if they were moving in wider channels now.
Things are becoming more close to me
and all images more thoroughly looked upon.
I feel more comfortable with that which is nameless,:
With my senses, as with birds, I reach up
into the windy heavens out of the oak,
and in those pools broken off from the day,
my feeling, as if standing on fishes, descends.

This is just divine Hes, your posts the past few days have been awesome, keep them coming!

[Alf]

A little bit of Rilke before bed:


I reach up into the windy heavens out of the oak,

Love that particular line Hes

I liked OWs offering as well. Very well put together.

[Derby Tup]

Unending Love

I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times…
In life after life, in age after age, forever.
My spellbound heart has made and remade the necklace of songs,
That you take as a gift, wear round your neck in your many forms,
In life after life, in age after age, forever.

Whenever I hear old chronicles of love, it's age-old pain,
It's ancient tale of being apart or together.
As I stare on and on into the past, in the end you emerge,
Clad in the light of a pole-star piercing the darkness of time:
You become an image of what is remembered forever.

You and I have floated here on the stream that brings from the fount.
At the heart of time, love of one for another.
We have played along side millions of lovers, shared in the same
Shy sweetness of meeting, the same distressful tears of farewell-
Old love but in shapes that renew and renew forever.

Today it is heaped at your feet, it has found its end in you
The love of all man’s days both past and forever:
Universal joy, universal sorrow, universal life.
The memories of all loves merging with this one love of ours –
And the songs of every poet past and forever

Rabindranath Tagore

According to 'Old Poetry' web-site this was Audrey Hepburn's favourite poem and Gregory Peck read it out at her funeral

[Stolly]

Talking of funerals , I think this poem, as read by John Hannah (with his Scottish twang) in Four Weddings and a Funeral is fantastic

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever; I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one:
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the woods:
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

W H Auden

[N-dubya]

Talking of funerals , I think this poem, as read by John Hannah (with his Scottish twang) in Four Weddings and a Funeral is fantastic

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever; I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one:
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the woods:
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

W H Auden

probably one of the best poems ever written in my opinion

[emmilou]

Not visited in here for far too long but insprired after reading a poetry book last night, however Mossdog and Hes especially have made me cry! It's too dangerous in here!!

[tinyman]

Not visited in here for far too long but insprired after reading a poetry book last night, however Mossdog and Hes especially have made me cry! It's too dangerous in here!!

Try this as a bit of light relief Emmilou

Nigh on 40 years ago, shortly after I started my first job in a cartographers office in Sunderland, I was told by one of the old hands there that “Map-reading isn’t a skill, it’s an belief”. This past year of my fellrunning comeback has meant that I’ve repeatedly explored that belief - not least on the Hobble last weekend.

Here’s a bit of Miroslav Holub that I use to reassure myself.

Brief reflection on maps

Albert Szent-Gyorgi, who knew a thing or two about maps,
by which life moves somewhere or other,
used to tell this story from the war,
through which history moves somewhere or other:

From a small Hungarian unit in the Alps a young lieutenant
sent out a scouting party into the icy wastes.
At once
it began to snow, it snowed for two days and the party
did not return. The lieutenant was in distress: he had sent
his men to their deaths.

On the third day, however, the scouting party was back.
Where had they been? How had they managed to find their way?
Yes, the men explained, we certainly thought we were
lost and awaited our end. When suddenly one of our lot
found a map in his pocket. We felt reassured.
We made a bivouac, waited for the snow to stop, and then
with the map
found the right direction.
And here we are.

The lieutenant asked to see that remarkable map in order to
study it. It wasn’t a map of the Alps
but the Pyrenees.

Goodbye

[N-dubya]

Towards the End

She was like a dodgem car stuttering, low
on sparks, all stops and starts a walk of a
hundred yards or slightly less could test
her heart and all its gubbins. Smoking started

at the age of nine, she never
stopped or tried to quit ever. Even
when early on in her career, her dad,
my great grandad locked her in the cellar
or bogey hole, with a pack of fags and a
box of matches. Everyone was lit and
smoked in turn, till she was ill. After eightyone

years a full patina of nicotine
on the index and middle finger is no more
than a give away of a dirty habit. The real
trouble was the rattling in her shoes.
The body decaying; her very toes
had blackened and shook loose, like
those of a mishapped mountaineer.

Death itself is instantaneous, dying
can take, minutes or years. It took
six months of refusing food, developing
bedsores and fits whilst possessed
under the spell of morphine. The end
was not sudden, unexpected or unseen
and however much grief you bare it
does not compare to the relief.

[Alf]

This might be a tad religious for some tastes.

I am the Great Sun

(From a Normandy crucifix of 1632)
by Charles Causley

I am the great sun, but you do not see me,
I am your husband, but you turn away.
I am the captive, but you do not free me,
I am the captain but you will not obey.
I am the truth, but you will not believe me,
I am the city where you will not stay.
I am your wife, your child, but you will leave me,
I am that God to whom you will not pray.
I am your counsel, but you will not hear me,
I am your lover whom you will betray.
I am the victor, but you do not cheer me,
I am the holy dove whom you will slay.
I am your life, but if you will not name me,
Seal up your soul with tears, and never blame me.