Today's poet

[Alf]

Battlefield Poet: Keith Douglas on now BBC 4
Wilfrid Owen 22:00
Simon Armitage 23:00

[freckle]

thanks alf....will try and catch it at some juncture if not now then on i player...

At Daybreak
Wilfred Owen


I LISTEN for him through the rain,
And in the dusk of starless hours
I know that he will come again;
Loth was he ever to forsake me:
He comes with glimmering of flowers
And stir of music to awake me.
Spirit of purity, he stands
As once he lived in charm and grace:
I may not hold him with my hands,
Nor bid him stay to heal my sorrow;
Only his fair, unshadowed face
Abides with me until to-morrow.

[L.F.F.]

Battlefield Poet: Keith Douglas on now BBC 4
Wilfrid Owen 22:00
Simon Armitage 23:00

Glad I logged on. Have just set it to record. Thanks.

[freckle]

Glad I logged on. Have just set it to record. Thanks.

caught a brief glimpse...looked v good and hope to get back to it. very humbling and poignant story about keith douglas, such a talent and amazing that he wrote such quality poetry in his early twenties but then he appears to have been an extraordinary man livng in extraordinary times....


Simplify me when I'm Dead

Remember me when I am dead
and simplify me when I'm dead.
As the processes of earth
strip off the colour and the skin
take the brown hair and blue eye
and leave me simpler than at birth
when hairless I came howling in
as the moon came in the cold sky.
Of my skeleton perhaps
so stripped, a learned man will say
'He was of such a type and intelligence,' no more.
Thus when in a year collapse
particular memories, you may
deduce, from the long pain I bore
the opinions I held, who was my foe
and what I left, even my appearance
but incidents will be no guide.
Time's wrong-way telescope will show
a minute man ten years hence
and by distance simplified.
Through that lens see if I seem
substance or nothing: of the world
deserving mention or charitable oblivion
not by momentary spleen
or love into decision hurled
leisurely arrive at an opinion.
Remember me when I am dead
and simplify me when I'm dead.


Keith Douglas

[L.F.F.]

A Friday poem for Friday. I hope your Friday is more cheerful than this.

Friday Night At The Royal Station Hotel

Light spreads darkly downwards from the high
Clusters of lights over empty chairs
That face each other, coloured differently.
Through open doors, the dining-room declares
A larger loneliness of knives and glass
And silence laid like carpet. A porter reads
An unsold evening paper. Hours pass,
And all the salesmen have gone back to Leeds,
Leaving full ashtrays in the Conference Room.

In shoeless corridors, the lights burn. How
Isolated, like a fort, it is -
The headed paper, made for writing home
(If home existed) letters of exile: Now
Night comes on. Waves fold behind villages.


Philip Larkin

[Alf]

A Friday poem for Friday. I hope your Friday is more cheerful than this.

Friday Night At The Royal Station Hotel

Light spreads darkly downwards from the high
Clusters of lights over empty chairs
That face each other, coloured differently.
Through open doors, the dining-room declares
A larger loneliness of knives and glass
And silence laid like carpet. A porter reads
An unsold evening paper. Hours pass,
And all the salesmen have gone back to Leeds,
Leaving full ashtrays in the Conference Room.

In shoeless corridors, the lights burn. How
Isolated, like a fort, it is -
The headed paper, made for writing home
(If home existed) letters of exile: Now
Night comes on. Waves fold behind villages.


Philip Larkin

Good choice L.F.F. that certainly paints a picture of emptiness and loneliness.

[Alf]

caught a brief glimpse...looked v good and hope to get back to it. very humbling and poignant story about keith douglas, such a talent and amazing that he wrote such quality poetry in his early twenties but then he appears to have been an extraordinary man livng in extraordinary times....


Simplify me when I'm Dead

Remember me when I am dead
and simplify me when I'm dead.
As the processes of earth
strip off the colour and the skin
take the brown hair and blue eye
and leave me simpler than at birth
when hairless I came howling in
as the moon came in the cold sky.
Of my skeleton perhaps
so stripped, a learned man will say
'He was of such a type and intelligence,' no more.
Thus when in a year collapse
particular memories, you may
deduce, from the long pain I bore
the opinions I held, who was my foe
and what I left, even my appearance
but incidents will be no guide.
Time's wrong-way telescope will show
a minute man ten years hence
and by distance simplified.
Through that lens see if I seem
substance or nothing: of the world
deserving mention or charitable oblivion
not by momentary spleen
or love into decision hurled
leisurely arrive at an opinion.
Remember me when I am dead
and simplify me when I'm dead.


Keith Douglas

I didn't know as much about Keith Douglas as I did about Wilfred Owen but I have tended to read more about the WW1 poets anyway. Having said that I didn't know about Siegfried Sassoon helping Owen with his poetry when they were at the hospital together. The insight into the way the poems developed by both poets was excellent though and we are lucky to still have their notebooks.

Simon Armitage does get some great gigs though doesn't he A trip round the Greek Islands in the wake of Odysseus

[freckle]

I didn't know as much about Keith Douglas as I did about Wilfred Owen but I have tended to read more about the WW1 poets anyway. Having said that I didn't know about Siegfried Sassoon helping Owen with his poetry when they were at the hospital together. The insight into the way the poems developed by both poets was excellent though and we are lucky to still have their notebooks.

Simon Armitage does get some great gigs though doesn't he A trip round the Greek Islands in the wake of Odysseus

I know I must admit that thought occurred to me too...ah, its a hard life being a top notch poet!

[Mountain Goatess]

BETWEEN GOING AND COMING...


Between going and staying
the day wavers,
in love with its own transparency.
The circular afternoon is now a bay
where the world in stillness rocks.

All is visible and all elusive,
all is near and can’t be touched.

Paper, book, pencil, glass,
rest in the shade of their names.

Time throbbing in my temples repeats
the same unchanging syllable of blood.

The light turns the indifferent wall
into a ghostly theater of reflections.

I find myself in the middle of an eye,
watching myself in its blank stare.

The moment scatters. Motionless,
I stay and go: I am a pause.

Octavio Paz

[freckle]

Between going and coming...

Between going and staying
the day wavers,
in love with its own transparency.
The circular afternoon is now a bay
where the world in stillness rocks.

All is visible and all elusive,
all is near and can’t be touched.

Paper, book, pencil, glass,
rest in the shade of their names.

Time throbbing in my temples repeats
the same unchanging syllable of blood.

The light turns the indifferent wall
into a ghostly theater of reflections.

I find myself in the middle of an eye,
watching myself in its blank stare.

The moment scatters. Motionless,
I stay and go: I am a pause.

Octavio Paz

Ooooooo this is nice, I do like a bit of OP! ....hope you had a lovely birthday MG.....x