Today's poet

[Alf]

I have always liked this one at this time of year.

The Journey of the Magi

'A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.'
And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.


T.S.Eliot

[Mossdog]

Ooooo baby its cold outside...well perhaps not THAT cold....

A whisper of spring

Shrinking away from me
My duplicitous friend
You turn your body up
a centigrade or two.

What was once bold
Is saddened,
by footfall, cussing
and the insidous grey.

Under the veil of denial
I am somewhat disorientated
by your now evident
dis-integration.
I even slipped a few times
trying to make out the boundaries.


But now, FINALLY
My feet hit the floor
In some semblance of normality
and exhaling
into a forgotten sense of balance
Here is my wish...

that molecule, by molecule
You will evolve
into a whisper of spring.

Even though you must surely be tempting fate Frecks with your 'whisper of spring"...I really like that But believe me, it ain't even got going yet and we've still got plenty of layering coming our way. See yadmoss ski website for the fun it can bring too

http://www.yadmoss.co.uk/snow-and-weather-report

[freckle]

Even though you must surely be tempting fate Frecks with your 'whisper of spring"...I really like that But believe me, it ain't even got going yet and we've still got plenty of layering coming our way. See yadmoss ski website for the fun it can bring too

http://www.yadmoss.co.uk/snow-and-weather-report

Looks like a lot of fun Mossy (or probably a broken leg in my case!!!!)...

anyhoo as for the whisper, i meant that in a feint, barely heard way...and only after considerable evolution...i.e. the water (or ? if thinking metaphorically) from the melted snow somehow finding its way to nourish the ground....and give life to something akin to "new" ....or somefin like that...

anyhoo i have just watched the bbc4 version of macbeth with patrick stewart and even tho I can't pretend to understand it all certain speeches stand out...i love the way the bard uses the idea of sleep (or the lack of it) to convey the inescapeable experience of guilt in Macbeth and his missus..who tho having behaving rather bad must have have a conscience between them otherwise why the nightmares?.....good stuff...

Macbeth, Act II Sc. II lines 49-54

“Sleep no more!
Macbeth does murder sleep”—the innocent sleep,
Sleep that knits up the raveled sleave of care,
The death of each day's life, sore labor's bath,
Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course,
Chief nourisher in life's feast

also really like this little speech after the death of lady macbeth (which i have posted b4)....

"She should have died hereafter;
There would have been a time for such a word.
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing."

[Alf]

anyhoo i have just watched the bbc4 version of macbeth with patrick stewart and even tho I can't pretend to understand it all certain speeches stand out...i love the way the bard uses the idea of sleep (or the lack of it) to convey the inescapeable experience of guilt in Macbeth and his missus..who tho having behaving rather bad must have have a conscience between them otherwise why the nightmares?.....good stuff...

Macbeth, Act II Sc. II lines 49-54

“Sleep no more!
Macbeth does murder sleep”—the innocent sleep,
Sleep that knits up the raveled sleave of care,
The death of each day's life, sore labor's bath,
Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course,
Chief nourisher in life's feast

That reminds me of a passage in Othello freckle.

Iago had planted the seed of a lie of Desdemona's infidelity in Othello's mind.

Iago
"Look where he comes! Not poppy, nor mandragora,
Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world,
Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep
Which thou owedst yesterday."

[freckle]

That reminds me of a passage in Othello freckle.

Iago had planted the seed of a lie of Desdemona's infidelity in Othello's mind.

Iago
"Look where he comes! Not poppy, nor mandragora,
Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world,
Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep
Which thou owedst yesterday."

Aye your a well read individual Alf! suitably impressed!

I found this tonight and thought it was rather lovely....apparently Lowell was an "imagist " and I can see why she has been labelled such from this little gem...

Petals by Amy Lowell

Life is a stream
On which we strew
Petal by petal the flower of our heart;
The end lost in dream,
They float past our view,
We only watch their glad, early start.
Freighted with hope,
Crimsoned with joy,
We scatter the leaves of our opening rose;
Their widening scope,
Their distant employ,
We never shall know. And the stream as it flows
Sweeps them away,
Each one is gone
Ever beyond into infinite ways.
We alone stay
While years hurry on,
The flower fared forth, though its fragrance still stays.

[Mossdog]

Aye your a well read individual Alf! suitably impressed!

I found this tonight and thought it was rather lovely....apparently Lowell was an "imagist " and I can see why she has been labelled such from this little gem...

Petals by Amy Lowell

Life is a stream
On which we strew
Petal by petal the flower of our heart;
The end lost in dream,
They float past our view,
We only watch their glad, early start.
Freighted with hope,
Crimsoned with joy,
We scatter the leaves of our opening rose;
Their widening scope,
Their distant employ,
We never shall know. And the stream as it flows
Sweeps them away,
Each one is gone
Ever beyond into infinite ways.
We alone stay
While years hurry on,
The flower fared forth, though its fragrance still stays.

Sad but delightful....Ah that's life!

[Alf]

You can almost feel your fingers and toes freezing as you read this!

Tractor

The tractor stands frozen - an agony
To think of. All night
Snow packed its open entrails. Now a head-pincering gale,
A spill of molten ice, smoking snow,
Pours into its steel.
At white heat of numbness it stands
In the aimed hosing of ground-level fieriness.

It defied flesh and won't start.
Hands are like wounds already
Inside armour gloves, and feet are unbelievable
As if the toe-nails were all just torn off.
I stare at it in hatred. Beyond it
The copse hisses - capitulates miserably
In the fleeing, failing light. Starlings,
A dirtier sleetier snow, blow smokily, unendingly, over
Towards plantations Eastward.
All the time the tractor is sinking
Through the degrees, deepening
Into its hell of ice.

The starting lever
Cracks its action, like a snapping knuckle.
The battery is alive - but like a lamb
Trying to nudge its solid-frozen mother -
While the seat claims my buttock-bones, bites
With the space-cold of earth, which it has joined
In one solid lump.

I squirt commercial sure-fire
Down the black throat - it just coughs.
It ridicules me - a trap of iron stupidity
I've stepped into. I drive the battery
As if I were hammering and hammering
The frozen arrangement to pieces with a hammer
And it jabbers laughing pain-crying mockingly
Into happy life.

And stands
Shuddering itself full of heat, seeming to enlarge slowly
Like a demon demonstrating
A more-than-usually-complete materialization -
Suddenly it jerks from its solidarity
With the concrete, and lurches towards a stanchion
Bursting with superhuman well-being and abandon
Shouting Where Where?

Worse iron is waiting. Power-lift kneels
Levers awake imprisoned deadweight,
Shackle-pins bedded in cast-iron cow-shit.
The blind and vibrating condemned obedience
Of iron to the cruelty of iron,
Wheels screeched out of their night-locks -

Fingers
Among the tormented
Tonnage and burning of iron

Eyes
Weeping in the wind of chloroform

And the tractor, streaming with sweat,
Raging and trembling and rejoicing.

Ted Hughes

[Harry H Howgill]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEyCm...eature=related

Alas I cannot Swim by Laura Marling

Theres a house across the river
but alas i cannot swim
And a garden of such beauty
that the flowers seem to grin
Theres a house across the river
but alas i cannot swim
I'll live my life regretting that i never jumped in!

Theres a boy across the river
with short black curly hair
He wants to be my lover
and i want to be his peer
Theres a boy across the river
but alas i cannot swim
And i never will get to put my arms around him

Theres a life across the river
that was ment for me
instead i live my life in constant misery
Theres a life across the river
but i do not see
why i should please those who will never be pleased

There is gold across the river
but i dont want none
There is gold across the river
but i dont want none

Gold is fleeting, gold is fickle, gold is fun!
Gold is fleeting, gold is fickle, gold is fun!

There is gold across the river
but i dont want none
I would rather be dry
then held up by a golden gun

saying
Work more
earn more
live more
have more fun!

saying
Work more
earn more
live more
have more fun!

saying
Work more
earn more
live more
have more fun!

[freckle]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEyCm...eature=related

Alas I cannot Swim by Laura Marling

Theres a house across the river
but alas i cannot swim
And a garden of such beauty
that the flowers seem to grin
Theres a house across the river
but alas i cannot swim
I'll live my life regretting that i never jumped in!

Theres a boy across the river
with short black curly hair
He wants to be my lover
and i want to be his peer
Theres a boy across the river
but alas i cannot swim
And i never will get to put my arms around him

Theres a life across the river
that was ment for me
instead i live my life in constant misery
Theres a life across the river
but i do not see
why i should please those who will never be pleased

There is gold across the river
but i dont want none
There is gold across the river
but i dont want none

Gold is fleeting, gold is fickle, gold is fun!
Gold is fleeting, gold is fickle, gold is fun!

There is gold across the river
but i dont want none
I would rather be dry
then held up by a golden gun

saying
Work more
earn more
live more
have more fun!

saying
Work more
earn more
live more
have more fun!

saying
Work more
earn more
live more
have more fun!

Evening Harry!...I love this and the animation is so cute.......so bittersweet....sigh

ps in a similar vein...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_oLC...eature=related

[freckle]

fancy a bit of Simon anyone?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vU5Mm...eature=related

lovin that voice!