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Thread: Today's poet

  1. #10341
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    Re: Today's poet

    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

  2. #10342
    Moderator Mossdog's Avatar
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    Re: Today's poet

    Quote Originally Posted by freckle View Post
    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
    Am Yisrael Chai

  3. #10343

    Re: Today's poet

    Quote Originally Posted by Mossdog View Post
    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."
    Last edited by freckle; 12-12-2010 at 11:33 PM. Reason: i like to waffle on a bit and regularly make typos...

  4. #10344
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    Re: Today's poet

    Quote Originally Posted by freckle View Post
    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."

  5. #10345

    Re: Today's poet

    Quote Originally Posted by Alf View Post
    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.
    Last edited by freckle; 13-12-2010 at 10:56 PM.

  6. #10346
    Moderator Mossdog's Avatar
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    Re: Today's poet

    Quote Originally Posted by freckle View Post
    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!
    Am Yisrael Chai

  7. #10347
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    Re: Today's poet

    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

  8. #10348
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    Re: Today's poet

    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!

  9. #10349

    Re: Today's poet

    Quote Originally Posted by Harry H Howgill View Post
    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
    Last edited by freckle; 14-12-2010 at 10:16 PM.

  10. #10350

    Re: Today's poet

    fancy a bit of Simon anyone?

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

    lovin that voice!

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