Today's poet

[Alf]

Something for any fell poets planning on a New Year return to fitness

Health Fanatic


Around the block - against the clock
Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock
Running out of breath - running out of socks
Rubber on the road... flippety flop
Non-skid agility... chop chop
No time to hang about
Work out health fanatic... work out!

The crack of dawn he's lifting weights
His tell-tale heart reverberates
He's high in polyunsaturates...
Low in polysaturates...
The Duke of Edinburgh's award awaits
It's a man's life
He's a health fanatic... so was his wife

A one-man war against decay
Enjoys himself the hard way
Allows himself a mars a day
How old am I - what do I weigh
Punch me there... does it hurt... no way
Running on the spot don't get too hot
He's a health fanatic, that's why not

Running through the traffic jam - taking in the lead
Hyperactivity keeps him out of bed
Deep down he'd like to kick it in the head
They'll regret it when they're dead
There's more to life than fun
He's a health fanatic - he's got to run

Beans greens and tangerines
And low cholestrol margarines
His limbs are loose, his teeth are clean
He's a high-octane fresh-air fiend
You've got to admit he's keen
What can you do but be impressed
He's a health fanatic... give it a rest

Shadow boxing - punch the wall
One-a-side football... what's the score... one-all
Could have been a copper... too small
Could have been a jockey... too tall
Knees up, knees up... head the ball
Nervous energy makes him tick
He's a health fanatic... he makes you sick

John Cooper Clarke

I love that poem DT though it has nothing in common with a fell runner's life of course

[Derby Tup]

Clenched Soul

We have lost even this twilight.

No one saw us this evening hand in hand

while the blue night dropped on the world.

I have seen from my window

the fiesta of sunset in the distant mountain tops.

Sometimes a piece of sun

burned like a coin in my hand.

I remembered you with my soul clenched

in that sadness of mine that you know.

Where were you then?

Who else was there?

Saying what?

Why will the whole of love come on me suddenly

when I am sad and feel you are far away?

The book fell that always closed at twilight

and my blue sweater rolled like a hurt dog at my feet.

Always, always you recede through the evenings

toward the twilight erasing statues

Pablo Neruda

[Alf]

Its still pantomime season but this Cinderella can be found all year round.

CINDERELLA

. . .the joy that isn't shared
I heard, dies young.
Anne Sexton, 1928-1974

Apart from my sisters, estranged
from my mother, I am a woman alone
in a house of men
who secretly
call themselves princes, alone
with me usually, under cover of dark. I am the one allowed in

to the royal chambers, whose small foot conveniently
fills the slipper of glass. The woman writer, the lady
umpire, the madam chairman, anyone's wife.
I know what I know.
And I once was glad

of the chance to use it, even alone
in a strange castle doing overtime on my own, cracking
the royal code. The princes spoke
in their father's language, were eager to praise me
my nimble tongue. I am a woman in a state of siege, alone
as one piece of laundry, strung on a windy clothesline a
mile long. A woman co-opted by promises: the lure
of a job, the ruse of a choice, a woman forced
to bear witness, falsely
against my own kind, as each
other sister was judge inadequate, bitchy, incompetent,
jealous, too thin, too fat. I know what I know.
What sweet bread I make

for myself in this prosperous house
is dirty, what good soup I boil turns
in my mouth to mud. Give
me my ashes. A cold stove, a cinder-block pillow, wet
canvas shoes in my sisters', my sisters' hut. Or I swear

I'll die young
like those favored before me, hand-picked each one
For her joyful heart.

Olga Broumas

[freckle]

Some great choices on here ...back to work today for me, bit of a culture shock...had to drink A LOT of coffee...stil one more day then I is off again and in the spirit of new years resolutions (nice JCC by the way DT!) I is planning on a run on the 1st...not quite a fell race but its a start!

Year's End

Now winter dow
ns the dying of the year,
And night is all a settlement of snow;
From the soft street the rooms of houses show
A gathered light, a shapen atmosphere,
Like frozen-over lakes whose ice is thin
And still allows some stirring down within.

I've known the wind by water banks to shake
The late leaves down, which frozen where they fell
And held in ice as dancers in a spell
Fluttered all winter long into a lake;
Graved on the dark in gestures of descent,
They seemed their own most perfect monument.

There was perfection in the death of ferns
Which laid their fragile cheeks against the stone
A million years. Great mammoths overthrown
Composedly have made their long sojourns,
Like palaces of patience, in the gray
And changeless lands of ice. And at Pompeii

The little dog lay curled and did not rise
But slept the deeper as the ashes rose
And found the people incomplete, and froze
The random hands, the loose unready eyes
Of men expecting yet another sun
To do the shapely thing they had not done.

These sudden ends of time must give us pause.
We fray into the future, rarely wrought
Save in the tapestries of afterthought.
More time, more time. Barrages of applause
Come muffled from a buried radio.
The New-year bells are wrangling with the snow.

Richard Wilbur

[freckle]

Its still pantomime season but this Cinderella can be found all year round.

CINDERELLA

. . .the joy that isn't shared
I heard, dies young.
Anne Sexton, 1928-1974

Apart from my sisters, estranged
from my mother, I am a woman alone
in a house of men
who secretly
call themselves princes, alone
with me usually, under cover of dark. I am the one allowed in

to the royal chambers, whose small foot conveniently
fills the slipper of glass. The woman writer, the lady
umpire, the madam chairman, anyone's wife.
I know what I know.
And I once was glad

of the chance to use it, even alone
in a strange castle doing overtime on my own, cracking
the royal code. The princes spoke
in their father's language, were eager to praise me
my nimble tongue. I am a woman in a state of siege, alone
as one piece of laundry, strung on a windy clothesline a
mile long. A woman co-opted by promises: the lure
of a job, the ruse of a choice, a woman forced
to bear witness, falsely
against my own kind, as each
other sister was judge inadequate, bitchy, incompetent,
jealous, too thin, too fat. I know what I know.
What sweet bread I make

for myself in this prosperous house
is dirty, what good soup I boil turns
in my mouth to mud. Give
me my ashes. A cold stove, a cinder-block pillow, wet
canvas shoes in my sisters', my sisters' hut. Or I swear

I'll die young
like those favored before me, hand-picked each one
For her joyful heart.

Olga Broumas

Absoultely fantastic choice well said Anne and Olga! oh and Alfster too :thumbup:

[MachGirl]

Evening everyone , hope all had a lovely christmas ! Just spent last hour reading all poems I have missed , nice blend of fun with the deep and meaningful slotted in there ! I very much like " Clenched Soul " and "Years End " DT and Freckle ........

[MachGirl]

Hi again , sorry about this

I just wanted to mention to Alf , I read Thomas Gray's "Elegy written in a country churchyard " following your comment regarding similarities in one passage with Anais Nin "Risk" poem , very lovely poem .... glad I read .. so thankyou !

[MachGirl]

Another C.P Cavafy poem , not sure how anyone will take this one though , but I like it !

Body Remember

Body, remember not just how much you were loved,
not simply those beds on which you have lain,
but also the desire for you that shone
plainly in the eyes that gazed at you,
and quavered in the voice for you, though
by some chance obstacle was finally forestalled.
Now that everything is finally in the past,
it seems as though you did yield to those desires ―
how they shone, remember, in the eyes that gazed at you,
how they quavered in the voice for you ― body, remember.

[MachGirl]

Wall's - Cavafy

With no consideration, no pity, no shame,
they have built walls around me, thick and high.
And now I sit here feeling hopeless.
I can’t think of anything else: this fate gnaws my mind—
because I had so much to do outside.
When they were building the walls, how could I not have noticed!
But I never heard the builders, not a sound.
Imperceptibly they have closed me off from the outside world.

[MachGirl]

Goodnight everyone , last poem for tonight !



Winter Heavens by George Meredith

Sharp is the night, but stars with frost alive
Leap off the rim of earth across the dome.
It is a night to make the heavens our home
More than the nest whereto apace we strive.
Lengths down our road each fir-tree seems a hive,
In swarms outrushing from the golden comb.
They waken waves of thoughts that burst to foam:
The living throb in me, the dead revive.
Yon mantle clothes us: there, past mortal breath,
Life glistens on the river of the death.
It folds us, flesh and dust; and have we knelt,
Or never knelt, or eyed as kine the springs
Of radiance, the radiance enrings:
And this is the soul's haven to have felt.