Today's poet

[Hes]

Wish

Talk soft to me,
talk gently as the night
shuffles its papers
in high offices and hilltops.

Talk low like cattle,
breathe hay-scented words
and I will show you the book
kept inside my coat,

already learnt by heart
by the nightjars that churr
to each other before daylight
setting the darkness home.

Helen Ivory

[Derby Tup]

The Old Women Of The Ocean

To the solemn sea the old women come
With their shawls knotted around their necks
With their fragile feet cracking

They sit down alone on the shore
Without moving their eyes or their hands
Without changing the clouds or the silence

The obscene sea breaks and claws
Rushes downhill trumpeting
Shakes its bull's beard

The gentle old ladies seated
As if in a transparent boat
They look at the terrorist waves

Where will they go and where have they been?
They come from every corner
They come from our own lives

Now they have the ocean
The cold and burning emptiness
The solitude full of flames

They come from all the pasts
From houses which were fragrant
From burnt-up evenings

They look, or don't look, at the sea
With their walking sticks they draw signs in the sand
And the sea erases their calligraphy

The old women get up and go away
With their fragile bird feet
While the waves flood in
Traveling naked in the wind

Pablo Neruda

[Alf]

Absence

I visited the place where we last met.
Nothing was changed, the gardens were well-tended,
The fountains sprayed their usual steady jet;
There was no sign that anything had ended
And nothing to instruct me to forget.

The thoughtless birds that shook out of the trees,
Singing an ecstasy I could not share,
Played cunning in my thoughts. Surely in these
Pleasures there could not be a pain to bear
Or any discord shake the level breeze.

It was because the place was just the same
That made your absence seem a savage force,
For under all the gentleness there came
An earthquake tremor: Fountain, birds and grass
Were shaken by my thinking of your name.

Elizabeth Jennings

[Alf]

Morning
Deborah Ager

We are what we repeatedly do.
—Aristotle

You know how it is waking
from a dream certain you can fly
and that someone, long gone, returned

and you are filled with longing,
for a brief moment, to drive off
the road and feel nothing

or to see the loved one and feel
everything. Perhaps one morning,
taking brush to hair you'll wonder

how much of your life you've spent
at this task or signing your name
or rising in fog in near darkness

to ready for work. Day begins
with other people's needs first
and your thoughts disperse like breath.

In the in-between hour, the solitary hour,
before day begins all the world
gradually reappears car by car.

Really enjoyed that poem Mossy, thanks for posting it !

[Hes]

That's sad and beautiful Alf.

Absence

I visited the place where we last met.
Nothing was changed, the gardens were well-tended,
The fountains sprayed their usual steady jet;
There was no sign that anything had ended
And nothing to instruct me to forget.

The thoughtless birds that shook out of the trees,
Singing an ecstasy I could not share,
Played cunning in my thoughts. Surely in these
Pleasures there could not be a pain to bear
Or any discord shake the level breeze.

It was because the place was just the same
That made your absence seem a savage force,
For under all the gentleness there came
An earthquake tremor: Fountain, birds and grass
Were shaken by my thinking of your name.

Elizabeth Jennings

[Hes]

Following Alf's theme, I heard this years ago and then forgot who wrote it but via this thread and with the help of Freckle, here it is posted again. I think it is a perfect evocation of loss.

Time does not bring relief you have all lied

Time does not bring relief;
you all have lied
Who told me time would ease me of my pain!
I miss him in the weeping of the rain;
I want him at the shrinking of the tide;
The old snows melt from every mountain-side,
And last year’s leaves are smoke in every lane;
But last year’s bitter loving must remain
Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide!
There are a hundred places where I fear
To go,—so with his memory they brim!
And entering with relief some quiet place
Where never fell his foot or shone his face
I say, “There is no memory of him here!”
And so stand stricken, so remembering him!

Edna St.Vincent Millay

[XRunner]

To carry on with today's thread...I give you a John Keats poem...

Ode on Melancholy

No, no, go not to Lethe, neither twist
Wolf's-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine;
Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kiss'd
By nightshade, ruby grape of Proserpine;
Make not your rosary of yew-berries,
Nor let the beetle, nor the death-moth be
Your mournful Psyche, nor the downy owl
A partner in your sorrow's mysteries;
For shade to shade will come too drowsily,
And drown the wakeful anguish of the soul.

But when the melancholy fit shall fall
Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud,
That fosters the droop-headed flowers all,
And hides the green hill in an April shroud;
Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose,
Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave,
Or on the wealth of globed peonies;
Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows,
Emprison her soft hand, and let her rave,
And feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes.

She dwells with Beauty--Beauty that must die;
And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips
Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh,
Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips:
Ay, in the very temple of Delight
Veil'd Melancholy has her sovran shrine,
Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue
Can burst Joy's grape against his palate fine;
His soul shalt taste the sadness of her might,
And be among her cloudy trophies hung.

[Hes]

Nice choice Xrunner. Takes me back to A'levels and studying Keats. Not sure about the direction the thread has gone in though, I was feeling quite chirpy earlier!

[XRunner]

Another poem to encourage Stef F (and change Hes's mood!)

Thoughts About A Bob Graham Round (Peter Travis)

I had considered such thoughts of running
fell and dale to have been severed
from my mind that once burned with hope.
But I was wrong , failure to attain
the two score and two mileage
beyond a comprehensible sanity
did not assuage the fire
that with each reading was fanned
into a burning flame which will not be quenched.

And so with eyes which scan the heart-tearing miles
that sweep the fells, I climb and run the screes,
I curse the rising steepness
I grimace at wearing pain inflicted
on my body that fights and struggles
against a force that drives it on.
All these are known to me,
for I have run these Lakeland fells
with hope that did not burgeon into reality.
My mind will not be freed
from this plaguing itch of challenge.
And so, I shall exclude all else
to make this my fulfilment
I shall free my spirit among the fells,
and I shall strive, and I shall conquer.

[Mossdog]

and......

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
by E. E. Cummings

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

Doesn't that just 'blow you away' wow - brillaint verse. Thanks Frecks.