Today's poet

[Stevie]

I have just got hold of a copy of Remains of Elmet, the 1979 paperback edition with Fay Godwin's photos. It is very wonderful and after I'd read it I'll post something from it on here.

In the meantime I am slightly disappointed not to find the "Heptonstall" poem in that was recently posted by Trig - repeated below. I have now seen that there is a 1994 edition called just "Elmet" and the contents are subtly different to "Remains of Elmet" and I'm wondering whether this "Heptonstall" poem (and there is more than one with that title) is in the newer "Elmet" edition. Can anybody help?

Thanks,
Steve

Heptonstall

Black village of grave stones
skull of an idiot
whose dreams die back
where they were born

Skull of a sheep
whose meat melts
under it's own rafters
only the flies leave it

Skull of a bird
the great geographie
drained to sutures
of cracked windowsills

Life tries

Death tries

The stone tries

Only the rain never tries

[Alf]

I have just got hold of a copy of Remains of Elmet, the 1979 paperback edition with Fay Godwin's photos. It is very wonderful and after I'd read it I'll post something from it on here.

In the meantime I am slightly disappointed not to find the "Heptonstall" poem in that was recently posted by Trig - repeated below. I have now seen that there is a 1994 edition called just "Elmet" and the contents are subtly different to "Remains of Elmet" and I'm wondering whether this "Heptonstall" poem (and there is more than one with that title) is in the newer "Elmet" edition. Can anybody help?

Thanks,
Steve

Heptonstall

Black village of grave stones
skull of an idiot
whose dreams die back
where they were born

Skull of a sheep
whose meat melts
under it's own rafters
only the flies leave it

Skull of a bird
the great geographie
drained to sutures
of cracked windowsills

Life tries

Death tries

The stone tries

Only the rain never tries

I posted my own version of 'Heptonstall' after I had run the new Heptonstall fell race which was basically an unapologetic dig at Ted Hughes ! He was a great poet but like a lot of us had feet of clay.

"Your son's eyes.... would become
So perfectly your eyes,
Became wet jewels
The hardest substance of the purest pain
As I fed him in his high white chair"

Ted Hughes (looking after his son Nicholas following the suicide of Sylvia Plath)


Nicholas committed suicide in 2009

[Alf]

and a little snippet from one of my favourites, Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage

He who, grown aged in this world of woe,
 In deeds, not years, piercing the depths of life,
 So that no wonder waits him; nor below
 Can love or sorrow, fame, ambition, strife,
 Cut to his heart again with the keen knife
 Of silent, sharp endurance: he can tell
 Why thought seeks refuge in lone caves, yet rife
 With airy images, and shapes which dwell
Still unimpaired, though old, in the soul’s haunted cell.

[freckle]

I have just got hold of a copy of Remains of Elmet, the 1979 paperback edition with Fay Godwin's photos. It is very wonderful and after I'd read it I'll post something from it on here.

In the meantime I am slightly disappointed not to find the "Heptonstall" poem in that was recently posted by Trig - repeated below. I have now seen that there is a 1994 edition called just "Elmet" and the contents are subtly different to "Remains of Elmet" and I'm wondering whether this "Heptonstall" poem (and there is more than one with that title) is in the newer "Elmet" edition. Can anybody help?

Thanks,
Steve

Heptonstall

Black village of grave stones
skull of an idiot
whose dreams die back
where they were born

Skull of a sheep
whose meat melts
under it's own rafters
only the flies leave it

Skull of a bird
the great geographie
drained to sutures
of cracked windowsills

Life tries

Death tries

The stone tries

Only the rain never tries

I'm sorry stevie i can't help you with this query, i just checked out a review of this book which i don't possess and it looks brill but also canny expensive! wonder if i could get it on inter library loan! thnx for posting the poem and alf i enjoyed your last melancholy choice too x

[freckle]

Mutability.
Percy Bysshe Shelley

We are as clouds that veil the midnight moon;
How restlessly they speed, and gleam, and quiver,
Streaking the darkness radiantly!--yet soon
Night closes round, and they are lost for ever;

Or like forgotten lyres, whose dissonant strings
Give various response to each varying blast,
To whose frail frame no second motion brings
One mood or modulation like the last.

We rest. -- A dream has power to poison sleep;
We rise. -- One wandering thought pollutes the day;
We feel, conceive or reason, laugh or weep;
Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away:

It is the same!--For, be it joy or sorrow,
The path of its departure still is free:
Man's yesterday may ne'er be like his morrow;
Nought may endure but Mutability.

[freckle]

Break, Break, Break

By Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Break, break, break,
On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!
And I would that my tongue could utter
The thoughts that arise in me.

O, well for the fisherman's boy,
That he shouts with his sister at play!
O, well for the sailor lad,
That he sings in his boat on the bay!

And the stately ships go on
To their haven under the hill;
But O for the touch of a vanish'd hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still!

Break, break, break
At the foot of thy crags, O Sea!
But the tender grace of a day that is dead
Will never come back to me.

[Hes]

In Our Time on R4 yesterday was all about Tennyson's In Memoriam, worth listening to on Iplayer:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode...s_In_Memoriam/

[Hes]

Found this at Verse Daily and liked the title....right, back to work for me now.

The confession of an apricot

I love incorrectly.

There is a solemnity in hands,
the way a palm will curve in
accordance to a contour of skin,
the way it will release a story.

This should be the pilgrimage.
The touching of a source.
This is what sanctifies.

This pleading. This mercy.
I want to be a pilgrim to everyone,
close to the inaccuracies, the astringent
dislikes, the wayward peace, the private
words. I want to be close to the telling.
I want to feel everyone whisper.

After the blossoming I hang.
The encyclical that has come
through the branches
instructs us to root, to become
the design encapsulated within.

Flesh helping stone turn tree.

I do not want to hold life
at my extremities, see it prepare
itself for my own perpetuation.
I want to touch and be touched
by things similar in this world.

I want to know a few secular days
of perfection. Late in this one great season
the diffused morning light
hides the horizon of sea. Everything
the color of slate, a soft tablet
to press a philosophy to.

Carl Adamschick

[Alf]

Mutability.
Percy Bysshe Shelley

We are as clouds that veil the midnight moon;
How restlessly they speed, and gleam, and quiver,
Streaking the darkness radiantly!--yet soon
Night closes round, and they are lost for ever;

Or like forgotten lyres, whose dissonant strings
Give various response to each varying blast,
To whose frail frame no second motion brings
One mood or modulation like the last.

We rest. -- A dream has power to poison sleep;
We rise. -- One wandering thought pollutes the day;
We feel, conceive or reason, laugh or weep;
Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away:

It is the same!--For, be it joy or sorrow,
The path of its departure still is free:
Man's yesterday may ne'er be like his morrow;
Nought may endure but Mutability.

I wonder if Charles Darwin adopted that last line as his mantra ?
A couple of excellent choices of poems there freckle :thumbup:

[Alf]

Found this at Verse Daily and liked the title....right, back to work for me now.

The confession of an apricot

I love incorrectly.

There is a solemnity in hands,
the way a palm will curve in
accordance to a contour of skin,
the way it will release a story.

This should be the pilgrimage.
The touching of a source.
This is what sanctifies.

This pleading. This mercy.
I want to be a pilgrim to everyone,
close to the inaccuracies, the astringent
dislikes, the wayward peace, the private
words. I want to be close to the telling.
I want to feel everyone whisper.

After the blossoming I hang.
The encyclical that has come
through the branches
instructs us to root, to become
the design encapsulated within.

Flesh helping stone turn tree.

I do not want to hold life
at my extremities, see it prepare
itself for my own perpetuation.
I want to touch and be touched
by things similar in this world.

I want to know a few secular days
of perfection. Late in this one great season
the diffused morning light
hides the horizon of sea. Everything
the color of slate, a soft tablet
to press a philosophy to.

Carl Adamschick

Smashing poem that Hes, thanks for posting it.