Today's poet

[Hes]

I love the Betjemen Alf! Especially the lines I highlighted.
Have you heard the cd Banana Blush where his poems are set to music and he is reading them? Its great.
(great new avatar by the way )

The Licorice Fields of Pontefract

In the licorice fields at Pontefract
My love and I did meet
And many a burdened licorice bush
Was blooming round our feet;
Red hair she had and golden skin,
Her sulky lips were shaped for sin,
Her sturdy legs were flannel-slack'd
The strongest legs in Pontefract.

The light and dangling licorice flowers
Gave off the sweetest smells;
From various black Victorian towers
The Sunday evening bells
Came pealing over dales and hills
And tanneries and silent mills
And lowly streets where country stops
And little shuttered corner shops.

She cast her blazing eyes on me
And plucked a licorice leaf;
I was her captive slave and she
My red-haired robber chief.
Oh love! for love I could not speak,
It left me winded, wilting, weak,
And held in brown arms strong and bare
And wound with flaming ropes of hair.

John Betjeman

[Hes]

Really enjoyed this too.

When the English tongue we speak.
Why is break not rhymed with freak?
Will you tell me why it's true
We say sew but likewise few?
And the maker of the verse,
Cannot rhyme his horse with worse?
Beard is not the same as heard
Cord is different from word.
Cow is cow but low is low
Shoe is never rhymed with foe.
Think of hose, dose,and lose

And think of goose and yet with choose
Think of comb, tomb and bomb,
Doll and roll or home and some.
Since pay is rhymed with say
Why not paid with said I pray?
Think of blood, food and good.
Mould is not pronounced like could.
Wherefore done, but gone and lone -
Is there any reason known?
To sum up all, it seems to me
Sound and letters don't agree.

Lord Cromer

[Hes]

Privacy of Rain
by Helen Dunmore

Rain. A plump splash
On tense, bare skin.
Rain. All the May leaves
Run upward, shaking.

Rain. A first touch
At the nape of the neck.
Sharp drops kick the dust, white
Downpours, shudder
Like curtains, rinsing
Tight hairdos to innocence

I love the privacy of rain.
The way it makes things happen
On verandahs, under canopies
Or in the shelter of trees
As a door slams and a girl runs out
Into the black-wet leaves.

By the brick wall an iris
Sucks up the rain
Like intricate food, its tongue
Sherbetty, furred.

Rain. All the May leaves
Run upward, shaking
On the street bud-silt
Covers the windscreens.

[Alf]

Privacy of Rain
by Helen Dunmore

Rain. A plump splash
On tense, bare skin.
Rain. All the May leaves
Run upward, shaking.

Rain. A first touch
At the nape of the neck.
Sharp drops kick the dust, white
Downpours, shudder
Like curtains, rinsing
Tight hairdos to innocence

I love the privacy of rain.
The way it makes things happen
On verandahs, under canopies
Or in the shelter of trees
As a door slams and a girl runs out
Into the black-wet leaves.

By the brick wall an iris
Sucks up the rain
Like intricate food, its tongue
Sherbetty, furred.

Rain. All the May leaves
Run upward, shaking
On the street bud-silt
Covers the windscreens.

I enjoyed that poem Hes and very topical looking out of my window today

[Alf]

I love the Betjemen Alf! Especially the lines I highlighted.
Have you heard the cd Banana Blush where his poems are set to music and he is reading them? Its great.
(great new avatar by the way )

Thanks for the info I will have to check out the CD.

The Brown Hare in full flight picture really gives a sense of speed with the blurring which is what attracted it to me.

The picture was taken by Marlene Thyssen (Wikimedia)

[Mossdog]

The Licorice Fields of Pontefract

In the licorice fields at Pontefract
My love and I did meet
And many a burdened licorice bush
Was blooming round our feet;
Red hair she had and golden skin,
Her sulky lips were shaped for sin,
Her sturdy legs were flannel-slack'd
The strongest legs in Pontefract.

The light and dangling licorice flowers
Gave off the sweetest smells;
From various black Victorian towers
The Sunday evening bells
Came pealing over dales and hills
And tanneries and silent mills
And lowly streets where country stops
And little shuttered corner shops.

She cast her blazing eyes on me
And plucked a licorice leaf;
I was her captive slave and she
My red-haired robber chief.
Oh love! for love I could not speak,
It left me winded, wilting, weak,
And held in brown arms strong and bare
And wound with flaming ropes of hair.

John Betjeman

Eh Alf, thes cheered me up no end lad -

[Hes]

Really like the photo Alf! I have been trying to take pictures of hares but they haven't been that great because my zoom isn't powerful enoughAttachment 5045

[Mossdog]

Privacy of Rain
by Helen Dunmore

Rain. A plump splash
On tense, bare skin.
Rain. All the May leaves
Run upward, shaking.

Rain. A first touch
At the nape of the neck.
Sharp drops kick the dust, white
Downpours, shudder
Like curtains, rinsing
Tight hairdos to innocence

I love the privacy of rain.
The way it makes things happen
On verandahs, under canopies
Or in the shelter of trees
As a door slams and a girl runs out
Into the black-wet leaves.

By the brick wall an iris
Sucks up the rain
Like intricate food, its tongue
Sherbetty, furred.

Rain. All the May leaves
Run upward, shaking
On the street bud-silt
Covers the windscreens.

Now having read that I'm feeling quite a whimp. Bottled out (postponed until tomorrow) an anticlockwise trot around the Kirby Stephen Yomp route due to the wet forecast today, it certainly didn't 'make things happen' for me

[Alf]

Ending

The love we thought would never stop
now cools like a congealing chop.
The kisses that were hot as curry
are bird pecks taken in a hurry.
The hands that held electric charges
now lie inert as four moored barges.
The feet that ran to meet a date
are running slow and running late.
The eyes that shone and seldom shut
are victims of a power cut.
The parts that then transmitted joy
are now reserved and cold and coy.
Romance, expected once to stay,
has left a note saying GONE AWAY.

Gavin Ewart

[Mountain Goatess]

I Sit and Think


I sit beside the fire and think
of all that I have seen,
of meadow-flowers and butterflies
in summers that have been;

Of yellow leaves and gossamer
in autumns that there were,
with morning mist and silver sun
and wind upon my hair.

I sit beside the fire and think
of how the world will be
when winter comes without a spring
that I shall never see.

For still there are so many things
that I have never seen:
in every wood in every spring
there is a different green.

I sit beside the fire and think
of people long ago,
and people who will see a world
that I shall never know.

But all the while I sit and think
of times there were before,
I listen for returning feet
and voices at the door.


John Ronald Reuel Tolkien