Today's poet

[Mossdog]

Thanks for posting this Mossdog, it is interesting. I like the idea that the copier has a mind and soul of its own. Well there has to be some reason copiers behave so badly!

I loved your Raymond Carver poem too. "It's not so simple. It is that simple."

Glad you enjoyed/found interesting Stevie - there's been some great poems posted on here recently, by Alf, Hes, Freckle, yourself and others, I really appreciate the eclectic mix too.

[freckle]

SIMPLE

A break in the clouds. The blue
outline of the mountains.
Dark yellow of the fields.
Black river. What am I doing here,
lonely and filled with remorse?

I go on casually eating from the bowl
of raspberries. If I were dead,
I remind myself, I wouldn’t
be eating them. It’s not so simple.
It is that simple.

Raymond Carver

i liked this, good to remember that things could be worse!

[freckle]

Some beautiful choices on the thread recently from one and all and I agree with Mossy that it is good to have such an eclectic mix

Here is a poet I hadn't really across before...

Request to a Year
by Judith Wright

If the year is meditating a suitable gift,
I should like it to be the attitude
of my great- great- grandmother,
legendary devotee of the arts,

who having eight children
and little opportunity for painting pictures,
sat one day on a high rock
beside a river in Switzerland

and from a difficult distance viewed
her second son, balanced on a small ice flow,drift down the current toward a waterfall
that struck rock bottom eighty feet below,

while her second daughter, impeded,
no doubt, by the petticoats of the day,
stretched out a last-hope alpenstock
(which luckily later caught him on his way).

Nothing, it was evident, could be done;
And with the artist's isolating eye
My great-great-grandmother hastily sketched the scene.
The sketch survives to prove the story by.

Year, if you have no Mother's day present planned,
Reach back and bring me the firmness of her hand.

[freckle]

Woman to child
Judith Wright

You who were darkness warmed my flesh
where out of darkness rose the seed.
Then all a world I made in me;
all the world you hear and see
hung upon my dreaming blood.

There moved the multitudinous stars,
and coloured birds and fishes moved.
There swam the sliding continents.
All time lay rolled in me, and sense,
and love that knew not its beloved.

O node and focus of the world;
I hold you deep within that well
you shall escape and not escape-
that mirrors still your sleeping shape;
that nurtures still your crescent cell.

I wither and you break from me;
yet though you dance in living light
I am the earth, I am the root,
I am the stem that fed the fruit,
the link that joins you to the night.

[Alf]

Woman to child
Judith Wright

You who were darkness warmed my flesh
where out of darkness rose the seed.
Then all a world I made in me;
all the world you hear and see
hung upon my dreaming blood.

There moved the multitudinous stars,
and coloured birds and fishes moved.
There swam the sliding continents.
All time lay rolled in me, and sense,
and love that knew not its beloved.

O node and focus of the world;
I hold you deep within that well
you shall escape and not escape-
that mirrors still your sleeping shape;
that nurtures still your crescent cell.

I wither and you break from me;
yet though you dance in living light
I am the earth, I am the root,
I am the stem that fed the fruit,
the link that joins you to the night.

That's a very powerful image captured in that last verse freckle. The child separating from the mother's body but always being linked to it. The true meaning of life?

[Alf]

A bit of Byron. Reading Childe Harold's Pilgrimage is a bit like painting the Forth Bridge, when you finally get to the end you are ready to start again.


What deep wounds ever clos'd without a scar?
The heart's bleed longest, and but heal to wear
That which disfigures it; and they who war
With their own hopes, and have been vanquish'd, bear
Silence, but not submission: in his lair
Fix'd Passion holds his breath, until the hour
Which shall atone for years; none need despair:
It came--it cometh--and will come--the power
To punish or forgive--in one we shall be slower.

Lord Byron

[freckle]

A bit of Byron. Reading Childe Harold's Pilgrimage is a bit like painting the Forth Bridge, when you finally get to the end you are ready to start again.


What deep wounds ever clos'd without a scar?
The heart's bleed longest, and but heal to wear
That which disfigures it; and they who war
With their own hopes, and have been vanquish'd, bear
Silence, but not submission: in his lair
Fix'd Passion holds his breath, until the hour
Which shall atone for years; none need despair:
It came--it cometh--and will come--the power
To punish or forgive--in one we shall be slower.

Lord Byron

Alf you are some reader! I am imagine your home is a very eloquent place to be! Liked the last line of this verse something enigmatic and slightly out of reach...

[Alf]

Alf you are some reader! I am imagine your home is a very eloquent place to be! Liked the last line of this verse something enigmatic and slightly out of reach...

I saw your post on Simonside freckle so have a good run tomorrow (and Hes and anyone else reading this and doing the race). I am staying closer to home for my run.

A sonnet from "the guvnor" to finish off with.
Night all



"I cry your mercy-pity-love! -aye, love!"


I cry your mercy—pity—love!—aye, love!
Merciful love that tantalizes not,
One-thoughted, never-wandering, guileless love,
Unmasked, and being seen—without a blot!
O! let me have thee whole,—all—all—be mine!
That shape, that fairness, that sweet minor zest
Of love, your kiss,—those hands, those eyes divine,
That warm, white, lucent, million-pleasured breast,
Yourself—your soul—in pity give me all,
Withhold no atom’s atom or I die
Or living on perhaps, your wretched thrall,
Forget, in the mist of idle misery,
Life’s purposes,—the palate of my mind
Losing its gust, and my ambition blind!

John Keats

[freckle]

I saw your post on Simonside freckle so have a good run tomorrow (and Hes and anyone else reading this and doing the race). I am staying closer to home for my run.

A sonnet from "the guvnor" to finish off with.
Night all



"I cry your mercy-pity-love! -aye, love!"


I cry your mercy—pity—love!—aye, love!
Merciful love that tantalizes not,
One-thoughted, never-wandering, guileless love,
Unmasked, and being seen—without a blot!
O! let me have thee whole,—all—all—be mine!
That shape, that fairness, that sweet minor zest
Of love, your kiss,—those hands, those eyes divine,
That warm, white, lucent, million-pleasured breast,
Yourself—your soul—in pity give me all,
Withhold no atom’s atom or I die
Or living on perhaps, your wretched thrall,
Forget, in the mist of idle misery,
Life’s purposes,—the palate of my mind
Losing its gust, and my ambition blind!

John Keats

love it alf! mr keats certainly was a passionate and wise gentleman if this is anything to go by!

here is one by blake...


The Sick Rose
by: William Blake (1757-1827)

ROSE, thou art sick!
The invisible worm,
That flies in the night,
In the howling storm,
Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy;
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.



PS Simonside was lush perhaps we will see you next time? hope your run today was nice

[Alf]

I didn't get out today in the end freckle :thunbdown: Did they have the Christmas lights/music up in the wood at Simonside ?



The Cheese Room

Here it is, on the back of the menu.
How, instead of a pudding, an extra fiver
will buy you the choice of the Cheese Room.
It shines in the corner, a treasury,
the moony glow of the cheeses walled round
with glass. As soon as she sees it, she's lost.
Before anyone spots her, she strips,
soaks a sari in buttermilk, wraps herself up
and goes in. She shivers to think of the air
full of spores, the shag-pile that fluffs
on things that slip your mind for a moment –
green islands on milk, jam lidded with wool.
A couple who've paid to pick slices of Reblochon,
Vignotte, Manchego, tap on the glass;
they can't believe how she stands,
drenched in whey, her hair wet to strings.
How she touches the rinds – dusted
with charcoal, or soft, that hidden-flesh bloom
you get on a Brie. There's the tightness
of smoke in some of the cheese, the fissured
and granular rock of a Parmesan split
into wheels. Then the diners lose interest,
return to their claret. Despite how oddly
she's dressed – the flimsy sarong,
the milky place where the muslin pulls into
the crack of her arse – perhaps they assume
she's some kind of expert assessing
the cheese? But she won't even taste,
pulls the cheesecloth over her face
and curls up on the floor. She's happy
to wait, passive like milk, for the birth,
for the journey from death into food.

Judy Brown