Today's poet

[Hes]

It's good to see that you are keeping the thread alive Alf, Mossy and Freckle! I'm ashamed by my absence on here but its been a busy few months and poetry seems to have taken a back seat. Having said that, I wrote a few haiku in Sweden. Here's a poem that a friend sent me from Iceland:

Answer,
by Ingibjorg Haraldsdottir

On the far side of the mountain
the silence is more tangible

There are other mountains
and other birds.

The shadows there are longer
and the stones softer.

It's up to you
whether you believe me.

[Hes]

The Avenue

Who has not seen their lover
Walking at ease,
Walking like any other,
A pavement under trees,
No singular, apart,
But footed, featured, dressed,
Approaching like the rest
In the same dapple of the summer caught;
Who has not suddenly thought,
With swift surprise:
There walks in cool disguise,
There comes, my heart.

Frances Cornford

[Alf]

Blackberry-Picking

Late August, given heavy rain and sun
For a full week, the blackberries would ripen.
At first, just one, a glossy purple clot
Among others, red, green, hard as a knot.
You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet
Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it
Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for
Picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger
Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam-pots
Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots.
Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drills
We trekked and picked until the cans were full
Until the tinkling bottom had been covered
With green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned
Like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered
With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard's.
We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre.
But when the bath was filled we found a fur,
A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache.
The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush
The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour.
I always felt like crying. It wasn't fair
That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot.
Each year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would not.

Seamus Heaney

[Alf]

Another Heaney poem, both this one and the previous one can be read as they are or as metaphors for the loss of innocence.

There is no poetry in the Jimmy Savilles and Lance Armstrongs of this world.



Death of a naturalist

All year the flax-dam festered in the heart
Of the townland; green and heavy headed
Flax had rotted there, weighted down by huge sods.
Daily it sweltered in the punishing sun.
Bubbles gargled delicately, bluebottles
Wove a strong gauze of sound around the smell.
There were dragon-flies, spotted butterflies,
But best of all was the warm thick slobber
Of frogspawn that grew like clotted water
In the shade of the banks. Here, every spring
I would fill jampotfuls of the jellied
Specks to range on window-sills at home,
On shelves at school, and wait and watch until
The fattening dots burst into nimble-
Swimming tadpoles. Miss Walls would tell us how
The daddy frog was called a bullfrog
And how he croaked and how the mammy frog
Laid hundreds of little eggs and this was
Frogspawn. You could tell the weather by frogs too
For they were yellow in the sun and brown
In rain.
Then one hot day when fields were rank
With cowdung in the grass the angry frogs
Invaded the flax-dam; I ducked through hedges
To a coarse croaking that I had not heard
Before. The air was thick with a bass chorus.
Right down the dam gross-bellied frogs were cocked
On sods; their loose necks pulsed like sails. Some hopped:
The slap and plop were obscene threats. Some sat
Poised like mud grenades, their blunt heads farting.
I sickened, turned, and ran. The great slime kings
Were gathered there for vengeance and I knew
That if I dipped my hand the spawn would clutch it.

Seamus Heaney

"Of frogspawn that grew like clotted water"

[freckle]

The Avenue

Who has not seen their lover
Walking at ease,
Walking like any other,
A pavement under trees,
No singular, apart,
But footed, featured, dressed,
Approaching like the rest
In the same dapple of the summer caught;
Who has not suddenly thought,
With swift surprise:
There walks in cool disguise,
There comes, my heart.

Frances Cornford

This is just lovely hes...thanks to alf and mossy too for keeping the thread going with great contributions...i am typing this on my i phone as laptop died on me hopefully it will be restored soon ! In the meantime i enjoy reading all of your posts x

[Hes]

Hi Freckle, hope that your laptop is restored soon. I've been enjoying the posts too. I'm a bit frazzled at the moment and am trying to read a poem before bed each night for relaxation, I like this one:

Body Language

He loved her so he wrote
a long, passionate poem, melting
his heart’s wax on the page all night,
burning the wick of his words at all ends
to attract her.
She loved him and her little cries
opened and closed like night anemones,
scenting the empty air
with the witching words of her mouth
to call him to her.
Neither came to the other.
All night long he held himself spell-
bound in the small circle of his own light
until he was burnt out,
and she, mesmerized by her own charms,
entered the flower of herself
and drew in her arms.

Sylvia Kantaris

[Hes]

I like this but need to think about its meaning...

Winter Solstice

Slender moon a kind of scar or cicatrix
On the twilight sky
Harm's way

I remember there were stars on your wrist
One year ago
I counted them

A cavalcade

The world has a body and I have none
I go out walking and leave no mark
Out at twilight with the old moon
I leave no mark

A woman cannot know
The moment he is born
A man begins to disappear

Donald Revell

[Alf]

Autumn

They brought me a quilled, yellow dahlia,
Opulent, flaunting.
Round gold
Flung out of a pale green stalk.
Round, ripe gold
Of maturity,
Meticulously frilled and flaming,
A fire-ball of proclamation:
Fecundity decked in staring yellow
For all the world to see.
They brought a quilled, yellow dahlia,
To me who am barren
Shall I send it to you,
You who have taken with you
All I once possessed?

Amy Lowell

[Mossdog]

Hi Freckle, hope that your laptop is restored soon. I've been enjoying the posts too. I'm a bit frazzled at the moment and am trying to read a poem before bed each night for relaxation, I like this one:

Body Language

He loved her so he wrote
a long, passionate poem, melting
his heart’s wax on the page all night,
burning the wick of his words at all ends
to attract her.
She loved him and her little cries
opened and closed like night anemones,
scenting the empty air
with the witching words of her mouth
to call him to her.
Neither came to the other.
All night long he held himself spell-
bound in the small circle of his own light
until he was burnt out,
and she, mesmerized by her own charms,
entered the flower of herself
and drew in her arms.

Sylvia Kantaris

Sounds HOT!!!! (cue schoolboy snigger....sorry!) :wink:

[Mossdog]

My Love

It’s not the lover that we love, but love
itself, love as in nothing, as in O;
love is the lover’s coin, a coin of no country,
hence: the ring; hence: the moon—
no wonder that empty circle so often figures
in our intimate dark, our skin-trade,
that commerce so furious we often think
love’s something we share; but we’re always wrong.

When our lover mercifully departs
and lets us get back to the business of love again,
either we’ll slip it inside us like the host
or we’ll beat its gibbous drum that the whole world
might know who has it. Which was always more my style:

O the moon’s a bodhran, a skin gong
torn from the hide of Capricorn,
and many’s the time I’d lift it from its high peg,
grip it to my side, tight as a gun,
and whip the life out of it, just for the joy
of that huge heart under my ribs again.
A thousand blows I showered like meteors
down on that sweet-spot over Mare Imbrium
where I could make it sing its name, over and over.
While I have the moon, I cried, no ship will sink,
or woman bleed, or man lose his mind—
but truth told, I was terrible:
the idiot at the session spoiling it,
as they say, for everyone.
O kings petitioned me to pack it in.
The last time, I peeled off my shirt
and found a coffee bruise that ran from hip to wrist.
Two years passed before a soul could touch me.

Even in its lowest coin, it kills us to keep love,
kills us to give it away. All of which
brings us to Camille Flammarion,
signing the flyleaf of his Terres du Ciel
for a girl down from the sanatorium,
and his remark—the one he couldn’t help but make—
on the gorgeous candid pallor of her shoulders;
then two years later, unwrapping the same book
reinscribed in her clear hand, with my love,
and bound in her own lunar vellum.

Don Paterson