Today's poet

[Alf]

Gone, Gone Again

Gone, gone again,
May, June, July,
And August gone,
Again gone by,

Not memorable
Save that I saw them go,
As past the empty quays
The rivers flow.

And now again,
In the harvest rain,
The Blenheim oranges
Fall grubby from the trees

As when I was young
And when the lost one was here
And when the war began
To turn young men to dung.

Look at the old house,
Outmoded, dignified,
Dark and untenanted,
With grass growing instead

Of the footsteps of life,
The friendliness, the strife;
In its beds have lain
Youth. love, age, and pain:

I am something like that;
Only I am not dead,
Still breathing and interested
In the house that is not dark:--

I am something like that:
Not one pane to reflect the sun,
For the schoolboys to throw at--
They have broken every one.

Edward Thomas

[Alf]

At the British War Cemetery, Bayeux

I walked where in their talking graves
And shirts of earth five thousand lay,
When history with ten feasts of fire
Had eaten the red air away.

‘I am Christ’s boy,’ I cried, ‘I bear
In iron hands the bread, the fishes,
I hang with honey and with rose
This tidy wreck of all your wishes.

‘On your geometry of sleep
The chestnut and the fir-tree fly,
And lavender and marguerite
Forge with their flowers an English sky.

‘Turn now towards the belling town
Your jigsaws of impossible bone,
And rising read your rank of snow
Accurate as death upon the stone.’

About your easy heads my prayers
I said with syllables of clay.
‘What gift,’ I asked, ‘shall I bring now
Before I weep and walk away?’

Take, they replied, the oak and laurel,
Take our fortune of tears and live
Like a spendthrift lover. All we ask
Is the one gift you cannot give.

Charles Causely

[Hes]

Did you hear the Afternoon Drama on radio 4 today (Wednesday) Alf? It featured some good ww1 poetry.

[Hes]

I really love getting things through the post but in these days of texts and emails, it doesn't happen that often so I feel really lucky to have got two great parcels in the last week. First was a book that an artist friend in Sweden found in a charity shop and is on elk and today's was from an old friend I rarely see but who sends me postcards and packages from the arctic and antarctic. This time the parcel came from Scotland and was Kathleen Jamie's latest poetry collection. I've just read a few and love this:

Fragment 1

Roe deer,
breaking from a thicket

bounding over briars
between darkening trees

you don't even glance
at the cause of your doubt

so how can you tell
what form I take?

What form I take
I scarcely know myself

adrift in a wood
in wintertime at dusk

always a deer
breaking from a thicket

for a while now
this is how its been.

Kathleen Jamie

[Alf]

Did you hear the Afternoon Drama on radio 4 today (Wednesday) Alf? It featured some good ww1 poetry.

I missed it Hes but thanks for the heads up, I will look on Iplayer.

[Alf]

I am reading 'Regeneration' by Pat Barker at the moment which is a novel (the first of 3 about WW1) but is based on real life experiences and set in a real Scottish hospital during the 1st World War. Wilfrid Owen meets a fellow soldier and poet Siegfried Sassoon there in real life and they are included in the novel though as fictional characters. It was a hospital for officers using up to date psychiatric methods to help the officers deal with their war related injuries both mental and physical.
God knows what the poor old enlisted men got for treatment though?

Disabled

He sat in a wheeled chair, waiting for dark,
And shivered in his ghastly suit of grey,
Legless, sewn short at elbow. Through the park
Voices of boys rang saddening like a hymn,
Voices of play and pleasure after day,
Till gathering sleep had mothered them from him.

About this time Town used to swing so gay
When glow-lamps budded in the light-blue trees
And girls glanced lovelier as the air grew dim,
— In the old times, before he threw away his knees.
Now he will never feel again how slim
Girls' waists are, or how warm their subtle hands,
All of them touch him like some queer disease.

There was an artist silly for his face,
For it was younger than his youth, last year.
Now he is old; his back will never brace;
He's lost his colour very far from here,
Poured it down shell-holes till the veins ran dry,
And half his lifetime lapsed in the hot race,
And leap of purple spurted from his thigh.
One time he liked a bloodsmear down his leg,
After the matches carried shoulder-high.
It was after football, when he'd drunk a peg,
He thought he'd better join. He wonders why . . .
Someone had said he'd look a god in kilts.

That's why; and maybe, too, to please his Meg,
Aye, that was it, to please the giddy jilts,
He asked to join. He didn't have to beg;
Smiling they wrote his lie; aged nineteen years.
Germans he scarcely thought of; and no fears
Of Fear came yet. He thought of jewelled hilts
For daggers in plaid socks; of smart salutes;
And care of arms; and leave; and pay arrears;
Esprit de corps; and hints for young recruits.
And soon, he was drafted out with drums and cheers.

Some cheered him home, but not as crowds cheer Goal.
Only a solemn man who brought him fruits
Thanked him; and then inquired about his soul.
Now, he will spend a few sick years in Institutes,
And do what things the rules consider wise,
And take whatever pity they may dole.
To-night he noticed how the women's eyes
Passed from him to the strong men that were whole.
How cold and late it is! Why don't they come
And put him into bed? Why don't they come?

Wilfrid Owen

[Mossdog]

Alone

I’ve listened: and all the sounds I heard
Were music,—wind, and stream, and bird.
With youth who sang from hill to hill
I’ve listened: my heart is hungry still.

I’ve looked: the morning world was green;
Bright roofs and towers of town I’ve seen;
And stars, wheeling through wingless night.
I’ve looked: and my soul yet longs for light.

I’ve thought: but in my sense survives
Only the impulse of those lives
That were my making. Hear me say
‘I’ve thought!’—and darkness hides my day.

Siegfried Sassoon

[Mossdog]

I really love getting things through the post but in these days of texts and emails, it doesn't happen that often so I feel really lucky to have got two great parcels in the last week. First was a book that an artist friend in Sweden found in a charity shop and is on elk and today's was from an old friend I rarely see but who sends me postcards and packages from the arctic and antarctic. This time the parcel came from Scotland and was Kathleen Jamie's latest poetry collection. I've just read a few and love this:

Fragment 1

Roe deer,
breaking from a thicket

bounding over briars
between darkening trees

you don't even glance
at the cause of your doubt

so how can you tell
what form I take?

What form I take
I scarcely know myself

adrift in a wood
in wintertime at dusk

always a deer
breaking from a thicket

for a while now
this is how its been.

Kathleen Jamie

Oh yes! More please.

That reminds me...Last winter, while running off Loadpot Hill above Ullswater, along the long grassy ridge, on the way back to Askham, I had the eastern Lake fells to myself, or so it seemed. Until, from over the ridge to my left, a herd of a dozen red deer or so (part of the Dalemain Herd I found out later), came charging up and over, presumedly spooked by something or other down by the lakeside, into a state of hysteria. For that briefest of moments, I found myself enveloped and running amongst these magnificent animals, before they disappeared off to my right, Carhullan way. Such rare moments in life as simply priceless and one of the many precious treasures of 'wild' fell running.

[freckle]

Dear all....i am really enjoying all of the posts. I have a laptop on loan but strangely it won't let me reply to this thread !?.....so i am typing this on my phone !!!! alfd i absolutely love pat barkers regeneration and associated poetry. Hes i enjoyed your choice and mossy yours too. Looking gutted to obtaining a new lap top

[freckle]

Looking forward !!!! Predictive text !!!!