Yes, that's weird!Originally Posted by Hes
I've 'got' 4 baby swallows in my stone shed - they're BRILLIANT and make me smile constantly with their puffed out chests, can-do attitude and tendency every evening to line up shoulder to shoulder on the rafters.
Am Yisrael Chai
There's no stoic like an old stoic
The Old Stoic
Riches I hold in light esteem,
And Love I laugh to scorn;
And lust of fame was but a dream,
That vanished with the morn:
And if I pray, the only prayer
That moves my lips for me
Is, "Leave the heart that now I bear,
And give me liberty!"
Yes, as my swift days near their goal:
'Tis all that I implore;
In life and death a chainless soul,
With courage to endure.
Emily Brontë
LET IT BE HUSHED
by David Raikes (d.21.4.1945)
Let it be hushed; let the deep ocean close
Upon these dead. Others may laud their parts,
Raise monuments of marble in their names.
But we who flew with them and laughed with them,
We other crews who, living side by side,
In outward contacts slowly came to know
Their inmost parts, would rather leave untouched
The wound we healed, the love we buried there.
These men knew moments you have never known,
Nor ever will; we knew those moments too,
And talked of them in whispers late at night;
Such confidence was born of danger shared.
We shared their targets, too; but we came back.
Lightly we talked of it. We packed their kit,
Divided up such common useful things
As cigarettes and chocolate, rations stored
Against a rainy day that never came.
‘And they cast lots among them!’ Someone said,
‘It was a pity that he wore his watch;
It was a good one, twenty pounds he said
He paid for it in Egypt. Now, let’s see,
Who’s on tonight. Ah, Taffy – you’ve a good one!
You’d better leave it with me.’ And we laughed.
Cold were we? Cold at heart. You get that way.
Sometimes we knew what happened; how they crashed.
It was not always on the other side.
One pranged upon the runway, dipped a wing,
The navigator bought it, and the gunner.
The other two got out, a little shaken.
Bob crashed when doing an air test, just low flying
– At least they think it was, they couldn’t say.
The plane was burning fiercely when they found it;
One man thrown clear, still living, but he died
On way to hospital. The loss was ours, –
Because I shared an aeroplane with Bob.
We had to get another D for dog.
And some did not come back. We never knew
Whether they lived – at first just overdue,
Till minutes changed to hours, and still no news.
One went to bed; but roused by later crews,
Asked ‘Were they back yet?’ and being answered ‘No’,
Went back to sleep.
One’s waking eyes sought out the empty beds,
And ‘Damn’, you said, ‘another kit to pack’;
I never liked that part, you never knew
What privacies your sorting might lay bare.
I always tried to leave my kit arranged
In decent tidiness. You never knew.
But that is past. The healing river flows
And washes clean the wound with passing years.
We grieve not now. There was a time for tears,
When Death stood by us, and we dared not weep.
Let the seas close above them, and the dissolving deep.
A bit of WH Auden. Hope everyone has a good weekend (I sound like a radio DJ signing off).
Have a Good Time
‘We have brought you,’ they said, ‘a map of the country;
Here is the line that runs to the vats,
This patch of green on the left is the wood,
We’ve pencilled an arrow to point out the bay.
No thank you, no tea; why look at the clock.
Keep it? Of course. It goes with our love.
We shall watch your future and send our love.
We lived for years, you know, in the country.
Remember at week-ends to wind up the clock.
We’ve wired to our manager at the vats.
The tides are perfectly safe in the bay,
But whatever you do don’t go to the wood.
There’s a flying trickster in that wood,
And we shan’t be there to help with our love.
Keep fit by bathing in the bay,
You’ll never catch fever then in the country.
You’re sure of a settled job at the vats
If you keep their hours and live by the clock.’
He arrived at last; it was time by the clock.
He crossed himself as he passed the wood;
Black against evening sky the vats
Brought tears to his eyes as he thought of their love;
Looking out over the darkening country,
He saw the pier in the little bay.
At the week-ends the divers in the bay
Distracted his eyes from the bandstand clock;
When down with fever and in the country
A skein of swans above the wood
Caused him no terror; he came to love
The moss that grew on the derelict vats.
And he has met sketching at the vats
Guests from the new hotel by the bay;
Now, curious, following his love,
His pulses differing from the clock,
Finds consummation in the wood
And sees for the first time the country.
Sees water in the wood and trees by the bay,
Hears a clock striking near the vats:
‘This is your country and the hour of love.’
..and a nice bit of Auden too :thumbup:
Today is the anniversary of Hopkins's birth. So I am having a beer or two
It was a hard thing to undo this knot
It was a hard thing to undo this knot.
The rainbow shines but only in the thought
Of him that looks. Yet not in that alone,
For who makes rainbows by invention?
And many standing round a waterfall
See one bow each, yet not the same to all,
But each a hand's breadth further than the next.
The sun on falling waters writes the text
Which yet is in the eye or in the thought.
It was a hard thing to undo this knot.
Gerard Manley Hopkins
Its time I distanced myself from the bollock scratching thread
The Lane
Some day, I think, there will be people enough
In Froxfield to pick all the blackberries
Out of the hedges of Green Lane, the straight
Broad lane where now September hides herself
In bracken and blackberry, harebell and dwarf gorse.
To-day, where yesterday a hundred sheep
Were nibbling, halcyon bells shake to the sway
Of waters that no vessel ever sailed ...
It is a kind of spring: the chaffinch tries
His song. For heat it is like summer too.
This might be winter's quiet. While the glint
Of hollies dark in the swollen hedges lasts—
One mile—and those bells ring, little I know
Or heed if time be still the same, until
The lane ends and once more all is the same.
Edward Thomas
Haiku about the futility of Haikus
I don't like Haikus
I think they are futile things
They are too restrict........
:thumbup:
Nice Hopkins and Thomas posts Alf! I haven't been on here for ages but am still reading poetry when I get a chance. Not writing much though, just the occasional haiku.
I like this one from Kathleen Jamie:
Halfling
Bird on the cliff-top
the angle of your back
a master-stroke:
why should kittiwakes
plunge at your head
with white shrills?
You're only just falling
from your parents' care,
They've dared slope off
together, to quarter
the island's only glen
leaving you sunlit, burnished,
glaring out to sea,
like one bewildered.
Some day soon you'll
topple to the winds
and be gone, a gangrel,
obliged to wander
island to mountain,
taking your chances -
till you moult at last
to an adult's mantle
and settle some scant
estate of your own. Already
the gulls shriek Eagle!
Eagle! - they know
more than you
what you'll become.
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