It's Christmas time, bring out the beer.
It's Christmas time, let us all cheer.
For peace to all, at this time of year,
Now take a seat by the fire, and down that beer.
R. Shlong. Christmas 2014.
#VoteShlongForFOTY
With days lengthening, here's to looking forward to the delights of Spring...ahhhhhh, yes please...
Lessons in the Orchard
An apple's soft thump on the grass, somewhen
this place. What was it? Beauty of Bath.
What was it? Yellow, vermillion, round, big, splendid;
already escaping the edge of itself,
like the mantra of bees,
like the notes of rosemary, tarragon, thyme.
Poppies scumble their colour onto the air,
now and there, here, then and again.
Alive-alive-oh,
the heart's impulse to cherish; thus,
a woman petalling paint onto a plate –
cornflower blue –
as the years pressed out her own violet ghost;
that slow brush of vanishing cloud on the sky.
And the dragonfly's talent for turquoise.
And the goldfish art of the pond.
And the open windows calling the garden in.
This bowl, life, that we fill and fill.
Carol Ann Duffy
Am Yisrael Chai
Hello all. long time no speak...hope you are keeping well especially Alf and Mossdog :-)
I have just read a really good (and short) book called the Peculiar Life Of a Lonely Postman by Denis Theriault which tells the tale of a Canadian postman who accidentally finds himself immersed in the world of haiku...I'll not spoil it but its well worth a read!
Actually that last post was from me! Forgot to sign the old whippet out! x
A bit of tanka...
The mind for truth
Begins, like a stream, shallow
At first, but then
Adds more and more depth
While gaining greater clarity.
Saigyo
its funny I read this last year then played the game quite good fun I would say what happens next is the best bit but I will not spoil it but well worth playing and reading
Probably a bit long for this thread unless you are into narrative poems but stick with itJohn Betjeman pointed out Hardy had used a "railway meter" to emphasise the journey part of it. In the complete poems of Thomas Hardy it has a date of 182? which is strange as its 20 years before Hardy was born and around 20 years before the Great Western Railway was created anyway ? Good old Wiki says its 1903 which fits much better
A Trampwoman's Tragedy
I
From Wynyard's Gap the livelong day,
The livelong day,
We beat afoot the northward way
We had travelled times before.
The sun-blaze burning on our backs,
Our shoulders sticking to our packs,
By fosseway, fields, and turnpike tracks
We skirted sad Sedge-Moor.
II
Full twenty miles we jaunted on,
We jaunted on, -
My fancy-man, and jeering John,
And Mother Lee, and I.
And, as the sun drew down to west,
We climbed the toilsome Poldon crest,
And saw, of landskip sights the best,
The inn that beamed thereby.
III
For months we had padded side by side,
Ay, side by side
Through the Great Forest, Blackmoor wide,
And where the Parret ran.
We'd faced the gusts on Mendip ridge,
Had crossed the Yeo unhelped by bridge,
Been stung by every Marshwood midge,
I and my fancy-man.
IV
Lone inns we loved, my man and I,
My man and I;
"King's Stag," "Windwhistle" high and dry,
"The Horse" on Hintock Green,
The cosy house at Wynyard's Gap,
"The Hut" renowned on Bredy Knap,
And many another wayside tap
Where folk might sit unseen.
V
Now as we trudged--O deadly day,
O deadly day! -
I teased my fancy-man in play
And wanton idleness.
I walked alongside jeering John,
I laid his hand my waist upon;
I would not bend my glances on
My lover's dark distress.
VI
Thus Poldon top at last we won,
At last we won,
And gained the inn at sink of sun
Far-famed as "Marshal's Elm."
Beneath us figured tor and lea,
From Mendip to the western sea -
I doubt if finer sight there be
Within this royal realm.
VII
Inside the settle all a-row -
All four a-row
We sat, I next to John, to show
That he had wooed and won.
And then he took me on his knee,
And swore it was his turn to be
My favoured mate, and Mother Lee
Passed to my former one.
VIII
Then in a voice I had never heard,
I had never heard,
My only Love to me: "One word,
My lady, if you please!
Whose is the child you are like to bear? -
HIS? After all my months o' care?"
God knows 'twas not! But, O despair!
I nodded--still to tease.
IX
Then up he sprung, and with his knife -
And with his knife
He let out jeering Johnny's life,
Yes; there, at set of sun.
The slant ray through the window nigh
Gilded John's blood and glazing eye,
Ere scarcely Mother Lee and I
Knew that the deed was done.
X
The taverns tell the gloomy tale,
The gloomy tale,
How that at Ivel-chester jail
My Love, my sweetheart swung;
Though stained till now by no misdeed
Save one horse ta'en in time o' need;
(Blue Jimmy stole right many a steed
Ere his last fling he flung.)
XI
Thereaft I walked the world alone,
Alone, alone!
On his death-day I gave my groan
And dropt his dead-born child.
'Twas nigh the jail, beneath a tree,
None tending me; for Mother Lee
Had died at Glaston, leaving me
Unfriended on the wild.
XII
And in the night as I lay weak,
As I lay weak,
The leaves a-falling on my cheek,
The red moon low declined -
The ghost of him I'd die to kiss
Rose up and said: "Ah, tell me this!
Was the child mine, or was it his?
Speak, that I rest may find!"
XIII
O doubt not but I told him then,
I told him then,
That I had kept me from all men
Since we joined lips and swore.
Whereat he smiled, and thinned away
As the wind stirred to call up day . . .
- 'Tis past! And here alone I stray
Haunting the Western Moor.
Thomas Hardy
Feel like we need a bit of Plath, with all that bloody sadness and the atrocious outrage in Paris yesterday.
Poppies In July
Little poppies, little hell flames,
Do you do no harm?
You flicker. I cannot touch you.
I put my hands among the flames. Nothing burns
And it exhausts me to watch you
Flickering like that, wrinkly and clear red, like the skin of a mouth.
A mouth just bloodied.
Little bloody skirts!
There are fumes I cannot touch.
Where are your opiates, your nauseous capsules?
If I could bleed, or sleep! -
If my mouth could marry a hurt like that!
Or your liquors seep to me, in this glass capsule,
Dulling and stilling.
But colorless. Colorless.
Am Yisrael Chai
Two anonymous fragments from The Manyoshu, a compilation made for the imperial court by the master poet Yakamochi.
WAITING
I wait and wait. He does not come.
The wild geese coldly cry.
The night grows late and yet more late
And, from a freezing sky,
The wind blows hard. It turns to ice
The snow upon my sleeves,
And ground-frost hardens to a crust
Of frozen grass and leaves.
On such a night he'll never come.
How could he come? Instead,
Hoping at least I'll dream he came,
I shiver back to bed.
WINTER WAITING
Is he here? Is he back? I asked them:
No one seemed to know.
I ran outside to look for him
As fast as I could go,
Into an empty courtyard
And the sibilance of snow.
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