Poetry

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Reading Gamba's excellent post about the Music and poetry which started off his New Year, it occurred to me that we haven't had a Poetry thread for some time. If Forumistas are willing, I'd like to start a place where we can post (and discuss where the mood takes us) favourite poems.

As Gamba has inspired this, mentioning Eliot's Four Quartets, I thought we might start with the wonderful, poignantly optimistic conclusion to Little Gidding, with New Year Greetings to everyone:

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, remembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always--
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Gamba also mentioned Dylan Thomas' Poem in October:

It was my thirtieth year to heaven
Woke to my hearing from harbour and neighbour wood
And the mussel pooled and the heron
Priested shore
The morning beckon
With water praying and call of seagull and rook
And the knock of sailing boats on the net webbed wall
Myself to set foot
That second
In the still sleeping town and set forth.


My birthday began with the water-
Birds and the birds of the winged trees flying my name
Above the farms and the white horses
And I rose
In rainy autumn
And walked abroad in a shower of all my days.

High tide and the heron dived when I took the road
Over the border
And the gates
Of the town closed as the town awoke.


A springful of larks in a rolling
Cloud and the roadside bushes brimming with whistling
Blackbirds and the sun of October
Summery
On the hill’s shoulder,
Here were fond climates and sweet singers suddenly
Come in the morning where I wandered and listened
To the rain wringing
Wind blow cold
In the wood faraway under me.


Pale rain over the dwindling harbour
And over the sea wet church the size of a snail
With its horns through mist and the castle
Brown as owls
But all the gardens
Of spring and summer were blooming in the tall tales
Beyond the border and under the lark full cloud.

There could I marvel
My birthday
Away but the weather turned around.


It turned away from the blithe country
And down the other air and the blue altered sky
Streamed again a wonder of summer
With apples
Pears and red currants
And I saw in the turning so clearly a child’s
Forgotten mornings when he walked with his mother
Through the parables
Of sun light
And the legends of the green chapels
And the twice told fields of infancy
That his tears burned my cheeks and his heart moved in mine.

These were the woods the river and sea
Where a boy
In the listening
Summertime of the dead whispered the truth of his joy
To the trees and the stones and the fish in the tide.
And the mystery
Sang alive
Still in the water and singingbirds.


And there could I marvel my birthday
Away but the weather turned around. And the true
Joy of the long dead child sang burning
In the sun.

It was my thirtieth
Year to heaven stood there then in the summer noon
Though the town below lay leaved with October blood.

O may my heart’s truth
Still be sung
On this high hill in a year’s turning.

... words which become Music when read in the beguiling tones of the poet himself:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XMaJanGuWI

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

One of the last poems by our late, and much missed fellow Forumista, Simon Howard; After Trackl (Loosely):

a creature calls

to another

creature. furniture creaks

nothing a

sleeps / a nowhere

in particular

ditch shivers

wraps itself

around about

darknesses

for warmth

of cold

some creature (re)calls

otherwise / other funiture creaks

neverything sleeps

neverwise

... and another by his nom-de-web, John Skelton:


Though ye suppose all jeperdys ar paste,
And all is done that ye lokyd for before,
Ware yet, I rede you, of Fortunes dowble cast,
For one fals poynt she is wont to kepe in store,
And vnder the fell oft festered is the sore:
That when ye thynke all daunger for to pas,
Ware of the lesard lyeth lurkyng in the gras.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Some Shakespeare overdue, meopines. I've always liked the idea of Shakespeare (of all people) being envious of anybody else's "Art" (even if he doesn't mean what we do by the term). SONNET #29:

When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;

Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
(Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven’s gate;
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

[Anna]

I am bent with wrath,
a plague upon all the women of this parish!
for I've never had (cruel, oppressive longing)
a single one of them,
neither a virgin (a pleasant desire)
nor a little girl nor hag nor wife.
What hindrance, what wickedness,
what failing prevents them from wanting me?
What harm could it do to a fine–browed maiden
to have me in a dark, dense wood?
It would not be shameful for her
to see me in a bed of leaves.
There was never a time when I did not love —
never was any charm so persistent —
even more than men of Garwy's ilk,
one or two in a single day,
and yet I've come no closer to winning one of these
than if she'd been my foe.
There was never a Sunday in Llanbadarn church
(and others will condemn it)
that my face was not turned towards the splendid girl
and my nape towards the resplendent, holy Lord.

And after I'd been staring long
over my feathers across my fellow parishioners,
the sweet radiant girl would hiss
to her campanion, so wise, so fair:
'He has an adulterous look —
his eyes are adept at disguising his wickedness —
that pallid lad with the face of a coquette
and his sister's hair upon his head.'
'Is that what he has in mind?'

says the other girl by her side,
'While the world endures he'll get no response,
to hell with him, the imbecile!'
I was stunned by the bright girl's curse,
meagre payment for my stupefied love.
I might have to renounce
this way of life, terrifying dreams.
Indeed, I'd better become
a hermit, a calling fit for scoundrels.
Through constant staring (a sure lesson)
over my shoulder (a pitiful sight),

it has befallen me, who loves the power of verse,
to become wry–necked without a mate.

Daffyd ap Gwilym

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

- brilliant, Anna! I love the attitude of "if you're going to be a grumpy git, you might as well do it with poetic vigour".

Do you know Gwerful Mechain (1462 - 1500)?

Gweles eich lodes lwydwen - eiddilaidd,
Hi ddylai gael amgen;
Hi yn ei gwres, gynheswen;
Chwithau 'nhad aethoch yn hen.

... which, I'm reliably (I hope) informed in Saesnig goes:

I saw your grey-white lass - she's feeble
But deserves a bit of class;
Her warm youth attracts your lust so bold;
But face it, Daddy - you're just too old!

[Anna]

:Do you know Gwerful Mechain (1462 - 1500)?

Yes, I do - but this is a family messageboard!!

[EdgeleyRob]

Spike Milligan.

Today I saw a little worm
wriggling on its belly,
perhaps he’d like to come inside
and see what’s on the telly.

My 2 year old grandson absolutely loves this poem.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Yes, I do - but this is a family messageboard!!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

My 2 year old grandson absolutely loves this poem.

Silly Verse for Kids and A Book of Milliganimals are brilliant collections, Rob. Small Dreams of a Scorpion ... isn't!

[amateur51]

Yes, I do - but this is a family messageboard!!

Not that bad, surely?

[johncorrigan]

Through many years
At great expense,
Journeying through many countries
I went to see high mountains,
I went to see oceans.
Only I had not seen
At my very doorstep,
The dew drop glistening
On the ear of the corn.

Rabindranath Tagore
(translated from the Bengali by Aurobindo Bose)

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Many thanks, john

Interesting how the sentiments here are simultaneously so similar and so different from those in the first four lines of the Eliot (fellow Nobel Laureate) in the OP.

[Tevot]

HAVE you forgotten yet?...
For the world's events have rumbled on since those gagged days,
Like traffic checked while at the crossing of city-ways:
And the haunted gap in your mind has filled with thoughts that flow
Like clouds in the lit heaven of life; and you're a man reprieved to go,
Taking your peaceful share of Time, with joy to spare.
But the past is just the same--and War's a bloody game...
Have you forgotten yet?...
Look down, and swear by the slain of the War that you'll never forget.

Do you remember the dark months you held the sector at Mametz--
The nights you watched and wired and dug and piled sandbags on parapets?
Do you remember the rats; and the stench
Of corpses rotting in front of the front-line trench--
And dawn coming, dirty-white, and chill with a hopeless rain?
Do you ever stop and ask, 'Is it all going to happen again?'

Do you remember that hour of din before the attack--
And the anger, the blind compassion that seized and shook you then
As you peered at the doomed and haggard faces of your men?
Do you remember the stretcher-cases lurching back
With dying eyes and lolling heads--those ashen-grey
Masks of the lads who once were keen and kind and gay?

Have you forgotten yet?...
Look up, and swear by the green of the spring that you'll never forget.

Siegfried Sassoon - Aftermath (1920)

[vinteuil]

"Off Cartage he, that worthie warier
Could overcome, but cowld not use his chaunce :
And I, like wise off all my long endever,
The sherpe conquest, tho fortune did avaunce,
Could not it use : the hold that is gyvin over
I unpossest : so hangith in balaunce
Off warr my pees, reward of all my payne ;
At Mountzon thus I restles rest in Spayne."

Wyatt was in Mountzon, Spain, in 1537, as an ambassador from England. The poem may be interpreted as a comment on his diplomatic failures, or as a love poem in which he laments his lack of success with his new mistress.

Of Carthage he = Hannibal, who in 218-216 BC defeated the Romans on various occasions, yet failed to take advantage of his victories and capture Rome.