Poetry

[EdgeleyRob]

On Music.

When through life unblest we rove,
Losing all that made life dear,
Should some notes we used to love,
In days of boyhood, meet our ear,
Oh! how welcome breathes the strain!
Wakening thoughts that long have slept,
Kindling former smiles again
In faded eyes that long have wept.

Like the gale, that sighs along
Beds of oriental flowers,
Is the grateful breath of song,
That once was heard in happier hours.
Fill'd with balm the gale sighs on,
Though the flowers have sunk in death;
So, when pleasure's dream is gone,
Its memory lives in Music's breath.

Music, oh, how faint, how weak,
Language fades before thy spell!
Why should Feeling ever speak,
When thou canst breathe her soul so well?
Friendship's balmy words may feign,
Love's are even more false than they;
Oh! 'tis only music's strain
Can sweetly soothe, and not betray.

Thomas Moore.

[gamba]

WARNING

by Jenny Joseph ( born 1932 )

When I'm an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn't go, and doesn't suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
and satin sandals, and say we've no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I'm tired
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
And run my stick along the public railings
And make up for the sobriety of my youth .
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
And pick the flowers in other people's gardens
And learn to spit.

You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
And eat three pounds of sausages at a go
Or only bread and pickle for a week
And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes.

But now we must have clothes that keep us dry
And pay our rent and not swear in the street
And set a good example to the children
We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.

But maybe I ought to practise a little now ?
So people who know me are not too shocked or surprised
When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.

[johncorrigan]

I took shelter from the storm in the Bunkhouse on the North End of Iona on Friday evening and looking through the reading material came upon this. Seemed most appropriate.

The Wildman comes to the Monastery

...There was a time when I thought sweeter than the quiet converse of monks, the cooing of the ringdove flitting about the pool.

There was a time when I thought sweeter than the sound of a little bell beside me, the warbling of the blackbird from the gable and the belling of the stag in the storm.

There was a time when I thought sweeter than the voice of a lovely woman beside me, to hear at matins the cry of the heathhen of the moor.

There was a time when I thought sweeter the howling of wolves, than the voice of a priest indoors, baa-ing and bleating.

Though you like your ale with ceremony in the drinking-halls, I like better to snatch a drink of water in my palm from a spring.

Though you think sweet, yonder in your church, the gentle talk of your students, sweeter I think the splendid talking the wolves make in Glenn mBolcain.

Though you like the fat and meat which are eaten in the drinking-halls, I like better to eat a head of clean water-cress in a place without sorrow...

From A Celtic Miscellany, Irish author unknown, 12th Century

[hedgehog]

johncorrigan: that is a lovely text. Just like say, listening to Machaut there is something very poignant in a text or a music from a distant time where so much still rings true but at the same time a lot is clearly not of the present.

gamba: I once was at an open garden and came across a group of women dressed in purple with red hats - by coincidence a day later I came across the poem you put up. Such an extraordinary serindipety, to have this spectacle explained a day later!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

It is lovely - I was a little disconcerted at first by all the "There was a time" - as if the poem was leading to a present where these thoughts have changed; but I think it's more about how these thoughts have accumulated, one by one, over time leading to the poet's present feelings. And I like the fact that the poet doesn't completely dismiss ale and meat, or drinking halls and contact with other humans, but merely finds in Nature things that are "sweeter" to him/her.

"a place without sorrow" ...

[vinteuil]

Though you think sweet, yonder in your church, the gentle talk of your students, sweeter I think the splendid talking the wolves make in Glenn mBolcain.
Though you like the fat and meat which are eaten in the drinking-halls, I like better to eat a head of clean water-cress in a place without sorrow...

From A Celtic Miscellany, Irish author unknown, 12th Century

.... clearly a Pome known by Flann O Brien when writing At Swim-Two-Birds :

[…] Bereft of fine women-folk,
the brooklime for a brother -
our choice for a fresh meal
is watercress always.

Without accomplished musicians
without generous women,
no jewel-gift for bards -
respected Christ, it has perished me...

... Watercress from the well at Cirb
is my lot at terce,
its colour is my mouth.
green on the mouth of Sweeney.

Chill chill is my body
when away from ivy,
the rain torrents it
and the thunder.

[…]


I do not relish
the mad clack of humans
sweeter warble of the bird
in the place he is.

I like not the trumpeting
heard at morn;
sweeter hearing is the squeal
of badgers in Benna Broc

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Oh, interesting, vints, thank you. I find the O Brien "smaller"; more judgementally misanthropic than the 12th Century "source" - the "it has perished me", "the mad clack of humans"; it lacks the generosity of the anonymous poem - and gives (me) the impression that O Brien dislikes humanity more than he likes the companionship of Nature.

[vinteuil]

... but the Flann o Brien is a humorous spoof*; in the mouth of his mythic hero Finn McCool he is guying a certain kind of "Celtic Twilight" Irishry.

It's not meant to be taken seriously - at least I don't think so!



[ * naughty of me. As ever, context is all... ]







.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

<much-missed"doh"emoticon>

[french frank]

... but the Flann o Brien is a humorous spoof*.

And possibly as much a spoof of English translations of original 12th c. Irish/Welsh/Gaelic or whichever, which invariably seem to add an overlay of archaic quaintness.

[Padraig]

And possibly as much a spoof of English translations of original 12th c. Irish/Welsh/Gaelic or whichever, which invariably seem to add an overlay of archaic quaintness.

Possibly there are exceptions, ff.


Colum Cille Cecinit

My hand is cramped from penwork.
My quill has a tapered point.
It's bird-mouth issues a blue-dark
Beetle sparkle of ink.

Wisdom keeps welling in streams
From my fine-drawn sallow hand:
Riverrun on the vellum
Of ink from green-skinned holly.

My small runny pen keeps going
Through books, through thick and thin,
To enrich the scholars' holdings -
Penwork that cramps my hand.

Seamus Heaney Human Chain 2010

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xuhxkt_seamus-heaney-colum-cille-cecinit_creation?from_related=related.page.int.gravity-only.d58e00c4ac8361535e89c04d777ebeea141382033

[Padraig]

johncorrigan: that is a lovely text. Just like say, listening to Machaut there is something very poignant in a text or a music from a distant time where so much still rings true but at the same time a lot is clearly not of the present.

gamba: I once was at an open garden and came across a group of women dressed in purple with red hats - by coincidence a day later I came across the poem you put up. Such an extraordinary serindipety, to have this spectacle explained a day later!

hh, I find myself evaluating your responses to john and gamba as little poems in themselves - so apposite in the former and personal in the latter; and with such refreshing honesty, like the poems themselves.

[french frank]

Possibly there are exceptions, ff.

As in by a poet rather than a translator? Traduttore traditore?

[Padraig]

As in by a poet rather than a translator? Traduttore traditore?

Do you think Heaney has betrayed the Irish poem?

[french frank]

Do you think Heaney has betrayed the Irish poem?

No, but I think he has made it his own poem. Which is fine. Many people can translate.