Poetry

[Joseph K]

How about this from March forty years ago:

Strange how Spring devours the hemispheres
And inch by roaring inch puts paid to dark;
Strange how the dawn which broke so near to tears
And wished the nightingale was but the lark
Washes the sky for flowers that still will come.
Silently, stealthily, like the Assyrian king
In purple, gold and crimson
Rides every tiny thing
With cohorts of cabbages
Spikes of pale asphodel
And little flags of harebell
Nodding in a ring.

Nice... did you write this?

[greenilex]

I have to acknowledge it though it feels like someone else’s...

[Joseph K]

The Claque

the clucking claque clap crap clap-trap
the fucking flock flap for forfending flak

[johncorrigan]

Heard this on Radio 4 last week with accompanying soundtrack.

Wet Evening in April

The birds sang in the wet trees
And as I listened to them it was a hundred years from now
And I was dead and someone else was listening to them.
But I was glad I had recorded for him the melancholy.

Patrick Kavanagh

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Alice in Wonderland would understand
A little Queen of Hearts like you.
But in my book it said: Off with his head!
And that's exactly what you'd do.

Indeed, I lost my head completely when
On the river one summer's day
All in the golden afternoon
We glided far away.

Oh, Alice, how I loved you.

The fairy cakes you made, the lemonade,
The funny stories that I told:
How Tweedle-Dum and Dee could not agree,
And Father William who was very old,
Mad Hatter on a spree, Doormouse dunked in the tea.
All of that day to me was gold.

We let the silent sand run though our hands,
The setting sun became a glow,
I recall, down the long years between.
Where did my Queen of Hearts go?

Alice in Wonderland,
Where are you now, my love?

Spike Milligan (b 16-04-1918) - a repeat of #493, I know - but a special exception made for this anniversary.

[Tevot]

How you became a poet's a mystery! / Where did you get your talent from? / I say: I had two uncles, Joe and Harry - / one was a stammerer, the other dumb.

- 'Heredity', Tony Harrison

[johncorrigan]

Keeping Quiet


Now we will count to twelve
and we will all keep still.

For once on the face of the earth,
let’s not speak in any language;
let’s stop for one second,
and not move our arms so much.

It would be an exotic moment
without rush, without engines;
we would all be together
in a sudden strangeness.

Fisherman in the cold sea
would not harm whales
and the man gathering salt
would not look at his hurt hands.

Those who prepare green wars,
wars with gas, wars with fire,
victories with no survivors,
would put on clean clothes
and walk about with their brothers
in the shade, doing nothing.

What I want should not be confused
with total inactivity.
Life is what it is about;
I want no truck with death.

If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving,
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with death.
Perhaps the earth can teach us
as when everything seems dead
and later proves to be alive.

Now I’ll count up to twelve
and you keep quiet and I will go.

Pablo Neruda

[Joseph K]

Pharmacy Lady

My overflowing passion, a desire
that’s boundless, yet again has found a source
whose beauty’s such that I must take recourse
to notions so sublime, my heart afire
like the empyrean so sounds the lyre
we pluck and strum on each other, perforce
producing chords of tender intercourse
I savour her exquisite taste, admire
this paragon of womankind. But this
is just a dream, she’ll never be my mate.
I asked her out but the question was parried –
expressing how I feel would be amiss,
I know that she would not reciprocate –
I’ll add her to the list of ‘should have married’!

[johncorrigan]

A book of Leonard Cohen's late poetry has just been released. This one was printed in the Guardian at the weekend - 'Happens to the Heart'

https://www.leonardcohenfiles.com/happens.html

[johncorrigan]

Happiness by Raymond Carver

So early it’s still almost dark out.
I’m near the window with coffee,
and the usual early morning stuff
that passes for thought.
When I see the boy and his friend
walking up the road
to deliver the newspaper.
They wear caps and sweaters,
and one boy has a bag over his shoulder.
They are so happy
they aren’t saying anything, these boys.
I think if they could, they would take
each other’s arm.
It’s early in the morning,
and they are doing this thing together.
They come on, slowly.
The sky is taking on light,
though the moon still hangs pale over the water.
Such beauty that for a minute
death and ambition, even love,
doesn’t enter into this.
Happiness. It comes on
unexpectedly. And goes beyond, really,
any early morning talk about it.

[Padraig]

Happiness by Raymond Carver

...Happiness. It comes on
unexpectedly. And goes beyond, really,
any early morning talk about it.

Warm remembrance of boyhood friendship? Lovely poem John. I do remember reading it before.

Ever read this one?

Ode

We are the music-makers
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by long sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams; -
World-losers and world-forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems.

With wonderful deathless ditties
We build up the world's great cities,
And out of a fabulous story
We fashion an empire's glory:
One man with a dream, at pleasure,
Shall go forth and conquer a crown;
And three with a new song's measure
Can trample an empire down.

We, in the ages lying
In the buried past of the earth,
Built Nineveh with our sighing,
And Babel itself with our mirth;
And o'erthrew them with prophesying,
To the old of the new world's worth;
For each age is a dream that is dying,
Or one that is coming to birth.

Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1844-1881

[Padraig]

Yesterday I glimpsed an elderly lady - an old woman - in a purple coat.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cACbzanitg

[Padraig]

A suspicion of John Synge.

1. Beg-Innish

Bring Kateen-beug and Maurya Jude
To dance in Beg-Innish,
And when the lads (they're in Dunquin)
Have sold their crabs and fish,
Wave fawny shawls and call them in,
And call the little girls who spin,
And seven weavers from Dunquin,
To dance in Beg-Innish.

I'll play you jigs, and Maurice Kean,
Where nets are laid to dry,
I've silken strings would draw a dance
From girls are lame or shy;
Four strings I've brought from Spain and France
To make your long men skip and prance,
Till stars look out to see the dance
Where nets are laid to dry.

We'll have no priest or peeler in
To dance in Beg-Innish;
But we'll have drink from M'riarty Jim
Rowed round while gannets fish,
A keg with porter to the brim,
That every lad may have his whim,
Till we up sails with M'riarty Jim
And sail from Beg-Innish.

2. The Curse

To a sister of an enemy of the author's who disapproved of 'The Playboy'

Lord, confound this surly sister.
Blight her brow with blotch and blister,
Cramp her larynx, lung, and liver,
In her guts a galling give her.
Let her live to earn her dinners
In Mountjoy with seedy sinners:
Lord, this judgment quickly bring,
And I'm your servant, J.M.Synge.

[Padraig]

John Synge lies here.

On an Anniversary

With Fifteen-ninety or Sixteen-sixteen
We end Cervantes, Marot, Nashe or Green:
Then Sixteen-thirteen till two score and nine,
Is Crashaw's niche, that honey-lipped divine.
And so when all my little work is done
They'll say I came in Eighteen-seventy-one,
And died in Dublin...What year will they write
For my poor passage to the stall of Night?


To the Oaks of Glencree

My arms are round you, and I lean
Against you, while the lark
Sings over us, and golden lights, and green
Shadows are on your bark.

There'll come a season when you'll stretch
Black boards to cover me:
Then in Mount Jerome I will lie, poor wretch,
With worms eternally.


A Question


I asked if I got sick and died, would you
With my black funeral go walking too,
If you'd stand close to hear them talk or pray
While I'm let down in that steep bank of clay,

And, No, you said, for if you saw a crew
Of living idiots, pressing round that new
Oak coffin - they alive, I dead beneath
That board, - you'd rave and rend them with your teeth.

John Millington Synge 1871 - 1909

[johncorrigan]

This week we have been celebrating Hamish Henderson in the town of his birth, Blairgowrie in Perthshire. Hamish was, among other things, a great folklorist collecting songs and stories from across Scotland, a pivotal figure in the folk revival of the 50s, but also a poet. Here's one of his poems written after his time in the North African Campaign in WW2.

NINTH ELEGY

Fort Capuzzo
For there will come a day
when the Lord will say
-- Close Order!

One evening, breaking a jeep journey at Capuzzo
I noticed a soldier as he entered the cemetery
and stood looking at the grave of a fallen enemy.
Then I understood the meaning of the hard word 'pietas'
(a word unfamiliar to the newsreel commentator
as well as to the pimp, the informer and the traitor).
His thought was like this. - Here's another 'Good Jerry'!
Poor mucker. Just eighteen. Must be hard-up for man-power.
Or else he volunteered, silly bastard. That's the fatal,
the-fatal mistake. Never volunteer for nothing.
I wonder how he died? Just as well it was him, though,
and not one of our chaps. . .Yes, the only good Jerry,
as they say, is your sort, chum.
Cheerio, you poor bastard.
Don't be late on parade when the Lord calls 'Close Order'.
Keep waiting for the angels. Keep listening for Reveille.

Hamish Henderson
I heard it recited today by folklorist and student of Hamish's, Margaret Bennett, followed by 'Thug Oirinn Oro'.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKHQfobGdvc

So moving!