Poetry

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAZyc8M5Q4I

[greenilex]

Would like more rhythm, and the pause mid-line to be more emphatic.

It is verse for public performance by a bard.

[johncorrigan]

First sign out there this year of Skylarks, always a messenger of spring, we hope. Hares are getting frisky too and even if it's not leveret time, thought I'd revisit John Clare...again.

The Skylark

By John Clare

The rolls and harrows lie at rest beside
The battered road; and spreading far and wide
Above the russet clods, the corn is seen
Sprouting its spiry points of tender green,
Where squats the hare, to terrors wide awake,
Like some brown clod the harrows failed to break.
Opening their golden caskets to the sun,
The buttercups make schoolboys eager run,
To see who shall be first to pluck the prize—
Up from their hurry, see, the skylark flies,
And o'er her half-formed nest, with happy wings
Winnows the air, till in the cloud she sings,
Then hangs a dust-spot in the sunny skies,
And drops, and drops, till in her nest she lies,
Which they unheeded passed—not dreaming then
That birds which flew so high would drop agen
To nests upon the ground, which anything
May come at to destroy. Had they the wing
Like such a bird, themselves would be too proud,
And build on nothing but a passing cloud!
As free from danger as the heavens are free
From pain and toil, there would they build and be,
And sail about the world to scenes unheard
Of and unseen—Oh, were they but a bird!
So think they, while they listen to its song,
And smile and fancy and so pass along;
While its low nest, moist with the dews of morn,
Lies safely, with the leveret, in the corn.

[greenilex]

Thank you. Wonderful simplicity.

Couldn’t help reflecting how a schoolboy like Richard Branson can spend his whole life in the sky now if he chooses...

[Padraig]

Inspired by an item on Breakfast, I took to reading some of Shakespeare's sonnets. Here's one of many I did not know:

Sonnet XXXII

If thou survive my well-contented day,
When that churl Death my bones with dust shall cover,
And shall by fortune once more re-survey
These poor rude lines of thy deceased lover,
Compare them with the bettering of the time,
And though they be outstripp'd by every pen,
Reserve them for my love, not for their rhyme,
Exceeded by the height of happier men.
O, then vouchsafe me but this loving thought:
"Had my friend's Muse grown with this growing age,
A dearer birth than this his love had brought,
To march in ranks of better equipage;
But since he died, and poets better prove,
Theirs for their style I'll read, his for his love."

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Thanks, Padraig - I studied the Sonnets in my second year at Uni (forty years ago ) but that was one that I had neglected since then. Time, I think, for another "traversal". (Actually, checking the meaning of that, it's not an accurate description of what I'm planning - I intend to read each of the sonnets more than once!)

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Nearly three weeks overdue, but in response to another Thread:

Valentine
Not a red rose or a satin heart.

I give you an onion.

It is a moon wrapped in brown paper.
It promises light
like the careful undressing of love.

Here.
It will blind you with tears
like a lover.
It will make your reflection
a wobbling photo of grief.

I am trying to be truthful.

Not a cute card or a kissogram.

I give you an onion.
Its fierce kiss will stay on your lips,
possessive and faithful
as we are,
for as long as we are.

Take it.
Its platinum loops shrink to a wedding ring,
if you like.
Lethal.
Its scent will cling to your fingers,
cling to your knife.

Carol Ann Duffy

[Joseph K]

Very nice Ferney.

[Padraig]

At the weekend I indulged in three days of music and poetry, including the launch of a slim volume in the Heaney Home Place in Bellaghy. The book was The Whetstone by Maura Johnston, an erstwhile colleague and a frequent visitor, like myself, to the Centre. I would like to share a small memento of this very pleasant occasion,

Neighbourhood Watch

The factory horn from Cookstown, tinny in the distance,
called my mother from bed at half past seven
to coax the breakfast fire into life.

At half twelve and at half one that same horn
bracketed a time for lunch. And at half five,
quitting time for some, it came to us across the plain,
in the vastness of a summer evening.

When the wind was in the right direction
the Angelus bell could be heard,
dignified, measured, at noon and six.

George the postman, straight-backed on his bicycle,
arrived regular as clockwork.

No one in our neighbourhood needed a watch.

********************************************

And in sharper vein:

Disagreement

Last night we disagreed.
It was, you might say, a storm;
gales shaking our house and cold
air puffing through cracks. No harm
was done to any living creature.
And yet who is to say what
ridges have corrugated my heart
or yours in the aftermath where
we are tensed, flensed, flayed.

[gradus]

First sign out there this year of Skylarks, always a messenger of spring, we hope. Hares are getting frisky too and even if it's not leveret time, thought I'd revisit John Clare...again.

The Skylark

By John Clare

The rolls and harrows lie at rest beside
The battered road; and spreading far and wide
Above the russet clods, the corn is seen
Sprouting its spiry points of tender green,
Where squats the hare, to terrors wide awake,
Like some brown clod the harrows failed to break.
Opening their golden caskets to the sun,
The buttercups make schoolboys eager run,
To see who shall be first to pluck the prize—
Up from their hurry, see, the skylark flies,
And o'er her half-formed nest, with happy wings
Winnows the air, till in the cloud she sings,
Then hangs a dust-spot in the sunny skies,
And drops, and drops, till in her nest she lies,
Which they unheeded passed—not dreaming then
That birds which flew so high would drop agen
To nests upon the ground, which anything
May come at to destroy. Had they the wing
Like such a bird, themselves would be too proud,
And build on nothing but a passing cloud!
As free from danger as the heavens are free
From pain and toil, there would they build and be,
And sail about the world to scenes unheard
Of and unseen—Oh, were they but a bird!
So think they, while they listen to its song,
And smile and fancy and so pass along;
While its low nest, moist with the dews of morn,
Lies safely, with the leveret, in the corn.

Thanks for posting this john.

[johncorrigan]

I originally came to 'The Second Coming' from Joni Mitchell's version 'Slouching Towards Bethlehem'. This last couple of days I've found it hanging around for some reason.

The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

William Butler Yeats (1919)

Here's Joni's version from 'Travelogue'.

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

[vinteuil]

.

There’s no mystic moment involved just
that we are
is how, each
severally, we’re
carried into
the wind which makes no decision and is
a tide, not taken. I saw it
and love is
when, how &
because we
do: you
could call it Ierusalem or feel it
as you walk, even quite jauntily, over the grass.

.

[Tevot]

The Retired Colonel


Who lived at the top end of our street
Was a Mafeking stereotype, ageing.
Came, face pulped scarlet with kept rage,
For air past our gate.
Barked at his dog knout and whipcrack
And coverings of India: five or six wars
Stiffened in his reddened neck;
Brow bull-down for the stroke.

Wife dead, daughters gone, lived on
Honouring his own caricature.
Shot through the heart with whisky wore
The lurch like ancient courage, would not go down
While posterity's trash stood, held
His habits like a last stand, even
As if he had Victoria rolled
In a Union Jack in that stronghold.

And what if his sort should vanish?
The rabble starlings roar upon
Trafalgar. The man-eating British lion
By a pimply age brought down.
Here's his head mounted, though only in rhymes.
Beside the head of the last English
Wolf (those starved and gloomy times!)
And the last sturgeon of Thames.


from Lupercal by Ted Hughes (1960)

[greenilex]

This is one from 1977. I had it printed on an old press and gave them away free in local shops and hostelries.

SOUTHAMPTON

Now who will speak of Hampton
That stands beside the Test
Where Itchen’s narrower waters
Mingle with the rest?
A triangle of trading
In the shelter of Wight’s shore,
A town as old as England, not
Unlearned in Europe’s lore.
‘Unto the breach’ the Captain said
When this was the first pace:
Dragging wounded back they come
Friends without a face.
Rolling down the Avenue
Smashing toward the Rhine
Homeward turning blinded eyes
In an unending line.
When firestorms raged around us,
When rockets fell and broke
Our city kept its dignity
Through the appalling smoke:
Or when in prosperous peacetime
The liners flung them forth,
Southampton sheltered travellers
From east, west, north.
Then raise a mug this Jubilee
As round the Bar you stand
For the city by the Solent
In England’s pleasant land.

[johncorrigan]

Drove across Scotland in driving rain yesterday with a deteriorating windscreen wiper with flapping scraps of rubber leaving only narrow channels of visibility. Couldn't swap the wipers over as they are two different sizes. Had me thinking of this poem by Louis MacNeice as I peered through daylight, fortunately, rather than darkness.

Wiper
by Louis MacNeice

Through purblind night the wiper
Reaps a swathe of water
On the screen; we shudder on
And hardly hold the road,
All we can see a segment
Of blackly shining asphalt
With the wiper moving across it
Clearing, blurring, clearing.

But what to say of the road?
The monotony of its hardly
Visible camber, the mystery
Of its invisible margins,
Will these be always with us,
The night being broken only
By lights that pass or meet us
From others in moving boxes?

Boxes of glass and water,
Upholstered, equipped with dials
Professing to tell the distance
We have gone, the speed we are going,
But not a gauge nor needle
To tell us where we are going
Or when day will come, supposing
This road exists in daytime.

For now we cannot remember
Where we were when it was not
Night, when it was not raining,
Before this car moved forward
And the wiper backward and forward
Lighting so little before us
Of a road that, crouching forward,
We watch move always towards us,

Which through the tiny segment
Cleared and blurred by the wiper
Is sucked in under our wheels
To be spewed behind us and lost
While we, dazzled by darkness,
Haul the black future towards us
Peeling the skin from our hands;
And yet we hold the road.