Poetry

[Joseph K]

That's nice, Padraig.

[jayne lee wilson]

Puts me in mind of one of my own Ted Hughes' favourites.....(from Lupercal, his 2nd collection)...

Hawk Roosting

I sit in the top of the wood, my eyes closed.
Inaction, no falsifying dream
Between my hooked head and hooked feet:
Or in sleep rehearse perfect kills and eat.

The convenience of the high trees!
The air's buoyancy and the sun's ray
Are of advantage to me;
And the earth's face upward for my inspection.

My feet are locked upon the rough bark.
It took the whole of Creation
To produce my foot, my each feather:
Now I hold Creation in my foot

Or fly up, and revolve it all slowly -
I kill where I please because it is all mine.
There is no sophistry in my body:
My manners are tearing off heads -

The allotment of death.
For the one path of my flight is direct
Through the bones of the living.
No arguments assert my right:

The sun is behind me.
Nothing has changed since I began.
My eye has permitted no change.
I am going to keep things like this.

[johncorrigan]

Scotland's recently created Makar, Kathleen Jamie, has produced a fine piece in commemoration of COP 26

What The Clyde Said After COP26

I keep the heid. I’m cool.
If asked - but you never ask -
I’d answer in tongues
hinting of linns, of Leven,
Nethan, Kelvin, Cart -
but neutral, balancing
both banks equally as I flow...

Do I judge? I mind the hammer-swing,
the welders’ flash, the heavy
steel-built hulls I bore downstream
from my city, and maybe
I was a blether-skite then,
a wee bit full of myself,
when we seemed gey near unstoppable...

But how can I stomach any more
of these storm rains? How can I
slip quietly away to meet my lover,
the wide-armed Ocean, knowing
I’m a poisoned chalice
she must drain, drinking
everything you chuck away...

So these days, I’m a listener, aye.
Think of me as a long level
liquid ear gliding slowly by.
I heard the world’s words,
the pleas of peoples born
where my ships once sailed,
I heard the beautiful promises...

and, sure, I’m a river,
but I can take a side.
From this day, I’d rather keep afloat,
like wee folded paper boats,
the hopes of the young folk
chanting at my bank,
fear in their spring-bright eyes

so hear this:
fail them, and I will rise.

Kathleen Jamie

[Padraig]

Scotland's recently created Makar, Kathleen Jamie, has produced a fine piece in commemoration of COP 26

What The Clyde Said After COP26


so hear this:
fail them, and I will rise.

Kathleen Jamie

. . . and well said! (Kathleen, Clyde, John)

[Padraig]

An Irish poet, and an Irish Language Poet to boot, with a poem to his daughter.

Poem for Lara, 10.

An ash tree on fire
the hair of your head
coaxing larks
with your sweet voice
in the green grass,
a crowd of daisies
playing with you,
a crowd of rabbits
dancing with you,
the blackbird
with its gold bill
is a jewel for you,
the goldfinch
with its sweetness
is your music.
You are perfume
you are honey,
a wild strawberry:
even the bees think you
a flower in the field.
Little queen of the land of books,
may you always be thus,
may you ever be free
from sorrow-chains.

Here's my blessing for you, girl,
and it's no petty grace -
may you have the beauty of your mother's soul
and the beauty of her face.

Michael Hartnett (1941 - 1999)

[Padraig]

I enjoyed this reading of Snake by DH Lawrence. It was a poem in my school anthology. Although not on the syllabus, I have to confess that I read it myself! Sorry lads - I really liked it. I found it again recently so . . .

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7el855DBEo

[ardcarp]

That's stirred a schoolboy memory in me too. Bat by DH Lawrence. The phrase that really struck me was 'wings like bits of umbrella'.
(We had a very charismatic English Lit teacher who set a lot of us on fire. Most of his inspiration was 'off syllabus'...something sadly lacking these days.)

[Padraig]

The Oxen

Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock,
"Now they are all on their knees,"
An elder said as we sat in a flock
By the embers in hearthside ease.

We pictured the meek, mild creatures
Where they dwelt in their strawy pen,
Nor did it occur to one of us there
To doubt they were kneeling then.

So fair a fancy few would weave
In these years! Yet, I feel,
If someone said on Christmas Eve,
"Come; see the oxen kneel

In the lonely barton by yonder coomb
Our childhood used to know,"
I should go with him in the gloom,
Hoping it might be so.

Thomas Hardy Moments of Vision 1915

[Padraig]

Amanda Gorman has a book published - Call Us What We Are. Although it didn't get a great revue in the Observer, I'll be buying it:
I would like her to succeed. Maybe there will be some of the poems made available in live performance or on video, which would be good since she is such a star performer, but no matter; most of the poetry I read is read cold anyway.

[johncorrigan]

I have never been to Orkney, though I hope to rectify that later this year. When I do go there I will be taking George Mackay Brown, the great Orcadian poet, as a guide. The other day in a second hand shop I picked up a new collection of his work, edited by Scotland's new Makar, Kathleen Jamie. I may have posted this before, but here is 'Taxman'.

Taxman

Seven scythes leaned at the wall.
Beard upon golden beard
The last barley load
Swayed through the yard.
The girls uncorked the ale.
Fiddle and feet moved together.
Then between stubble and heather
A horseman rode.

George Mackay Brown

Here's another that popped out of the book explaining how Mackay Brown saw his role in 'describing the ancestral world, the communalities of work, the fables and the religious stories which he saw as underpinning mortal lives.'

A Work for Poets

To have carved on the days of our vanity
A sun
A ship
A star
A cornstalk

Also a few marks
From an ancient forgotten time
A child may read

That not far from the stone
A well
Might open for wayfarers

Here is a work for poets -
Carve the runes
Then be content with silence.

George Mackay Brown

[Padraig]

Two poems by Leigh Hunt.

Abou Ben Adhem

Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase)
Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,
And saw, within the moonlight in his room.
Making it rich and like a lily in bloom,
An angel writing in a book of gold :-
Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold,
And to the Presence in the room he said,
"What writest thou?" - The vision raised its head
And with a look made of all sweet accord,
Answered, "The names of those who love the Lord".
"And is mine one?, said Abou. "Nay, not so",
Replied the angel. Abou spoke more low,
But cheerly still, and said, "I pray thee then,
Write me as one that loves his fellow men".

The angel wrote and vanished. The next night
It came again with a great awakening light
And showed the names whom love of God had blessed,
And lo! Ben Adhem's name led all the rest.



Jenny Kiss'd Me

Jenny kiss'd me when we met,
Jumping from the chair she sat in;
Time. you thief, who love to get
Sweets into your list, put that in!
Say I'm weary, say I'm sad,
Say that health and wealth have miss'd me;
Say I'm growing old, but add,
Jenny kiss'd me.

James Henry Leigh Hunt 1784 - 1859

[Forget It (U2079353)]

Amanda Gorman has a book published - Call Us What We Are. Although it didn't get a great revue in the Observer, I'll be buying it:
I would like her to succeed. Maybe there will be some of the poems made available in live performance or on video, which would be good since she is such a star performer, but no matter; most of the poetry I read is read cold anyway.

I rather liked this one

[Padraig]

Thanks F I for that one. She has a way with words in more than one sense. I'm in the middle of the book just now, and I wondered how one could get the shape of the urn into a posting. Well done. However, I'll have to start over again - she covers such a wide range of interlaced topics. It's like a continuous newscast.

When I'm here I'll include the post I had already prepared. My last one.


The Greatest Man

My teacher said us boys should write
about some great man, so I thought last night
'n thought about the heroes and men
that had done great things,
'n then I got to thinking 'bout my Pa;
he aint a hero or anything but pshaw!
Say! He can ride the wildest hoss
'n find minners near the moss
down by the creek; 'n he can swim
'n fish, we ketched five new lights, me 'n him!
Dad's some hunter too - oh my!
Miss Molly Cottontail sure does fly
when he tromps through the fields 'n brush!
(Dad won't kill a lark or thrush.)
Once when I was sick 'n though his hands were rough
he rubbed the pains right out. "That's the stuff"
he said when I winked back the tears. He never cried
but once, 'n that was when my mother died.
There's lots o' great men - George Washington 'n Lee,
But Dad's got 'em all beat holler, seems to me!

Anne Collins

And, for a bonus and (I hope) a pleasant surprise -

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

[johncorrigan]

Reflections from Simon Armitage watching images on the war in Ukraine.

Resistance

It’s war again: a family
carries its family out of a pranged house
under a burning thatch.

The next scene smacks
of archive newsreel: platforms and trains
(never again, never again),

toddlers passed
over heads and shoulders, lifetimes stowed
in luggage racks.

It’s war again: unmistakable smoke
on the near horizon mistaken
for thick fog. Fingers crossed.

An old blue tractor
tows an armoured tank
into no-man’s land.

It’s the ceasefire hour: godspeed the columns
of winter coats and fur-lined hoods,
the high-wire walk

over buckled bridges
managing cases and bags,
balancing west and east - godspeed.

It’s war again: the woman in black
gives sunflower seeds to the soldier, insists
his marrow will nourish

the national flower. In dreams
let bullets be birds, let cluster bombs
burst into flocks.

False news is news
with the pity
edited out. It’s war again:

an air-raid siren can’t fully mute
the cathedral bells -
let’s call that hope.

Simon Armitage

[Serial_Apologist]

Free Thinking on Rilke - tonight.

Weds 27 April
10pm - Free Thinking
Anne McElvoy discusses the legacy of Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926), who idiosyncratically used figures and images from both classical mythology and Christianity to explore existential themes, and who now is seen as a New Age mystic. McElvoy is joined by composer Ninfea Crutwell-Read, biographer Lesley Chamberlain and Sean Williams, a specialist in German literature ...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0016k0v

More on Ms Reade (note spelling ) here: http://ninfeacruttwellreade.com/