Poetry

[silvestrione]

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.

Loved that, thanks. Wipers and rain in the car makes me think of Ted Hughes's one masterpiece amongst his 'Laureate' verse, 'Rain Charm for the Duchy', with its delightful subtitle "A Blessed, Devout Drench for the Christening of His Royal Highness Prince Harry". Unfortunately I can't find a copy online.

[greenilex]

Perhaps it sank without trace?

[Tevot]

Loved that, thanks. Wipers and rain in the car makes me think of Ted Hughes's one masterpiece amongst his 'Laureate' verse, 'Rain Charm for the Duchy', with its delightful subtitle "A Blessed, Devout Drench for the Christening of His Royal Highness Prince Harry". Unfortunately I can't find a copy online.

Neither could I Silvestrione ....

Rain-Charm for the Duchy

After the five month drought
My windscreen was frosted with dust
Sight itself had grown a harsh membrane
Against glare and particles

Now the first blobby tears broke painfully

Big, sudden thunder drops. I felt them splashing like
vapoury petrol
Among the ants
In Cranmere's cracked heath-tinder.And into the ulcer craters
Of what had been river pools.

Then, like taking a great breath, we were under it.
Thunder gripped and picked up the city.
Rain didn't so much fall as collapse.
The pavements danced, like cinders in a riddle.

Flash in the pan, I thought, as people scampered.
Soon it was falling, vertical, precious, pearled.
Thunder was a brass-band accompaniment
To some festive, civic event. Squeals and hurry. With
tourist bunting.

The precinct saplings lifted their arms and faces. And the
heaped-up sky
Moved in mayoral pomp, behind buildings,
With flash and thump. It had almost gone by
And I almost expected the brightening. Instead,
something like a shutter
Jerked and rattled - and the whole county darkened.
Then rain really came down. You scrambled into the car
Scattering oxygen like a drenched bush.
What a weight of warm Atlantic water!

The car-top hammered. The Cathedral jumped in and out
Of a heaven that had obviously caught fire
And couldn't be contained.
A girl in high heels, her handbag above her head,

Risked it across the square's lit metals.
We saw surf cuffed over her and the car jounced.
Grates, gutters, clawed in the backwash.

She kept going. Flak and shrapnel of thundercracks
Hit the walls and roofs. Still a swimmer
She bobbed off, into sea-smoke,
Where headlights groped. Already

Thunder was breaking up the moors.
It dragged tors over the city -
Uprooted chunks of map. Somethings of ore, pink and
violet,
Spattered and wriggled down

Into the boiling sea
Where Exeter huddled -
A small trawler, nets out.
"Think of the barley!" you said.

You remembered earlier harvests.
But I was thinking
Of joyful sobbings -
The throb

In the rock-face mosses of the Chains,
And of the exultant larvae in the Barle's shrunk trench,
their filaments blur like propellers, under the churned
ceiling of light.

And of the Lyn's twin gorges, clearing their throats,
deepening their voices, beginning to hear each other
Rehearse forgotten riffles,

And the Mole, a ditch's choked whisper,
Rousing the stagnant camp of the Little Silver, the
Crooked Oak and the Yeo
To a commotion of shouts, muddied oxen
A rumbling of wagons.

And the red seepage, the snake of life
Lowering its ringlets into the Taw

And the Torridge, rising to the kiss,
Plunging under sprays, new-born
A washed cherub, clasping the breasts of light.

And the Okement, nudging her detergent bottles,
tugging at her nylon stockings, starting to trundle her
Pepsi-Cola cans,

And the Tamar, roused and blinking under the fifty-mile drumming,
Declaiming her legend - her rusty knights tumbling out
of their clay vaults, her canters assembling from shillets,
With a cheering of aged stones along the Lyd and the Lew,
the Wolf and the Thrushel,

And the Tavy, jarred from her quartz rock-heap, feeling
the moor shift,
Rinsing her stale mouth, tasting tin, copper, ozone,

And the baby Erme, under the cyclone's top-heavy,
toppling sea-fight, setting afloat odd bits of dead stick

And the Dart, her shaggy horde coming down
Astride bareback ponies, with a cry.
Loosening sheepskin banners, bumping the granite,
Flattening rowans and frightening oaks,

And the Teign, startled in her den
By the rain-dance of bracken
Hearing Heaven reverberate under Gidleigh,

And the highest pool of the Exe, her coil recoiling under
the sky-shock
Where a drinking stag flings its head up
From a spilled sinful of lightning -

My windscreen wipers swam as we moved.

I imagined the two moors
The two stone-age hands
Cupped and brimming, lifted, an offering -
And I thought of those other, different lightnings, the
patient, thirsting ones

Under Crow Island, inside Bideford Bar,
And between the Hamoaze anchor chains,
And beneath the thousand, shivering, fiberglass hulls
Inside One Gun Point, and aligned

Under the Ness, and inside Great Bull Hill:

The salmon, deep in the thunder, lit
And again lit. with glimpses of quenching,
Twisting their glints in the suspense,
Biting at the stir, beginning to move...

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From Ted Hughes - New Selected Poems 1957 - 1994 ( Faber and Faber)

[greenilex]

Wow, wow and again wow. Thank you for that.

I guess the subsequent flooding may have been seen as another punishment?

[Padraig]

Oft in the Stilly Night by Tom Moore

Oft in the stilly night
Ere slumber's chain has bound me
Fond Mem'ry brings the light
Of other days around me;
The smiles, the tears of boyhood's years,
The words of love then spoken;
The eyes that shone
Now dimm'd and gone
The cheerful hearts now broken!
Thus in the stilly night
Ere slumber's chain has bound me,
Sad Mem'ry brings the light
Of other days around me.

When I remember all
The friends so link'd together,
I've seen around me fall
Like leaves in wintry weather,
I feel like one
Who treads alone
Some banquet hall deserted,
Whose lights are fled,
Whose garlands dead,
And all but he departed!
Thus in the stilly night
Ere slumber's chain has bound me,
Sad Mem'ry brings the light
Of other days around me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbvNnx12DkA

[silvestrione]

Neither could I Silvestrione ....

Rain-Charm for the Duchy

After the five month drought
My windscreen was frosted with dust
Sight itself had grown a harsh membrane
Against glare and particles

Now the first blobby tears broke painfully

Big, sudden thunder drops. I felt them splashing like
vapoury petrol
Among the ants
In Cranmere's cracked heath-tinder.And into the ulcer craters
Of what had been river pools.

Then, like taking a great breath, we were under it.
Thunder gripped and picked up the city.
Rain didn't so much fall as collapse.
The pavements danced, like cinders in a riddle.

Flash in the pan, I thought, as people scampered.
Soon it was falling, vertical, precious, pearled.
Thunder was a brass-band accompaniment
To some festive, civic event. Squeals and hurry. With
tourist bunting.

The precinct saplings lifted their arms and faces. And the
heaped-up sky
Moved in mayoral pomp, behind buildings,
With flash and thump. It had almost gone by
And I almost expected the brightening. Instead,
something like a shutter
Jerked and rattled - and the whole county darkened.
Then rain really came down. You scrambled into the car
Scattering oxygen like a drenched bush.
What a weight of warm Atlantic water!

The car-top hammered. The Cathedral jumped in and out
Of a heaven that had obviously caught fire
And couldn't be contained.
A girl in high heels, her handbag above her head,

Risked it across the square's lit metals.
We saw surf cuffed over her and the car jounced.
Grates, gutters, clawed in the backwash.

She kept going. Flak and shrapnel of thundercracks
Hit the walls and roofs. Still a swimmer
She bobbed off, into sea-smoke,
Where headlights groped. Already

Thunder was breaking up the moors.
It dragged tors over the city -
Uprooted chunks of map. Somethings of ore, pink and
violet,
Spattered and wriggled down

Into the boiling sea
Where Exeter huddled -
A small trawler, nets out.
"Think of the barley!" you said.

You remembered earlier harvests.
But I was thinking
Of joyful sobbings -
The throb

In the rock-face mosses of the Chains,
And of the exultant larvae in the Barle's shrunk trench,
their filaments blur like propellers, under the churned
ceiling of light.

And of the Lyn's twin gorges, clearing their throats,
deepening their voices, beginning to hear each other
Rehearse forgotten riffles,

And the Mole, a ditch's choked whisper,
Rousing the stagnant camp of the Little Silver, the
Crooked Oak and the Yeo
To a commotion of shouts, muddied oxen
A rumbling of wagons.

And the red seepage, the snake of life
Lowering its ringlets into the Taw

And the Torridge, rising to the kiss,
Plunging under sprays, new-born
A washed cherub, clasping the breasts of light.

And the Okement, nudging her detergent bottles,
tugging at her nylon stockings, starting to trundle her
Pepsi-Cola cans,

And the Tamar, roused and blinking under the fifty-mile drumming,
Declaiming her legend - her rusty knights tumbling out
of their clay vaults, her canters assembling from shillets,
With a cheering of aged stones along the Lyd and the Lew,
the Wolf and the Thrushel,

And the Tavy, jarred from her quartz rock-heap, feeling
the moor shift,
Rinsing her stale mouth, tasting tin, copper, ozone,

And the baby Erme, under the cyclone's top-heavy,
toppling sea-fight, setting afloat odd bits of dead stick

And the Dart, her shaggy horde coming down
Astride bareback ponies, with a cry.
Loosening sheepskin banners, bumping the granite,
Flattening rowans and frightening oaks,

And the Teign, startled in her den
By the rain-dance of bracken
Hearing Heaven reverberate under Gidleigh,

And the highest pool of the Exe, her coil recoiling under
the sky-shock
Where a drinking stag flings its head up
From a spilled sinful of lightning -

My windscreen wipers swam as we moved.

I imagined the two moors
The two stone-age hands
Cupped and brimming, lifted, an offering -
And I thought of those other, different lightnings, the
patient, thirsting ones

Under Crow Island, inside Bideford Bar,
And between the Hamoaze anchor chains,
And beneath the thousand, shivering, fiberglass hulls
Inside One Gun Point, and aligned

Under the Ness, and inside Great Bull Hill:

The salmon, deep in the thunder, lit
And again lit. with glimpses of quenching,
Twisting their glints in the suspense,
Biting at the stir, beginning to move...

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From Ted Hughes - New Selected Poems 1957 - 1994 ( Faber and Faber)

Thanks, great to read it again here. Did you type it? I love that sense of knowledge and awareness he has, the fisherman's knowledge and awareness, of the rivers and how they'll be responding, and then the salmon stirring at the end, their beginning excitement, and his excitement at that...

[Tevot]

Thanks, great to read it again here. Did you type it? I love that sense of knowledge and awareness he has, the fisherman's knowledge and awareness, of the rivers and how they'll be responding, and then the salmon stirring at the end, their beginning excitement, and his excitement at that...

Hi there Silvestrione,

Yes indeed I did type it - I thought "what the heck !!" - and funnily enough I'd never read it before - but reading and typing it - not only did the poem strike me as being pretty damn good - but it conveyed brilliantly the experience of place and time and being caught in a sudden torrential downpour. Gripping - and very wet - stuff !!

Best Fishes,

Tevot

[silvestrione]

Hi there Silvestrione,

Yes indeed I did type it - I thought "what the heck !!" - and funnily enough I'd never read it before - but reading and typing it - not only did the poem strike me as being pretty damn good - but it conveyed brilliantly the experience of place and time and being caught in a sudden torrential downpour. Gripping - and very wet - stuff !!

Best Fishes,

Tevot

Glad to have found the poem another reader, and thanks for all the typing!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Glad to have found the poem another reader, and thanks for all the typing!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

How to Continue

Oh there once was a woman
and she kept a shop
selling trinkets to tourists
not far from a dock
who came to see what life could be
far back on the island.

And it was always a party there
always different but very nice
New friends to give you advice
or fall in love with you which is nice
and each grew so perfectly from the other
it was a marvel of poetry
and irony

And in this unsafe quarter
much was scary and dirty
but no one seemed to mind
very much
the parties went on from house to house
There were friends and lovers galore
all around the store
There was moonshine in winter
and starshine in summer
and everybody was happy to have discovered
what they discovered

And then one day the ship sailed away
There were no more dreamers just sleepers
in heavy attitudes on the dock
moving as if they knew how
among the trinkets and the souvenirs
the random shops of modern furniture
and a gale came and said
it is time to take all of you away
from the tops of the trees to the little houses
on little paths so startled

And when it became time to go
they none of them would leave without the other
for they said we are all one here
and if one of us goes the other will not go
and the wind whispered it to the stars
the people all got up to go
and looked back on love

John Ashbery

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0000h9m

Apparently a repeat of a programme broadcast a month ago, which I missed

Sunday Feature: John Ashbery - Portrait in a Convex Mirror

John Ashbery is one of the towering figures in American poetry of the last 50 years. Up until his death in September 2017 at the age of 90, he produced a vast and hugely acclaimed body of poetry and prose, often characterised as a surrealist river of ideas and playfulness: the reader tossed around, seldom entirely sure what's going on, yet swept along by the sheer exuberance and mischievous glint of Ashbery’s writing.

The life story is compelling: from an isolated farm in upstate New York, and a childhood family tragedy, a gifted young writer went to Harvard, and found himself in a class of soon-to-be-successful literary talents. There were years in Paris, and then home to the buzzing experimentalism of Warhol’s New York.

In a writing career whose trajectory took him from enfant terrible to national treasure, Ashbery achieved a dazzling string of literary successes including a 1976 Pulitzer; and at a point where alcohol-fuelled self-destruction was ominously close, Ashbery met David Kermani, the man who would become his partner for nearly fifty years.
Together they eloped upstream from Manhattan, and bought a house at Hudson, on the banks of the river. It would become a magical space: gallery, museum, studio, and home. From it, the couple would build on Ashbery’s achievements of the 50s, 60s, and 70s by providing a stable and happy place from which to continue writing, but also to provide lavish and warm welcomes for a constant stream of guests.

Standing squarely in a long and distinguished tradition of American poetics, and making a vivid and distinctive contribution to it, Ashbery was strongly influenced by John Cage, Abstract Expressionism, Warhol’s progressive modernism, surrealism, the daily clashing of high and low culture, and the sheer joy of being alive. His audacious mastery of the English language dances on the page; and one of his greatest qualities, perhaps, was an irrepressible playfulness.

Drawing on the testimony of many who knew him, including Ann Lauterbach, Karin Roffman, Robert Polito, John Yau, and Mark Ford, Colm Toibin draws on his own memories of Ashbery to present an intimate portrait of the brilliant, unpredictable, mischievous, Pulitzer-winning American poet.

[vinteuil]

from: Jubilate Agno

For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry.
For he is the servant of the Living God duly and daily serving him.
For at the first glance of the glory of God in the East he worships in his way.
For this is done by wreathing his body seven times round with elegant quickness.
For then he leaps up to catch the musk, which is the blessing of God upon his prayer.
For he rolls upon prank to work it in.
For having done duty and received blessing he begins to consider himself.
For this he performs in ten degrees.
For first he looks upon his forepaws to see if they are clean.
For secondly he kicks up behind to clear away there.
For thirdly he works it upon stretch with the forepaws extended.
For fourthly he sharpens his paws by wood.
For fifthly he washes himself.
For sixthly he rolls upon wash.
For seventhly he fleas himself, that he may not be interrupted upon the beat.
For eighthly he rubs himself against a post.
For ninthly he looks up for his instructions.
For tenthly he goes in quest of food.
For having consider'd God and himself he will consider his neighbour.
For if he meets another cat he will kiss her in kindness.
For when he takes his prey he plays with it to give it a chance.
For one mouse in seven escapes by his dallying.
For when his day's work is done his business more properly begins.
For he keeps the Lord's watch in the night against the adversary.
For he counteracts the powers of darkness by his electrical skin and glaring eyes.
For he counteracts the Devil, who is death, by brisking about the life.
For in his morning orisons he loves the sun and the sun loves him.
For he is of the tribe of Tiger.
For the Cherub Cat is a term of the Angel Tiger.
For he has the subtlety and hissing of a serpent, which in goodness he suppresses.
For he will not do destruction, if he is well-fed, neither will he spit without provocation.
For he purrs in thankfulness, when God tells him he's a good Cat.
For he is an instrument for the children to learn benevolence upon.
For every house is incomplete without him and a blessing is lacking in the spirit.
For the Lord commanded Moses concerning the cats at the departure of the Children of Israel from Egypt.
For every family had one cat at least in the bag.
For the English Cats are the best in Europe.
For he is the cleanest in the use of his forepaws of any quadruped.
For the dexterity of his defence is an instance of the love of God to him exceedingly.
For he is the quickest to his mark of any creature.
For he is tenacious of his point.
For he is a mixture of gravity and waggery.
For he knows that God is his Saviour.
For there is nothing sweeter than his peace when at rest.
For there is nothing brisker than his life when in motion.
For he is of the Lord's poor and so indeed is he called by benevolence perpetually—Poor Jeoffry! poor Jeoffry! the rat has bit thy throat.
For I bless the name of the Lord Jesus that Jeoffry is better.
For the divine spirit comes about his body to sustain it in complete cat.
For his tongue is exceeding pure so that it has in purity what it wants in music.
For he is docile and can learn certain things.
For he can set up with gravity which is patience upon approbation.
For he can fetch and carry, which is patience in employment.
For he can jump over a stick which is patience upon proof positive.
For he can spraggle upon waggle at the word of command.
For he can jump from an eminence into his master's bosom.
For he can catch the cork and toss it again.
For he is hated by the hypocrite and miser.
For the former is afraid of detection.
For the latter refuses the charge.
For he camels his back to bear the first notion of business.
For he is good to think on, if a man would express himself neatly.
For he made a great figure in Egypt for his signal services.
For he killed the Ichneumon-rat very pernicious by land.
For his ears are so acute that they sting again.
For from this proceeds the passing quickness of his attention.
For by stroking of him I have found out electricity.
For I perceived God's light about him both wax and fire.
For the Electrical fire is the spiritual substance, which God sends from heaven to sustain the bodies both of man and beast.
For God has blessed him in the variety of his movements.
For, tho he cannot fly, he is an excellent clamberer.
For his motions upon the face of the earth are more than any other quadruped.
For he can tread to all the measures upon the music.
For he can swim for life.
For he can creep.

Christopher Smart [1722 - 1771]
.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

[Padraig]

From the Observer's Poetry Book of the Month, 18.05.2019

Stories
after Marie Howe

Think of a night in midsummer, a night with water
falling to a pond from the raised mouth

of a freckled stone seal, & children up late
calling to each other two or three gardens away, & under

those a softer murmur. So lies the past,
no further. You do not need to get up

& stand on tiptoe at the hedge to know
that what you hear are the people you love. You suppose

the stories I've told you are over. Think of the garden.
You sat there so long the dew had settled

on the grass, on the yellow pistils of the irises, the children's hair.
Their laughter was made of the same

air that moved as a breeze across you, & and the dew likewise
was bits of sky, nestling where it could, & all of it

(although you could not touch it)
was part of you, was what the summer night contained.

Julia Copus

[Bella Kemp]

From the Observer's Poetry Book of the Month, 18.05.2019

Stories
after Marie Howe

Think of a night in midsummer, a night with water
falling to a pond from the raised mouth

of a freckled stone seal, & children up late
calling to each other two or three gardens away, & under

those a softer murmur. So lies the past,
no further. You do not need to get up

& stand on tiptoe at the hedge to know
that what you hear are the people you love. You suppose

the stories I've told you are over. Think of the garden.
You sat there so long the dew had settled

on the grass, on the yellow pistils of the irises, the children's hair.
Their laughter was made of the same

air that moved as a breeze across you, & and the dew likewise
was bits of sky, nestling where it could, & all of it

(although you could not touch it)
was part of you, was what the summer night contained.

Julia Copus

An extraordinary and very moving poem. I'm ashamed to say I'd not heard of this poet. Thank you for posting.