Poetry

[Padraig]

Thank you! - and apologies that I have only just noticed this. It is a very fine poem by a poet unknown to me.

Go ndeana se maith duit - may it do you good, or, in English - you're welcome. Here's another.

Snow

I cannot help noticing how this slow Monk solo
seems to go somehow
with the snow
that is coming down this morning,

how the notes and the spaces accompany
its easy falling
on the geometry of the ground,
on the flagstone path,
the slanted roof,
and the angles of the split rail fence

as if he had imagined a winter scene
as he sat at the piano
late one night at the Five Spot
playing 'Ruby My Dear'.

Then again, it's the kind of song
that would go easily with rain
or a tumult of leaves,

and for that matter it's a snow
that could attend
an adagio for strings,
the best of the Ronettes,
or George Thorogood and the Destroyers.

it falls so indifferently
into the spacious white parlor of the world,
if I were sitting here reading
in silence,
reading the morning paper
or reading Being and Nothingness
not even letting the spoon
touch the inside of the cup,
I have a feeling
the snow would even go perfectly with that.

Billy Collins from Picnic, Lightning 1998

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jymS_7zyy7c

[Joseph K]

Nice, Padraig. I do rather like Monk.

[Bella Kemp]

A very fine poem, Padraig. It shares a certain music with Carver's Happiness (post 609 on this thread)

[Padraig]

A last word from Billy.

Lines Lost Among Trees

These are not the lines that came to me
while walking in the woods
with no pen
and nothing to write on anyway.

They are gone forever,
a handful of coins
dropped through the grate of memory,
along with the ingenious mnemonic

I devised to hold them in place -
all gone and forgotten
before I had returned to the clearing of lawn
in back of our quiet house

with its jars jammed with pens,
its notebooks and reams of blank paper,
its desk and soft lamp,
its table and the light from its windows.

So this is my elegy for them,
those six or eight exhalations,
the braided rope of the syntax,
the jazz of the timing,

and the little insight at the end
wagging like the short tail
of a perfectly obedient spaniel
sitting by the door.

This is my envoy to nothing
where I say Go, little poem -
not out into the world of strangers' eyes,
but off to some airy limbo,

home to lost epics.
unremembered names,
and fugitive dreams
such as the one I had last night,

which, like a fantastic city in pencil
erased itself
in the bright morning air
just as I was waking up.

Billy Collins from Picnic, Lightning 1998

[Joseph K]

Nice.

[vinteuil]

.

EPISTLE
To Miss BLOUNT, on her leaving the Town, after the CORONATION *

.

As some fond virgin, whom her mother’s care
Drags from the town to wholesom country air,
Just when she learns to roll a melting eye,
And hear a spark, yet think no danger nigh;
From the dear man unwillingly she must sever,
Yet takes one kiss before she parts for ever:
Thus from the world fair Zephalinda flew,
Saw others happy, and with sighs withdrew;
Not that their pleasures caus'd her discontent,
She sigh'd not that They stay'd, but that She went.
She went, to plain-work, and to purling brooks,
Old-fashion'd halls, dull aunts, and croaking rooks,
She went from Op'ra, park, assembly, play,
To morning walks, and pray'rs three hours a day;
To pass her time ‘twixt reading and Bohea,
To muse, and spill her solitary Tea,
Or o’er cold coffee trifle with the spoon,
Count the slow clock, and dine exact at noon;
Divert her eyes with pictures in the fire,
Hum half a tune, tell stories to the squire;
Up to her godly garret after sev'n,
There starve and pray, for that’s the way to heav'n.
Some Squire, perhaps, you take a delight to rack;
Whose game is Whisk, whose treat a toast in sack,
Who visits with a gun, presents you birds,
Then gives a smacking buss, and cries – No words!
Or with his hound comes hollowing from the stable,
Makes love with nods, and knees beneath a table;
Whose laughs are hearty, tho’ his jests are coarse,
And loves you best of all things – but his horse.
In some fair evening, on your elbow laid,
Your dream of triumphs in the rural shade;
In pensive thought recall the fancy'd scene,
See Coronations rise on ev'ry green;
Before you pass th’ imaginary sights
Of Lords, and Earls, and Dukes, and garter'd Knights;
While the spread Fan o’ershades your closing eyes;
Then give one flirt, and all the vision flies.
Thus vanish sceptres, coronets, and balls,
And leave you in lone woods, or empty walls.
So when your slave, at some dear, idle time,
(Not plagu'd with headachs, or the want of rhime)
Stands in the streets, abstracted from the crew,
And while he seems to study, thinks of you:
Just when his fancy points your sprightly eyes,
Or sees the blush of soft Parthenia rise,
Gay pats my shoulder, and you vanish quite;
Streets, chairs, and coxcombs rush upon my sight;
Vext to be still in town, I knit my brow,
Look sow'r, and hum a tune – as you may now.

Alexander Pope [1688 - 1744]

'

[ ... * "The greatest ode to fomo in Eng lit.", according to the deputy literary editor of The Times in the paper this morning.]




.

[Padraig]

Bella, I feel you deserve a little brightness after your recent thoughtfully forceful response to current pressures. May I?


From To A Skylark

Hail to thee, blithe Spirit
Bird thou never wert,
That from Heaven or near it,
Pourest thy full heart
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.

Higher still and higher
From the earth thou springest
Like a cloud of fire;
The blue deep thou wingest.
And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.

In the golden light'ning
Of the sunken Sun,
O'er which clouds are bright'ning,
Thou dost float and run,
Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.

*

What thou art we know not:
What is most like thee?
From rainbow clouds there flow not
Drops so bright to see
As from thy presence showers a rain of melody,

We look before and after,
And pine for what is not:
Our sincerest laughter
With some pain is fraught:
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

Yet, if we could scorn
Hate, and pride, and fear;
If we were things born
Not to shed a tear,
I know not how thy joy we ever should come near.

Better than all measures
Of delightful sound,
Better than all treasures
That in books are found,
Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground!

Teach me half the gladness
That thy brain must know;
Such harmonious madness
From my lips would flow
The world should listen then, as I am listening now.

Percy Bysshe Shelley 1792 - 1822

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNv0KKjmcrU

[Bella Kemp]

Very beautiful Padraig, thank you. I like to remember the psalmist: 'Weeping may endure for a night but joy cometh in the morning.' And thinking of larks, I am reminded of the Shakespeare sonnet which I must recite to my three year old grandson when next he brightens my day:

When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
(Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven’s gate;
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

[vinteuil]

.
On Lord Holland's Seat near Margate, Kent

Old and abandoned by each venal friend,
Here H[olland] took the pious resolution
To smuggle some few years and strive to mend
A broken character and constitution.
On this congenial spot he fixed his choice;
Earl Godwin trembled for his neighbouring sand;
Here sea-gulls scream and cormorants rejoice,
And mariners, though shipwrecked, dread to land.
Here reign the blustering North and blighting East,
No tree is heard to whisper, bird to sing:
Yet nature cannot furnish out the feast,
Art he invokes new horrors still to bring.
Now mouldering fanes and battlements arise,
Arches and turrets nodding to their fall,
Unpeopled palaces delude his eyes,
And mimic desolation covers all.
"Ah", said the sighing peer, "had Bute been true,
Nor Shelburne's, Rigby's, Calcraft's friendship vain,
Far other scenes than these had blessed our view
And realised the ruins that we feign.
Purged by the sword and beautified by fire,
Then had we seen proud London's hated walls:
Owls might have hooted in St Peter's choir,
And foxes stunk and littered in St Paul's."

Thomas Gray [1716-1771]

[ ... Henry Fox, Lord Holland, Paymaster General 1757-65, had been deserted by his political colleagues and had retired to ornament his estate near Margate with mock ruins. ]


.

[vinteuil]

.

The Alarm

What is’t, good prying friend, you say?
A hair or two just turning grey!
Quick, boy! for the next barber send:
This sight my Chloë may offend;
I’ll pass for twenty-five no more,
Though I have seen seven lustrums o’er.
Go, tap the oldest cask of wine;
Invite those merry blades to dine;
Bid Arrigoni bring his lute;
And brush my best embroidered suit!
This mighty hurry, friend, forgive;
‘Tis time to be in haste, to live!

Hildebrand Jacob [1693-1739]


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[johncorrigan]

I was reminded of 'Strawberries' by Edwin Morgan when it was suggested as a great poem of the outdoors. I had always thought of it as about love, but on re-reading it it is indeed a great poem of eating al fresco...and love. It also mentions the Kilpatrick Hills which we used to look across the Clyde Valley at, about 12 miles away from my old stomping grounds on the Gleniffer Braes.

Strawberries

There were never strawberries
like the ones we had
that sultry afternoon
sitting on the step
of the open french window
facing each other
your knees held in mine
the blue plates in our laps
the strawberries glistening
in the hot sunlight
we dipped them in sugar
looking at each other
not hurrying the feast
for one to come
the empty plates
laid on the stone together
with the two forks crossed
and I bent towards you
sweet in that air
in my arms
abandoned like a child
from your eager mouth
the taste of strawberries
in my memory
lean back again
let me love you

let the sun beat
on our forgetfulness
one hour of all
the heat intense
and summer lightning
on the Kilpatrick hills

let the storm wash the plates

Edwin Morgan

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Fingers

Who will remember your fingers?
Their mingled life? They flew
With the light in your look.
At the Piano, stomping out hits from the forties,
They performed an incidental clowning
Routine of their own, deadpan puppets.
You were only concerned to get them to the keys.
But as you talked, as your eyes signalled
The strobes of your elation,
They flared, flicked balletic aerobatics.
I thought of birds in some tropical sexual
Play of display, leaping and somersaulting,
Doing strange things in the air, and dropping to the dust.
Those dancers of your excess!
With such deft, practical touches - so accurate.
Thinking their own thoughts caressed like lightning
The lipstick into your mouth corners.

Trim conductors of your expertise,
Cavorting at your typewriter,
Possessed by infant spirit, puckish,
Who, whatever they did, danced or mimed it
In a weightless largesse of espressivo.

I remember your fingers. And your daughter's
Fingers remember your fingers
In everything they do.
Her fingers obey and honour your fingers,
The Lares and Penates of our house.


Ted HUGHES (on what sh/would have been his 89th birthday) from Birthday Letters.

[silvestrione]

Fingers

Who will remember your fingers?
Their mingled life? They flew
With the light in your look.
At the Piano, stomping out hits from the forties,
They performed an incidental clowning
Routine of their own, deadpan puppets.
You were only concerned to get them to the keys.
But as you talked, as your eyes signalled
The strobes of your elation,
They flared, flicked balletic aerobatics.
I thought of birds in some tropical sexual
Play of display, leaping and somersaulting,
Doing strange things in the air, and dropping to the dust.
Those dancers of your excess!
With such deft, practical touches - so accurate.
Thinking their own thoughts caressed like lightning
The lipstick into your mouth corners.

Trim conductors of your expertise,
Cavorting at your typewriter,
Possessed by infant spirit, puckish,
Who, whatever they did, danced or mimed it
In a weightless largesse of espressivo.

I remember your fingers. And your daughter's
Fingers remember your fingers
In everything they do.
Her fingers obey and honour your fingers,
The Lares and Penates of our house.


Ted HUGHES (on what sh/would have been his 89th birthday) from Birthday Letters.

Thanks for that: I read through when I couldn't see the name at the bottom and did not pick it as one Hughes', despite him having been the poet I followed most closely through my life, up to and just after his death (what, nearly 20 years ago!). Nice to honour him...

[un barbu]

A great favourite which I used to love teaching to A Level classes.

[johncorrigan]

Meeting Point

Time was away and somewhere else,
There were two glasses and two chairs
And two people with the one pulse
(Somebody stopped the moving stairs):
Time was away and somewhere else.

And they were neither up nor down;
The stream’s music did not stop
Flowing through heather, limpid brown,
Although they sat in a coffee shop
And they were neither up nor down.

The bell was silent in the air
Holding its inverted poise—
Between the clang and clang a flower,
A brazen calyx of no noise:
The bell was silent in the air.

The camels crossed the miles of sand
That stretched around the cups and plates;
The desert was their own, they planned
To portion out the stars and dates:
The camels crossed the miles of sand.

Time was away and somewhere else.
The waiter did not come, the clock
Forgot them and the radio waltz
Came out like water from a rock:
Time was away and somewhere else.

Her fingers flicked away the ash
That bloomed again in tropic trees:
Not caring if the markets crash
When they had forests such as these,
Her fingers flicked away the ash.

God or whatever means the Good
Be praised that time can stop like this,
That what the heart has understood
Can verify in the body’s peace
God or whatever means the Good.

Time was away and she was here
And life no longer what it was,
The bell was silent in the air
And all the room one glow because
Time was away and she was here.

LOUIS MACNEICE