Poetry

[agingjb]

Two striking sonnets. I'll throw in a more ordinary one:

Staddles

Designed at first to baffle rats,
Working staddles guard the store,
Supporting all the manger straw,
And puzzle the prolific cats.

But as the sheds with failing wood
Collapse above the sturdy rocks
Redundant and archaic blocks,
The staddles useless where they stood.

So now the staddles have retired,
They will not rot, will not decay.
And, far too big to throw away,
A novel purpose they’ve acquired.

Toadstools like prehistoric bones
Form lines of granite traffic cones.

[Joseph K]

Thank you, agingjb. I like yours - with its tetrametre and rhyme scheme, it is in these respects a more modern thing than my more traditional Shakespearean ones... I had to look up the word 'staddle'.

Here's another one of mine, I can't be absolutely sure I haven't posted this before - I think I may have posted it on r3ok.

Devotion (pt. 2)

The Lydian melismas that entwine
with one another, forming flourishes
of trills and liquid tone, twangs of divine
sound coursing through the veins it nourishes.
With choric grandeur coruscating beams
appear and break the opaque brumous sky
asunder: this is where the wah-wah gleams,
an arabesque design in which we scry
a numen’s sonic hand which follows death,
repeating sequence after sequence rising
indefinitely upon eternity’s breath
with every shade of joy; the same, yet surprising
with limitless renewal, though in time
but not of it, beyond that which we climb.

February 2018

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBmkB8ws_x8

[Bella Kemp]

Thank you, agingjb. I like yours - with its tetrametre and rhyme scheme, it is in these respects a more modern thing than my more traditional Shakespearean ones... I had to look up the word 'staddle'.

Here's another one of mine, I can't be absolutely sure I haven't posted this before - I think I may have posted it on r3ok.

Devotion (pt. 2)

The Lydian melismas that entwine
with one another, forming flourishes
of trills and liquid tone, twangs of divine
sound coursing through the veins it nourishes.
With choric grandeur coruscating beams
appear and break the opaque brumous sky
asunder: this is where the wah-wah gleams,
an arabesque design in which we scry
a numen’s sonic hand which follows death,
repeating sequence after sequence rising
indefinitely upon eternity’s breath
with every shade of joy; the same, yet surprising
with limitless renewal, though in time
but not of it, beyond that which we climb.

February 2018

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBmkB8ws_x8

I like this poem very much, Joseph, but I can't say the same for the music that inspired it! I'll give it another try, though - I remember as a teenager it took me a long time and many attempts to like Mahler.

[Joseph K]

Thank you, Bella.

[johncorrigan]

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
for hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.

T.S.Eliot from 'The Four Quartets'

[Padraig]

But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.

I believe you'll love this, John...well I hope so.

You might say that with lockdown we have largely missed the Spring, and hardly begun to enjoy an abnormal Summer when Autumn has come upon us. Here is a version of that scenario where the 'I' is indeed Emily Dickinson.

My first well Day - since many ill -
I asked to go abroad,
And take the Sunshine in my hands
And see the things in Pod -

A'blossom just - when I went in
To take my Chance with pain -
Uncertain if myself, or He
Should prove the strongest One.

The Summer deepened, while we strove -
She put some flowers away -
And Redder cheeked Ones - in their stead -
A fond - illusive way -

To Cheat herself, it seemed she tried -
As if before a Child
To fade - Tomorrow - Rainbow held
The Sepulchre, could hide.

She dealt a fashion to the Nut -
She tied the Hoods to Seeds -
She dropped bright scraps of Tint, about -
And left Brazilian Threads

On every shoulder that she met -
Then both her Hands of Haze
Put up - to hide her parting Grace
From our unfitted eyes -
My loss by sickness - Was it Loss?
Or that Etherial Gain
One earns by measuring the Grave -
Then - measuring the Sun.

Written 1862 Published 1935

[johncorrigan]

I believe you'll love this, John...well I hope so.

You might say that with lockdown we have largely missed the Spring, and hardly begun to enjoy an abnormal Summer when Autumn has come upon us. Here is a version of that scenario where the 'I' is indeed Emily Dickinson.

Loved it, Padraig...'that etherial gain one earns by measuring the Grave, then measuring the Sun.'

[Padraig]

Derek Mahon 1941 - 22020

https://www.poetrybooks.co.uk/blogs/news/poem-a-day-everything-is-going-to-be-all-right

[Pulcinella]

I posted a link to Howells' setting of this poem on the Modulations thread, and thought that I might post the poem itself here.

We are all a bit sorrowful at present, but, unlike King David, we have reasons for our sorrow.
Perhaps the song of the nightingale (no Stravinskian association intended!) will help to take some of our cares away, too.

King David, by Walter De La Mare

King David was a sorrowful man:
No cause for his sorrow had he;
And he called for the music of a hundred harps,
To ease his melancholy.

They played till they all fell silent:
Played - and play sweet did they;
But the sorrow that haunted the heart of King David
They could not charm away.

He rose; and in his garden
Walked by the moon alone,
A nightingale hidden in a cypress tree
Jargoned on and on.

King David lifted his sad eyes
Into the dark-boughed tree -
‘Tell me, thou little bird that singest,
Who taught my grief to thee?’

But the bird in no wise heeded;
And the king in the cool of the moon
Hearkened to the nightingale's sorrowfulness,
Till all his own was gone.

[Padraig]

We are all a bit sorrowful at present, but, unlike King David, we have reasons for our sorrow.
Perhaps the song of the nightingale (no Stravinskian association intended!) will help to take some of our cares away, too.

Yes, I was listening, Pulcinella.

I thought the poem was a nice companion to Derek Mahon's in the previous post.

I couldn't help imagining that King David could have been listening to
...'Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn...'

[vinteuil]

.

... just returned to London from Belfast, this resonated -

Afterlives

(for James Simmons)

1

I wake in a dark flat
To the soft roar of the world.
Pigeons neck on the white
Roofs as I draw the curtains
And look out over London
Rain-fresh in the morning light.

This is our element, the bright
Reason on which we rely
For the long-term solutions.
The orators yap, and guns
Go off in a back street;
But the faith doesn’t die

That in our time these things
Will amaze the literate children
In their non-sectarian schools
And the dark places be
Ablaze with love and poetry
When the power of good prevails.

What middle-class shits we are
To imagine for one second
That our privileged ideals
Are divine wisdom, and the dim
Forms that kneel at noon
In the city not ourselves.



2

I am going home by sea
For the first time in years.
Somebody thumbs a guitar
On the dark deck, while a gull
Dreams at the masthead,
The moon-splashed waves exult.

At dawn the ship trembles, turns
In a wide arc to back
Shuddering up the grey lough
Past lightship and buoy,
Slipway and dry dock
Where a naked bulb burns;

And I step ashore in a fine rain
To a city so changed
By five years of war
I scarcely recognize
The places I grew up in,
The faces that try to explain.

But the hills are still the same
Grey-blue above Belfast.
Perhaps if I’d stayed behind
And lived it bomb by bomb
I might have grown up at last
And learnt what is meant by home.

vale Derek Mahon

.

[Serial_Apologist]

Ivor Cutler discussed on R3 - Friday 9 Oct

7pm - Front Row
A round-up of news, reviews and interviews from the worlds of art, literature, film and music. Tonight Kirsty Lang discusses the work of the Scottish poet and musician Ivor Cutler with the singer/songwriter KT Tungstall, who's just made a documentary about him. Cutler (1923-2006) was known for his appearances on radio and was a great favourite of John Peel, recording many sessions for his late-night music show. Cutler also appeared on the Beatles' TV movie Magical Mystery Tour.

I thought this might be appropriate to draw to people's attention on here.

[johncorrigan]

7pm - Front Row
A round-up of news, reviews and interviews from the worlds of art, literature, film and music. Tonight Kirsty Lang discusses the work of the Scottish poet and musician Ivor Cutler with the singer/songwriter KT Tungstall, who's just made a documentary about him. Cutler (1923-2006) was known for his appearances on radio and was a great favourite of John Peel, recording many sessions for his late-night music show. Cutler also appeared on the Beatles' TV movie Magical Mystery Tour.

I thought this might be appropriate to draw to people's attention on here.

Thanks S_A...I'll be there!

[gurnemanz]

7pm - Front Row
A round-up of news, reviews and interviews from the worlds of art, literature, film and music. Tonight Kirsty Lang discusses the work of the Scottish poet and musician Ivor Cutler with the singer/songwriter KT Tungstall, who's just made a documentary about him. Cutler (1923-2006) was known for his appearances on radio and was a great favourite of John Peel, recording many sessions for his late-night music show. Cutler also appeared on the Beatles' TV movie Magical Mystery Tour.

I thought this might be appropriate to draw to people's attention on here.

Thanks for the nudge. We last saw him in the elegant surroundings of Bath Assembly Rooms - he shambled onto the platform carrying a rucksack. A very good session

[Serial_Apologist]

Thanks for the nudge. We last saw him in the elegant surroundings of Bath Assembly Rooms - he shambled onto the platform carrying a rucksack. A very good session

It's amazing what some people carry around in their rucksacks, isn't it!