Poetry

[johncorrigan]

Happy '23 to one and all.

In Memoriam, [Ring out, wild bells]

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light:
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind
For those that here we see no more;
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes
But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease;
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson - 1809-1892

[JasonPalmer]

Wow, that's lovely, thanks for that.

[johncorrigan]

Scintillate

I have outlived
my youthfulness
so a quiet life for me

where once
I used to
scintillate

now I sin
till ten
past three.

Roger McGough

[Padraig]

Scintillate

I have outlived
my youthfulness
so a quiet life for me

where once
I used to
scintillate

now I sin
till ten
past three.

Roger McGough

I enjoyed that, John, though it has upstaged my intended serious thought. But, here goes, again.

from The Cure at Troy

Human beings suffer.
They torture one another.
They get hurt and get hard.
No poem or play or song
Can fully right a wrong
Inflicted and endured.

History says, Don't hope
On this side of the grave,
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up,
And hope and history rhyme.

So hope for a great sea-change
On the far side of revenge.
Believe that a farther shore
Is reachable from here.
Believe in miracles
And cures and healing wells.

Call miracle self-healing,
The utter self-revealing
Double-take of feeling.
If there's fire on the mountain
And lightning and storm
And a god speaks from the sky

That means someone is hearing
The outcry and the birth-cry
Of new life at its term.
It means once in a lifetime
That justice can rise up
And hope and history rhyme.

Seamus Heaney

[vinteuil]

.

Tychbornes Elegie, written with his owne hand in the Tower before his execution



My prime of youth is but a frost of cares,
My feast of joy is but a dish of paine,
My Crop of corne is but a field of tares,
And al my good is but vaine hope of gaine.
The day is past, and yet I saw no sunne,
And now I live, and now my life is done.

My tale was heard, and yet it was not told,
My fruite is falne, & yet my leaves are greene:
My youth is spent, and yet I am not old,
I saw the world, and yet I was not seene.
My thred is cut, and yet it is not spunne,
And now I live, and now my life is done.


I sought my death, and found it in my wombe,
I lookt for life, and saw it was a shade:
I trod the earth, and knew it was my Tombe,
And now I die, and now I was but made.
My glasse is full, and now my glasse is runne,
And now I live, and now my life is done.

Chidiock Tichborne [1562 - 1586]

[Joseph K]

.

Tychbornes Elegie, written with his owne hand in the Tower before his execution



My prime of youth is but a frost of cares,
My feast of joy is but a dish of paine,
My Crop of corne is but a field of tares,
And al my good is but vaine hope of gaine.
The day is past, and yet I saw no sunne,
And now I live, and now my life is done.

My tale was heard, and yet it was not told,
My fruite is falne, & yet my leaves are greene:
My youth is spent, and yet I am not old,
I saw the world, and yet I was not seene.
My thred is cut, and yet it is not spunne,
And now I live, and now my life is done.


I sought my death, and found it in my wombe,
I lookt for life, and saw it was a shade:
I trod the earth, and knew it was my Tombe,
And now I die, and now I was but made.
My glasse is full, and now my glasse is runne,
And now I live, and now my life is done.

Chidiock Tichborne [1562 - 1586]

Nice.

[Padraig]

Not so much resignation as bitter anger in the poet's outrage, possibly exacerbated by the recent death of a beloved child.

Apparently with no surprise
To any happy Flower
The Frost beheads it at its play -
In accidental power -
The blond assassin passes on -
The Sun proceeds unmoved
To measure off another Day
For an Approving God -

Emily Dickinson c1884 published 1890

[smittims]

I hadn't seen that Dickinson poem. It put me in mind of Blake's 'the Fly' , one of the most moving poems I know (as one who loves insects):

Little fly
thy summer's play
my thoughtless hand
has brush'd away.

Am not I
a fly like thee?
Or art not thou
a man like me?

For I dance
and drink and sing;
till some blind hand
shall brush my wing.

If thought is life
and strength and breath
and the want
of thought is death;

Then am I
a happy fly,
If I live,
or if I die.

[Forget It (U2079353)]

This is less poetry - more punk but ...

I am the fly in the ointment
I can spread more disease than the fleas
Which nibble away at your window display
Yes, I am the fly in the ointment
I shake you down to say please
As you accept the next dose of disease

Wire - I am the fly in the ointment (youtube)

[Hitch]

Lee Stockdale is the winner of the National Poetry Competition with My Dead Father’s General Store in the Middle of a Desert.

It has gas pumps with red horses and wings,
but is not merely a gas station, your father is not my father,
standing over me with a clipboard, checking off things done and left undone.

He seems happy at this last stop before death for those living,
before life for those not yet born,
where his general store deals in flour, sugar, pieces of hacked meat,
or liver, reddish purple, a heart he wraps in brown paper.
He cuts my hair beneath the tin awning. I must have gotten here
from one direction or other on the road that stretches horizon to horizon,
the desert heat shimmering my eyes into pools.

I crawled in on my hands and knees,
he handed me an ice-cold orange Nehi drink.
It’s pure coincidence that this store is my father’s.
I ask him where all this stuff comes from, as no trucks travel this road
to replenish merchandise no one buys.
He doesn’t like questions that challenge his existence.
I become quiet, he’s cutting my hair
and might consciously or unconsciously make me look bad.

You’re doing a great job out here, I say, which he knows is bullshit—
how many fathers, even if they’re dead, set up a general store in a desert.
I persist, You keep the shelves stocked, floor broomed, bathroom clean.
The more I talk, the more I encourage myself to love him for the trouble he went to
making all this seem real, with cans of various sized nails, beans, rice,
shelves of liquor, deli section with giant pickles.

I begin to see what a dear, sweet man he is. Is this because he is dead?
I wish he were alive again.
I don’t think he killed himself to be mean to me personally.
At night, he says, howling coyotes come down from the mountains
and leave notes, bible verses, threatening messages, love letters.
Everything a coyote wants to get off its chest.
I ask if they come every night.
He says, Without fail.

[vinteuil]

.

... from Flies to Fleas -



The Flea

Marke but this flea, and marke in this,
How little that which thou deny'st me is;
It suck'd me first, and now sucks thee,
And in this flea, our two bloods mingled bee;
Thou know'st that this cannot be said
A sinne, nor shame, nor losse of maidenhead,
Yet this enjoyes before it wooe,
And pamper'd swells with one blood made of two,
And this, alas, is more than wee would doe.
.
.
Oh stay, three lives in one flea spare,
Where wee almost, yea more then maryed are,
This flea is you and I, and this
Our marriage bed, and mariage temple is;
Though parents grudge, and you, w'are met,
And cloystered in these living walls of Jet.
Though use make you apt to kill mee,
Let not to that, selfe murder added bee,
And sacrilege, three sinnes in killing three.
.
.
Cruell and sodaine, hast thou since
Purpled thy naile, in blood of innocence?
Wherein could this flea guilty bee,
Except in that drop which it suckt from thee?
Yet thou triumph'st, and saist that thou
Find'st not thy selfe, nor mee the weaker now;
'Tis true, then learne how false, feares bee;
Just so much honor, when thou yeeld'st to mee,
Will wast, as this flea's death tooke life from thee.

John Donne [1572-1731]



.

[Joseph K]

I am quite fond of The Flea.

[Tevot]

Crow, Wheels

When the city was destroyed,
they started fighting over the cemetery.
It was right before Easter
and wooden crosses over the freshly dug graves
put out their paper blossoms—
red, blue, yellow,
neon green, orange, raspberry pink.

Joyful relatives poured vodka for themselves
and for the dead—straight into their graves.
And the dead asked for more, and more, and more
and the relatives just kept pouring.

The celebration went on.
But at some point
a young man tripped over the stretchers
at the grave of his mother-in-law,
an old man stared into the sky
and found himself missing an eye,
a fat man smashed his shot glass
and damaged the edging around his wife’s grave.
Glass fell at his feet
like hail.

Easter came.
Now a live crow sits on top of a grave
of Anna Andriivna Voronova
instead of a gravestone.
BTR-80 wheels
rest at the cemetery nest of the Kolesnykiv family,
where lie buried
Maria Viktorivna, Pylyp Vasylyovych, and Mykola Pylypovych.

What are they to me, those wheels and that crow?
I can no longer remember.

Lyuba Yakimchuk, translated by Oksana Maksymchuk and Max Rosochinsky
from Words Without Borders, April 2016

[smittims]

Thanks, Tevot. That is a very poignant poem.

[Tevot]

Thanks, Tevot. That is a very poignant poem.

The poem features in this online anthology I came across today - https://www.wordsforwar.com/poems - comprising poetry by a number of artists in the original as well as the English translation. For those interested - the preface, introduction and afterword put the pieces into context.