Poetry

[amateur51]

I loved the random nature of beginning and ending, and of the strange relationships we create from this poem by Kit Wright featured in Saturday's Guardian

That Was the Summer

by Kit Wright

That was the summer as I recall,
the man next door and I began
to call each other Sir,
in a kind of roguish formality or
mock-combative collusion. Why,
I cannot say, but keep it up
we somehow did for some little time;
for as long, you might almost say, as it took.
"Are you all right, sir?" "Quite all right, sir.
You all right, sir?" "Sir, I'm well."
Nor did we fail to operate
attendant quasi-theatrical business:
the stiff half-turn; the ritual bow;
the planted stare of profound regard,
as we met on our doorsteps, housekeys poised …
or bellowed across the howling High Road
"ARE YOU ALL RIGHT, SIR?" "QUITE ALL RIGHT, SIR!"
as though in loyal defence of a principle
both were prepared to die for, soon.
But the ending seemed as inexplicable
as the beginning: the disappearance,
ambulance sirens, police, old pressmen
hogging the bar at the Horse and Artichoke,
cats gone skinny, the haunted dog.
And of course I know no more than anyone
else as I walk these streets at midnight,
hoping to coax from neon or starlight
a final reflexive Sir, I'm well.

Elegantly done - the end was upon me before I'd realised what was going on.

[Padraig]

During the football last night I had powerful thoughts about sport and people and.... things........ I forget now. It happens.]

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 Selected Poems 1988-1998

[Padraig]

Another poem from the same slim volume. I wondered if it should be filed under "Jazz".

The Blues

Much of what is said here
must be said twice,
a reminder that no one
takes an immediate interest in the pain of others.

Nobody will listen, it would seem,
if you simply admit
your baby left you early this morning
and didn't even stop to say goodbye.

But if you sing it again
with the help of the band
which will now lift you to a higher,
more ardent and beseeching key,

people will not only listen;
they will shift to the sympathetic
edges of their chairs,
moved to such acute anticipation

by that chord and the delay that follows
they will not be able to sleep
unless you release with one finger
a scream from the throat of your guitar

and turn your head back to the microphone
to let them know
you're a hard-hearted man
but that woman's sure going to make you cry.

Billy Collins

[Ockeghem's Razor]

Derek Mahon's 'Morning Radio'

The silence of the ether...
What can be going on
In the art-deco liner?

Ah, now the measured pips,
A stealth of strings
Tickling the fretwork throat,

Woodwinds entering
Delicately, the clarinet
Ascending to a lark-like note.

Seven o'clock ---
News-time, and the merciful
Voice of Tom Crowe

Explains with sorrow
That the world we know
Is coming to an end.

Even as he speaks
We can hear furniture
Creak and slide on the decks.

But first a brief recital
Of resonant names ---
Mozart, Schubert, Brahms.

The sun shines,
And a new day begins
To the strains of a horn concerto.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Inspired choice, Razor - welcome aboard!

[Tevot]

Inspired choice, Razor - welcome aboard!

I fully concur

Here's another one :- Everything is Going to be All Right


How should I not be glad to contemplate

the clouds clearing beyond the dormer window

and a high tide reflected on the ceiling?

There will be dying, there will be dying,

but there is no need to go into that.

The poems flow from the hand unbidden

and the hidden source is the watchful heart.

The sun rises in spite of everything

and the far cities are beautiful and bright.

I lie here in a riot of sunlight

watching the day break and the clouds flying.

Everything is going to be all right.

Derek Mahon, from Selected Poems

[vinteuil]

.

The room was suddenly rich and the great bay-window was
Spawning snow and pink roses against it
Soundlessly collateral and incompatible:
World is suddener than we fancy it.

World is crazier and more of it than we think,
Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion
A tangerine and spit the pips and feel
The drunkenness of things being various.

And the fire flames with a bubbling sound for world
Is more spiteful and gay than one supposes -
On the tongue on the eyes on the ears in the palms of one's hands -
There is more than glass between the snow and the huge roses.

[Tevot]

MCMXIV


Those long uneven lines
Standing as patiently
As if they were stretched outside
The Oval or Villa Park,
The crowns of hats, the sun
On moustached archaic faces
Grinning as if it were all
An August Bank Holiday lark;

And the shut shops, the bleached
Established names on the sunblinds,
The farthings and sovereigns,
And dark-clothed children at play
Called after kings and queens,
The tin advertisements
For cocoa and twist, and the pubs
Wide open all day--

And the countryside not caring:
The place names all hazed over
With flowering grasses, and fields
Shadowing Domesday lines
Under wheat's restless silence;
The differently-dressed servants
With tiny rooms in huge houses,
The dust behind limousines;

Never such innocence,
Never before or since,
As changed itself to past
Without a word--the men
Leaving the gardens tidy,
The thousands of marriages,
Lasting a little while longer:

Never such innocence again.

Philip Larkin (1922-1985)

[Ockeghem's Razor]

The Larkin poem is a great favourite, beautifully capturing the pathos and innocence of the moment, and thank you for that. This, from a former poster-boy of jingo imperialism, and someone who lost a beloved son in the conflict-----

A DEAD STATESMAN

I could not dig: I dared not rob:
Therefore I lied to please the mob.
Now all my lies are proved untrue
And I must face the men I slew.
What tale shall serve me here among
Mine angry and defrauded young?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Almost Audenesque that Kipling poem, Razor. Quite different from most of his other stuff.

I mentioned Neil Curry a couple of months ago, and I notice he has a new collection out from Enitharmon, Some Letters Never Sent. I like the gentle musing of this one from his previous collection Other Rooms:

The Weather House

I've just seen my neighbour go indoors
carrying a basket of fruit
and a bunch of flowers.
It has started to rain.
I wonder if her husband will come out
in his wellies and raincoat
and stand on the steps
until it stops
and he can go inside again.

And (perhaps more RSThomasesque in tone - the line division between lines 3 & 4 superbly judged) completely different:

The Well

Though he leant right over the rim,
The water was too far down for him to see.

"Time, you realise," someone remarked
Inside his head, "is only the rate

At which the past decays." And so,
He let slip slowly through his fingers

The one or two choice memories he chanced
To have about him, then stood listening

Attentively for their depleted echo.

[Ockeghem's Razor]

Stepping outside this morning I was aware of a change in the air. I like the way in which Wallace Stevens pictures it in 'The Beginning':

So summer comes in the end to these few stains
And the rust and rot of the door through which she went.

The house is empty. But here is where she sat
To comb her dewy hair, a touchless light,

Perplexed by its darker iridescences.
This was the glass in which she used to look

At the moment's being, without history,
The self of of summer perfectly perceived,

And feel its country gayety and smile
And be surprised and tremble, hand and lip.

This is the chair from which she gathered up
Her dress, the carefulest, commodious weave

Inwoven by a weaver to twelve bells...
The dress is lying, cast-off, on the floor.

Now, the first tutoyers of tragedy
Speak softly, to begin with, in the eaves.

[johncorrigan]

It was a glorious sunny morning and I was taking a bus from Perth to Blairgowrie. The first bus to arrive takes a roundabout route but I thought I'd take it anyway - across the Tay, past Scone Palace where the only other passengers disembarked and then through small villages that claim links to Macbeth and on over the River Isla, past the magnificent Meikleour Beech Hedge and on into Blair...and all on my bus pass. I felt blessed and I kept thinking of the Leonard Cohen poem that I first read at school.

The bus

I was the last passenger of the day,
I was alone on the bus,
I was glad they were spending all that money
just getting me up Eighth Avenue.
Driver! I shouted, it's you and me tonight,
let's run away from this big city
to a smaller city more suitable to the heart,
let's drive past the swimming pools of Miami Beach,
you in the driver's seat, me several seats back,
but in the racial cities we'll change places
so as to show how well you've done up North,
and let us find ourselves some tiny American fishing village
in unknown Florida
and park right at the edge of the sand,
a huge bus pointing out,
metallic, painted, solitary,
with New York plates.

Leonard Cohen

[Globaltruth]

Whereas we walked into Matlock Bath & I vaguely recalled this poem from John Betjeman.
We missed the bus and walked back too...

From Matlock Bath's half-timbered station
I see the black dissenting spire,
Thin witness of a congregation,
Stone emblem of a Handel choir;
In blest Bethesda's limpid pool,
Comes treacling out of Sunday School.

By cool Siloam's shady rill--
The sounds are sweet as strawberry jam:
I raise mine eyes unto the hill,
The beetling Heights of Abraham;
The branchy trees are white with rime
In Matlock Bath this winter-time.

And from the whiteness, grey uprearing,
Huge cliffs hang sunless ere they fall,
A tossed and stoney ocean nearing
The moment to o'erwhelm us all:
Eternal Father, strong to save,
How long wilt thou suspend the wave?

How long before the pleasant acres,
Of intersecting Lovers' Walks
Are rolled across by limestone breakers,
Whole woodlands snapp'd like cabbage stalks?
O God, our help in ages past,
How long will Speedwell Cavern last?

In this dark dale I hear the thunder
Of houses folding with the shocks,
The Grand Pavilion buckling under
The weight of the Romantic Rocks,
The hardest Blue John ash-trays seem
To melt away in thermal steam.

Deep in their Nonconformist setting
The shivering children wait their doom--
The father's whip, the mother's petting
In many a coffee-coloured room;
And attic bedrooms shriek with fright,
For dread of Pilgrims of the Night.

Perhaps it's this that makes me shiver
As I ascend the slippery path
High, high above the sliding river
And terraces of Matlock Bath;
A sense of doom, a drear to see
The Rock of Ages cleft for me.

[johncorrigan]

We missed the bus and walked back too...

I assume that ye and Mrs GT stayed too long before the pleasant acres of intersecting lover's walks.

[johncorrigan]

To mark the 30th anniversary of Betjeman, a programme with AN Wilson on Monday evening at 9pm followed by 'Metroland', the programme JB made in '73.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04gb6nl