Poetry

[Hornspieler]

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.

Just to remind you:




Here is Blair Castle

HS

[Tevot]

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

Many thanks for this John. I'll certainly "tune -in" at some point next week

Best Wishes,

Tevot

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I've recently bought the Uncollected Poems of RS Thomas - a fascinating collection of poems written for individual magazine publication and semi-discarded work that he neither destroyed nor offered for publication. These latter give remarkable insights to the workings of the poet's mind - all of them containing powerful passages together with "sticky" moments that hamper the poem's effectiveness. This one has some of Thomas' characteristics, but some of the imagery isn't quite "there", and the words don't flow as in his best work - but what I would give to be able to produce something of this standard!

Luminary

My luminary,
My morning and evening
star. My light at noon
when there is no sun
and the sky lowers. My balance
of joy in a a world
that has gone off joy's
standard. Yours the face
that young I recognised
as though I had known you
of old. Come, my eyes
said, out into the morning
of a world whose dew
waits for your footprint.
Before a green altar
with the thrush for a priest
I took those gossamer
vows that neither the Church
could stale nor the Machine
tarnish, that with the years
have grown hard as flint
lighter than platinum
on our ringless fingers.

Thomas had already perceived the central flaw in such poems, in another poem that also displays them:

Birthday

Come to me a moment, stand
Ageing yet lovely still,
At my side. Let me tell you that,
With the clouds massing for attack
And the wind worrying the leaves
From the branches and the blood seeping
Thin and slow through the ventricles
Of the heart, I regret less,
Looking back on the poem's
Weakness, the failure of the mind
To be clever than of the heart
To deserve you as you showed how.

[Padraig]

A gentlemanly enough response, Hs. I doubt if this fellow would have been so diplomatic:

Just My Luck I'm Not Pig-Ignorant

Just my luck I'm not pig-ignorant
Though it's hard to be a boor
Now that I have to go out among
This miserable shower.

A pity I'm not a stutterer,
Good people, among you,
For that would suit you better,
You thick, ignorant crew.

If I found a man to swap, I'd trade
Him verse that would cheer -
As good a cloak as would come, he'd find,
Between him and despair.

Since a man is less respected
For his talent than his suit,
I regret that what I've spent on art
I haven't now in cloth.

Since happy the words and deeds that show no hint,
On boorish tongues, of music, metre, clarity,
I regret the time I've wasted grappling with hard print
Since my prime, that i didn't spend it on vulgarity.

Dáibhí Ó Bruadair c 1625 - 1698
Poems from the Irish Collected Translations Gabriel Fitzmaurice 2004

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

It disappoints me that this particular forum does not carry any contributions from other forumites who have used their own abilities to express themselves in verse – or even simply to publish something of their own to share with others, as the artists and photographers among us have done on other of the Arts threads.

There was once a Thread precisely for this, wasn't there, HS? (In fact, didn't you start it? I remember sals and others contributing.) I started this Thread to complement that - I seem to remember you preferred more traditional rhyme, scansion etc, so I started this to complement that with professional poetry that Forumistas wished to share with others. Not, I hasten to add, that that need necessarily be a rule, if there anyone else wishes to use this Thread to share their own creative work.

My main disappointment is that the Thread seems to attract fewer contributions than the footie threads.

[amateur51]

Come on then. What about it?

HS

(Joke)Where do all the police constables live?

Letsby Avenue!

More specifically Evening Hall, Letsby Avenue

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

The Late Wasp

You, that through all the dying summer
Came every morning to our breakfast table,
A lonely bachelor mummer,
And fed on the marmalade
So deeply all your strength was scarcely able
To prise you from the sweet bed you had made -
You and the earth have now grown older,
And your blue thoroughfares have felt a change;
They have grown colder;
And it is strange
How the familiar avenues of the air
Crumble now, crumble; the good air will not hold.
All cracked and perished with the cold;
And down you dive through nothing and despair.

Edwin MUIR (1887-1959)

[agingjb]

I seem to have brought the previous thread to an end. Oh well, some rather odd sonnets here

[agingjb]

More to share? There's probably too much on my site.

I'm currently trying a form of seven line stanzas rhymed abcbabc with freeish line length and stress.

[Anna]

I've posted a Dafydd ap Gwilym (1320-1370) before but was reminded of this one by the recent misty mornings we've had. Poor Dafydd, he continuously got himself into a state of feverish anticipation but always something intervened to prevent him getting the girl, this time it's mist. The translation is again by Swansea University.
(I don't apologise for the length, it's easy to scroll over what you don't wish to read!)

The Mist

Yesterday, Thursday (a day for drinking,
it was good for me to have, I got a favour,
a dependable sign, I am thin for her sake,
complete love) I got
a course amongst lovely branches under the greenwood
with a girl, she agreed to meet me.
There was no one under dear God the Father
(bless her) who knew,
when break of day came on Thursday,
how full of joy I was
as I went, [to] see the beauty,
to the land where the tall slender maid was,
when there came indeed on a long moor
a mist just like night.

A great parchment roll which was a cover to the rain,
pallid rows to stop me,
a rusting tin-coloured sieve,
bird-net of the black earth,
a dark hedge on a narrow path,
an endless blanket in the sky,
a grey cowl making the ground one colour,
a lid on every gaping valley,
roof lattice seen up above,
a great weal over woods, haze of the land,
thick grey fleece, pale grey, flaccid and loose,
the colour of smoke, field's cowl,
hedge of rain to hinder welfare,
coat of armour of an oppressive shower,
it would deceive men, dark appearance,
shaggy cloak of the lands,
towers of Gwyn's tribe
travelling on high, headdress of the wind,
its grim cheeks hide the land,
a blanket covering three signs of the Zodiac,
darkness, a thick unlovely one,
blindness of the world to deceive a poet,
broad web of thick deceptive cambric,
it was spread out like a rope,
a spider's web, like wares of a French shop,
flaccid headland of Gwyn and his tribe,
speckled smoke which gets everywhere,
steam around small trees,
bear's breath where dogs bark,
ointment of the witches of Annwfn,
it wets stealthily like dew,
damp opaque habergeon of the land.

It's easier to go on a journey by night
over moors than in mist by day.
The stars come from the sky
like flames of wax candles,
but neither moonlight nor the Lord's stars,
painful promise, will come in mist.
He did ill when He made the mist
forever black and confining, it was lightless.
It blocked my path beneath the sky,
the dark grey curtain hinders a love messenger,
and prevented me (swift getting)
from going to my slender-browed girl.

[Padraig]

No apology required, Anna.
Do I hear, or sense, a prophetic echo of another better known Welsh bard?
What a glittering shower of metaphors, and the odd mysterious simile

it was spread out like a rope,
a spider's web, like wares of a French shop.

And I learned a new word - habergeon - which I can apply to that jumper that's too small.
It's probably a cliche, but here's another example of finding much to identify with in the thoughts of someone from so long ago.

I enjoyed this poem a lot, thank you.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I enjoyed this poem a lot, thank you.

So did I!

Did everyone watch Cerys Matthews' programme on the Mabinogion last night? (A wee bit "gushing" - probably from trying to fit so much information into such a short programme - but so wonderful to hear those words in Mid-Welsh.) Isn't Dafydd in the same situation as Rwyll's men trying to catch up with Rhiannon's horse? The more effort he puts into chasing Love, the further away from him it saunters.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Another poem about lack of success (with one of the darkestly comic final lines I know!)

nobody loses all the time

i had an uncle named
Sol who was a born failure and
nearly everybody said he should have gone
into vaudeville perhaps because my Uncle Sol could
sing McCann He Was A Diver on Xmas Eve like Hell Itself which
may or may not account for the fact that my Uncle

Sol indulged in that possibly most inexcusable
of all to use a highfalootin phrase
luxuries that is or to
wit farming and be
it needlessly
added

my Uncle Sol’s farm
failed because the chickens
ate the vegetables so
my Uncle Sol had a
chicken farm till the
skunks ate the chickens when

my Uncle Sol
had a skunk farm but
the skunks caught cold and
died and so
my Uncle Sol imitated the
skunks in a subtle manner

or by drowning himself in the watertank
but somebody who’d given my Uncle Sol a Victor
Victrola and records while he lived presented to
him upon the auspicious occasion of his decease a
scrumptious not to mention splendiferous funeral with
tall boys in black gloves and flowers and everything and
i remember we all cried like the Missouri
when my Uncle Sol’s coffin lurched because
somebody pressed a button
(and down went
my Uncle
Sol

and started a worm farm)

cummings ist der dichter.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

And, yes; it is a word!

[hedgehog]

Thanks for the poem fhg, I like it very much.

I have a lot of time for Sean Bonney - he's uncompromising and stark, but he has such a good command of language, rhythm and combinations of imagery that I am compelled to keep reading and accept the (at times) discomfort.

A link to his Blog for the latest penning: http://abandonedbuildings.blogspot.c...tation_24.html