Poetry

[edashtav]

Many thanks,FHG, for that moving poem which speaks of a Scottish artisan but connects through, perhaps, Thomas Hardy and West Gallery bands to those of us who look across the CoE and see, one by one, parishes where they are saying "What shall we do now? There is no Music in in this or the next parish."

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Thanks, ed - and it's also pertinent to some schools who are cutting down on specialist Music staff; parents only becoming aware (or even realizing) how much they have lost after they have lost it.

AND, the hidden skills and dreams of people we think we know. AND the prejudice of others who prevent them from realizing those dreams. It is a very rich and poignant poem.

[edashtav]

Thanks, ed - and it's also pertinent to some schools who are cutting down on specialist Music staff; parents only becoming aware (or even realizing) how much they have lost after they have lost it.

AND, the hidden skills and dreams of people we think we know. AND the prejudice of others who prevent them from realizing those dreams. It is a very rich and poignant poem.

[my emphasis]

And that's the miracle of poetry: resonance!
This poem brought to mind those oft quoted lines of A E Housman:
Into my heart an air that kills
From yon far country blows:
What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?

That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.



Perhaps, on its surface Housman's poem that is the epitome of nostalgia but when one allows the meaning of "content" to move away from satisfied with towards capacity then it doesn't reek only of nostalgia but also embraces aspects of lost or missed opportunities: c.f. Dunn.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Apartment Cats

The girls wake, stretch, and pad up to the door.
They rub my leg and purr;
One sniffs around my shoe,
Rich with an outside smell,
The other rolls back on the floor -
White bib exposed, and stomach of soft fur.

Now, more awake, they re-enact Ben Hur
Along the corridor,
Wheel, gallop; as they do,
Their noses twitching still,
Their eyes get wild, their bodies tense,
Their usual prudence seemingly withdraws.

And then they wrestle: parry, lock of paws,
Blind hug of close defence,
Tail-thump, and smothered mew.
If either, though, feels claws,
She abruptly rises, knowing well
How to stalk off in wise indifference.

Thom GUNN

[johncorrigan]

Here's a wee tune for you all for the Bard's birthday. Spoiler alert:Tapsalteerie means topsy-turvy, by the way.

A Fiddler in the North

Tune—“The King o’ France he rade a race.”

AMANG the trees, where humming bees,
At buds and flowers were hinging, O,
Auld Caledon drew out her drone,
And to her pipe was singing, O:
’Twas Pibroch, Sang, Strathspeys, and Reels,
She dirl’d them aff fu’ clearly, O:
When there cam’ a yell o’ foreign squeels,
That dang her tapsalteerie, O.


Their capon craws an’ queer “ha, ha’s,”
They made our lugs grow eerie, O;
The hungry bike did scrape and fyke,
Till we were wae and weary, O:
But a royal ghaist, wha ance was cas’d,
A prisoner, aughteen year awa’,
He fir’d a Fiddler in the North,
That dang them tapsalteerie, O.


Robert Burns

[Nick Armstrong]

Apartment Cats

Really enjoyed that - takes one back to multiple cat ownership of yore!

The only trick he misses is the mutual kick-battering with back paws in that 'blind hug' during the wrestling...

[Tevot]

Hello everyone,

This is taken from a website that showcases C21st Chinese poets...

http://modernchinesepoetry.com/poems.php

A Pair of Chopsticks
by Zhang Shaobao

In my childhood, my immaculate mother
would set wooden chopsticks, a pair for each,
around the table, where hot steams were rising
from a coarse meal. That was the simple happiness
in a farmer’s home.

My sister got married, leaving
one fewer pair of chopsticks on the table.

Later I took a wife, and
chopsticks were added, a pair more.

The way chopsticks were set around a table
stood for the everyday bliss
for a family.

Now, Mother has passed on;
a pair of chopsticks have been removed.

The happiness around the dining table
is now something from the past.
Nowadays the siblings are like
branches of an old tree growing apart.

Lonely chopsticks are set
a world’s distance apart.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Many thanks to johnc for that Burns' Night treat: if I've understood it correctly, sending a chilly shiver down the spine! (But what is a "hungry bike"?)

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Cali - glad you liked the Gunn - I love watching cats (small "c" - certain West End "hits" NOT included) and it's always been a great frustration that I'm allergic to them; ten minutes in their company and I need my inhaler. Tremendous animals and great companions - when they feel like it!

Timely, too, I thought - some dignified withdrawals from recent spats on the Forum were a good idea.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Tevot - lovely poem, many thanks.

In not a dissimilar tone:

Back

The "wick" of "Walberswick"
Had been torn off.
Above the tear, fading,
The single word "Mother".
"That's Emmie's writing,"
Said my mother, as if
Recognizing a face,
Her memory instinct with
The slanted loop of letters
Long since read and lost.

The photo, a two-inch circle
Set in a black, wood roundel,
Hung on the bedroom wall.
Behind the greening glass,
The head and shoulders
Of a woman in stiff black,
The long hair pinned up;
A small monkey-like face
And a grim slight smile
Rigid for the 1890 camera.

"Who's that?" I had asked.
"My grandmother. She lived
In Walberswick for a while.
She had four daughters."
(These were Mabel, Emmie, Elsie
And Violet, my mother's mother.)
"I forget what she was called."
So she turned the photo over
To find the torn place-name
And that single, looped word.

Oliver Reynolds

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I've neglected this Thread for far too long, so today two poems that seem apt. The first by Edna St Vincent Millay; a poet I've never really taken to, but who here (and in the final line especially) manages to surmount the sentimental wall that separates her writing from my enjoyment of it:

Spring in the Garden

Ah, cannot the curled shoots of the larkspur that you loved so,
Cannot the spiny poppy that no winter kills
Instruct you how to return through the thawing
ground and the thin snow
Into this April sun that is driving the mist between the hills?

A good friend to the monkshood in a time of need
You were, and the lupine's friend as well;
But I see the lupine lift the ground like a tough weed
And the earth over the monkshood swell,

And I fear that not a root in all this heaving sea
Of land, has nudged you where you lie, has found
Patience and time to direct you, numb and stupid as
you still must be
From your first winter underground.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

The second, by contrast, a poet whose work I've adored since I first encountered it at "A"-Level (nearly forty years ago!!!) - John Donne.

The Anniversary

All Kings, and all their favourites,
All glory of honours, beauties, wits,
The sun itself, which makes times, as they pass,
Is elder by a year now than it was
When thou and I first one another saw:
All other things to their destruction draw,
Only our love hath no decay;
This no tomorrow hath, nor yesterday,
Running it never runs from us away,
But truly keeps his first, last, everlasting day.

Two graves must hide thine and my corse;
If one might, death were no divorce.
Alas, as well as other Princes, we
(Who Prince enough in one another be)
Must leave at last in death these eyes and ears,
Oft fed with true oaths, and with sweet salt tears;
But souls where nothing dwells but love
(All other thoughts being inmates) then shall prove
This, or a love increasèd there above,
When bodies to their graves, souls from their graves remove.

And then we shall be throughly blessed;
But we no more than all the rest.
Here upon earth we’re Kings, and none but we
Can be such Kings, nor of such subjects be;
Who is so safe as we? where none can do
Treason to us, except one of us two.
True and false fears let us refrain,
Let us love nobly, and live, and add again
Years and years unto years, till we attain
To write threescore: this is the second of our reign.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

An Arundel Tomb

Side by side, their faces blurred,
The earl and countess lie in stone,
Their proper habits vaguely shown
As jointed armour, stiffened pleat,
And that faint hint of the absurd—
The little dogs under their feet.

Such plainness of the pre-baroque
Hardly involves the eye, until
It meets his left-hand gauntlet, still
Clasped empty in the other; and
One sees, with a sharp tender shock,
His hand withdrawn, holding her hand.

They would not think to lie so long.
Such faithfulness in effigy
Was just a detail friends would see:
A sculptor’s sweet commissioned grace
Thrown off in helping to prolong
The Latin names around the base.

They would not guess how early in
Their supine stationary voyage
The air would change to soundless damage,
Turn the old tenantry away;
How soon succeeding eyes begin
To look, not read. Rigidly they

Persisted, linked, through lengths and breadths
Of time. Snow fell, undated. Light
Each summer thronged the glass. A bright
Litter of birdcalls strewed the same
Bone-riddled ground. And up the paths
The endless altered people came,

Washing at their identity.
Now, helpless in the hollow of
An unarmorial age, a trough
Of smoke in slow suspended skeins
Above their scrap of history,
Only an attitude remains:

Time has transfigured them into
Untruth. The stone fidelity
They hardly meant has come to be
Their final blazon, and to prove
Our almost-instinct almost true:
What will survive of us is love.


Philip Larkin

[johncorrigan]

Wish the receptionist in my office was like the one in Paul Durcan's surgery.


The Laughing Receptionist in the GP’s Surgery

by Paul Durcan

When I nip into the GP’s surgery
To pick up a repeat prescription
For anti-depressants and sleeping pills
I find the fair-haired receptionist
On her elbows with laughter,
For no reason other than that this April day
Is all sunlight and blue skies,
Street lined with limes of new green leaf,
Tiny gardens jungles of white magnolia.
She announces: “Today is the day
For buying a villa on the seafront:
I know I must win the Lottery –
But how can I win the Lottery
When I do not even remember
To buy a Lottery ticket?
And even then, in any case,
I forget to check the results!”
She is weeping with laughter.
I wade out into the street
And not caring if YOU are watching me
I pluck a blue tulip from a front garden,
Wade back in and present it to her.
I, too, am weeping with laughter
As I let myself out of the surgery and –
Dear Mrs Double Parking – I do not give a farthing
What you think – it’s spring!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]