Poetry

[Daniel]

The Darkling Thrush

I leant upon a coppice gate
When Frost was spectre-grey,
And Winter's dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought their household fires.

The land's sharp features seemed to be
The Century's corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
Seemed fervourless as I.

At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt and small,
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.

Thomas Hardy


This poem sat rather well in the last few days.

[Flay]

This poem sat rather well in the last few days.

Indeed. A lovely poem, Daniel.

It's usually a happy robin hereabouts who sings his soul to a lamp post at all hours.

[johncorrigan]

As part of yesterday's 'Poetry Please' Rory Bremner read this in celebration of Burn's Day. I enjoyed the energy of it all.

Bagpipe music

It’s no go the merry-go-round, it’s no go the rickshaw,
All we want is a limousine and a ticket for the peepshow.
Their knickers are made of crêpe-de-chine, their shoes are made of python,
Their halls are lined with tiger rugs and their walls with heads of bison.

John MacDonald found a corpse, put it under the sofa,
Waited till it came to life and hit it with a poker,
Sold its eyes for souvenirs, sold its blood for whisky,
Kept its bones for dumb-bells to use when he was fifty.

It’s no go the Yogi-Man, it’s no go Blavatsky,
All we want is a bank balance and a bit of skirt in a taxi.

Annie MacDougall went to milk, caught her foot in the heather,
Woke to hear a dance record playing of Old Vienna.
It’s no go your maidenheads, it’s no go your culture,
All we want is a Dunlop tyre and the devil mend the puncture.

The Laird o’Phelps spent Hogmanay declaring he was sober,
Counted his feet to prove the fact and found he had one foot over.
Mrs Carmichael had her fifth, looked at the job with repulsion,
Said to the midwife ‘Take it away; I’m through with
over-production’.

It’s no go the gossip column, it’s no go the Ceilidh,
All we want is a mother’s help and a sugar-stick for the baby.

Willie Murray cut his thumb, couldn’t count the damage,
Took the hide of an Ayrshire cow and used it for a bandage.
His brother caught three hundred cran when the seas were lavish,
Threw the bleeders back in the sea and went upon the parish.

It’s no go the Herring Board, it’s no go the Bible,
All we want is a packet of fags when our hands are idle.

It’s no go the picture palace, it’s no go the stadium,
It’s no go the country cot with a pot of pink geraniums
It’s no go the Government grants, it’s no go the elections,
Sit on your arse for fifty years and hang your hat on a pension.

It’s no go my honey love, it’s no go my poppet;
Work your hands from day to day, the winds will blow the profit.
The glass is falling hour by hour, the glass will fall forever,
But if you break the bloody glass you won’t hold up the weather.

Louis MacNeice(1938)

[Rue Dubac]

Thank you. One of my all-time favourites, so full of wit, too.

[Padraig]

Thank you. One of my all-time favourites, so full of wit, too.

I enjoyed it just now, but as a student I found it a bit vulgar!

This one strikes a chord or two:

Love Songs in Age

She kept her songs, they took so little space,
The covers pleased her;
One bleached from lying in a sunny place,
One marked in circles by a vase of water,
One mended, when a tidy fit had seized her,
And coloured, by her daughter -
So they had waited, till in widowhood
She found them, looking for something else, and stood

Relearning how each frank submissive chord
Had ushered in
Word after sprawling hyphenated word,
And the unfailing sense of being young
Spread out like a spring-woken tree, wherein
That hidden freshness, sung,
That certainty of time laid up in store
As when she played them first. But, even more,

The glare of that much-mentioned brilliance, love,
Broke out, to show
Its bright incipience sailing above,
Still promising to solve, and satisfy,
And set unchangeably in order. So
To pile them back, to cry,
Was hard, without lamely admitting how
It had not done so then, and could not now.

Philip Larkin The Whitsun Weddings 1964

[Lat-Literal]

Information about World Poetry Day which was on 21 March:

http://www.un.org/en/events/poetryday/index.shtml

https://globaldimension.org.uk/calendar/event/4923

Terezín Children's Holocaust Poems with English Translations:

http://www.thehypertexts.com/Terez%C3%ADn%20Children%20Holocaust%20Poems.htm

"The heaviest wheel rolls across our foreheads to bury itself deep somewhere inside our memories"

(as featured in Robert Convery's Cantata)

[DracoM]

Just hope it's not introduced by Ian MacMillan.

[cloughie]

Just hope it's not introduced by Ian MacMillan.

Why?

[Padraig]

Why?

Always a good question, cloughie.

While awaiting an answer here is a poem by Jackie Kay who this week talks to Sarah Walker in Essential Classics.

In My Country

walking by the waters
down where an honest river
shakes hands with the sea,
a woman passed round me
in a slow watchful circle,
as if I were a superstition;

or the worst dregs of her imagination;
so when she finally spoke
her words spliced into bars
of an old wheel. A segment of air.
Where do you come from?
'Here', I said. 'Here. These parts'.

[johncorrigan]

Always a good question, cloughie.

While awaiting an answer here is a poem by Jackie Kay who this week talks to Sarah Walker in Essential Classics.

In My Country

Thanks Padraig...she's just been appointed the new Scottish Makar, our National Laureate I suppose, following in the footsteps of Edwin Morgan and Liz Lochhead. I heard a very good interview with her on Woman's Hour on Friday. She's an enthusiastic soul.

[Padraig]

Last night I caught a repeat of Return to Larkinland with A.N.Wilson. If not seen, it's worth a visit to:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b06hhlyl/return-to-larkinland

[Padraig]

Love's Farewell

Since there's no help come let us kiss and part -
Nay I have done, you get no more of me,
And I am glad, yea, glad with all my heart,
That thus so cleanly I myself can free;
Shake hands for ever, cancel all out vows,
And when we meet at any time again,
Be it not seen in any of our brows
That we one jot of former love retain.
Now at the last gasp of love's latest breath
When his pulse failing, passion speechless lies,
When faith is kneeling by his bed of death,
And innocence is closing up his eyes,
- Now if thou would'st when all have given him over,
From death to life thou might'st him yet decover,

Michael Drayton 1563 - 1616

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qw0BU02lTww

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

A Point in Time

Now you understand how stars and hearts are one with another
And how there can nowhere be an end, nowhere a hindrance;
How the boundless dwells perfect and undivided in the spirit,
How each part can be infinitely great, and infinitely small,
How the utmost extension is but a point, and how
Light, harmony, movement, power
All identical, all separate, and all united are life.

Hugh MacDiarmid (1892 - 1978)

[Padraig]

From North which I am re-reading because of pressure from another thread!


Fosterage
For Michael McLaverty

'Description is revelation!' Royal
Avenue, Belfast,1962,
A Saturday afternoon, glad to meet
Me, newly cubbed in language, he gripped
My elbow, 'Listen. Go your own way.
Do your own work. Remember
Katherine Mansfield - I will tell
How the laundry basket squeaked . . . that note of exile.'
But to hell with overstating it:
'Don't have the veins bulging in your biro.'
And then, 'Poor Hopkins!' I have the Journals
He gave me, underlined, his buckled self
Obeisant to their pain. He discerned
The lineaments of patience everywhere
And fostered me and sent me out, with words
Imposing on my tongue like obols.

Seamus Heaney North 1975

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_McLaverty

[johncorrigan]

Mrs C's been reading up on archaeology for her course and came across this poem by Auden which I fair enjoyed.

Archaeology

The archaeologist's spade
delves into dwellings
vacancied long ago,

unearthing evidence
of life-ways no one
would dream of leading now,

concerning which he has not much
to say that he can prove:
the lucky man!

Knowledge may have its purposes,
but guessing is always
more fun than knowing.

We do know that Man,
from fear or affection,
has always graved His dead.

What disastered a city,
volcanic effusion,
fluvial outrage,

or a human horde,
agog for slaves and glory,
is visually patent,

and we're pretty sure that,
as soon as places were built,
their rulers,

though gluttoned on sex
and blanded by flattery,
must often have yawned.

But do grain-pits signify
a year of famine?
Where a coin-series

peters out, should we infer
some major catastrophe?
Maybe. Maybe.

From murals and statues
we get a glimpse of what
the Old Ones bowed down to,

but cannot conceit
in what situations they blushed
or shrugged their shoulders.

Poets have learned us their myths,
but just how did They take them?
That's a stumper.

When Norsemen heard thunder,
did they seriously believe
Thor was hammering?

No, I'd say: I'd swear
that men have always lounged in myths
as Tall Stories,

that their real earnest
has been to grant excuses
for ritual actions.

Only in rites
can we renounce our oddities
and be truly entired.

Not that all rites
should be equally fonded:
some are abominable.

There's nothing the Crucified
would like less
than butchery to appease Him.

CODA

From Archaeology
one moral, at least, may be drawn,
to wit, that all

our school text-books lie.
What they call History
is nothing to vaunt of,

being made, as it is,
by the criminal in us:
goodness is timeless.

W. H. Auden