Poetry

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  • Daniel
    Full Member
    • Jun 2012
    • 418

    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.

    Comment

    • Flay
      Full Member
      • Mar 2007
      • 5795

      Originally posted by Daniel View Post
      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.
      Pacta sunt servanda !!!

      Comment

      • johncorrigan
        Full Member
        • Nov 2010
        • 10358

        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)

        Comment

        • Rue Dubac
          Full Member
          • Mar 2013
          • 48

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

          Comment

          • Padraig
            Full Member
            • Feb 2013
            • 4236

            Originally posted by Rue Dubac View Post
            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

            Comment

            • Lat-Literal
              Guest
              • Aug 2015
              • 6983

              Information about World Poetry Day which was on 21 March:



              Reboot Education is the UK's leading global learning platform, supporting a community of educators in bringing global connection, compassion, and conversation to life for their students.


              Terezín Children's Holocaust Poems with English Translations:



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

              (as featured in Robert Convery's Cantata)
              Last edited by Lat-Literal; 23-03-16, 23:35.

              Comment

              • DracoM
                Host
                • Mar 2007
                • 12970

                Just hope it's not introduced by Ian MacMillan.

                Comment

                • cloughie
                  Full Member
                  • Dec 2011
                  • 22119

                  Originally posted by DracoM View Post
                  Just hope it's not introduced by Ian MacMillan.
                  Why?

                  Comment

                  • Padraig
                    Full Member
                    • Feb 2013
                    • 4236

                    Originally posted by cloughie View Post
                    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'.

                    Comment

                    • johncorrigan
                      Full Member
                      • Nov 2010
                      • 10358

                      Originally posted by Padraig View Post
                      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.

                      Comment

                      • Padraig
                        Full Member
                        • Feb 2013
                        • 4236

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

                        Writer and critic AN Wilson revisits the life and work of poet Philip Larkin. Featuring readings by Larkin himself, including The Whitsun Weddings, Arundel Tomb and Aubade.

                        Comment

                        • Padraig
                          Full Member
                          • Feb 2013
                          • 4236

                          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


                          Tobias Hume, Loves Farewell (Musicall Humors n. 47)Luciana Elizondo, viola da gambaRegistrato a Cremona nella Chiesa di Santa Maria Maddalena© 2013 co'l part...
                          Last edited by Padraig; 02-04-16, 15:38.

                          Comment

                          • ferneyhoughgeliebte
                            Gone fishin'
                            • Sep 2011
                            • 30163

                            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)
                            [FONT=Comic Sans MS][I][B]Numquam Satis![/B][/I][/FONT]

                            Comment

                            • Padraig
                              Full Member
                              • Feb 2013
                              • 4236

                              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

                              Last edited by Padraig; 13-04-16, 19:30.

                              Comment

                              • johncorrigan
                                Full Member
                                • Nov 2010
                                • 10358

                                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

                                Comment

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