Poetry

[Padraig]

"We Say We Shall Not Meet"

We say we shall not meet
Again beneath this sky,
And turn with leaden feet,
Murmuring "Good-bye!"

But laugh at how we rued
Our former time's adieu
When those who went for good
Are met anew.

We talk in lightest vein
On trifles talked before,
And part to meet again,
But meet no more.

From Winter Words his last volume

[johncorrigan]

I heard the young Zambian British poet, Kayo Chingonyi , at the weekend and was impressed by what I heard. Here's a poem of his from some time back with music and dance very much at the heart.

Some Bright Elegance

…and all his words ran out of it: that there
was some bright elegance the sad meat
of the body made
‘The Dance’, Amiri Baraka

For the screwfaced in good shoes that paper
the walls of dance halls, I have little patience.
I say dance not to be seen but free, your feet
are made for better things, feel the bitterness
in your lift as it did for a six-year-old Bojangles
tapping a living out of beer garden patios to
the delight of a crowd that wasn’t lynching
today but laughing at the quickness of the kid.

Throw yourself into the thick, emerging pure
reduced to flesh and bone, nerve and sinew.
Your folded arms understand music. Channel
a packed Savoy Ballroom and slide across
the dusty floor as your zoot-suited, twenties
self, the feather in your hat from an ostrich,
the swagger in your step from the ochre dust
of a West African village. Dance for the times

you’ve been stalked by store detectives
for a lady on a bus, for the look of disgust
on the face of a boy too young to understand
why he hates but only that he must. Dance
for Sammy, dead and penniless, and for the
thousands still scraping a buck as street corner
hoofers who, though they dance for their food,
move as if it is only them, and the drums, talking.

Kayo Chingonyi 2011

[Padraig]

Thomas Hardy - he does bitterness too.

[Padraig]

I'm still reading Thomas Hardy - he does bitterness too.

...but no bitterness here:

The Spring Call

Down Wessex way, when spring's a-shine,
The blackbird's "pret-ty de-urr!"
In Wessex accents marked as mine
Is heard afar and near.

He flutes it strong, as if in song
No Rs of feebler tone
Than his appear in "pretty dear",
Have blackbirds ever known.

Yet they pipe "prattie deerh" I glean
Beneath a Scottish sky,
And "pehty dee-aw" amid the treen
Of Middlesex or nigh.

While some folks say - perhaps in play -
Who know the Irish isle,
'Tis "purrity dare" in treeland there
When songsters would beguile.

Well: I'll say what the listening birds
Say, hearing "pret-ty de-urr!" -
However strangers sound such words,
That's how we sound them here.

Yes, in this clime at pairing time,
As soon as eyes can see her
At dawn of day, the proper way
To call is " pret-ty de-urr!"

from Time's Laughingstocks 1909

[vinteuil]

.

Spend the years of learning squandering
Courage for the years of wandering
Through a world politely turning
From the loutishness of learning.

January 1932

....


....

Up he went & in he passed
& down he came with such endeavour
As he shall rue until at last
He rematriculate for ever

May 1934



....

Samuel Beckett [1906 - 1989]


.

[vinteuil]

Toads


Why should I let the toad work
Squat on my life?
Can't I use my wit as a pitchfork
and drive the brute off?

Six days of the week it soils
With its sickening poison-
Just for paying a few bills!
That's out of proportion.

Lots of folk live on their wits:
Lecturers, lispers,
Losels, loblolly-men, louts-
They don't end as paupers;

Lots of folk live up lanes
With fires in a bucket,
Eat windfalls and tinned sardines-
They seem to like it.

Their nippers have got bare feet,
Their unspeakable wives
Are skinny as whippets-and yet
No one actually starves.

Ah, were I courageous enough
To shout Stuff your pension!
But I know, all too well, that's the stuff
That dreams are made on:

For something sufficiently toad-like
Squats in me, too;
Its hunkers are heavy as hard luck,
And cold as snow,

And will never allow me to blarney
My way to getting
The fame and the girl and the money
All at one sitting.

I don't say, one bodies the other
One's spiritual truth;
But I do say it's hard to lose either,
When you have both.

Philip Larkin [1922-1985]

[vinteuil]

Toads Revisited


Walking around in the park
Should feel better than work:
The lake, the sunshine,
The grass to lie on,

Blurred playground noises
Beyond black-stockinged nurses -
Not a bad place to be.
Yet it doesn't suit me.

Being one of the men
You meet of an afternoon:
Palsied old step-takers,
Hare-eyed clerks with the jitters,

Waxed-fleshed out-patients
Still vague from accidents,
And characters in long coats
Deep in the litter-baskets -

All dodging the toad work
By being stupid or weak.
Think of being them!
Hearing the hours chime,

Watching the bread delivered,
The sun by clouds covered,
The children going home;
Think of being them,

Turning over their failures
By some bed of lobelias,
Nowhere to go but indoors,
Nor friends but empty chairs -

No, give me my in-tray,
My loaf-haired secretary,
My shall-I-keep-the-call-in-Sir:
What else can I answer,

When the lights come on at four
At the end of another year?
Give me your arm, old toad;
Help me down Cemetery Road.


Philip Larkin [1922-1985]

.

[Padraig]

Two Thrushes: Poems by Thomas Hardy 1840 - 1928

The Caged Thrush Freed And Home Again

(Villanelle)

"Men know but little more than we,
Who count as least of things terrene,
How happy days are made to be!

" Of such tidings what think ye,
O birds in brown that peck and preen?
Men know but little more than we!

"When I was borne from yonder tree
In bonds to them, I hoped to glean
How happy days are made to be,

"And want and wailing turned to glee;
Alas, despite their mighty mien
Men know but little more than we!

"They cannot change the Frost's decree,
They cannot keep the skies serene;
How happy days are made to be

"Eludes great Man's sagacity
No less than ours, O tribes in treen!
Men know but little more than we
How happy days are made to be."

from Poems of the Past and Present 1901


The Reminder

While I watch the Christmas blaze
Paint the room with ruddy rays,
Something makes my vision glide
To the frosty scene outside.

There, to reach a rotting berry,
Toils a thrush - constrained to very
Dregs of food by sharp distress,
Taking such with thankfulness.

Why, O starving bird, when I
One day's joy would justify,
And put misery out of view,
Do you make me notice you!

from Time's Laughingstocks 1909

[Padraig]

Written by one of the last of the Gaelic poets, after the Treaty of Limerick was broken in 1691.

Last Lines

I shall not call for help until they coffin me -
What good for me to call when hope of help is gone?
Princes of Munster who would have heard my cry
Would not rise from the dead because I am alone.

Mind shudders like a wave in this tempestuous mood,
My bowels and my heart are pierced and filled with pain
To see our lands, our hills, our gentle neighbourhood,
A plot where any English upstart stakes his claim.

The Shannon and the Liffey and the tuneful Lee,
The Boyne and the Blackwater a sad music sing,
The waters of the west run red into the sea -
No matter what be trumps, their knave will beat our king.

And I can never cease weeping these useless tears;
I am a man oppressed, afflicted and undone
Who where he wanders mourning no companion hears
Only some waterfall that has no cause to mourn.

Now I shall cease, death comes, and I must not delay
By Laune and Laine and Lee, diminished of their pride,
I shall go after the heroes, ay, into the clay -
My fathers followed theirs before Christ was crucified.

Egan ORahilly 1670 - 1726

Translated by Frank OConnor

(The Penguin Book of Irish Verse, 1970)

[johncorrigan]

Very moving, Padraig; indeed the penultimate verse was heart wrenching.

The youthful Miss C and I had an evening out in Edinburgh last night and went to see Russian-born American singer Regina Spektor, whose family emigrated from the USSR in the 80s. She started the show with that anger that you get from some Americans regarding the present administration, but then recited the poem by Emma Lazarus, 'The New Collossus' ,that was added to the Statue of Liberty in the early 1900s and I found it very moving.

The New Colossus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Emma Lazarus

[gurnemanz]

We went to see the new play "Looking at Lucian", a one-hander about Lucian Freud, at the Ustinov Theatre, Bath, last night. Henry Goodman delivers a powerful and riveting performance during which for most of the time he fixes his steely gaze on us, his audience, standing in for the model he is painting. We in turn stare back at him. At one point he turns to us, almost chillingly, and recalls the potency of Auden's line:

"All we are not stares back at what we are.”

[johncorrigan]

Last weekend on Danny Baker's Saturday morning show a listener phoned in saying that her Gran had always told her to crush their eggshells as otherwise witches would sail them out to sea where the witches would cast spells to create storms which would shipwreck mariners. Baker said he'd never heard of it, but other listeners then phoned and e-mailed in with their versions of the superstition. Today he had been sent a poem about it.

Eggshells by Elizabeth Fleming (1934)

Oh, never leave your egg-shells unbroken in the cup;
Think of us poor sailor-men and always smash them up,
For witches come and find them and sail away to sea,
And make a lot of misery for mariners like me.

They take them to the sea-shore and set them on the tide -
A broom-stick for a paddle is all they have to guide
And off they go to China or round the ports of Spain,
To try and keep our sailing ships from coming home again.

They call up all the tempests from Davy Jones’s store,
And blow us into waters where we haven’t been before;
And when the masts are falling in splinters on the wrecks,
The witches climb the rigging and dance upon the decks.

So never leave your egg-shells unbroken in the cup;
Think of us poor sailor-men and always smash them up;
For witches come and find them and sail away to sea,
And make a lot of misery for mariners like me.

[Padraig]

I used to think that The Old Woman of Beare was yet another lament for Old Ireland. Instead it's a lament for lost youth and I'll drink to that.

May I count this as an 'Irish Friday'?

The Old Woman of Beare

The sea crawls from the shore
Leaving there
The despicable weed,
A corpse's hair.
In me,
The desolate withdrawing sea.

The Old Woman of Beare am I
Who once was beautiful.
Now all I know is how to die,
I'll do it well.

Look at my skin
Stretched tight on the bone,
Where kings have pressed their lips,
The pain, the pain.

I don't hate the men
Who swore the truth was in their lies.
One thing alone I hate -
Women's eyes.

The young sun
Gives its youth to everyone,
Touching everything with gold.
In me, the cold.

The cold. Yet still a seed
Burns there.
Women love only money now.
But when
I loved, I loved
Young men.

Young men whose horses galloped
On many an open plain
Beating lightning from the ground.
I loved such men.

And still the sea
Rears and plunges into me,
Shoving, rolling through my head
Images of the drifting dead.

A soldier cries
Pitifully about his plight;
A king fades
Into the shivering night.

Does not every season prove
That the acorn hits the ground?
Have I not known enough of love
To know it's lost as soon as found?

I drank my fill of wine with kings,
Their eyes fixed on my hair.
Now among the stinking hags
I chew the cud of prayer.

Time was the sea
Brought kings as slaves to me.
Now I near the face of God
And the crab crawls through my blood.

I loved the wine
That thrilled me to my fingertips;
Now the mean wind
Stitches salt into my lips.

The coward sea
Slouches away from me.
Fear brings back the tide
That made me stretch at the side
Of him who'd take me briefly for his bride.

The sea grows smaller, smaller now.
Farther, farther it goes
Leaving me here where the foam dries
On the deserted land,
Dry as my shrunken thighs,
As the tongue that presses my lips,
As the veins that break through my hands.

Anon 10th ? century Translated by Brendan Kennelly

[Padraig]

Heard in many a song recital.

The Lark in the Clear Air.

Dear thoughts are in my mind
And my soul soars enchanted,
As I hear the sweet lark sing
In the clear air of the day.
For a tender beaming smile
To my hope has been granted,
And tomorrow she shall hear
All my fond heart would say.

I shall tell her all my love,
All my soul's adoration;
And I think she will hear me
And will not say me nay.
It is this that fills my soul
With its joyous elation,
As I hear the sweet lark sing
In the clear air of the day.

Samuel Ferguson 1810 - 1886

[teamsaint]

“What is the price of Experience? Do men buy it for a song?
Or wisdom for a dance in the street? No, it is bought with the price
Of all that a man hath, his house, his wife, his children
Wisdom is sold in the desolate market where none come to buy
And in the wither'd field where the farmer ploughs for bread in vain

It is an easy thing to triumph in the summer's sun
And in the vintage and to sing on the waggon loaded with corn
It is an easy thing to talk of patience to the afflicted
To speak the laws of prudence to the homeless wanderer
To listen to the hungry raven's cry in wintry season
When the red blood is fill'd with wine and with the marrow of lambs

It is an easy thing to laugh at wrathful elements
To hear the dog howl at the wintry door, the ox in the slaughterhouse moan;
To see a god on every wind and a blessing on every blast
To hear sounds of love in the thunderstorm that destroys our enemies' house;
To rejoice in the blight that covers his field and the sickness that cuts off his children
While our olive and vine sing and laugh round our door and our children bring fruits and flowers

Then the groan and the dolour are quite forgotten and the slave grinding at the mill
And the captive in chains and the poor in the prison and the soldier in the field
When the shatter'd bone hath laid him groaning among the happier dead
It is an easy thing to rejoice in the tents of prosperity:
Thus could I sing and thus rejoice: but it is not so with me.

William Blake.