Poetry

[Padraig]

Give a cheer for Fancis Ledwidge, the Irish poet and soldier who was a friend of Thomas McDonagh. McDonagh was executed in Dublin in 1916; Ledwidge died at Passchendaele in 1917.

Thomas McDonagh

He shall not hear the bittern cry
In the wild sky, where he is lain,
Nor voices of the sweeter birds
Above the wailing of the rain.

Nor shall he know when loud March blows
Thro' slanting snows her fanfare shrill,
Blowing to flame the golden cup
Of many an upset daffodil.

But when the Dark Cow leaves the moor,
And pastures poor with greedy weeds,
Perhaps he'll hear her low at morn
Lifting her horn in pleasant meads.

Francis Ledwidge 1891 - 1917

[Padraig]

In Memoriam Francis Ledwidge
Killed in France 31 July 1917

The bronze soldier hitches a bronze cape
That crumples stiffly in imagined wind
No matter how the real winds buff and sweep
His sudden hunkering run, forever craned

Over Flanders. Helmet and haversack,
The gun's firm slope from butt to bayonet,
The loyal, fallen names on the embossed plaque -
It all meant little to the worried pet

I was in nineteen forty-six or seven,
Gripping my Aunt Mary by the hand
Along the Portstewart prom, then round the crescent
To thread the Castle Walk out to the strand.

The pilot from Coleraine sailed to the coal-boat.
Courting couples rose out of the scooped dunes.
A farmer stripped to his studs and shiny waistcoat
Rolled the trousers down on his timid shins.

Francis Ledwidge, you courted at the seaside
Beyond Drogheda one Sunday afternoon.
Literary, sweet-talking, countrified,
You pedalled out the leafy road from Slane

Where you belonged, among the dolorous
And lovely: the May altar of wild flowers,
Easter water sprinkled in outhouses,
Mass-rocks and hill-top raths and raftered byres.

I think of you in your Tommy's uniform,
A haunted Catholic face, pallid and brave,
Ghosting the trenches like a bloom of hawthorn
Or silence cored from a Boyne passage-grave.

It's summer nineteen-fifteen. I see the girl
My aunt was then, herding on the long-acre.
Behind a low bush in the Dardanelles
You suck stones to make your dry mouth water.

It's nineteen-seventeen. She still herds cows
But a big strafe puts the candles out in Ypres:
'My soul is by the Boyne, cutting new meadows...
My country wears her confirmation dress.'

'To be called a British soldier while my country
Has no place among nations...' You were rent
By shrapnel six weeks later. 'I am sorry
That party politics should divide our tents.'

In you, our dead enigma, all the strains
Criss-cross in useless equilibrium
And as the wind tunes through this vigilant bronze
I hear again the sure confusing drum

You followed from Boyne water to the Balkans
But miss the twilit note your flute should sound.
You were not keyed or pitched like these true-blue ones
Though all of you consort now underground.

Seamus Heaney Field Work 1979

[johncorrigan]

Thank you so much for those last two poems, Padraig.

[Joseph K]

Wind and Tree


In the way that most of the wind
Happens where there are trees,

Most of the world is centred
About ourselves.

Often where the wind has gathered
The trees together,

One tree will take
Another in her arms and hold.

Their branches that are grinding
Madly together,

It is no real fire.
They are breaking each other.

Often I think I should be like
The single tree, going nowhere,

Since my own arm could not and would not
Break the other. Yet by my broken bones

I tell new weather.

Paul Muldoon

[Padraig]

Nice one, JK. By God them Irish lads can turn a phrase!

Homecoming

The familiar pull of the slow train
trundling after a sinking sun on shadowed fields.
White light splicing the broad span of the sky.
Evening deepens grass, the breeze,
like purple smoke, ruffles its surface.
Straight into herring-dark skies the great cathedral spire
is sheer Gothic; slender and singular,
grey as the slate at school when a child looking up -
a bottle of raspberry in one hand, a brown bag of biscuits in t'other -
Feathereye Mykie my uncle told me a man
shot down a hawk dead from the cross
with a telescope fixed to his rifle.

Pulling home now into the station. Cunneen waving
a goatskin of wine from the Spain he has never seen
like an acolyte swinging a thurible.
My father, behind him, as ever in clerical grey,
white hair shining, his hand raised,
preaching away to the Poet Ryan.
And after a drink at the White House - out home.

The house in bedlam. He's here says my father.
Sober? my mother. She's looking me over.
Bring out the bottle. Pull round the fire.
Talk of the journey, living abroad:
Paris and London, Rome and New York.
What is it like in an airplane? my sister.
Glad you could make it - my brother.
Everything here the same tuppence ha'penny - the neighbours;
just as you left it; the same old roast chestnut.
After the songs, the one for the road,
the last caller gone - up to my room.

As I used to find it home for the Christmas from school.
The great brass bed. The box still under it full
of old prayerbooks, assorted mementos,
the untouched bundle of letters mottled with mould.
Now it's a house of doorways and walls
and no laughter. A place for two old people
who speak to each other but rarely, And that only
when children return. Old people mumbling
low in the night of change and of ageing
when they think you asleep and not listening -
and we wide awake in the dark,
as when we were children.

Desmond O'Grady 1935 - 2014

[Padraig]

Ode

We are the music-makers
And we are the dreamers of dreams...

see #521

Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1844-1881

On the Poet, Arthur O'Shaughnessy

There's an Irishman, Arthur O'Shaughnessy -
On the chessboard of poets a pawn is he;
Though a bishop or king
Would be rather the thing
To the fancy of Arthur O'Shaughnessy.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1828 - 1882

How about that, BBM!

[Padraig]

On the news today - an item on Helen Waddell, medievalist and historical novelist.


The Mournes

I shall not go to heaven when I die.
But if they let me be
I think I'll take a road I used to know
That goes by Slieve-na-garagh and the sea.
And all day breasting me the wind will blow,
And I'll hear nothing but the peewit's cry
And the sea talking in the caves below.
I think it will be winter when I die
(For no-one in the North would die in spring)
And all the heather will be dead and grey,
And the bog-cotton will have blown away,
And there will be no yellow on the wind.
But I shall smell the peat
And when it's almost dark I'll set my feet
Where a white track goes glimmering to the hills,
And see, far up, a light -
Would you think Heaven could be so small a thing
As a lit window on the hills at night? -
And come in stumbling from the gloom,
Half-blind, into a firelit room,
Turn, and see you,
And there abide.

If it were true,
And if I thought that they would let me be,
I almost wish it were tonight I died.

Helen Waddell 1889 - 1965

[johncorrigan]

On Hogmanay Mrs C and I headed over to Dunkeld, just north of Perth, and thought we'd head to the Poetry Path that we had been meaning to go to for a while. It was a fine day, reasonably mild. The Poetry Path is about 5 miles west of the town on the road to the Sma' Glen. It was about two miles long taking us round the perimeter of the Corbennic School and is punctuated by poems and sculptures by local poets and artists, and the views were spectacular, as you expect in Highland Perthshire - though I'm sure there's plenty days when the mist descends and you the world around you disappears. Eventually we dropped through old oak woods to the rushing River Braan, heading down to the Tay. Fabulous couple of hours. Here's a poem by Kathleen Jamie from the trail.

Blossom

There’s this life and no hereafter –
I’m sure of that
but still I dither, waiting
for my laggard soul
to leap at the world’s touch.

How many May dawns
have I slept right through,
the trees courageous with blossom?
Let me number them . . .

I shall be weighed in the balance
and found wanting.
I shall reckon for less
than an apple pip.

Kathleen Jamie 2014

https://www.corbenicpoetrypath.com/the-path.html

[Padraig]

On Hogmanay Mrs C and I headed over to Dunkeld, just north of Perth, and thought we'd head to the Poetry Path that we had been meaning to go to for a while. It was a fine day, reasonably mild. The Poetry Path is about 5 miles east of the town on the road to the Sma' Glen. It was about two miles long taking us round the perimeter of the Corbennic School and is punctuated by poems and sculptures by local poets and artists, and the views were spectacular, as you expect in Highland Perthshire - though I'm sure there's plenty days when the mist descends and you the world around you disappears. Eventually we dropped through old oak woods to the rushing River Braan, heading down to the Tay. Fabulous couple of hours. Here's a poem by Kathleen Jamie from the trail.

Blossom

There’s this life and no hereafter –
I’m sure of that
but still I dither, waiting
for my laggard soul
to leap at the world’s touch.

How many May dawns
have I slept right through,
the trees courageous with blossom?
Let me number them . . .

I shall be weighed in the balance
and found wanting.
I shall reckon for less
than an apple pip.

Kathleen Jamie 2014



https://www.corbenicpoetrypath.com/the-path.html

But not you, John.

A poetically happy new year to you too.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I reckon anyone who can come up with so succinct a summary of feeling and awareness as communicated in that poem is worth a bit more than an apple pip.

Many thanks for starting the New Poetic Year, jc.

[Padraig]

Many thanks for starting the New Poetic Year, jc.

I had earlier today been reading some poems, and I thought that I should like to make respectful reference to our recently departed friend Hornspeiler with this one:

Resurrection

Is it true that after this life of ours we shall one day be awakened
by a terrifying clamour of trumpets?
Forgive me, God, but I console myself
that the beginning of the resurrection of all of us dead
will simply be announced by the crowing of the cock.

After that we'll remain lying down a while...
The first to get up
will be Mother...We'll hear her
quietly laying the fire,
quietly putting the kettle on the stove
and cosily taking the teapot out of the cupboard.
We'll be home once more.

Vladimir Holan 1905- 1980

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

A change of tone:

St Distaff's Day (or The Morning After Twelfth Night

PARTLY work and partly play
You must on St. Distaff’s Day:
From the plough soon free your team;
Then come home and fother them;
If the maids a-spinning go,
Burn the flax and fire the tow.
Scorch their plackets, but beware
That ye singe no maiden-haire.
Bring in pails of water then,
Let the maids bewash the men.
Give St. Distaff all the right;
Then bid Christmas sport good night,
And next morrow every one
To his own vocation.

Robert Herrick

[vinteuil]

ferney I see uses the censored version of the pome.
The original has an extra couple of lines -

Partly worke and partly play
Ye must on S. Distaffs day:
From the Plough soone free your teame;
Then come home and fother them;
If the Maides a spinning goe,
Burn the flax, and fire the tow;
Scorch their plackets, but beware
That ye singe no maiden-haire.
Bring in pailes of water then,
Let the Maids bewash the men.
Give S. Distaff all the right;
Then bid Christmas sport good-night,
And next morrow, every one
To his owne vocation.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

ferney I see uses the censored version of the pome.
The original has an extra couple of lines

Thank you, vinty - duly restored.

[Bryn]

The John Tilbury event tomorrow night is not strictly a solo affair. It also incudes the participation of poet Harry Gilonis. It has been confirmed that John will be including a performance of Feldman's For Bunita Marcus. Next week there's a 2 day residency for Frederic and Jan Rzewski. Whether Fred will be in attendance at Borough New Music on Tuesday, I do not know, but two works of his will be included in that lunchtime's concert at St George the Martyr.

https://www.cafeoto.co.uk/events/frederic-rzewski-two-day-residency/

http://www.boroughnewmusic.co.uk/series/series-12

Just a quick mention that I recorded Harry's recitation, etc. If interested, send me a PM and I will provide the URL for a download.