[lit-ideas] Re: poetry month - haiku-breaking news
- From: Judy Evans <judithevans001@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2005 19:19:36 +0100
I have to post my poem/s early or risk being too late (visiting family
stuff...), also to rush this post between thunderstorms!
_She Tells Her Love While Half Asleep_
She tells her love while half asleep,
In the dark hours,
With half words whispered low;
As earth stirs in her winter sleep
And puts out grass and flowers
Despite the snow,
Despite the falling snow.
_The Cool Web_
Children are dumb to say how hot the day is,
How hot the scent is of the summer rose,
How dreadful the black wastes of evening sky,
How dreadful the tall soldiers drumming by,
But we have speech, to chill the angry day,
And speech, to dull the roses's cruel scent,
We spell away the overhanging night,
We spell away the soldiers and the fright.
There's a cool web of language winds us in,
Retreat from too much joy or too much fear:
We grow sea-green at last and coldly die
In brininess and volubility.
But if we let our tongues lose self-possession,
Throwing off language and its watery clasp
Before our death, instead of when death comes,
Facing the wide glare of the children's day,
Facing the rose, the dark sky and the drums,
We shall go mad, no doubt, and die that way.
Both by Robert Graves. I heard him read at Poetry
International, when he was already frail. He read a new poem,
brief, sparse, elegant. I have chosen the poet not the poem/s, in
memory of that moment when I heard beauty, but I like these verses,
too.
_Spring Wedding_
I took your news outdoors, and strolled a while
In silence on my square of garden-ground
Where I could dim the roar of arguments,
Ignore the scandal-flywheel whirring round,
And hear instead the green fuse in the flower
Ignite, the breeze stretch out a shadow-hand
To ruffle blossom on its sticking points,
The blackbirds sing, and singing take their stand.
I took your news outdoors, and found the Spring
Had honoured all its promises to start
Disclosing how the principles of earth
Can make a common purpose with the heart.
The heart which slips and sidles like a stream
Weighed down by winter-wreckage near its source -
But given time, and come the clearing rain,
Breaks loose to revel in its proper course.
Andrew Motion.
Motion's written some really rather bad Royal Poems, this I think is
good. He writes well when he writes autobiographically (though not
only then) and I think this particular assignment struck a chord).
Quick note to Stan Spiegel: Stan, I have always liked that William
Carlos Williams poem.
Judy
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