Poetry

[johncorrigan]

At work on a Friday I get a newsletter in the e-mail which sometimes has a nice wee afterthought from the writer of it. I'll reproduce the final piece as it was presented this week...maybe it was the weather, but it just seemed perfect for the day.

The Scottish poet John Burnside calls them ‘grace events’ – those fleeting glimpses we occasionally experience of the world being ‘just so’. I think Edward Thomas captures such a moment in his poem Adlestrop – at once immediate and eternal.

Yes. I remember Adlestrop – the name, because one afternoon of heat the express-train drew up there unwontedly. It was late June. The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat. No one left and no one came on the bare platform. What I saw was Adlestrop – only the name and willows, willow-herb, and grass, and meadowsweet, and haycocks dry, no whit less still and lonely fair than the high cloudlets in the sky. And for that minute a blackbird sang close by, and around him, mistier, farther and farther, all the birds of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.

[Padraig]

What is it about trains stopping at railway stations?

At nine in the morning there passed a church,
At ten there passed me by the sea,
At twelve a town of smoke and smirch,
At two a forest of oak and birch,
And then, on a platform, she:

A radiant stranger, who saw not me.
I said, " Get out to her do I dare?"
But I kept my seat in my search for a plea,
And the wheels moved on. O could it but be
That I had alighted there!

Thomas Hardy. Faintheart in a Railway Train.

I see that Hardy's poetry is OK for the syllabus, but not his novels.

[johncorrigan]

Each a glimpse and gone forever, Padraig!
The first poem I ever learned! We had to read it fast! Still love it.

From a Railway Carriage
by Robert Louis Stevenson


Faster than fairies, faster than witches,
Bridges and houses, hedges and ditches;
And charging along like troops in a battle
All through the meadows the horses and cattle:
All of the sights of the hill and the plain
Fly as thick as driving rain;
And ever again, in the wink of an eye,
Painted stations whistle by.
Here is a child who clambers and scrambles,
All by himself and gathering brambles;
Here is a tramp who stands and gazes;
And here is the green for stringing the daisies!
Here is a cart runaway in the road
Lumping along with man and load;
And here is a mill, and there is a river:
Each a glimpse and gone forever!

[Hitch]

A Local Train of Thought

Alone, in silence, at a certain time of night,
Listening, and looking up from what I'm trying to write,
I hear a local train along the Valley. And "There
Goes the one-fifty," think I to myself; aware
That somehow its habitual travelling comforts me,
Making my world seem safer, homelier, sure to be
The same to-morrow; and the same, one hopes, next year.
"There's peacetime in that train." One hears it disappear
With needless warning whistle and rail-resounding wheels.
"That train's quite like an old familiar friend," one feels.

Siegfried Sassoon

[ardcarp]

At nine in the morning there passed a church,
At ten there passed me by the sea,
At twelve a town of smoke and smirch,
At two a forest of oak and birch,
And then, on a platform, she:

A radiant stranger, who saw not me.
I said, " Get out to her do I dare?"
But I kept my seat in my search for a plea,
And the wheels moved on. O could it but be
That I had alighted there

I guess the railway line Hardy had in mind fell to Beeching. Many parts of West Dorset (eg the Bridport area)) are full of disused railway tracks.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridport_Railway

Social and poetic philistinism. Grrr.

[Hitch]

Don't mention the axeman. It's bad for my blood pressure.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Don't mention the axeman. It's bad for my blood pressure.

Quite!

I've been to Adelstrop. The poem's better.

Continuing the theme:

I like to see it lap the Miles -
And lick the Valleys up -
And stop to feed itself at Tanks -
And then - prodigious step
Around a Pile of Mountains -
And supercilious peer
In Shanties - by the sides of Roads -
And then a Quarry pare
To fit its sides
And crawl between
Complaining all the while
In horrid - hooting stanza -
Then chase itself down Hill -
And neigh like Boanerges -
Then - prompter than a Star
Stop - docile and omnipotent
At its own stable door -

Emily Dickinson

[johncorrigan]

Pardon me, drifting back to my default position, but in the run-up to the forthcoming referendum this bit of MacCaig railpoetry keeps returning to me.

London to Edinburgh

I’m waiting for the moment
when the train crosses the Border
and home creeps closer
at seventy miles an hour.

I dismiss the last four days
and their friendly strangers
into the past
that grows bigger every minute.

The train sounds urgent as I am,
it says home and home and home.
I light a cigarette
and sit smiling in the corner.

Scotland, I rush towards you
into my future that,
every minute,
grows smaller and smaller.

Norman MacCaig

[Tevot]

Two Poems by Irish Writers ( but imho universal in their experience and sentiment)

Thanks to a work colleague for reminding me and his students of them :-)

I

W.B Yeats - When You are old

WHEN you are old and gray and full of sleep
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true;
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face.

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead,
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.


and II

[B]Seamus Heaney : Mid Term Break

I sat all morning in the college sick bay
Counting bells knelling classes to a close.
At two o’clock our neighbours drove me home.

In the porch I met my father crying -
He had always taken funerals in his stride -
And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow.

The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram
When I came in, and I was embarrassed
By old men standing up to shake my hand

And tell me they were ‘sorry for my trouble’
Whispers informed strangers that I was the eldest,
Away at school, as my mother held my hand

In hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs.
At ten o’clock the ambulance arrived
With the corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses.

Next morning I went up into the room. Snowdrops
And candles soothed the bedside I saw him
For the first time in six weeks. Paler now,

Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple.
He lay in a four foot box, as in his cot.
No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.

A four foot box, a foot for every year.

[Padraig]

Two Poems by Irish Writers
I

[B]W.B Yeats - When You are old


and II

[B]Seamus Heaney : Mid Term Break

.

Two well loved poems, Tevot.

Maud Gonne (McBride) was the inspiration for the former. She was also strongly featured in this poem by Paul Durcan, whose mother was a McBride, and the niece of Maud Gonne's husband John, who was executed in 1916.
It's a small world, as they often say....everywhere.

The McBride Dynasty

What young mother is not a vengeful goddess
Spitting dynastic as well as motherly pride?
In 1949 in the black Ford Anglia,
Now that I had become a walking, talking little boy,
Mummy drove me out to visit my grand-aunt Maud Gonne
In Roebuck House in the countryside near Dublin,
To show off to the servant of the Queen
The latest addition to the extended family.
Although the eighty-year old Cathleen Ní Houlihan had taken to her bed
She was keen as ever to receive admirers,
Especially the children of the family.
Only the previous day the actor MacLiammóir
Had been kneeling at her bedside reciting Yeats to her,
His hand on his heart, clutching a red rose.
Cousin Sean and his wife Kid led the way up the stairs,
Sean opening the door and announcing my mother.
Mummy lifted me up in her arms as she approached the bed
And Maud leaned forward, sticking out her claws
To embrace me, her lizards of eyes darting about
In the rubble of the ruins of her beautiful face.
Terrified I recoiled from her embrace
And, fleeing her bedroom, ran down the stairs
Out onto the wrought-iron balcony
Until Sean caught up with me and quieted me
And took me for a walk in the walled orchard.
Mummy was a little but not totally mortified;
She had never liked Maud Gonne because of Maud's
Betrayal of her husband, Mummy's Uncle John,
Major John, most ordinary of men, most
Humorous, courageous of soldiers,
The pride of our family,
Whose memory always brought laughter
To my grandmother Eileen's lips. 'John,'
She used cry, 'John was such a gay man.'
Mummy set great store by loyalty; loyalty
In Mummy's eyes was the cardinal virtue.
Maud Gonne was a disloyal wife
And, therefore, not worthy of Mummy's love.
For dynastic reasons we would tolerate Maud,
But we would always see through her.

Paul Durcan

[johncorrigan]

Two well loved poems, Tevot.

Maud Gonne (McBride) was the inspiration for the former. She was also strongly featured in this poem by Paul Durcan, whose mother was a McBride, and the niece of Maud Gonne's husband John, who was executed in 1916.

Thank you so much for making the links, Padraig.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Thank you so much for making the links, Padraig.

- three wonderful contributions yesterday, I thought.

And thanks, johnc, for the Norman MacCraig, too.

[amateur51]

By way of a tribute to the recently deceased Maya Angelou ...

Phenomenal Woman


Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I'm not cute or built to suit a fashion model's size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I'm telling lies.
I say,
It's in the reach of my arms
The span of my hips,
The stride of my step,
The curl of my lips.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

I walk into a room
Just as cool as you please,
And to a man,
The fellows stand or
Fall down on their knees.
Then they swarm around me,
A hive of honey bees.
I say,
It's the fire in my eyes,
And the flash of my teeth,
The swing in my waist,
And the joy in my feet.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

Men themselves have wondered
What they see in me.
They try so much
But they can't touch
My inner mystery.
When I try to show them
They say they still can't see.
I say,
It's in the arch of my back,
The sun of my smile,
The ride of my breasts,
The grace of my style.
I'm a woman

Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

Now you understand
Just why my head's not bowed.
I don't shout or jump about
Or have to talk real loud.
When you see me passing
It ought to make you proud.
I say,
It's in the click of my heels,
The bend of my hair,
the palm of my hand,
The need of my care,
'Cause I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

Maya Angelou

[Padraig]

It was difficult to ignore Maya Angelou, God rest her.
I thought of your poem, amateur, when I was reading this one today.

The Planter's Daughter

When night stirred at sea
And the fire brought a crowd in,
They say that her beauty
Was music in mouth
And few in the candlelight
Thought her too proud,
For the house of the planter
Is known by the trees.

Men that had seen her
Drank deep and were silent,
The women were speaking
Wherever she went -
As a bell that is rung
Or a wonder told shyly,
And O she was the Sunday
In every week.

Austin Clarke

[johncorrigan]

I loved the random nature of beginning and ending, and of the strange relationships we create from this poem by Kit Wright featured in Saturday's Guardian

That Was the Summer

by Kit Wright

That was the summer as I recall,
the man next door and I began
to call each other Sir,
in a kind of roguish formality or
mock-combative collusion. Why,
I cannot say, but keep it up
we somehow did for some little time;
for as long, you might almost say, as it took.
"Are you all right, sir?" "Quite all right, sir.
You all right, sir?" "Sir, I'm well."
Nor did we fail to operate
attendant quasi-theatrical business:
the stiff half-turn; the ritual bow;
the planted stare of profound regard,
as we met on our doorsteps, housekeys poised …
or bellowed across the howling High Road
"ARE YOU ALL RIGHT, SIR?" "QUITE ALL RIGHT, SIR!"
as though in loyal defence of a principle
both were prepared to die for, soon.
But the ending seemed as inexplicable
as the beginning: the disappearance,
ambulance sirens, police, old pressmen
hogging the bar at the Horse and Artichoke,
cats gone skinny, the haunted dog.
And of course I know no more than anyone
else as I walk these streets at midnight,
hoping to coax from neon or starlight
a final reflexive Sir, I'm well.