A Place for Poetry

Atticus wrote:

Thanks Audi, I definitely like Mahon!

There's one more I know that I have to find in an anthology on one of my shelves too. I like to get new poets too and the one you put up had an image of a Masai warrior woman going in my mind as I was reading it - maybe because you primed it with the mixed race. Great imagery with an unexpected chunk of meaning in the middle..

Ever read Thomas Kinsella? He was on the Irish Leaving Cert for years. Interesting but not very lyrical...

gosh Kinsella was on the LC alright, but haven't read him since then if I'm honest. Have a copy of An Duanaire somewhere (not long moved house, most of my books still in boxes). Didn't he write .. no Elizabeth Bowen wrote Last September, he wrote "Another September"? .. ridiculous, I have his blooming autograph in an anthology somewhere. God you're taking me back now ( no, not that far, am not that old!)

The Hen Woman by Thomas Kinsella

The noon heat in the yard
smelled of stillness and coming thunder.
A hen scratched and picked at the shore.
It stopped, its body crouched and puffed out.
The brooding silence seemed to say "Hush…"
The cottage door opened,
a black hole
in a whitewashed wall so bright
the eyes narrowed.
Inside, a clock murmured "Gong…"

(I had felt all this before…)

She hurried out in her slippers
Muttering, her face dark with anger,
And gathered the hen up jerking
languidly. Her hand fumbled.
Too late. Too late.


It fixed me with its pebble eyes
(seeing what mad blur?).
A white egg showed in the sphincter;
mouth and beak opened together;
and time stood still.

Nothing moved: bird or woman,
fumbled or fumbling - locked there
(as I must have been) gaping.

*

There was a tiny movement at my feet,
tiny and mechanical; I looked down.
A beetle like a bronze leaf
was inching across the cement,
clasping with small tarsi
a ball of dung bigger than its body.
The serrated brow pressed the ground humbly,
lifted in a short stare, bowed again;
the dung-ball advanced minutely,
losing a few fragments,
specks of staleness and freshness.

*

A mutter of thunder far off
----- time not quite stopped.
I saw the egg had moved a fraction:
a tender blank brain
under torsion, a clear new world.


As I watched, the mystery completed.
The black zero of the orifice
closed to a point
and the white zero of the egg hung free,
flecked with greenish brown oils.
It slowly turned and fell.
Dreamlike, fussed by her slayed fingers,
it floated outward, moon-white,
leaving no trace in the air,
and began its drop to the shore.

*

I feed upon it still, as you see;
there is no end to that which,
not understood, may yet be noted
and hoarded in the imagination,
in the yolk of one's being, so to speak,
there to undergo its (quite animal) growth,
dividing blindly,
twitching, packed with will,
seraching in its own tissue
for the structure
in which it may wake.
Something that had - clenched
in its cave - not been
now was: an egg of being.

Through what seemed a whole year it fell
-----as it still falls, for me,
solid and light, the red gold beating
in its silverly womb,
alive as the yolk and white
of my eye; as it will continue
to fall, probably, until I die,
through the vast indifferent spaces
with which I am empty.

*
It smashed against the grating
and slipped down quickly in a comical flash.
The soft mucous shell clung a little longer,
then drained down.

*

She stood staring, in blank anger.
Then her eyes came to life, and she laughed
And let the bird flap away.
"It's all the one.
There's plenty more where that come from!"



Hen to pan!
It was a simple world.

I'm not going to read all that Kinsella shite. How about some Auditor verses ?

e.e. cummings

when faces called flowers float out of the ground
and breathing is wishing and wishing is having—
but keeping is downward and doubting and never
—it’s april(yes,april;my darling)it’s spring!
yes the pretty birds frolic as spry as can fly
yes the little fish gambol as glad as can be
(yes the mountains are dancing together)

when every leaf opens without any sound
and wishing is having and having is giving—
but keeping is doting and nothing and nonsense
—alive;we’re alive,dear:it’s(kiss me now)spring!
now the pretty birds hover so she and so he
now the little fish quiver so you and so i
(now the mountains are dancing,the mountains)

when more than was lost has been found has been found
and having is giving and giving is living—
but keeping is darkness and winter and cringing
—it’s spring(all our night becomes day)o,it’s spring!
all the pretty birds dive to the heart of the sky
all the little fish climb through the mind of the sea
(all the mountains are dancing;are dancing)

Thanks for that Auditor. I like e.e. cummings quite a lot -the romance is kind of visceral, isn't it? There's something honest but not trite about the love poetry.

There were some verses by e.e. in a film I saw recently - they were the best bit by far - In Her Shoes with Cameron Diaz.

all the little fish climb through the mind of the sea

has to be one of the memorablest lines ever in any poem anywhere

(there was references to eecummings in Hannah and Her Sisters - the Woody Allen one with michael caine)

if strangers meet
life begins-
not poor not rich
(only aware)
kind neither
nor cruel
(only complete)
i not not you
not possible;
only truthful
-truthfully,once
if strangers(who
deep our most are
selves)touch:
forever

(and so to dark)

and so to dark - death ?


stand with your lover on the ending earth-
and while a (huge by which huger than
huge) whoing sea leaps to greenly hurl snow, suppose we could not love, dear; imagine
ourselves like living neither nor dead these
(or many thousands hearts which don't and dream
or many million minds which sleep and move)
blind sand, at pitiless the mercy of
time time time time time
how fortunate are you and I, whose home
is timelessness: we who have wondered down
from fragrant mountains of eternal now
to frolic in such mysteries as birth
and death a day (or maybe even less)

Quote :

you and I, whose home
is timelessness

That notion comes up in a lot of poetry but I don't think it's true. It's when you're in love that you're most urgent, most conscious of mortality and the passage of time, not blissfully wallowing in timelessness.

Kate P wrote:

Quote :

you and I, whose home
is timelessness

That notion comes up in a lot of poetry but I don't think it's true. It's when you're in love that you're most urgent, most conscious of mortality and the passage of time, not blissfully wallowing in timelessness.

Maybe that's NOT how men feel?

(that happens when we get married )

God in his wisdom made the fly
And then forgot the reason why.

O.Nash

No flies on you clareman51

I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year

'Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.'

And he replied,

'Go into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God

That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way!'

So I went forth and finding the Hand of God

Trod gladly into the night

He led me towards the hills

And the breaking of day in the lone east.

So heart be still!

What need our human life to know

If God hath comprehension?

In all the dizzy strife of things

Both high and low,

God hideth his intention."

Minnie Louise Haskins

Right, this is a truly dreadful dirge, seem to rem. hearing it sung terribly when I was little. However, I chanced upon it while leafing through the Rattle Bag on the way to work this morning. Sorry but all I could picture were spangly gay cowboys and couldn't help but smile!!
Would include a photo but daren't google spangly gay cowboy on my work PC!!



The Streets of Laredo

As I walked out in the streets of Laredo,
As I walked out in Laredo one day,
I spied a young cowboy all wrapped in white linen,
All wrapped in white linen as cold as the clay.

"I see by your outfit that you are a cowboy" -
These words he did say as I boldly stepped by,
"Come sit down beside me and hear my sad story;
I'm shot in the breast and I know I must die.

"It was once in the saddle I used to go dashing,
Once in the saddle I used to go gay;
First to the ale-house and then to the jail-house,
Got shot in the breast and I'm dying today.

"Get six jolly cowboys to carry my coffin;
Get six pretty maidens to carry my pall;
Put bunches of roses all over my coffin,
Roses to deaden the clods as they fall.

"Oh, beat the drum slowly and play the fife lowly,
Play the dead march as you carry me along;
Take me to the green valley and lay the sod o'er me,
For I'm a young cowboy and I know I've done wrong.

"Go gather around you a crowd of young cowboys
And tell them the story of this, my sad fate;
Tell one and the other before they go further
To stop their wild roving before it's too late.

"Go fetch me a cup, a cup of water
To cool my parched lips," the cowboy then said.
Before I returned, the spirit had left him
And gone to its Maker - the cowboy was dead.

We beat the drum slowly and played the fife lowly,
And bitterly wept as we carried him along;
For we all loved our comrade, so brave, young and handsome,
We all loved our comrade although he'd done wrong.

ANON

That one was originally an Irish song called "The Unfortunate Rake". This is another version/descendant (and the one I know how to sing):

When I was on horseback wasn't I pretty
When I was on horseback wasn't I gay
Wasn't I pretty when I entered Cork City
And met with my downfall on the fourteenth of May.


Six jolly soldiers to carry my coffin
Six jolly soldiers to march by my side
It's six jolly soldiers take a bunch of red roses
Then for to smell them as we go along.


Beat the drum slowly and play the pipes only
Play up the dead-march as we go along
And bring me to Tipperary and lay me down easy
I am a young soldier that never done wrong

I liked that, Atticus

Enough of yer morbitidy boys! Enough, I say!

by Roger McGough...

Let me die a young man's death
not a clean and inbetween
the sheets holywater death
not a famous-last-words
peaceful out of breath death

When I'm 73
and in constant good tumour
may I be mown down at dawn
by a bright red sports car
on my way home
from an allnight party

Or when I'm 91
with silver hair
and sitting in a barber's chair
may rival gangsters
with hamfisted tommyguns
burst in and give me a short back and insides

Or when I'm 104
and banned from the Cavern
may my mistress
catching me in bed with her daughter
and fearing for her son
cut me up into little pieces
and throw away every piece but one

Let me die a young man's death
not a free from sin tiptoe in
candle wax and waning death
not a curtains drawn by angels borne
'what a nice way to go' death

Love After Love, by Derek Walcott

January 11, 2006

The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

From a good blog I found
http://tisiwoota.blogsome.com/2008/03/

I TASTE a liquor never brewed,
From tankards scooped in pearl;
Not all the vats upon the Rhine
Yield such an alcohol!
Inebriate of air am I,	5
And debauchee of dew,
Reeling, through endless summer days,
From inns of molten blue.
When landlords turn the drunken bee
Out of the foxglove’s door,	10
When butterflies renounce their drams,
I shall but drink the more!
Till seraphs swing their snowy hats,
And saints to windows run,
To see the little tippler	15
Leaning against the sun!

Emily Dickinson.



I very much enjoy this poetry thread. I think I was very blessed during my secondary school years to have absolutely fantastic English teachers who really gave life to most of what we studied. Held us all in good stead.

I love that poem Johnfás, I often get the feeling of being drunk by the beauty of everything around us. Even reading poetry or prose in Irish with beautifully ornate, well sounded, deep meaningful vocabulary, gives me a feeling of relaxed drunkeness. I sometimes liken learning Irish to drinking from a vast vat of a sweet liquor.

BuachaillBeo wrote:

Leafy-with-love banks and the green waters of the canal
Pouring redemption for me, that I do
The will of God, wallow in the habitual, the banal,
Grow with nature again as before I grew.
The bright stick trapped, the breeze adding a third
Party to the couple kissing on an old seat,
And a bird gathering materials for the nest for the Word
Eloquently new and abandoned to its delirious beat.
O unworn world enrapture me, encapture me in a web
Of fabulous grass and eternal voices by a beech,
Feed the gaping need of my senses, give me ad lib
To pray unselfconsciously with overflowing speech
For this soul needs to be honoured with a new dress woven
From green and blue things and arguments that cannot be proven.


Something I just threw together there while I was waiting for the kettle to boil.....

Mmmmm.

Quote :

O unworn world enrapture me, encapture me in a web
Of fabulous grass and eternal voices by a beech,
Feed the gaping need of my senses, give me ad lib
To pray unselfconsciously with overflowing speech
For this soul needs to be honoured with a new dress woven
From green and blue things and arguments that cannot be proven.

Amen

I try to imagine how that must sound in Kavanagh's own Monaghan brogue. I bet it's magic.

Kate P wrote:

Quote :

O unworn world enrapture me, encapture me in a web
Of fabulous grass and eternal voices by a beech,
Feed the gaping need of my senses, give me ad lib
To pray unselfconsciously with overflowing speech
For this soul needs to be honoured with a new dress woven
From green and blue things and arguments that cannot be proven.

Amen

I try to imagine how that must sound in Kavanagh's own Monaghan brogue. I bet it's magic.

You've obviously never heard a monaghan brogue. :-)

I knew one girl from monaghan called sue ellen, needless to say anytime we were drunk we couldn't stop whistling the dallas theme.