DREAM OF WINTER
These were the sounds that dinned upon his ear –
The spider’s fatal purring, and the grey
Trumpeting of old mammoths locked in ice.
No human sound there was: only the evil
Shriek of the violin sang of human woe
And conquest and defeat, and the round drums
Sobbed as they beat.
He saw the victim nailed against the night
With ritual stars. The skull, a ruin of dreams,
Leaned in the wind, merry with curl and thorn.
The long robes circled. A penitential wail
For the blue lobster and the yellow cornstalk
And the hooded victim, broken to let men live,
Flashed from their throats.
Then all the faces turned from the Winter Man.
From the loch’s April lip a swan slid out
In a cold rhyme. The year stretched like a child
And rubbed its eyes on light. Spring on the hill
With lamb and tractor, lovers and burning heather.
Byres stood open. The wind’s blue fingers laid
A migrant on the rock.
FROM:
The Faber Book of 20th Century Verse
Edited by John Heath-Stubbs & David Wright
MARINAQuis hic locus quaeRegio, quae mundi plaga?What seas what shores what grey rocks and what islands
What water lapping the bow
And scent of pine and the woodthrush singing through the
fog
What images return
O my daughter.
Those who sharpen the tooth of the dog, meaning
Death
Those who glitter with the glory of the hummingbird,
meaning
Death
Those who sit in the sty of contentment, meaning
Death
Those who suffer the ecstacy of the animals, meaning
Death
Are become unsubstantial, reduced by a wind,
A breath of pine, and the woodsong fog
By this grace dissolved in place
What is this face, less clear and clearer
The pulse in the arm, less strong and stronger –
Given or lent? more distant than stars and nearer than the
Eye
Whisper and small laughter between leaves and hurrying
Feet
Under sleep, where all the waters meet.
Bowsprit cracked with ice and paint cracked with heat.
I made this, I have forgotten
And remember.
The rigging weak and the canvas rotten
Between one June and another September.
Made this unknowing, half conscious, unknown, my own.
The garboard strake leaks, the seams need caulking.
This form, this face, this life
Living to live for a world of time beyond me; let me
Resign my life for this life, my speech for that unspoken,
The awakened, lips parted, the hope, the new ships.
What seas what shores what granite islands towards my
timbers
And woodthrush calling through the fog
My daughter.
FROM:
Collected Poems
1909-1962
T.S. Eliot
Faber Paperbacks
From: BEOWULF AND GRENDEL
Attend!
We have heard of the thriving of the throne of
Denmark,
how the folk-kings flourished in former days,
how those royal athelings earned that glory.
Was it not Scyld Shefing that shook the halls,
Took mead-benches, taught encroaching
foes to fear him – who, found in childhood,
lacked clothing? Yet he lived and prospered,
grew in strength and stature under the heavens
until the clans settled in the sea-coasts neighbouring
over the whale-road all must obey him
and give tribute. He was a good king!
FROM:
Beowulf and Grendel
A Verse Translation by Michael Alexander
Penguin 60s
Bit by bit I am planting in the flower garden. It is surrounded on three sides by fuchsia so is the only part of the garden with any real protection from the wind, and even so …
Shadows in the DellOut to air – my winter duvet – Summer is here!
One of my favourite jobs in the garden. The weather, after the gale force winds, is lovely so I took the opportunity to mow paths in the orchard grass.
CORONA
Autumn eats its leaf out of my hand: we are friends.
From the nuts we shell time and we teach it to walk:
then time returns to the shell.
In the mirror it’s Sunday,
in dream there is room for sleeping,
our mouths speak the truth.
My eye moves down to the sex of my loved one:
we look at each other,
we exchange dark words,
we love each other like poppy and recollection,
we sleep like wine in the conches,
like the sea in the moon’s blood ray.
We stand by the window embracing, and people look up from
the street:
it is time they knew!
It is time the stone made an effort to flower,
time unrest had a beating heart.
It is time it were time.
It is time.
FROM:
PAUL CELAN
Selected Poems
Penguin Poetry
This poem seems particularly pertinent today. Brilliant and I love the rhyme structure.
VALEDICTORY
Those living and those yet to be
Are all her immortality:
The subjects of the world she made
Still speak her language, still afraid
To change it.
She saw her people as they were:
Don’t-Cares who can’t be made to care:
These sentimental hypocrites
Let her, their true-blue Clausewitz
Arrange it.
Let poverty without parole
Replace the right to draw the dole.
Let coppers pulling triple time
Turn opposition into crime
At Orgreave.
Let the General Belgrano,
Sunk to save our sheep, our guano,
Mark the freezing south Atlantic
As the empire’s last romantic
War grave.
Let children learn no history
These days, but only how to be
As economically astute
As all the dealers snorting toot
For dinner,
Desperate to anticipate
Like destiny the nation state’s
Ineluctable decline
To client status: I me mine,
The winner.
Branch libraries and playing fields
Deliver rather slower yields
Than asset-stripping mountebanks
Can rake in flogging dope and tanks;
Great Britain!
Strange: no one nowadays admits
To voting in the gang of shits
Who staffed her army of the night:
Our history, it seems, is quite
Rewritten.
When it comes to telling lies
The change is hard to recognize.
What can’t be hidden can be burned.
She must be gratified: we’ve learned
Her lesson.
Now when some sanctimonious ape
Says, No, there never was a tape,A bribe, a private meeting with
Et cetera, where are you, Smith
And Wesson?
FROM:
THE DROWNED BOOK
Sean O'Brien
Picador Classic
