[1934–current, born New Zealand, but spent most of life in
England]
I write in praise of the solitary act:
of not feeling a trespassing tongue
forced into one’s mouth, one’s breath
smothered, nipples crushed against the
ribcage, and that metallic tingling
in the chin set off by a certain odd nerve:
unpleasure. Just to avoid those eyes would help –
such eyes as a young girl draws life from,
listening to the vegetal
rustle within her, as his gaze
stirs polypal fronds in the obscure
sea-bed of her body, and her own eyes blur.
There is much to be said for abandoning
this no longer novel exercise –
for not ‘participating in
a total experience’ – when
one feels like the lady in Leeds who
had seen The Sound of Music eighty-six times;
or more, perhaps, like the school drama mistress
producing A Midsummer Night’s Dream
for the seventh year running, with
yet another cast from 5B.
Pyramus and Thisbe are dead,
but the hole in the wall can still be troublesome.
I advise you, then, to embrace it without
encumbrance. No need to set the scene,
dress up (or undress), make speeches.
Five minutes of solitude are
enough – in the bath, or to fill
that gap between the Sunday papers and lunch.
Source: Goodwin, D 2002, 101 Poems That Could Save Your Life: An Anthology of Emotional First Aid, Harper.
22 Jan 2014
5 Dec 2013
Untitled (And the days are not full enough…) – Ezra Pound
[1885–1972, American]
And the days are not full enough
And the nights are not full enough
And life slips by like a field mouse
Not shaking the grass
Source: Pound, E 1926, Personae, New Directions Press.
And the days are not full enough
And the nights are not full enough
And life slips by like a field mouse
Not shaking the grass
Source: Pound, E 1926, Personae, New Directions Press.
Funeral Blues – WH Auden
[1907–1973, born England, migrated to America]
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone.
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He is Dead,
Put crépe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.
He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song,
I thought that love would last forever: ‘I was wrong’
The stars are not wanted now, put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.
Source: Auden, WH 1940, Another Time, New York Press.
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone.
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He is Dead,
Put crépe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.
He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song,
I thought that love would last forever: ‘I was wrong’
The stars are not wanted now, put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.
Source: Auden, WH 1940, Another Time, New York Press.
Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night – Dylan Thomas
[1914–1953, Welsh]
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse; bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Source: Thomas, D 1952, The Poems of Dylan Thomas, New Directions Publishing Corporation.
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse; bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Source: Thomas, D 1952, The Poems of Dylan Thomas, New Directions Publishing Corporation.
D’Ya Ever Have One of Those Days Tommy? – Paul Summers
[1967–current, English]
When even sticking on
the telly for lunchtime
neighbours is a bit of an
effort?
When you guzzle milk
instead of tea ‘cos
you can’t be arsed
to wait for the
kettle?
d’y’ever just sit
in an armchair for a whole
afternoon and think
how it felt to be cast in
ironside?
or count up the
speckles on a
woodchipped wall?
sometimes after
casualty I think I’ve got
cancer,
I think that I’m dying
when I’m really just
bored.
Source: Summers, P 1998, The Last Bus, Iron Press.
When even sticking on
the telly for lunchtime
neighbours is a bit of an
effort?
When you guzzle milk
instead of tea ‘cos
you can’t be arsed
to wait for the
kettle?
d’y’ever just sit
in an armchair for a whole
afternoon and think
how it felt to be cast in
ironside?
or count up the
speckles on a
woodchipped wall?
sometimes after
casualty I think I’ve got
cancer,
I think that I’m dying
when I’m really just
bored.
Source: Summers, P 1998, The Last Bus, Iron Press.
Cryptographs – Philip Salom
[1950–current, Australian]
The air moves on you like a naked woman.
The night’s made the shape of a shop.
You’ve been offered one and stolen from the other
and glad it was that way about.
Avoid people who bore you,
nothing’s so dull as your wrists
when your blood beats like some rock and roll
you couldn’t even stand as a kid.
A risk’s not a short-cut but a new way
home, as home’s not the same river twice.
Swim in the art like a lover comes, or
risk to – the windows lift up like a gasp.
Sunk into language you can swim
without moving. The currents sway you
as much as the sharks.
Or sit there in its armchair
as it stares coolly from the fireplace
and you go up in flames.
Looking for a title
then seeing what the hunger is
and what all art is:
feeding the ghost.
And having fed it I
in choosing words for what
did not at the time exist
make it our illusion.
The poem pretends to exist
like a fact before the title
but all the emptiness is
named by this. Paradigm.
The wall remembers everything,
staying on when you should have left,
saying yes when you really meant no
and all such shameful vacuums.
Source: Salom, P 1993, Feeding the ghost, Penguin Books London.
The air moves on you like a naked woman.
The night’s made the shape of a shop.
You’ve been offered one and stolen from the other
and glad it was that way about.
Avoid people who bore you,
nothing’s so dull as your wrists
when your blood beats like some rock and roll
you couldn’t even stand as a kid.
A risk’s not a short-cut but a new way
home, as home’s not the same river twice.
Swim in the art like a lover comes, or
risk to – the windows lift up like a gasp.
Sunk into language you can swim
without moving. The currents sway you
as much as the sharks.
Or sit there in its armchair
as it stares coolly from the fireplace
and you go up in flames.
Looking for a title
then seeing what the hunger is
and what all art is:
feeding the ghost.
And having fed it I
in choosing words for what
did not at the time exist
make it our illusion.
The poem pretends to exist
like a fact before the title
but all the emptiness is
named by this. Paradigm.
The wall remembers everything,
staying on when you should have left,
saying yes when you really meant no
and all such shameful vacuums.
Source: Salom, P 1993, Feeding the ghost, Penguin Books London.
3. Arrival of a 75 per center to the Burns Unit – Heather Cam
They wheeled him in
just before the dinner trolleywrapped like Lazarus,
but howling
howling so you’d know he was alive.
Source: Cam, H 1990, ‘The Moon’s Hook’, Poetry Australia 125, South Head Press, Sydney.
2. Burns Unit – Heather Cam
Twice daily the Nurse of the Salt Baths
worships and washes my devastation.
Then she wraps my precious body in a turban
of gauzy dressings drenched in unguents
and wheels me
like a sultan on a litter
back to the Bubble in the Burns Unit.
worships and washes my devastation.
Then she wraps my precious body in a turban
of gauzy dressings drenched in unguents
and wheels me
like a sultan on a litter
back to the Bubble in the Burns Unit.
In the antechamber my visitors are waiting,
receiving strict instructions
to maintain the proper distance.
They shuffle in:
feet bandaged, heads covered, masked and mittened,
draped in starched hospital gowns,
shamefully aware of the burden of bacteria,
and the risk they pose to this Sterilized Zone
and to my recovery.
receiving strict instructions
to maintain the proper distance.
They shuffle in:
feet bandaged, heads covered, masked and mittened,
draped in starched hospital gowns,
shamefully aware of the burden of bacteria,
and the risk they pose to this Sterilized Zone
and to my recovery.
They hold up offerings:
cards I may not open,
flowers I may not smell,
hands I may not hold.
They hold in check the desire to see my hurt,
my singed skin.
cards I may not open,
flowers I may not smell,
hands I may not hold.
They hold in check the desire to see my hurt,
my singed skin.
Like desert melons after a freakish rain,
bubbles are bursting out under the bandages,
oozing sap, crusting into scabs, itching like mad,
like sand in the eyes, like sand flies –
for I must not forget, must not forget,
even I must not touch, must not rub, must not scratch.
Tense and urgent, I listen
for the rattle of the drugs trolley;
sweating for the pills that numb this healing itch.
bubbles are bursting out under the bandages,
oozing sap, crusting into scabs, itching like mad,
like sand in the eyes, like sand flies –
for I must not forget, must not forget,
even I must not touch, must not rub, must not scratch.
Tense and urgent, I listen
for the rattle of the drugs trolley;
sweating for the pills that numb this healing itch.
The sweet pink pills will lie on my tongue
like a blessing
promising relief, release from my beleaguered body.
Swallowed, they will soon smudge me out;
mercifully smear me into a blur like sleep.
Where I dream
like a blessing
promising relief, release from my beleaguered body.
Swallowed, they will soon smudge me out;
mercifully smear me into a blur like sleep.
Where I dream
a lonely desert crossing,
a caravan in camel-slow procession,
through sand-storms and torturous dreams of houris
and the occasional oasis,
but mostly to another day of sun,
cantankerous camels,
and endless desert sands,
over which I, Suntan of the Bedouin,
ride to my healing.
a caravan in camel-slow procession,
through sand-storms and torturous dreams of houris
and the occasional oasis,
but mostly to another day of sun,
cantankerous camels,
and endless desert sands,
over which I, Suntan of the Bedouin,
ride to my healing.
Source: Cam, H 1990, ‘The
Moon’s Hook’, Poetry Australia 125,
South Head Press, Sydney.
* Houris definition from
thefreedictionary.com (5 Oct 2012): 1. A voluptuous, alluring woman. 2. One of the beautiful virgins of the Koranic
paradise.
1. Tarot Reading – Heather Cam
Touching the back of every card
in the tight-lipped pack
I shuffled, cut and drew
The Tower of Destruction
scene of disaster and disarray
in vivid suspension:
turrets about to crumble;
guardsmen in a headlong tumble;
petals of hard hot rain,
hanging heavy as portents in the thickening air.
in the tight-lipped pack
I shuffled, cut and drew
The Tower of Destruction
scene of disaster and disarray
in vivid suspension:
turrets about to crumble;
guardsmen in a headlong tumble;
petals of hard hot rain,
hanging heavy as portents in the thickening air.
Two days later
the hard hot rain fell down, fell down,
not arrows, spears nor cannon balls,
but precise pellets of pain
spilling from a height –
boiling water
across my bare bare back,
burning burning
into my mind the Tarot pack.
the hard hot rain fell down, fell down,
not arrows, spears nor cannon balls,
but precise pellets of pain
spilling from a height –
boiling water
across my bare bare back,
burning burning
into my mind the Tarot pack.
Source: Cam, H 1990, ‘The
Moon’s Hook’, Poetry Australia 125,
South Head Press, Sydney.
4 Dec 2013
Age looking back at its youth – John M Ridland
We had so little, yet we had so much:
Thunder and lightning at the lightest touch.Source: Ridland, JM 2011 (February), 'Age looking back at its youth', Poetry magazine.
18 Nov 2013
A Poison Tree – William Blake
[1757–1827, English]
I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.
And I watered it in fears
Night and morning with my tears,
And I sunned it with smiles
And with soft deceitful wiles.
And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright,
And my foe beheld it shine,
And he knew that it was mine,–
And into my garden stole
When the night had veiled the pole;
In the morning, glad, I see
My foe outstretched beneath the tree.
Source: Blake, W 1794, Songs of Experience.
I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.
And I watered it in fears
Night and morning with my tears,
And I sunned it with smiles
And with soft deceitful wiles.
And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright,
And my foe beheld it shine,
And he knew that it was mine,–
And into my garden stole
When the night had veiled the pole;
In the morning, glad, I see
My foe outstretched beneath the tree.
Source: Blake, W 1794, Songs of Experience.
Proverbs 17:1 – David Curzon
[Born Australia, migrated to America]
Better is a dry morsel with quiet
and a key turning in a front lock,
a door that opens onto empty rooms,
a lonely mouth watering at the thought
of a kiss as it reads a trashy romance,
and a death undiscovered for several days,
and a funeral to which few come,
than a house full of feasting with strife
Source: Curson, D 1998, The view from Jacob’s Ladder, Jewish Publ., USA.
Better is a dry morsel with quiet
and a key turning in a front lock,
a door that opens onto empty rooms,
a lonely mouth watering at the thought
of a kiss as it reads a trashy romance,
and a death undiscovered for several days,
and a funeral to which few come,
than a house full of feasting with strife
Source: Curson, D 1998, The view from Jacob’s Ladder, Jewish Publ., USA.
A Statistician to His Love – Peter Goldsworthy
[1951–current, Australian]
Men kill women in bedrooms, usually
by hand, or gun. Women kill men,
less often, in kitchens, with knives.
Don’t be alarmed, there is understanding
to be sucked from all such hard
and bony facts, or at least a sense
of symmetry. Drowned men – an
instance – float face down, women up.
But women, ignited, burn more fiercely.
The death camp pyres were therefore,
sensibly, women and children first,
an oily kind of kindling. The men
were stacked in rows on top. Yes,
there is always logic in this world.
And neatness. And the comfort
of fact. Did I mention that suicides
outnumber homicides? The figures
are reliable. So stay awhile yet
with me: the person to avoid, alone,
is mostly you yourself.
Source: Goldsworthy, P 1992, After the Ball, National Library of Australia, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory.
Men kill women in bedrooms, usually
by hand, or gun. Women kill men,
less often, in kitchens, with knives.
Don’t be alarmed, there is understanding
to be sucked from all such hard
and bony facts, or at least a sense
of symmetry. Drowned men – an
instance – float face down, women up.
But women, ignited, burn more fiercely.
The death camp pyres were therefore,
sensibly, women and children first,
an oily kind of kindling. The men
were stacked in rows on top. Yes,
there is always logic in this world.
And neatness. And the comfort
of fact. Did I mention that suicides
outnumber homicides? The figures
are reliable. So stay awhile yet
with me: the person to avoid, alone,
is mostly you yourself.
Source: Goldsworthy, P 1992, After the Ball, National Library of Australia, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory.
21 Oct 2013
Excerpt from ‘Little Gidding’ – TS Eliot
[1888–1965, Born in Britain, migrated to America]
We shall not cease from exploration.
And the end of all our exploring
will be to arrive where we started
and know the place for the first time.
Source: Eliot, TS 1943, ‘Little Gidding’, Four Quartets, Harcourt (US).
We shall not cease from exploration.
And the end of all our exploring
will be to arrive where we started
and know the place for the first time.
Source: Eliot, TS 1943, ‘Little Gidding’, Four Quartets, Harcourt (US).
Blind Date. Bees – Philip Salom
[1950–current, Australian]
When he mentions the Right Names
she begins to think of bees.
When his Conquests get an airing
she feels like being elsewhere.
By the time he gets around to the First Million
her head is a swarm.
Shocked he thinks her face is Distressed
but closer, it is a complete intensity.
And then the queen streaks into the sky
and her face takes flight, is gone.
A few last workers trailing off
where once had been her arms.
Her clothes collapse, empty as his mouth
about to say: ‘Honey?’
Source: Salom, P 1993, Feeding the ghost, Penguin Books, London.
When he mentions the Right Names
she begins to think of bees.
When his Conquests get an airing
she feels like being elsewhere.
By the time he gets around to the First Million
her head is a swarm.
Shocked he thinks her face is Distressed
but closer, it is a complete intensity.
And then the queen streaks into the sky
and her face takes flight, is gone.
A few last workers trailing off
where once had been her arms.
Her clothes collapse, empty as his mouth
about to say: ‘Honey?’
Source: Salom, P 1993, Feeding the ghost, Penguin Books, London.
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