Somewhere on this forum there is a thread on favourite lyrics. Well, I read that, and in spite of some artists I like being included broadly I thought the lyrics read pretty poorly. So, in an effort to inject some proper word-smithing to STW, any favourite poems out there? Myself-

I learnt Cargoes by John Masefield in primary 5 and have never forgotten it:

“Dirty British Coaster with a salt-caked smoke stack
Butting through the Channel in the mad March days,
With a cargo of Tyne coal,
Road-rail, pig-lead,
Firewood, iron-ware, and cheap tin trays.”

I love the rhythm of it, just like a slow revving diesel. A really lazy, but unstoppable poem.

I’ve got a soft spot for Larkin also. And any of the trench poets. But Cargoes is the one, short and sweet.

Anything by John Hegley.

Tssk loddrik. I’m hoping folk will post a snippet as a taster, too lazy to google myself. Well, too lazy to google all responses (if there are any more)……

Edit – I like it, Hegley scores 😀

Dead Swans

The dead swans lay in the stagnant pool.
They lay. They rotted. They turned
Around occassionally.
Bits of flesh dropped off them from
Time to time.
And sank into the pool’s mire.
They also smelt a great deal.

Regarding Dead Swans, am I allowed to say I don’t like it?

🙂 That’s OK. How about this one…

Daed-traa

I go to the rockpool at the slack of the tide
to mind me what my poetry’s for.

It has its ventricles, just like us –
pumping brine, like bull’s blood, a syrupy flow.

It has its theatre –
hushed and plush.

It has its Little Shop of Horrors.
It has its crossed and dotted monsters.

It has its cross-eyed beetling Lear.
It has its billowing Monroe.

I go to the rockpool at the slack of the tide
to mind me what my poetry’s for.

For monks, it has barnacles
to sweep broth as it flows, with fans,
grooming every cubic millimetre.

It has its ebb, the easy heft of wrack from rock,
like plastered, feverish locks of hair.

It has its flodd,
It has its welling god
with puddled, podgy face and jaw.

It has its holy hiccup.

Its minute’s silence

daed-traa.

I go to the rockpool at the slack of the tide
to mind me what my poetry’s for.

I like that, I grew up by the sea in Ireland and it has me remembering the types and shapes of rock pool life.

No time for sloping about rock pools in adult hood 😕

Harking back to an old topic of mine regarding riding around and about Glen Dubh/Glen Coul near Kylesku, I read a poem about the last inhabitants of one of the bothies there. One of the most moving poems I’ve read, gives me a shiver every time.

The bothy:

Last Days of Marriage

You told my mother your old husband died
In the small house in the dark glen, Glendhu;
That no one there could lay him out but you;
And your one place to sleep was by his side,
As if the double bed were still your bed.

And now your son’s that age, I think my mother
(Foreseeing widowhood) fears such another
Dissolving night beside the newly dead.

The hours of little sleep at either end
Of marriage are too secret to be told;
The grandson and the son must not pretend
To understand the silence of the old.
I try to reach across those thirty years
With comfort: the dumb comfort of a kiss
Suddenly given can relieve those fears –

But how I wish we could speak of this.

Tam O’ Shanter

Delicate line between heaven and earth…
The calm of the ages,
all the world’s worth.
Such minuscule measure,
while we think it so grand…
Just five specks of smallness,
This soft quiet land.
So frail and so fleeting,
in the end you will see
Simple dreams were Horatio’s philosophy.

For all the truth,
all creation,
all secrets of yore
Can be told in an instant,
by then they’re no more.

Ah, The Unexplainable
All worries unsettled,
heartache unresolved…
All questions unanswered,
with death, shall be solved.

We already teeter,
this sheer cliff so high.
When we fall to corruption,
insecurities die.

To end is to start;
to surrender is to know.

Despair and depression,
together they grow.
Hope shall meet hopeless
when there’s nowhere to go.

Don’t think I have a favourite, but I like that one. Don’t understand how/why it translates so well though.

As the Team’s Head-Brass by Edward Thomas

As the team’s head-brass flashed out on the turn
The lovers disappeared into the wood.
I sat among the boughs of the fallen elm
That strewed the angle of the fallow, and
Watched the plough narrowing a yellow square
Of charlock. Every time the horses turned
Instead of treading me down, the ploughman leaned
Upon the handles to say or ask a word,
About the weather, next about the war.
Scraping the share he faced towards the wood,
And screwed along the furrow till the brass flashed
Once more.

The blizzard felled the elm whose crest
I sat in, by a woodpecker’s round hole,
The ploughman said. ‘When will they take it away? ‘
‘When the war’s over.’ So the talk began –
One minute and an interval of ten,
A minute more and the same interval.
‘Have you been out? ‘ ‘No.’ ‘And don’t want to, perhaps? ‘
‘If I could only come back again, I should.
I could spare an arm, I shouldn’t want to lose
A leg. If I should lose my head, why, so,
I should want nothing more…Have many gone
From here? ‘ ‘Yes.’ ‘Many lost? ‘ ‘Yes, a good few.
Only two teams work on the farm this year.
One of my mates is dead. The second day
In France they killed him. It was back in March,
The very night of the blizzard, too. Now if
He had stayed here we should have moved the tree.’
‘And I should not have sat here. Everything
Would have been different. For it would have been
Another world.’ ‘Ay, and a better, though
If we could see all all might seem good.’ Then
The lovers came out of the wood again:
The horses started and for the last time
I watched the clods crumble and topple over
After the ploughshare and the stumbling team.

Tony Harrison:

Baked the day she suddenly dropped dead
we chew it slowly that last apple pie.

Shocked into sleeplessness you’re scared of bed.
We never could talk much, and now don’t try.

You’re like book ends, the pair of you, she’d say,
Hog that grate, say nothing, sit, sleep, stare…

The ‘scholar’ me, you, worn out on poor pay,
only our silence made us seem a pair.

Not as good for staring in, blue gas,
too regular each bud, each yellow spike.

At night you need my company to pass
and she not here to tell us we’re alike!

You’re life’s all shattered into smithereens.

Back in our silences and sullen looks,
for all the Scotch we drink, what’s still between ‘s
not the thirty or so years, but books, books, books.

II

The stone’s too full. The wording must be terse.
There’s scarcely room to carve the FLORENCE on it–

Come on, it’s not as if we’re wanting verse.
It’s not as if we’re wanting a whole sonnet!

After tumblers of neat Johnny Walker
(I think that both of us we’re on our third)
you said you’d always been a clumsy talker
and couldn’t find another, shorter word
for ‘beloved’ or for ‘wife’ in the inscription,
but not too clumsy that you can’t still cut:

You’re supposed to be the bright boy at description
and you can’t tell them what the **** to put!

I’ve got to find the right words on my own.

I’ve got the envelope that he’d been scrawling,
mis-spelt, mawkish, stylistically appalling
but I can’t squeeze more love into their stone.

13thfloormonk, would you believe I used to be maintenance officer for Glencoul bothy, south of Glendhu – I used to walk past Glendhu to get there. So been many times. The picture you post is from the east gable of Glendhu bothy, and the building in the foreground is an outbuilding to the larger house, which is used by Westminster Estates to entertain disabled and disadvantaged children.

The field behind that outbuilding has fine highland garrons in season that don’t mind you hopping on for a loop of the field. 😀

Sorry for the digression – but hey, it’s my thread 🙄

The picture you post is from the east gable of Glendhu bothy

I knew you had a connection to the area, should have guessed you’d spot that wasn’t actually the bothy! My MBA calendar had a picture of GlenCoul for April, my boots were twitching at the thought of getting up there for a few days…

I’ve enjoyed a lot of the stuff above, maybe the tin of Deuchars is going to work quicker than usual or maybe I’m finally being turned to poetry, have got some Norman McCaig sitting under the bed somewhere…

Commentary on life and a handy one for parents in those difficult times.

Philip Larkin – This Be The Verse

They **** you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were f**ked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.

One of many that touch a chord; Stevie Smith’s “Not Waving but Drowning”

Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he’s dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.

Two gems in quick succession 😛

“If” is over-read, but something I’ve taken it to heart since childhood, which makes it more like a psalm than a poem. So it means a lot:

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
…

I love this one

Do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am, a reluctant enthusiast, a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it is still there. So go out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, encounter the grizz, climb the mountains, and bag the peaks…. and I promise you this much: I promise you this one sweet victory over your enemies, over those deskbound people with their hearts in a safe deposit box… I promise you this: you will outlive the bastards. -Edward Abbey

Whenever I’m chasing around at work like a blue arse fly or whenever I stop on a ride to take in my surroundings I think of this poem by a fellow Welshman:
W. H. Davies – Leisure

What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare?—
No time to stand beneath the boughs,
And stare as long as sheep and cows:
No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass:
No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night:
No time to turn at Beauty’s glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance:
No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began?
A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

…and another favourite poem of mine (which, funnily enough, I was thinking about earlier when I read the thread about the last WW1 soldier who recently died) by Wilfred Owen – “Futility”:

Move him into the sun –
Gently its touch awoke him once,
At home, whispering of fields unsown.
Always it woke him, even in France,
Until this morning and this snow.
If anything might rouse him now
The kind old sun will know.
Think how it wakes the seeds, –
Woke, once, the clays of a cold star.
Are limbs, so dear-achieved, are sides,
Full-nerved – still warm – too hard to stir?
Was it for this the clay grew tall?
– O what made fatuous sunbeams toil
To break earth’s sleep at all?

Then there’s so much by Dylan Thomas that I daren’t start on that…

‘The German Guns’

Boom, Boom, Boom, Boom,
Boom, Boom, Boom,
Boom, Boom, Boom, Boom,
Boom, Boom, Boom

french poem on my site

Hovis Presley

 I rely on you

I rely on you
like a Skoda needs suspension
like the aged need a pension
like a trampoline needs tension
like a bungee jump needs apprehension
I rely on you
like a camera needs a shutter
like a gambler needs a flutter
like a golfer needs a putter
like a buttered scone involves some butter
I rely on you
like an acrobat needs ice cool nerve
like a hairpin needs a drastic curve
like an HGV needs endless derv
like an outside left needs a body swerve
I rely on you
like a handyman needs pliers
like an auctioneer needs buyers
like a laundromat needs driers
like The Good Life needed Richard Briers
I rely on you
like a water vole needs water
like a brick outhouse needs mortar
like a lemming to the slaughter
Ryan’s just Ryan without his daughter
I rely on you

‘The German Guns’
Boom, Boom, Boom, Boom,
Boom, Boom, Boom,
Boom, Boom, Boom, Boom,
Boom, Boom, Boom

Baldrick. Class

I like that a lot Kevt!

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rage 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.

I like the Blackadder reference. I’m sure to those involved in trench warfare the guns were all that mattered. Boom boom boom indeed.

I’m also pleased to see this thread didn’t descend into a select group of pedants arguing with each other.

“Larkin was a misogynistic shirt lifter” “No he wasn’t, Larkin was a sex god with a chain of nymphs following him” etc.

I’m also pleased to see this thread didn’t descend into a select group of pedants arguing with each other.

Give it time… give it time…

I just clocked the mention of “If” by Buzz Lightyear above… couldn’t agree more… I actually read it at my Dad’s funeral so it will always be special to me.

top five, off the top of my head, today only

octavio paz – there is a motionless tree
raymond carver – late fragment
meg bateman – aotramachd
margaret atwood – morning in the burned house
paul celan – Wie du dich ausstirbirst in mir:

I’ve always loved GK Chesterton.
Favourite is The Rolling English Road.

“Before the Romans came to Rye
or across the Severn strode.
The rolling English drunkard
made the rolling English road…..”

but I also love his ‘Ode to Tennyson’

“I ramble on, and on and on
And on, and on and on and on.
On and on and on and on
and on and on and on and on.
Just like Lord Tennyson.”

Love the “nuts in grass” line, always makes me smirk immaturely.

Personal favourites: the imagery in TS Eliot’s The Hollow Men, not posting it here as it’s too long… The Waste Land‘s another favourite, too.

And:

This Is Just To Say – William Carlos Williams

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

I’ve always really liked this by Robert Frost –

The Road Not Taken

“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.”

And this extract from “Betsy Lee” by T E Brown always reminds me of my father – it was one of his favourites.

“Now the beauty of the thing when childher plays is
The terrible wonderful length the days is.
Up you jumps, and out in the sun,
And you fancy the day will never be done ;
And you’re chasin’ the bumbees huminin’ so cross
In the hot sweet air among the goss,
Or gath’rin’ blue-bells, or lookin’ for eggs,
Or peltin’ the ducks with their yalla legs,
Or a climbin’ and nearly breakin’ your skulls,
Or a shoutin’ for divilment after the gulls,
Or a thinkin’ of nothin’, but down at the tide
Singin’ out for the happy you feel inside.
That’s the way with the kids, you know,
And the years do come and the years do go,
And when you look back it’s all like a puff,
Happy and over and short enough.”

Really like Roger McGoughs poems. He is often very funny but at times can create different moods but still with a smile. This one is just funny and I reckon there are teachers who dream about it.

The Lesson.

Chaos ruled OK in the classroom
as bravely the teacher walked in
the nooligans ignored him
hid voice was lost in the din

“The theme for today is violence
and homework will be set
I’m going to teach you a lesson
one that you’ll never forget”

He picked on a boy who was shouting
and throttled him then and there
then garrotted the girl behind him
(the one with grotty hair)

Then sword in hand he hacked his way
between the chattering rows
“First come, first severed” he declared
“fingers, feet or toes”

He threw the sword at a latecomer
it struck with deadly aim
then pulling out a shotgun
he continued with his game

The first blast cleared the backrow
(where those who skive hang out)
they collapsed like rubber dinghies
when the plug’s pulled out

“Please may I leave the room sir?”
a trembling vandal enquired
“Of course you may” said teacher
put the gun to his temple and fired

The Head popped a head round the doorway
to see why a din was being made
nodded understandingly
then tossed in a grenade

And when the ammo was well spent
with blood on every chair
Silence shuffled forward
with its hands up in the air

The teacher surveyed the carnage
the dying and the dead
He waggled a finger severely
“Now let that be a lesson” he said

Short but very, very sweet!

Listen to the Exhortation of the Dawn!
Look to this Day!
For it is Life, the very Life of Life.
In its brief course lie all the Verities and Realities of your Existence,
The Bliss of Growth,
The Glory of Action,
The Splendor of Beauty.
For Yesterday is but a Dream,
And Tomorrow is only a Vision;
But Today well lived makes every Yesterday a Dream of Happiness,
and every Tomorrow a Vision of Hope.
Look well therefore to this Day!
Such is the Salutation of the Dawn.

Well I never! Did you ever.
See a monkey dressed in leather.
Leather eyes, leather nose,
Leather breeches to his toes.

Then of course there’s always ‘The Pointy Birds’

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nU4RD2f2BnY[/video]

I discovered Tim Minchin’s Storm yesterday – very funny.
Bit of language in it, so not entirely safe for work, but here’s the link anyway:
[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhGuXCuDb1U[/video]

If – Rudyard Kipling.

IF you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream – and not make dreams your master;
If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
‘ Or walk with Kings – nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And – which is more – you’ll be a Man, my son!

TWO CURES FOR LOVE by Wendy Cope

1 Don’t see him. Don’t phone or write a letter.
2 The easy way: get to know him better.

This makes me think of summer
Adlestrop
Edward Thomas
Yes, I remember Adlestrop –
The name because one afternoon
Of heat the express-train drew up there
Unwontendly. 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 round him, mistier,
Farther and farther, all the birds
Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.

This just makes me think
Robert Laurence Binyon
With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,
England mourns for her dead across the sea.
Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,
Fallen in the cause of the free.

Solemn the drums thrill; Death august and royal
Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres,
There is music in the midst of desolation
And a glory that shines upon our tears.

They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted;
They fell with their faces to the foe.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;
They sit no more at familiar tables of home;
They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;
They sleep beyond England’s foam.

But where our desires are and our hopes profound,
Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,
To the innermost heart of their own land they are known
As the stars are known to the Night;

As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain;
As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
To the end, to the end, they remain.