Poetry on the Forum

Someone sent me this poem several years ago. Despite my best efforts I've been unable to find out who it's by. If anyone knows I'd love to find out...I think it's by someone reasonable famous...


you wouldn't believe
how still she can lie, like a moon

intent on the study of various kinds of smiling
and how effective they are as ways of suffering

On a forum frequented by music lovers, Auden's poems set by Britten as Hymn to St Cecilia deserve a place:

I.

In a garden shady this holy lady
With reverent cadence and subtle psalm,
Like a black swan as death came on
Poured forth her song in perfect calm:
And by ocean's margin this innocent virgin
Constructed an organ to enlarge her prayer,
And notes tremendous from her great engine
Thundered out on the Roman air.
Blonde Aphrodite rose up excited,
Moved to delight by the melody,
White as an orchid she rode quite naked
In an oyster shell on top of the sea;
At sounds so entrancing the angels dancing
Came out of their trance into time again,
And around the wicked in Hell's abysses
The huge flame flickered and eased their pain.
Blessed Cecilia, appear in visions
To all musicians, appear and inspire:
Translated Daughter, come down and startle
Composing mortals with immortal fire.


II.

I cannot grow;
I have no shadow
To run away from,
I only play.
I cannot err;
There is no creature
Whom I belong to,
Whom I could wrong.
I am defeat
When it knows it
Can now do nothing
By suffering.
All you lived through,
Dancing because you
No longer need it
For any deed.
I shall never be Different. Love me.
Blessed Cecilia, appear in visions
To all musicians, appear and inspire:
Translated Daughter, come down and startle
Composing mortals with immortal fire.


III.

O ear whose creatures cannot wish to fall,
O calm of spaces unafraid of weight,
Where Sorrow is herself, forgetting all
The gaucheness of her adolescent state,
Where Hope within the altogether strange
From every outworn image is released,
And Dread born whole and normal like a beast
Into a world of truths that never change:
Restore our fallen day; O re-arrange.
O dear white children casual as birds,
Playing among the ruined languages,
So small beside their large confusing words,
So gay against the greater silences
Of dreadful things you did: O hang the head,
Impetuous child with the tremendous brain,
O weep, child, weep, O weep away the stain,
Lost innocence who wished your lover dead,
Weep for the lives your wishes never led.
O cry created as the bow of sin Is drawn across our trembling violin.
O weep, child, weep, O weep away the stain.
O law drummed out by hearts against the still
Long winter of our intellectual will.
That what has been may never be again.
O flute that throbs with the thanksgiving breath
Of convalescents on the shores of death.
O bless the freedom that you never chose.
O trumpets that unguarded children blow
About the fortress of their inner foe.
O wear your tribulation like a rose.
Blessed Cecilia, appear in visions
To all musicians, appear and inspire:
Translated Daughter, come down and startle
Composing mortals with immortal fire.

If you like the poems, listen to Britten's musical setting; it's one of his most attractive works.

quote:

Originally posted by Steeve:
Someone sent me this poem several years ago. Despite my best efforts I've been unable to find out who it's by. If anyone knows I'd love to find out...I think it's by someone reasonable famous...


you wouldn't believe
how still she can lie, like a moon

intent on the study of various kinds of smiling
and how effective they are as ways of suffering

Hi Steeve

To my ears, this lacks rhythm, and reads more like prose, so my guess is that it's not the work of a professional poet. It could be a song lyric, but googling phrases draws a blank. Therefore, I suspect it's the work of a non-poet who is famous for something else - an actor, or a comedian maybe? Beyond that, I have no idea - sorry!

Nigel

With apologies for the change in structure...
___

"I have of late

but wherefore I know not

lost all my mirth, foregone all custom of exercises;

and indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly
frame,
the earth,
seems to me a sterile promontory;
this most excellent canopy,
the air,
look you,
this brave o'erhanging firmament,
this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why,
it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours.

What a piece of work is a man!
How noble in reason!
How infinite in faculty!
In form and moving how express and admirable! In action how like an angel!
In apprehension how like a god!
The beauty of the world!
The paragon of animals!
And yet,
to me,
what is this quintessence of dust?

man delights not me;

no, nor woman neither,
though, by your smiling, you seem to say so."
___

William Shakespeare, Hamlet, 2.2

Literally awesome - sheer genius.

The Romance of Cecilia

Their wedding-day, they whispered, should be soon;
They'd bicycle one life-long honeymoon.
She praised his prowess (ah, that praise was sweet!),
She thought his whole equipment "very neat";
Then whispered, "Darling, -- nay, it must, must be,
"We'll cycle into Andover to tea."

They started: but Cecilia never knew,
While Robert learned, she'd been progressing too.
Down the first hill she led by twenty yards,
(Speed, Robert, Speed! What Fate thy wheel retards?)
Along the level flashed her silver bright,
Another moment -- she was out of sight;
A hill before her! Warming to the fray,
She pedalled (double action) all the way.
O ecstasy! O grand exhilaration!
She dreamt of nothing but the wheeel's rotation.
The sun was bright, the open sky was blue;
"Whirr" went the wheel; it hummed; it sang; it flew.
Swift as a bird toward Andover she fled,
And, for a moment, Robert left her head.
Then memory; contrition; and a stop!
She paused upon a difficult hill-top;
Down the valley white the roadway wound,
Two miles -- but not a sight, but not a sound.
She paused; she fidgeted; she stamped her heel;
She choked the rage she could not all conceal;
Then swung her wheel round with an evil grace,
And took that hill at a terrific pace.


"Ah, God of Love, what pains thy victims cull!
"As thou art strong, though shouldst be pitiful,"


Four miles away, back in the paling West,
She found her Robert, pedalling his best.
His face was set -- dead weary, past denying --
She thought he looked as tho' he had been crying,
Yet with determination brave to see
He panted, "Dear, we'll still be there to tea."
She bade him turn; she lead him up the lane;
slowly she rode till they were home again.
She passed the trysting-tree, nor stayed to tell
The parting secrets that they loved so well.
Into the market square, without one kiss,
She rode, and there took leave of Robert Bliss!

I think he knew his fate. I think that, when
a note was brought to him next day at ten,
With no surprise the words assailed his sight:
"I fear I cannot ride with you to-night."
I only know that from that fateful day
He locked his hard-bought bicycle away.

I also know that Miss Cecilia Brown
Was seen last week careering up and down
With Mr. Watkins, muscular and lank,
Who's bought a Swift, and manages the bank.

***

from Legends of the Wheel by Arthur Waugh
published 1897

I knew that Arthur Waugh, Evelyn's father, was involved in publishing, but not that he was a poet. Thank you Nymph.

Dear Little Flo

Oh, dear Little Flo
I love you so
Especially in your nightie

When the moonlight flits
Across your tits
Oh, Jesus Christ almighty


Derek and Clive

A personal favourite

Philip Larkin - This Be The Verse

They fuck 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 fucked 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.

Good thread!

A personal favourite; hope you like it too.

The Otter

When you plunged
The light of Tuscany wavered
And swung through the pool
From top to bottom.

I loved your wet head and smashing crawl,
Your fine swimmer's back and shoulders
Surfacing and surfacing again
This year and every year since.

I sat dry-throated on the warm stones.
You were beyond me.
The mellowed clarities, the grape-deep air
Thinned and disappointed.

Thank God for the slow loadening,
When I hold you now
We are close and deep
As the atmosphere on water.

My two hands are plumbed water.
You are my palpable, lithe
Otter of memory
In the pool of the moment,

Turning to swim on your back,
Each silent, thigh-shaking kick
Re-tilting the light,
Heaving the cool at your neck.

And suddenly you're out,
Back again, intent as ever,
Heavy and frisky in your freshened pelt,
Printing the stones.

Seamus Heaney

If you are prepared to tackle a poem in sixteenth-century Scots, you might find the following to be rather powerful. Mark Alexander Boyd (1563-1601) would appear to have had his fingers severely burned, emotionally-speaking, in an affair of love.

Fra banc to banc, fra wod to wod, I rin
Ourhailit with my feble fantasie,
Lyc til a leif that fallis from a trie
Or til a reid ourblawin with the wind.
Twa gods gyds me: the ane of tham is blind,
Ye, and a bairn brocht up in vanitie;
The nixt a wyf ingenrit of the se,
And lichter nor a dauphin with hir fin.

Unhappie is the man for evirmaire
That teils the sand and sawis in the aire;
Bot twyse unhappier is he, I lairn,
That feidis in his hairt a mad desyre,
And follows on a woman throw the fyre,
Led be a blind and teichit be a bairn.

"For sixpence" by Ivor Cutler

For sixpence I whisper, “You are beautiful”
For a shilling I whisper, “You are beautiful despite certain unfortunate features”
For a florin I call, “What an interesting physiognomy you possess”
For five bob, “You are exceedingly ugly”
For ten, “Eerrch”
And, for a quid, “I love you”

I wandered lonely as a Bear, cos everything the Bear meets, he eats.


(I'll get me coat)

Looks like the Bear ate the thread...

Thought I'd draw the readership's attention to this illegal link:

http://community.nytimes.com/article/comments/2008/06/1...17slam.html?s=1&pg=1

And here's one from the wonderful John Cooper Clark.

Rich

poems on the formation of a nation.

September 1913


What need you, being come to sense,
But fumble in a greasy till
And add the halfpence to the pence
And prayer to shivering prayer, until
You have dried the marrow from the bone?
For men were born to pray and save:
Romantic Ireland's dead and gone,
It's with O'Leary in the grave.

Yet they were of a different kind,
The names that stilled your childish play,
They have gone about the world like wind,
But little time had they to pray
For whom the hangman's rope was spun,
And what, God help us, could they save?
Romantic Ireland's dead and gone,
It's with O'Leary in the grave.

Was it for this the wild geese spread
The grey wing upon every tide;
For this that all that blood was shed,
For this Edward Fitzgerald died,
And Robert Emmet and Wolfe Tone,
All that delirium of the brave?
Romantic Ireland's dead and gone,
It's with O'Leary in the grave.

Yet could we turn the years again,
And call those exiles as they were
In all their loneliness and pain,
You'd cry, 'Some woman's yellow hair
Has maddened every mother's son':
They weighed so lightly what they gave.
But let them be, they're dead and gone,
They're with O'Leary in the grave.



Easter, 1916


I Have met them at close of day
Coming with vivid faces
From counter or desk among grey
Eighteenth-century houses.
I have passed with a nod of the head
Or polite meaningless words,
Or have lingered awhile and said
Polite meaningless words,
And thought before I had done
Of a mocking tale or a gibe
To please a companion
Around the fire at the club,
Being certain that they and I
But lived where motley is worn:
All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

That woman's days were spent
In ignorant good-will,
Her nights in argument
Until her voice grew shrill.
What voice more sweet than hers
When, young and beautiful,
She rode to harriers?
This man had kept a school
And rode our winged horse;
This other his helper and friend
Was coming into his force;
He might have won fame in the end,
So sensitive his nature seemed,
So daring and sweet his thought.
This other man I had dreamed
A drunken, vainglorious lout.
He had done most bitter wrong
To some who are near my heart,
Yet I number him in the song;
He, too, has resigned his part
In the casual comedy;
He, too, has been changed in his turn,
Transformed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

Hearts with one purpose alone
Through summer and winter seem
Enchanted to a stone
To trouble the living stream.
The horse that comes from the road.
The rider, the birds that range
From cloud to tumbling cloud,
Minute by minute they change;
A shadow of cloud on the stream
Changes minute by minute;
A horse-hoof slides on the brim,
And a horse plashes within it;
The long-legged moor-hens dive,
And hens to moor-cocks call;
Minute by minute they live:
The stone's in the midst of all.

Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
That is Heaven's part, our part
To murmur name upon name,
As a mother names her child
When sleep at last has come
On limbs that had run wild.
What is it but nightfall?
No, no, not night but death;
Was it needless death after all?
For England may keep faith
For all that is done and said.
We know their dream; enough
To know they dreamed and are dead;
And what if excess of love
Bewildered them till they died?
I write it out in a verse -
MacDonagh and MacBride
And Connolly and Pearse
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.



sadly we are nearer the former than the latter at the moment in Ireland.



SJB

From the sublime to the gorblimey:


GERTRUDE:
There is a willow grows aslant a brook
That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream.
There with fantastic garlands did she come
Of crowflowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples,
That liberal shepherds give a grosser name,
But our cold maids do “dead men's fingers” call them.
There, on the pendant boughs her coronet weeds
Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke,
When down her weedy trophies and herself
Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide,
And mermaid-like a while they bore her up,
Which time she chanted snatches of old lauds
As one incapable of her own distress,
Or like a creature native and indued
Unto that element. But long it could not be
Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,
Pulled the poor wretch from her melodious lay
To muddy death.

Shakespeare - Hamlet, death of Ophelia


GERTRUDE:
There's a willow that leans over the brook, dangling its white leaves over the glassy water. Ophelia made wild wreaths out of those leaves, braiding in crowflowers, thistles, daisies, and the orchises that vulgar shepherds have an obscene name for, but which pure-minded girls call “dead men's fingers.” Climbing into the tree to hang the wreath of weeds on the hanging branches, she and her flowers fell into the gurgling brook. Her clothes spread out wide in the water, and buoyed her up for a while as she sang bits of old hymns, acting like someone who doesn't realize the danger she's in, or like someone completely accustomed to danger. But it was only a matter of time before her clothes, heavy with the water they absorbed, pulled the poor thing out of her song, down into the mud at the bottom of the brook.

No Fear Shakespeare.

It makes me sad...