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mmm
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Songs in the key of m
T.S. Eliot
This is my favourite poem for Christmas, certainly my fave Eliot. I guess I like that poetry has the powerto make you see things from a different angle. Also reminds me that a lot of stuff we do at Christmas is just heathen New Year fun that has been stolen and absorbed higgeldy-piggeldy by Christianity. I don't particularly think that's a bad thing, just interesting, that's all.
The Journey of the Magi
'A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For the journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.'
And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.
Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins,
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory
All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death,
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.
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11/11
My l'il bro wants to join the Navy. I don't want him to. Heard this on Radio 2 last week, completely by accident, as I popped out of the office to bank a cheque. Written and read beautifully by Lucy Berry. Something to think about today.
The Point of Remembrance - Lucy Berry
A lady who’s over eighty now
Remembers traffic used to slow
And stop on the street, when she was a girl,
And pedestrians halt on the pavement so
The world, it seemed, stood still to recall
The husbands, fiancés, precious ones
Never to see or to hug again,
Brothers and uncles, fathers and sons.
Still those old eyes brim with pain
At menfolk not come back again.
A mother in the playground here
Thinks of her eldest, far away.
She hasn’t seen him half a year
Although he ‘phoned her yesterday.
Remember the way he buttons his cuffs.
Remember the way he chews his toast.
Remember the curls in the nape of his neck
And wonder if this will be his last post.
And tell me the point of Remembrance Day
When we let them go the same old way.
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Sonnet 116
I'll be damned if I can find the Hughes I want. It's the one in Birthday Letters about the foundations of their relationship, and other girls, and Celtic sacrifice. Yeah, that one. I'll search out my copy of it sometime.
In the meantime, if Ron's having one, so am I. The first poem I ever went 'ooooh riiiiight, yeah' after reading it a few times. It's true too, love isn't gonna bugger off when your beloved loses their looks, or decides to take up line dancing, or you meet them in real life and they're actually a man. Or whatever. Not if it's for real.
Sonnet 116
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love ’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error, and upon me prov’d,
I never writ, nor no man ever lov’d.
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So, this'll be out soon. I kinda want to see it, and I kinda don't want what I see in my head to be spoilt. Being a Pennines girl, and thus fiercely loyal to Mr. Hughes, I've never really got on with Plath. I regularly called her 'that whiney Paltrow-esque bint' at Uni. I'm glad someone heard me. However. She redeemed herself by writing this - up there in my Top Ten that's for sure.
Pursuit - Sylvia Plath
Dans le fond des forêts votre image me suit - Racine
There is a panther stalks me down:
One day I'll have my death of him;
His greed has set the woods aflame,
He prowls more lordly than the sun.
Most soft, most suavely glides that step,
Advancing always at my back;
From gaunt hemlock, rooks croak havoc:
The hunt is on, and sprung the trap.
Flayed by thorns I trek the rocks,
Haggard through the hot white noon.
Along red network of his veins
What fires run, what craving wakes?
Insatiate, he ransacks the land
Condemned by our ancestral fault,
Crying: blood, let blood be spilt;
Meat must glut his mouth's raw wound.
Keen the rending teeth and sweet
The singeing fury of his fur;
His kisses parch, each paw's a briar,
Doom consummates that appetite.
In the wake of this fierce cat,
Kindled like torches for his joy,
Charred and ravened women lie,
Become his starving body's bait.
Now hills hatch menace, spawning shade;
Midnight cloaks the sultry grove;
The black marauder, hauled by love
On fluent haunches, keeps my speed.
Behind snarled thickets of my eyes
Lurks the lithe one; in dreams' ambush
Bright those claws that mar the flesh
And hungry, hungry, those taut thighs.
His ardor snares me, lights the trees,
And I run flaring in my skin;
What lull, what cool can lap me in
When burns and brands that yellow gaze?
I hurl my heart to halt his pace,
To quench his thirst I squander blood;
He eats, and still his need seeks food,
Compels a total sacrifice.
His voice waylays me, spells a trance,
The gutted forest falls to ash;
Appalled by secret want, I rush
From such assault of radiance.
Entering the tower of my fears,
I shut my doors on that dark guilt,
I bolt the door, each door I bolt.
Blood quickens, gonging in my ears:
The panther's tread is on the stairs,
Coming up and up the stairs.
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Life aims:
In honour of this somewhat exhaustive list - here are my life aims:
--------------------------------------------
1. Move.
2. Learn to drive.
3. Earn more than 15k.
4. Buy a cat.
5. Get a tattoo.
--------------------------------------------
Or, if I really am going to be whimsical:
1. Take a year or so to drive across America on my own in a red, flat-bed Ford. From NY to LA or vice versa, buying a bona-fide cowboy hat at some point.
2. Take from 6 months to a year to rent a croft on a moor somewhere, with no running water (but has a well), no electricity (but has a generator), and no central heating (but has plenty of log fires), in order to write about my American Adventure with no distractions. Apart from the shepherd boy who pops in now and again with fuel and food.
3. Get published.
4. Be pregnant.
5. Er....
This list was a lot longer once.
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boom-boom.
Q. What does a slug say to a snail?
A. Big Issue, sir?
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Brian Patten -
Is my absolutely most favourite poet. The reason I like him (and the other Liverpool Poets, and the Python team) so much is basically The Beatles. I get the sneaking suspicion there's more than a few of us at 20six who got funny looks at school for saying 'Take That? Nah, mate - The Beatles. They're my favourite band.' Who just rolled their eyes the first time they heard Oasis. Who carried this picture:
in their purses. Mmmm. >swoon< Still! Who's fam and friends, even now, will say things like - 'Ooo, I saw John on the telly last night' or 'I don't think much of Paul's new bird' or 'I was sorry to hear about George' and you'll know exactly who they mean, no need for surnames here. They're your buddies, aren't they? And who refused to make friends with the boy who spat at you in Yr 7 for being freaky when he came up to you in Yr 11, apologised and asked to borrow the White Album.
Okay. Just me then.
So yeh, Brian Patten. My copy of 'Love Poems' was a 16th birthday present from Mr Gee (in Cast and Crew) I got it signed at a gig later the same year. It's my pride and joy really. I wanted to share this poem, it puts everything in perspective when you're feeling a bit odd about lurve.
A few questions about Romeo
And what if Romeo,
lying in that chapel in Verona,
miserable and spotty, at odds with everything,
what if he'd had a revelation from which
Juliet was absent?
What if, just before darkness settled
the arguments between most things,
through a gap in the walls he'd seen
a garden exploding,
and the pink shadow of blossom
shivering on stones?
What if,
unromantic as it seems,
her mouth, eyes, cheeks and breasts suddenly became
ornaments on a frame
common as any girl's?
Could he still have drunk that potion had he known
without her the world still glowed
and love was not confined
in one shape alone?
From the prison the weary imagine,
all living things inhabit
how could either
not have wished to escape?
Poor Romeo, poor Juliet, poor human race!
(*edit* misuse of the apostrophe. Tsk.)
(*edit* bad tag. D'oh.)
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