Tag Archives: poetry

A prayer before birth- Louis MacNeice…

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Audrey steered me towards Louis MacNeice, as I am always on the look out for great poetry.

MacNeice was born in Belfast, but spent much of his life working for the BBC in London. He was part of a group known as the ‘thirties poets’, including Auden, Spender and Day Lewis. They were united by their left-leanings.

He said this- which I very much agree with-

Poetry in my opinion must be honest before anything else and I refuse to be ‘objective’ or clear-cut at the cost of honesty.

Here is one of his poems which I love, entitled ‘Prayer before birth’-

I am not yet born; O hear me.
Let not the bloodsucking bat or the rat or the stoat or the club-footed ghoul come near me.

I am not yet born, console me.
I fear that the human race may with tall walls wall me, with strong drugs dope me, with wise lies lure me, on black racks rack me, in blood-baths roll me.

I am not yet born; provide me
With water to dandle me, grass to grow for me, trees to talk to me, sky to sing to me, birds and a white light in the back of my mind to guide me.

I am not yet born; forgive me
For the sins that in me the world shall commit, my words when they speak me, my thoughts when they think me, my treason engendered by traitors beyond me, my life when they murder by means of my hands, my death when they live me.

I am not yet born; rehearse me
In the parts I must play and the cues I must take when old men lecture me, bureaucrats hector me, mountains frown at me, lovers laugh at me, the white waves call me to folly and the desert calls me to doom and the beggar refuses my gift and my children curse me.

I am not yet born; O hear me,
Let not the man who is beast or who thinks he is God come near me.

I am not yet born; O fill me
With strength against those who would freeze my humanity, would dragoon me into a lethal automaton, would make me a cog in a machine, a thing with one face, a thing, and against all those who would dissipate my entirety, would blow me like thistledown hither and thither or hither and thither  like water held in the hands would spill me.

Let them not make me a stone and let them not spill me.
Otherwise kill me.

Sea tree…

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High on the shore line

Above the storm berm

The winter sea gave out a pilgrim trunk

.

It was thrown up the beach

Like you or I might flick a pebble

.

The corpse of the old tree

Has been gnarled and shaped

By encounters with deep reefs

Where it rolled and shoaled with the fish

And bore the barnacles and wracks

Of the deep blue sea

.

Now it lies here

Like bone of leviathan

.

It has taken on the colours of the deep-

Sea green

Shadow black

Red like the eye of a shark

Grey like the dripping tail of a whale

All faded a little by the blown sand

But jewelled instead by salt crystals

Drawn out in the low sun

.

Who knows where its roots are

Or what of its seeds

Still remain

Rest…

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“Come to me” he said

“If the turning wheel has broken you”

So I staggered in his direction

 

“Sit with me” he said

“And we will sip tea

And soak a careful biscuit while

Occasionally raising a listening eyebrow

And enjoying that communal space

When words find rest

In silence.”

 

And perhaps our dreams will dance in the firelight

For a while this room will be the universe

And it will be possible to believe

In starflight

 

“Or perhaps it is enough,” he said

“Just to rest.”

For he was gentle

And humble

Of heart

 

Matthew 11:28-30

 

 

 

A cheerful little poem about dying…

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I sat in my office this lunchtime, thinking about death.

There is a lot of it about.

Not me of course. I will last for ever.

For most of us, death is a foreign country- one which we are unlikely ever to visit- Moldova or Uzbekistan.

So much of what we do is focussed on avoiding it, delaying it as long as possible, pushing it into the background.

It is no way to live.

So I wrote this poem…

Something is going to kill me

In the end it will polish me off

This machine comes with built-in obsolescence

And already my bearings run rough

.

Perhaps my blood will turn orange

Or my bones will powder like chalk

My brain is sure to malfunction

And my feet will forget how to walk

.

I may be squashed like a bug by a lorry

Or an elm tree will fall on my skull

An arrow of misfortune will stick me

As I am gored by a runaway bull

.

Perhaps we live  love then fertilise loam

And  this heaven-talk is really moronic

Or perhaps there is something aerodynamic in me

Shaped to go supersonic

Ways of life…

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I love this image- if it is yours, sorry I pinched it- from here…

Ways of life

.

For some life is lived in the measuring

Of every moment

In raising high the cup of experience

And drinking it dry

.

Life too is like a dark forest

A dark green shadow

Oozing out its fungal fingers

Spreading secret spores

Unnoticed

But irrepressible

.

Life may be a blazing flare

Across the stormy night sky

Burning an arc into the retina

Should you look its way

.

Life too is an ember whose glow

Was borrowed by proximity

Given

Then gone

.

Or life may be a bubble

In a clear blue stream

Dancing with the bouncing pebbles

And waltzing among the weeds

.

Then rising

.

Detained briefly by the surface tension

Going through

.

And beyond

Anyone got a spare bucket and spade?

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The Goans are off on a traditional British summer holiday.

Cue for a song- take it away Cliff…

(Nice little misogynist twist at the end there!)

This year we are heading to Whitby, on the Yorkshire coast- a familiar old place for us, as we had our Honeymoon at Robin Hood’s Bay almost 20 years ago. We have fond memories of parking our Citroen 2cv with it’s bumper against a lamp post as neither the hand brake nor leaving it in gear would hold it on the steep cobbled street.

The blog will be quiet for a couple of weeks

For those of you who are staying at home, or travelling- may you find rest. May there be some mid summer Jubilee.

May the noise of children mingle with the sound of sea gulls to conjure up best memories of your own childhood.

May the days rest soft and the nights be kind.

And may God hold you in the palm of his hand…

There is a time for all things under heaven

A time for marram grass to move
In gentle air
And for the dying sun
To turn all green things gold
To alchemise the evening
Into a luminal place
On the twilit edge
Between here
And there

A time when the last call of the curlew
Will echo away over the dimming mountains
And the stillness is itself

Whispering

A time for this day

To silence

The soul

From ‘Listing‘.

Reviewing the back catalogue…

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I am doing some work on a new collection of poetry.

I have been writing poetry for many years- with spikes and troughs of productivity. I wanted to do something with some of the things I had written. It is hard work though- I find looking at things that I wrote a few years ago quite hard. The emotional meaning that they bring to me is muted by the passage of time, and for me poetry is perhaps above all an emotional thing.

Others may focus on the technical and cerebral aspects of poetry, but I think I am a bit too lazy for all that stuff… although I tinker a bit on the edges.

So rather than doing what I should be doing and organising and editing, I am writing new things.

I did come across this the other day though-

Meaning

.

At the end of it all,

When history finally catches up with its vanishing point

What elements of you and me will still carry meaning?

Are we really no more than a knot along an evolutionary string?

Perhaps near the end

But then again, what a conceit that is-

Maybe we are nearer the beginning

.

Will all things pass,

Or are we elemental

Like the carbon molecules that mould us?

.

What might survive?

Truth
Beauty
Grace
Poetry singing in the soul
The flicker of a rising sun
In an old man’s eyes
The heart stings of hope
And the passing of glances
From father
To son
.
For what value have frescoes?
Icons?
But the truth they speak
Is in the filter
Of the eyes
They fall on
.

I am brought back to the Bible

Like a phantom itch in a missing limb.
.
To the cynical meanderings of the writer of Ecclesiastes.
And the beginning of it all in Genesis.
.
The end described in the wild narcotics of the Apocalypse of John.
.
And I stand still on the promise of a new kingdom
Here on the earth

But interconnected with a mysterious elsewhere

.
And the soft uncertain space

.
Within

English Cathedrals…

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I read recently that attendance at services held within English Cathedrals are growing around 4% each year since the Millennium.

No surprise really. What they offer to post modern people is a connection to something pre-modern- a rediscovery of a liturgical and spiritual tradition that goes back a thousand years. It is made visible in a ancient glass and stone, and comes alive with the continued traditions of worship and seasonal observation.

I love Cathedrals. They are one of the things that I really miss about England. They survived the puritans and the Civil War almost intact, and continue to be at the heart of most of the major cities.

On the way back from out recent trip to Telford, Michaela and I visited Lichfield Cathedral, and attended the end of the afternoon service. There has been a Cathedral here since 700 AD, built to house the bones of St Chad. Fragments of this building remain, along with the Lichfield Gospels which date to around 730AD.

But the impact of the place on Michaela and I was not anything to do with historical facts though. We sat in awe as the light filtered into the ancient building. And the sound of the choir singing away in the distance found a way through the old stone arches.

And we both cried…

Cathedrals make me cry

It was the powdered bones of St Chad

Mingled with the dust made

By the masons in the soaring north transept-

Some of it lodged in my eye

.

Or perhaps it was a glint in the light

Falling through ancient glass

On a flag floor polished into smooth undulations

By the leather of a hundred thousand pilgrims

.

Or perhaps it was the west wing

Stuffed with memorials to men speared and shot

In empire battles long forgotten

Tattered ensigns flying the cross of Jesus over genocide

Or perhaps it was the music of a choir

At first half heard and half imagined

Like the very stones breathing

Then a rolling on me like a wave, lifting me on a last Amen

.

I know not what will bring meaning

To men 1000 years from now

Or what towers they will point towards God

All I know

Is that Cathedrals make me cry