Monthly Archives: January 2024

Week 587: It Rains, by Edward Thomas

Posted on by
Reply

I imagine most people first come upon Edward Thomas through the celebrated ‘Adlestrop’, but my own acquaintance began with this lesser known but entirely characteristic piece. I was immediately attracted by its beautiful precision – the diamonds of rain on the grassblades, the unshaken petals further down, the parsley stalks that ‘twilight has fined to naught’. I did not fully appreciate at the time that how deeply sad a poem this is, and how subtly revealing of the writer’s temperament. It turns on that almost throwaway phrase that begins the third verse, ‘Unless alone..’, an admission that he can no longer respond to human love as he did in the first flush of courtship, that happiness now is a thing to be sought only in solitude. This would of course have been hurtful to those who loved him, particularly his long-suffering wife Helen, but that’s how it goes: a poet’s passion for truth can be a sharp blade on which others cut themselves.

Parsley: this is of course cow-parsley with its white umbels, not the garden herb.

It Rains

It rains, and nothing stirs within the fence
Anywhere through the orchard’s untrodden, dense
Forest of parsley. The great diamonds
Of rain on the grassblades there is none to break,
Or the fallen petals further down to shake.

And I am nearly as happy as possible
To search the wilderness in vain though well,
To think of two walking, kissing there,
Drenched, yet forgetting the kisses of the rain:
Sad, too, to think that never, never again,

Unless alone, so happy shall I walk
In the rain. When I turn away, on its fine stalk
Twilight has fined to naught, the parsley flower
Figures, suspended still and ghostly white,
The past hovering as it revisits the light.

Edward Thomas

Week 586: The Rider at the Gate, by John Masefield

Posted on by
Reply

I think that this is one of the somewhat underrated John Masefield’s finest poems, showing his gift for vivid historical reconstruction, and his masterful use of a metre that drives the poem like the hoofbeats of a galloping horse. I imagine the story of Caesar’s assassination is too well known to need explanation, but just as a reminder Pompey had been at one time a political ally of Julius Caesar, and along with him and Crassus a member of the First Triumvirate, but later he became Caesar’s enemy and after being defeated by him at the Battle of Pharsalus fled to Egypt, where a faction thinking to curry favour with Caesar had him killed and decapitated. Caesar was apparently not as pleased as they had hoped – these Bullingdon types may feud among themselves but they soon close ranks when there are lower orders to be kept in their place. This happened in 48 BC, four years before Caesar’s own death.

Calpurnia: Caesar’s third or fourth wife, and wife to him at the time of his assassination.

Cressets: torches. Note how the guttering of the torches (i.e. their flickering in the wind as if about to go out) symbolically prefigures the coming end of Caesar’s life.

Loaning: a lane, an open space for passage between fields of corn; a place for milking cows.

The Rider at the Gate

A windy night was blowing on Rome,
The cressets guttered on Caesar’s home,
The fish-boats, moored at the bridge, were breaking
The rush of the river to yellow foam.

The hinges whined to the shutters shaking,
When clip-clop-clep came a horse-hoof raking
The stones of the road at Caesar’s gate;
The spear-butts jarred at the guard’s awaking.

‘Who goes there?’ said the guard at the gate.
‘What is the news, that you ride so late?’
‘News most pressing, that must be spoken
To Caesar alone, and that cannot wait.’

‘The Caesar sleeps; you must show a token
That the news suffice that he be awoken.
What is the news, and whence do you come?
For no light cause may his sleep be broken.’

‘Out of the dark of the sands I come,
From the dark of death, with news for Rome.
A word so fell that it must be uttered
Though it strike the soul of the Caesar dumb.’

Caesar turned in his bed and muttered,
With a struggle for breath the lamp-flame guttered;
Calpurnia heard her husband moan:
‘The house is falling,
The beaten men come into their own.’

‘Speak your word,’ said the guard at the gate;
‘Yes, but bear it to Caesar straight,
Say, “Your murderers’ knives are honing,
Your killers’ gang is lying in wait.”

‘Out of the wind that is blowing and moaning,
Through the city palace and the country loaning,
I cry, “For the world’s sake, Caesar, beware,
And take this warning as my atoning.

‘“Beware of the Court, of the palace stair,
Of the downcast friend who speaks so fair,
Keep from the Senate, for Death is going
On many men’s feet to meet you there.”

‘I, who am dead, have ways of knowing
Of the crop of death that the quick are sowing.
I, who was Pompey, cry it aloud
From the dark of death, from the wind blowing.

‘I, who was Pompey, once was proud,
Now I lie in the sand without a shroud;
I cry to Caesar out of my pain,
“Caesar beware, your death is vowed.”’

The light grew grey on the window-pane,
The windcocks swung in a burst of rain,
The window of Caesar flung unshuttered,
The horse-hoofs died into wind again.

Caesar turned in his bed and muttered,
With a struggle for breath the lamp-flame guttered;
Calpurnia heard her husband moan:
‘The house is falling,
The beaten men come into their own.’

John Masefield

Week 585: Moonlit Night, by Du Fu

Posted on by
Reply

Du Fu (formerly Tu Fu) was a Chinese poet of the Tang Dynasty, 712-770, reckoned by those who know to rank, along with his friend Li Bai (formerly Li Po), as China’s greatest poet, and indeed one of the great poets of the world. (The annoying name changes are due to new transliteration practices rather than to posthumous acts of deed poll). His work is marked by its range and humanity, its lyrical awareness of the natural world and its adherence to strict forms.

This poem is about being separated by war from his wife and children, and thinking one moonlit night about how the same moon will be shining on them far away.

I do not speak Chinese, which is a shameful admission for a poet to have to make but you know how it is, the lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne… The translation is mine, therefore, but drawing on a prose crib for the literal meaning, so I offer it with even more reservations than usual.

Chang’an: a former city in north central China.
Fu-chou: (Fuzhou or Foochow), the capital of Fujian province, China. A long way from Chang’an.
White as jade: I thought jade was green but apparently it can be all sorts of colours, and at times white jade has been prized as a symbol of nobility.

Moonlit Night

Tonight at Fu-chou, she watches this same moon
Alone in our room. And my children, far away,
Are too young to understand what keeps me from them
Or even remember Chang’an. By now her hair

Will be scented by the mist, her arms, white as jade,
Be chilled in its clear light. When will it find us
Together again, the curtains drawn back, its shine
Silvering the tear tracks on each face?

Du Fu

Week 584: Ode To Billie Joe, by Bobby Gentry

Posted on by
1

I take my poetry wherever I find it, and while I may not often find it in popular song, I do feel that this ballad by the American singer-songwriter Bobby Gentry, first released in 1967, with its claustrophobic atmosphere and slow oblique build of narrative tension, is a masterpiece of storytelling quite worthy to stand beside the great mediaeval ballads of illicit love and infanticide such as ‘Mary Hamilton’ and ‘Down By The Greenwood Side’.

For those unfamiliar with the song, it is the story of a young girl living in the Mississipi Delta in the southern U.S. who hears that her childhood friend Billy Joe has committed suicide by jumping of the Tallahatchie Bridge. Slowly we realise that she and Billy Joe have been lovers, that some social gap has made an open relationship impossible, that nonetheless she has become pregnant by Billy Joe, that she has delivered, or perhaps aborted, the child in secret, and that she and Billy Joe have together disposed of it by throwing it off that same bridge, leaving Billy Joe a guilt that he cannot live with. All this is conveyed very skilfully by hints and conversational exchanges, with nothing being made explicit.

I must at this point emphasise that this is my personal interpretation of the song, though I believe one shared by many other listeners. Bobby Gentry herself has consistently refused to give any clarification of the lyrics, especially in the matter of what was thrown off the bridge. She gives as her reason a wish for people to focus instead on the indifference of the supporting characters, the cultural lack of empathy, but I wonder if there is also an element of wanting to preserve the mystery, and also, maybe, of not wanting to commit to what seems to me by far the most compelling interpretation of the narrative on the grounds that it might be rather strong meat for a modern American audience.

Ode To Billy Joe

Was the third of June, another sleepy, dusty Delta day
I was out choppin’ cotton and my brother was balin’ hay
And at dinnertime we stopped and walked back to the house to eat
And Mama hollered out the back door y’all remember to wipe your feet
And then she said I got some news this mornin’ from Choctaw Ridge
Today Billie Joe MacAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge

And Papa said to Mama as he passed around the blackeyed peas
Well, Billie Joe never had a lick of sense, pass the biscuits please
There’s five more acres in the lower forty I got to plow
And Mama said it was shame about Billie Joe, anyhow
Seems like nothin’ ever comes to no good up on Choctaw Ridge
And now Billie Joe MacAllister’s jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge

And Brother said he recollected when he and Tom and Billie Joe
Put a frog down my back at the Carroll County picture show
And wasn’t I talkin’ to him after church last Sunday night?
I’ll have another piece of apple pie, you know it don’t seem right
I saw him at the sawmill yesterday on Choctaw Ridge
And now you tell me Billie Joe’s jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge

Mama said to me, Child, what’s happened to your appetite?
I’ve been cookin’ all mornin’ and you haven’t touched a single bite
That nice young preacher, Brother Taylor, dropped by today
Said he’d be pleased to have dinner on Sunday, oh, by the way
He said he saw a girl that looked a lot like you up on Choctaw Ridge
And she and Billie Joe was throwing somethin’ off the Tallahatchie Bridge

A year has come and gone since we heard the news ’bout Billie Joe
And brother married Becky Thompson, they bought a store in Tupelo
There was a virus goin’ ’round, Papa caught it and he died last spring
And now mama doesn’t seem to wanna do much of anything
And me, I spend a lot of time pickin’ flowers up on Choctaw Ridge
And drop them into the muddy water off the Tallahatchie Bridge

Bobby Gentry