Monthly Archives: June 2025

Week 661: The Children Look At The Parents, by A.J.S.Tessimond

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As a young man I worked for a while with someone who had, he told me, once shared an office with A.J.S.Tessimond (1902-1962). I expressed suitable awe at the idea of sharing an office with a poet (I did not think it worth mentioning my own endeavours in the field), but had to confess that I was aware only dimly of the name, mainly from a poem about cats featured in some school anthology. I’ve finally after all these years got round to chasing the name up, and found among others this poem about the parent-child relationship, somewhat reminiscent of Larkin’s famous verses on the subject, but less brutal, if still fairly harsh: one senses that a reluctance to wound is at war with the desire to analyse, with the latter winning out.

Of course, the main point of parents has always been to give children someone to blame when their lives turn out not to be perfect, and it is amazing how early this process can start. I remember how when my two eldest sons were four and not quite three I had to break it to them that one of their grandfathers had died. The four year old took it philosophically; the two year old, a child of a very different temper who had not encountered the idea of death before, was absolutely furious with parents so irresponsible as to bring him into a world where this sort of thing could happen, and indeed might one day happen to him. ‘You should have told me not to be born!’ he howled with all the indignation that a two year old can muster, which is quite a lot. I could only apologise.

The Children Look At The Parents

We being so hidden from those who
Have quietly borne and fed us,
How can we answer civilly
Their innocent invitations?

How can we say ‘we see you
As but-for-God’s-grace-ourselves, as
Our caricatures (we yours), with
Time’s telescope between us’?

How can we say ‘you presumed on
The accident of kinship,
Assumed our friendship coatlike,
Not as a badge one fights for’?

How say ‘and you remembered
The sins of our outlived selves and
Your own forgiveness, buried
The hatchet to slow music;

Shared money but not your secrets;
Will leave as your final legacy
A box double-locked by the spider
Packed with your unsolved problems’?

How say all this without capitals,
Italics, anger or pathos,
To those who have seen from the womb come
Enemies? How not say it?

A.J.S.Tessimond

Week 660: Demain, dès l’aube, by Victor Hugo

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This is one of Victor Hugo’s most celebrated poems, written four years after the death of his daughter Leopoldine, aged nineteen, in a boating accident on the Seine. It appears that Hugo made this pilgrimage every Thursday. I find it very moving in its restrained simplicity.

The translation that follows is my own.

Demain, dès l’aube

Demain, dès l’aube, à l’heure où blanchit la campagne,
Je partirai. Vois-tu, je sais que tu m’attends.
J’irai par la forêt, j’irai par la montagne.
Je ne puis demeurer loin de toi plus longtemps.
 
Je marcherai les yeux fixés sur mes pensées,
Sans rien voir au dehors, sans entendre aucun bruit,
Seul, inconnu, le dos courbé, les mains croisées,
Triste, et le jour pour moi sera comme la nuit.
 
Je ne regarderai ni l’or du soir qui tombe,
Ni les voiles au loin descendant vers Harfleur,
Et quand j’arriverai, je mettrai sur ta tombe
Un bouquet de houx vert et de bruyère en fleur.

Victor Hugo,  3 septembre 1847

Tomorrow, in the dawn

Tomorrow, in the dawn’s first whitening,
I’ll leave. I know, you see, that you are waiting.
I’ll take the forest path, the upland way.
So far from you I can no longer stay.

I’ll walk, lost in my thoughts, with eyes cast down,
Seeing and hearing nothing, quite alone,
Stooped, anonymous, with hands clasped tight,
Sad, and the day for me will be as night.

I shall not watch the gold as evening falls
Nor, dipping to Harfleur, the far off sails,
And when I arrive, I’ll lay upon your tomb
A garland of green holly and heather in bloom.

Week 659: Prayer, by R.S.Thomas

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So, what’s this about Baudelaire’s grave? The reference is to lines in ‘Les Litanies de Satan’, one of the poems in the nineteenth-century French poet’s collection ‘Les Fleurs du Mal’:

‘Fais que mon âme un jour sous l’Arbre de Science
Près de toi se repose…’

‘Grant that my soul one day, under the Tree of Science,
May rest near to you…’

On the face of it, it may seem odd that the Christian priest R.S.Thomas should invoke lines from a controversial poem in praise of Satan, but I think the point is that Thomas had a lifelong interest in reconciling science and religion, or at least in getting them to coexist, and saw Baudelaire as somewhat of a fellow-spirit in this regard.

‘since I sought and failed/to steal from it’. I find this modesty on the part of the poet a little irritating, and feel like saying ‘Oh, come on, man, you must know you’ve knocked out more good poems than a poet may reasonably expect in one lifetime’. But I guess it goes with Thomas’s somewhat dour outlook, and his discontent with his oeuvre was probably quite genuine.

‘wearing the green leaves of time’. I find the image in the last three lines beautiful, though I would be hard put to tease it out fully. I think the suggestion is one of the spirit of poetry as something platonic that does not in essence change over time and yet in each generation finds a new expression in the current actuality.

Prayer

Baudelaire’s grave
not too far
from the tree of science –
Mine, too,
since I sought and failed
to steal from it,
somewhere within sight
of the tree of poetry
that is eternity wearing
the green leaves of time.

R.S.Thomas

Week 658: The Slow Starter, by Louis MacNeice

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Louis MacNeice remains in my view the one among major mid-twentieth century English poets most accessible to the common reader, especially in the collections of shorter lyrics published towards the end of his life, from one of which this week’s poem is taken. In its low-key way it is a masterclass in what can be done with plain, almost prosaic statement: conversational in tone, and with what might be called poetic special effects being reserved for the brilliantly clinching image in the last two lines.

The Slow Starter

A watched clock never moves, they said:
Leave it alone and you’ll grow up.
Nor will the sulking holiday train
Start sooner if you stamp your feet.
   He left the clock to go its way;
   The whistle blew, the train went gay.

Do not press me so, she said;
Leave me alone and I will write
But not just yet, I am sure you know
The problem. Do not count the days.
   He left the calendar alone;
   The postman knocked, no letter came.

O never force the pace, they said;
Leave it alone, you have lots of time,
Your kind of work is none the worse
For slow maturing. Do not rush.
   He took their tip, he took his time,
   And found his time and talent gone.

Oh you have had your chance, It said;
Left it alone and it was one.
Who said a watched clock never moves?
Look at it now. Your chance was I.
   He turned and saw the accusing clock
   Race like a torrent round a rock.

Louis MacNeice