Week 282: O Wha’s The Bride, by Hugh MacDiarmid

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At first sight, the idea behind this poem seems a bit daft. The poet imagines a bridegroom on his wedding night apparently about to be shocked by the realisation that his virgin bride is actually the product of a long process of genetic mingling. Well, unless he had thought up till then that the human race had survived throughout the millennia by parthenogenesis, it shouldn’t really have come as a surprise. Nor is it clear why he should view the process as malevolent and despoiling: it’s just the way things are, and after all his bride wouldn’t be there without these contributions from his predecessors. And yet, viewing the matter from another angle, perhaps MacDiarmid is right: just because things are the way they are doesn’t mean that there is not an intangible and disturbing mystery about them, and if we normally shut our eyes to that mystery, then it is all the more the poet’s job to open them. Still not quite sure I grasp his thought, and yet it seems to me a remarkable poem.

O Wha’s The Bride

O wha’s the bride that carries the bunch
O’ thistles blinterin’ white?
Her cuckold bridegroom little dreids
What he sall ken this nicht.

For closer than gudeman can come
And closer to’r than hersel’,
Wha didna need her maidenheid
Has wrocht his purpose fell.

O wha’s been here afore me, lass,
And hoo did he get in?
– A man that deed or I was born
This evil thing has din.

And left, as it were on a corpse,
Your maidenheid to me?
– Nae lass, gudeman, sin’ Time began
’S hed ony mair to gie.

But I can gie ye kindness, lad,
And a pair o’ willin’ hands,
And you sall hae my breists like stars,
My limbs like willow wands.

And on my lips ye’ll heed nae mair,
And in my hair forget,
The seed o’ a’ the men that in
My virgin womb ha’e met.

Hugh MacDiarmid

Week 281: The Curse of Cromwell, by W.B.Yeats

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The Yeatsian rhetoric and Yeatsian rhythms are very seductive, so seductive that it may be some time before one begins to look askance at what is actually being said. This poem is a case in point, expressing the poet’s nostalgia for an unchanging, hierarchical society that comprises an aristocratic elite, a sturdy but deferential peasantry, and a few well-rewarded poets between. ‘His fathers served their fathers before Christ was crucified’. Not, you note, the other way round, and one may reflect that it is much easier to be in favour of an unchanging social order when others are doing the serving and you’re the one being served. And yet, whatever my egalitarian reservations, I find the poem compellingly memorable.

The Curse Of Cromwell

You ask what I have found, and far and wide I go:
Nothing but Cromwell’s house and Cromwell’s murderous crew,
The lovers and the dancers are beaten into the clay,
And the tall men and the swordsmen and the horsemen, where are they?
And there is an old beggar wandering in his pride –
His fathers served their fathers before Christ was crucified.
O what of that, O what of that,
What is there left to say?

All neighbourly content and easy talk are gone,
But there’s no good complaining, for money’s rant is on.
He that’s mounting up must on his neighbour mount,
And we and all the Muses are things of no account.
They have schooling of their own, but I pass their schooling by,
What can they know that we know that know the time to die?
O what of that, O what of that,
What is there left to say?

But there’s another knowledge that my heart destroys,
As the fox in the old fable destroyed the Spartan boy’s
Because it proves that things both can and cannot be;
That the swordsmen and the ladies can still keep company,
Can pay the poet for a verse and hear the fiddle sound,
That I am still their servant though all are underground.
O what of that, O what of that,
What is there left to say?

I came on a great house in the middle of the night,
Its open lighted doorway and its windows all alight,
And all my friends were there and made me welcome too;
But I woke in an old ruin that the winds howled through;
And when I pay attention I must out and walk
Among the dogs and horses that understand my talk.
O what of that, O what of that,
What is there left to say?

W.B.Yeats

Week 280: In The Small Hours, by Thomas Hardy

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Philip Larkin said he would not have wanted Hardy’s ‘Collected Poems’ one page shorter. I wouldn’t go that far, but I could happily fill a couple of years of this blog simply with Hardy poems. Here’s another, that captures with aching precision one of those wistful moments between dream and waking that seem to become more frequent as one goes older.

In The Small Hours

I lay in my bed and fiddled
With a dreamland viol and bow,
And the tunes flew back to my fingers
I had melodied years ago
It was two or three in the morning
When I fancy-fiddled so
Long reels and country-dances,
And hornpipes swift and slow.

And soon anon came crossing
The chamber in the gray
Figures of jigging fieldfolk –
Saviours of corn and hay –
To the air of ‘Haste to the Wedding.’
As after a wedding-day;
Yea, up and down the middle
In windless whirls went they!

There danced the bride and bridegroom,
And couples in a train,
Gay partners time and travail
Had longwhiles stilled amain!….
It seemed a thing for weeping
To find, at slumber’s wane
And morning’s sly increeping,
That Now, not Then, held reign.

Thomas Hardy

Week 279: Naming of Parts, by Henry Reed

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This is part of a sequence called ‘Lessons of the War’, written in 1942 by the Second World War poet Henry Reed (1914-1986). It seems to be the only poem he is remembered by, but at least it is remembered: indeed, it was quoted, albeit somewhat inappositely, in last Sunday’s episode of the police drama ‘Endeavour’, by an army colonel who seemed to think it was a poem in praise of military routine and pride in regimental tradition, similar to Sir Henry Newbolt’s ‘Vitaī Lampada’ which had been quoted a little earlier. Polite cough from me: ‘Er, excuse me, script-writers, but I don’t think that was quite what Henry Reed had in mind.’

Naming of Parts

Today we have naming of parts. Yesterday,
We had daily cleaning. And tomorrow morning,
We shall have what to do after firing. But today,
Today we have naming of parts. Japonica
Glistens like coral in all the neighbouring gardens,
And today we have naming of parts.

This is the lower sling swivel. And this
Is the upper sling swivel, whose use you will see,
When you are given your slings. And this is the piling swivel,
Which in your case you have not got. The branches
Hold in the gardens their silent, eloquent gestures,
Which in our case we have not got.

This is the safety-catch, which is always released
With an easy flick of the thumb. And please do not let me
See anyone using his finger. You can do it quite easy
If you have any strength in your thumb. The blossoms
Are fragile and motionless, never letting anyone see
Any of them using their finger.

And this you can see is the bolt. The purpose of this
Is to open the breech, as you see. We can slide it
Rapidly backwards and forwards: we call this
Easing the spring. And rapidly backwards and forwards
The early bees are assaulting and fumbling the flowers:
They call it easing the Spring.

They call it easing the Spring: it is perfectly easy
If you have any strength in your thumb: like the bolt,
And the breech, the cocking-piece, and the point of balance,
Which in our case we have not got; and the almond blossom
Silent in all of the gardens and the bees going backwards and forwards,
For today we have naming of parts.

Henry Reed

Week 278: The Lost Heifer, by Austin Clarke

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I find this poem by the Irish poet Austin Clarke (1896-1974) enchantingly obscure, and since I set great store by clarity, ‘enchanting’ and ‘obscure’ are not normally words I would use together. The good news is that the poem does have a key to it: there is apparently a tradition among Irish poets of personifying their country in various ways, and one of those ways is to see it as a cow – Clarke comments that ‘the Heifer’ or ‘Silk of the Kine’ was a secret name for Ireland used by Jacobite poets. So the lost heifer is Ireland itself, and Clarke adds that he wrote the poem at a time when he felt that national identity was undergoing an eclipse. The less good news is that this still does not, at least to me, go very far to explaining what is going on here: what, for example, is ‘the last honey by the water’? And yet the poem still seems to me a beautiful evocation of something, even if I’m not sure exactly what is being evoked. As usual, any further enlightenment will be gratefully received.

The Lost Heifer

When the black herds of the rain were grazing
In the gap of the pure cold wind
And the watery haze of the hazel
Brought her into my mind,
I thought of the last honey by the water
That no hive can find.

Brightness was drenching through the branches
When she wandered again,
Turning the silver out of dark grasses
Where the skylark had lain,
And her voice coming softly over the meadow
Was the mist becoming rain.

Austin Clarke

Week 277: A Father’s Death, by John Hewitt

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Another lesson from the Irish poet John Hewitt (1907-1987) in how form may be used to contain feeling as a cartridge-case contains gunpowder.

A Father’s Death

It was no vast dynastic fate
when gasp by gasp my father died,
no mourner at the palace gate
or tall bells tolling slow and wide.

We sat beside the bed: the screen
shut out the hushed, the tiptoe ward,
and now and then we both would lean
to catch what seemed a whispered word.

My mother watched her days drag by,
two score and five the married years,
yet never weakened to a cry
who was so ready with her tears.

Then, when dawn washed the polished floor
and steps and voices woke and stirred
with wheels along the corridor
my father went without a word.

The sick, the dying, bed by bed,
lay clenched around their own affairs;
that one behind a screen was dead
was someone’s grief, but none of theirs.

It was no vast dynastic death,
no nation silent round that throne,
when, letting go his final breath,
a lonely man went out alone.

John Hewitt

Week 276: Parents at Eighty, by Jack Winter

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A very sad and moving piece, far removed from a Darby and Joan view of growing old together. I have to say it doesn’t really accord with the majority of my own observations: from what I’ve seen couples lucky enough to survive together into old age tend to experience, now that they are relieved of the stresses of child-rearing, a new serenity and a new closeness, perhaps founded on the realisation that now more than ever is the time to love that well which thou must leave ere long. But I am certainly prepared to believe that this may not always be the case.

Parents at Eighty

Who loved each other all this while
Have now begun to hate.
(Too late, my love, and you, my love,
Too late, my love, too late).

He cannot bear the way she walks.
She cannot watch him sit.
(As for you, you’re none of three
And want no share of it).

They draw me into corners
Beyond the prying other
To dish me grievance heaped on tale
Of mother, father, mother.

He will not wear his ear device.
She says what’s not worth hearing.
He snores. She slurs. Not his nor hers
Is illness feared, but fearing.

She dare not… can not… never has.
He would… some other mate.
She’s joyless… he, deprived his joy.
(Too late, my love, too late).

Had she but known the wage of care
For every day of woe,
She’d not have tended him, she’d not.
(My love, it’s time to go).

(And you and I move homeward
Down tunnels shaped like years.
My love, I’ll do your smile for you,
If you will do my tears).

Jack Winter

Week 275: She Walked Unaware, by Patrick MacDonogh

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The Irish poet Patrick MacDonogh (1902-1961) was a contemporary of Louis MacNeice and Patrick Kavanagh, and incidentally an international hockey player. I love the Irish lilt of this one, and its folksong-like quality – indeed, its theme of the lover rejected in favour of a better prospect is a common one in Irish folksongs, such as ‘Going to Mass last Sunday’, that begins ‘Going to Mass last Sunday, my love she passed me by/I knew her mind was altered by the roving of her eye/I knew her mind was altered to a lad of higher degree/For it’s Molly, lovely Molly, your looks have wounded me’. But MacDonogh adds a lyrical awareness of the natural world not so common in folksong.

She Walked Unaware

Oh, she walked unaware of her own increasing beauty
That was holding men’s thoughts from market or plough,
As she passed by intent on her womanly duties
And she passed without leisure to be wayward or proud;
Or if she had pride then it was not in her thinking
But thoughtless in her body like a flower of good breeding.
The first time I saw her spreading coloured linen
Beyond the green willow she gave me gentle greeting
With no more intention than the leaning willow tree.

Though she smiled without intention yet from that day forward
Her beauty filled like water the four corners of my being,
And she rested in my heart like a hare in the form
That is shaped to herself. And I that would be singing
Or whistling at all times went silently then,
Till I drew her aside among straight stems of beeches
When the blackbird was sleeping and she promised that never
The fields would be ripe but I’d gather all sweetness,
A red moon of August would rise on our wedding.

October is spreading bright flame along stripped willows,
Low fires of the dogwood burn down to grey water, –
God pity me now and all desolate sinners
Demented with beauty! I have blackened my thought
In droughts of bad longing, and all brightness goes shrouded
Since he came with his rapture of wild words that mirrored
Her beauty and made her ungentle and proud.
Tonight she will spread her brown hair on his pillow,
But I shall be hearing the harsh cries of wild fowl.

Patrick MacDonogh

Week 274: On Wenlock Edge, by A.E.Housman

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I walked along Wenlock Edge once. Still plenty of trees to be seen, but this was on a quiet evening of silver sun, far removed from Housman’s inner and outer weather. I suppose that Housman’s landscapes, compared with, say, those of Edward Thomas, may lack solidity and particularity, but for me they make up for it, as in this poem, with a luminous, time-layered, mythical quality.

On Wenlock Edge

On Wenlock Edge the wood’s in trouble;
His forest fleece the Wrekin heaves;
The gale, it plies the saplings double,
And thick on Severn snow the leaves.

‘Twould blow like this through holt and hanger
When Uricon the city stood:
‘Tis the old wind in the old anger,
But then it threshed another wood.

Then, ’twas before my time, the Roman
At yonder heaving hill would stare:
The blood that warms an English yeoman,
The thoughts that hurt him, they were there.

There, like the wind through woods in riot,
Through him the gale of life blew high;
The tree of man was never quiet:
Then ’twas the Roman, now ’tis I.

The gale, it plies the saplings double,
It blows so hard, ’twill soon be gone:
To-day the Roman and his trouble
Are ashes under Uricon.

A.E.Housman

Week 273: Ithaka, by C.P.Cavafy

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This is one of the best known poems of the Greek poet Constantine Peter Cavafy (1863-1933), and I think even in translation it has a kind of morning freshness, a harking back to a Homeric age of heroes, while managing at the same time to be perfectly modern. 

Ithaka

As you set out for Ithaka
hope the journey is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians and Cyclops,
angry Poseidon – don’t be afraid of them:
you’ll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians and Cyclops,
wild Poseidon – you won’t encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.

Hope the voyage is a long one.
May there be many a summer morning when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you come into harbours seen for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfume of every kind –
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to gather stores of knowledge from their scholars.

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you are destined for.
But do not hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you are old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you have gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.

Ithaka gave you the marvellous journey.
Without her you would not have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you will have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.

C.P. Cavafy (translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sharrard)