Tag Archives: poetry

Week 225: Linum, by Alison Brackenbury

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Some years ago one of the fields round the South Oxfordshire village where I live, normally given over to corn, turned a most amazing shade of blue, as if a patch of heaven had fallen to earth, though it appears that a more mundane explanation had to do with EU subsidies at the time. At first I was completely puzzled as to what the crop could be, until I remembered a passage from John Moore’s ‘Brensham Trilogy’: ‘an azure mist upon the field, like smoke from a squitch-fire’. Of course: this was flax or linseed, the ‘blue field’ that had given the third of the trilogy its title. After due contemplation I went on my way with a definite feeling that here was something I would one day write a poem about. Now, you can’t rush these things: a poem will come when it’s ready, but there can be a small problem with this relaxed attitude, as I discovered when some time later I came across this piece by Alison Brackenbury and found, slightly to my annoyance, that she had very definitely scooped me. Fair play to Alison though: it’s hard to imagine how anyone could have made a better job of it.

Linum

It is not tall enough, it will not make a crop –
it has changed its name. It used to be flax,
maker of sheets for fine ladies’ beds.
Now it is linseed; feeds cattle.
It is high as a knee, blown with threads of leaf,
scattered with flower. What corn is blue?

They are mouths, they are stars, they gleam
sweet as those pictures of children under dark leaf
in frames of dark gilt. It knows nothing;
the sky is bitterer. Last night’s sun
was icy lemon, with drifts fog grey;
the morning’s blaze is for storm. The flax flowers
begin to shimmer, with a metal edge,
to reflect ripe cloud, race a colder sea.
The flies still whirl in hot air, and I
rise quick up the ridge, through the brief, starred fields.
It is not every day you can run through the sky.

Alison Brackenbury

 

Week 224: Je me souviens, by Jules Supervielle

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The French poet Jules Supervielle (1884-1960) wrote many tender love poems to his wife Pilar, whom he married in Montevideo in 1907, Uruguay (the country ‘fort au sud’ referred to in the poem) being the country of his birth. This is one of them. 

The translation that follows is my own. I confess to not quite understanding the words in the fourth line ‘lui donne son nom’ – did Supervielle think that the French words ‘coeur’ and ‘carrefour’ were etymologically connected? This does not in fact seem to be the case. 

Je me souviens

Je me souviens – lorsque je parle ainsi
Ah saura-t-on jamais qui se souvient
Dans tout ce chaud murmurant carrefour
Qui fait le coeur et lui donne son nom –
Je me souviens, c’était dans un pays
Qu’on aperçoit fort au sud sur les cartes,
Le ciel mouillait à tort et à travers
Le grand matin noir et plein d’innocence.
Je me souviens – cette fois je suis sûr
Qu c’est bien moi qui hume ce temps-là –
Je vous trouvai durant une accalmie
Vous qui deviez devenir mon amie
Pendant vingt ans, et c’est encor vrai.

Jules Supervielle

I Remember 

I remember – ah, but when I speak this way
Can we ever know for sure what memories
Meet at that warm murmuring crossroads within
We call the heart, which gives it its name? –
I remember, it was in another country
You see on maps a long way to the south.
It rained as if the rain would never cease
That great dark morning full of innocence.
I remember – and for once I am quite sure
That it is I who breathe in that time’s air –
I found you as the sky began to clear
You who would become my wife, my friend
These twenty years gone by, and are still here.

Week 223: Bells for John Whiteside’s Daughter, by John Crowe Ransom

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I promised we’d come back to John Crowe Ransom so here is another of his elegies for dead children (cf. week 50), and again it is something of a puzzle to me, not because of any difficulty with the meaning, but because one feels that Ransom’s slightly archaic style, fastidious to the point of preciousness, like a man handling words with white gloves, simply should not work as well as it does, especially for a subject of such pathos. Yet somehow those cadences mesmerise.

Bells for John Whiteside’s Daughter

There was such speed in her little body,
And such lightness in her footfall,
It is no wonder her brown study
Astonishes us all.

Her wars were bruited in our high window.
We looked among orchard trees and beyond
Where she took arms against her shadow,
Or harried unto the pond

The lazy geese, like a snow cloud
Dripping their snow on the green grass,
Tricking and stopping, sleepy and proud,
Who cried in goose, Alas,

For the tireless heart within the little
Lady with rod that made them rise
From their noon apple-dreams and scuttle
Goose-fashion under the skies!

But now go the bells, and we are ready,
In one house we are sternly stopped
To say we are vexed at her brown study,
Lying so primly propped.

John Crowe Ransom

Week 222: Field Day, by W.R.Rodgers

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This poem by the Irish poet W.R.Rodgers (1909-1969), about how landscapes, or just odd scraps of landscape, can be numinous for us makes an interesting comparison with Patrick Kavanagh’s poem ‘Innocence’ and his love for ‘The triangular hill that hung/Under the Big Forth’ – see week 10. My own numinous field, the wheatfield that started at the bottom of my garden when I was a child, was not triangular but a great rectangle that dipped and then curved up to a line of woodland. Last time I went back they were building a new housing estate on it. Well, people need places to live, but they also need places to live.

Field Day

The old farmer, nearing death, asked
To be carried outside and set down
Where he could see a certain field
‘And then I will cry my heart out’, he said.

It troubles me, thinking about that man;
What shape was the field of his crying In Donegal?

I remember a small field in Down, a field
Within fields, shaped like a triangle.
I could have stood there and looked at it
All day long.

And I remember crossing the frontier between
France and Spain at a forbidden point, and seeing
A small triangular field in Spain,
And stopping

Or walking in Ireland down any rutted by-road
To where it hit the high-way, there was always
At this turning point and abutment
A still centre, a V-shape of grass
Untouched by cornering traffic.
Where country lads larked at night.

I think I know what the shape of the field was
That made the old man weep.

W.R.Rodgers

Week 221: Die Erblindende, by Rainer Maria Rilke

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Another of my favourite poems by the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke, a small masterpiece of delicate, compassionate observation. The translation that follows is my own.

Die Erblindende

Sie saß so wie die anderen beim Tee.
Mir war zuerst, als ob sie ihre Tasse
ein wenig anders als die andern fasse.
Sie lächelte einmal. Es tat fast weh.

Und als man schließlich sich erhob und sprach
und langsam und wie es der Zufall brachte
durch viele Zimmer ging (man sprach und lachte),
da sah ich sie. Sie ging den andern nach,

verhalten, so wie eine, welche gleich
wird singen müssen und vor vielen Leuten;
auf ihren hellen Augen die sich freuten war
Licht von außen wie auf einem Teich.

Sie folgte langsam und sie brauchte lang
als wäre etwas noch nicht überstiegen;
und doch: als ob, nach einem Übergang,
sie nich mehr gehen würde, sondern fliegen.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Going Blind

She sat just like the rest of them at tea.
What struck me first was how she held her cup
Not quite the same as others in the group.
She sometimes smiled. It almost hurt to see.

And when the others rose at last and went
From room to room, taking their random way,
Laughing and talking, with so much to say,
I saw her. She was following, intent

On some thought of her own, like one aware
She soon would have to sing for many people,
While light on her bright eyes, as on a pool,
Gleamed from beyond, reflecting gladness there.

She followed slowly, so long passing by
As if there were still something to surmount;
And yet, once she had mastered that ascent,
She would no more be walking, but would fly.

Week 220: Danny Deever, by Rudyard Kipling

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I think my father only ever read one poem in his life, Rudyard Kipling’s ‘If’, which he carried about with him as a cutting in his wallet. All credit to it for seeing him through some difficult times of war and ill-health, though I had my own reservations about the poem. ‘If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew/To serve your turn long after they are gone….’ – what did that even mean? There are strict physiological limits, and the toughest athletes in the world, though their limits may be very different from ours, will still come up against them. No, I felt that if you wanted to represent Kipling as a poet there were better things to be had, prime among them being the powerful and disturbing ‘Danny Deever’. I don’t read it that Kipling is necessarily opposed to the ultimate penalty being enforced in capital cases, but there is no relish about it, such as Kipling’s detractors might have looked for, just a grim recognition that the administration of such justice exacts its toll on the humanity of all concerned.

Danny Deever

‘What are the bugles blowin’ for?’ said Files-on-Parade.
‘To turn you out, to turn you out,’ the Colour-Sergeant said.
‘What makes you look so white, so white?’ said Files-on-Parade.
‘I’m dreadin’ what I’ve got to watch,’ the Colour-Sergeant said.
For they’re hangin’ Danny Deever, you can hear the Dead March play,
The regiment’s in ‘ollow square–they’re hangin’ him to-day;
They’ve taken of his buttons off an’ cut his stripes away,
An’ they’re hangin’ Danny Deever in the mornin’.

‘What makes the rear-rank breathe so ‘ard?’ said Files-on-Parade.
‘It’s bitter cold, it’s bitter cold,’ the Colour-Sergeant said.
‘What makes that front-rank man fall down?’ says Files-on-Parade.
‘A touch o’ sun, a touch o’ sun,’ the Colour-Sergeant said.
They are hangin’ Danny Deever, they are marchin’ of ‘im round,
They ‘ave ‘alted Danny Deever by ‘is coffin on the ground;
An’ e’ll swing in ‘arf a minute for a sneakin’ shootin’ hound–
O they’re hangin’ Danny Deever in the mornin’!

‘Is cot was right-‘and cot to mine,’ said Files-on-Parade.
‘E’s sleepin’ out an’ far tonight,’ the Colour Sergeant said.
‘I’ve drunk ‘is beer a score o’ times,’ said Files-on-Parade.
‘E’s drinkin bitter beer alone,’ the Colour-Sergeant said.
They are hangin’ Danny Deever, you must mark ‘im to ‘is place,
For ‘e shot a comrade sleepin’–you must look ‘im in the face;
Nine ‘undred of ‘is county an’ the regiment’s disgrace,
While they’re hangin’ Danny Deever in the mornin’.

‘What’s that so black agin the sun?’ said Files-on-Parade.
‘It’s Danny fightin’ ‘ard for life,’ the Colour-Sergeant said.
‘What’s that that whimpers over’ead?’ said Files-on-Parade.
‘It’s Danny’s soul that’s passin’ now,’ the Colour-Sergeant said.
For they’re done with Danny Deever, you can ‘ear the quickstep play,
The regiment’s in column, an’ they’re marchin’ us away;
Ho! the young recruits are shakin’, an’ they’ll want their beer today,
After hangin’ Danny Deever in the mornin’.

Rudyard Kipling

Week 219: Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries, by A.E.Housman

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I do have a strong preference for poems that seem to me to be not just eloquent but true, by which I mean, I suppose, in accordance with the facts of life as I perceive them. Because of this these two poems taken in combination give me an acute case of cognitive dissonance, since both are eloquent and I feel that both have something to be said for them, yet their viewpoints could hardly be more diametrically opposed. As a peace-loving child of risk-adverse times, I count it one of the blessings of my life that my country has allowed me to get to a fairly advanced age without requiring me to get myself killed or, a prospect I view with an almost equal lack of enthusiasm, to kill anybody else. To that extent, I am with MacDiarmid. But then I am minded of the quote (often attributed to Orwell, though it appears he never used these exact words) ‘We sleep safely in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would harm us’. One also has to consider that while Housman may have been somewhat given to the romanticisation of things military, in a way that became rather more difficult after World War I and the reports of poets who had actually seen the face of modern warfare, this possible flaw in his moral stance is surely far outweighed by MacDiarmid’s adulation of totalitarian Russia: the proposition that Stalin’s regime was a better bet than Housman’s ‘Old Contemptibles’ when it came to preserving ‘elements of worth’, seems, to put it mildly, dubious. So, in the end, Housman for me.

Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries

These, in the day when heaven was falling,
The hour when earth’s foundations fled,
Followed their mercenary calling,
And took their wages, and are dead.

Their shoulders held the sky suspended;
They stood, and earth’s foundations stay;
What God abandoned, these defended,
And saved the sum of things for pay.

A.E. Housman

Another Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries

It is a God-damned lie to say that these
Saved, or knew, anything worth any man’s pride,
They were professional murderers and they took
Their blood money and their impious risks and died.
In spite of all their kind some elements of worth
With difficulty persist here and there on earth.

Hugh MacDiarmid

Week 218: Retirement, by R.S.Thomas

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You don’t go to R.S.Thomas’s poems for consolation, but you do go to them for the quiet satisfaction of their craftsmanship, for their flow of images and metaphors, never imposed on the poem but coming from some deep well of devotion within it. The ‘bough of country’ here is the Lleyn peninsula in Wales, Thomas’s final home. ‘Subsong’ is birdsong that is softer and less well defined than the usual territorial song, a ‘quiet warbling’ used by some birds especially in courtship: wryly appropriate here given Thomas’s passion for birdwatching.

Retirement

I have crawled out at last
far as I dare on to a bough
of country that is suspended
between sky and sea.

From what was I escaping?
There is a rare peace here
though the aeroplanes buzz me,
reminders of that abyss,

deeper than sea or sky, civilisation
could fall into. Strangers
advance, inching their way
out, so that the branch bends

further away from the scent
of the cloud blossom. Must
I console myself
with reflections? There are

times even the mirror
is misted as by one breathing
over my shoulder. Clinging
to my position, witnessing

the seasonal migrations,
I must try to content
myself with the perception
that love and truth have

no wings, but are resident
like me here, practising
their subsong quietly in the face
of the bitterest of winters.

R.S.Thomas

 

Week 217: The Secret, by David Sutton

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Just this once, one of my own efforts, with the excuse that it does at least have a seasonal theme…

The Secret

My winter treat, the pantomime at Christmas:
To go out after tea, in frosty dark,
Down by the railway bridge, past the allotments
To the lit hall in the village.
I was four.
What was time to me? I thought that Jesus
Lived in the air-raid shelter, I thought that a train
Out of the unmapped dark might bring the Wise Men.
I thought that the whole silent valley brimmed with a secret
That the stars might spell out with their shining.
They are gone,
The lit hall, and the laughter; I recall
Nothing of those. Strange then, to see so clearly
That journey down, the glint of moonlit rails,
The frost-furred brick, the snow-capped cabbages,
And all the starry secret, still untold.

David Sutton

Week 216: Their Lonely Betters, by W.H.Auden

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There seems to be a general view that the work of the later, postwar Auden is marked by a decline in poetic power. I can see that it has its wobbles, but I think there were also gains: a move towards greater lucidity, towards writing less for a coterie audience and more for the only audience really worth having, the company of free spirits throughout time. I like, for example, this poem, written in 1950, in which Auden characteristically combines a light touch with a serious thought.

As I listened from a beach-chair in the shade
To all the noises that my garden made,
It seemed to me only proper that words
Should be withheld from vegetables and birds.

A robin with no Christian name ran through
The Robin-Anthem which was all it knew,
And rustling flowers for some third party waited
To say which pairs, if any, should get mated.

Not one of them was capable of lying,
There was not one which knew that it was dying
Or could have with a rhythm or a rhyme
Assumed responsibility for time.

Let them leave language to their lonely betters
Who count some days and long for certain letters;
We, too, make noises when we laugh or weep:
Words are for those with promises to keep.

W.H.Auden