Poems which touch your heart ...

[Bitch]

CAntos suggested the TOK version. I listened but i prefer the aforementioned. It does get better tho' after you pass the heavy rap.

 

I suppose the poem answers one of life's mysteries. You don't have to be religious to appreciate it. 'God' can be whatever you believe in, whether it's a life force or inner will.

[Darter]

Some great verses on here and I am so pleased that people are posting. The Stevie Smith one posted by Sheila has always been one of my faves, and also the Brookes and the Kipling - poems for all time ...

[Darter]

I think this is one of the most touching expressions of someone's love for their mother.

 

from Clearances (in memorium M.K.H., 1911-1984)

 

When all the others were away at Mass

I was all hers as we peeled potatoes.

They broke the silence, let fall one by one

Like solder weeping off the soldering iron:

Cold comforts set between us, things to share

Gleaming in a bucket of clean water.

And again let fall. Little pleasant splashes

From each other's work would bring us to our senses.

 

So while the parish priest at her bedside

Went hammer and tongs at the prayers for the dying

And some were responding and some crying

I remembered her head bent towards my head,

Her breath in mine, our fluent dipping knives -

Never closer the whole rest of our lives.

 

Seamus Heaney

 

[Darter]

And one from Larkin, my favourite poet

 

Love Songs In Age

 

She kept her songs, they kept so little space,

The covers pleased her:

One bleached from lying in a sunny place,

One marked in circles by a vase of water,

One mended, when a tidy fit had seized her,

And coloured, by her daughter -

So they had waited, till, in widowhood

She found them, looking for something else, and stood

 

Relearning how each frank submissive chord

Had ushered in

Word after sprawling hyphenated word,

And the unfailing sense of being young

Spread out like a spring-woken tree, wherein

That hidden freshness sung,

That certainty of time laid up in store

As when she played them first. But, even more,

 

The glare of that much-mentioned brilliance, love,

Broke out, to show

Its bright incipience sailing above,

Still promising to solve, and satisfy,

And set unchangeably in order. So

To pile them back, to cry,

Was hard, without lamely admitting how

It had not done so then, and could not now.

 

Philip Larkin

 

[The Slathering Beagle]

woof woof Beagles Next

 

All in the towns were fast asleep

When the sun came up, with a shout and a leap

In the lonely streets, unseen by man

A little dog danced, and the day had began

 

All of his life he'd been good

As far as dogs could

And the cuddly beast had done all that he could

but this morning he swore

By Odin and Thor

And the dogghy Valhalla

He'd stand it no more

 

So his prayer it was granted

To do just what he wanted

Prevented by none

For the space of one day

Get in their faces

Pi55 on their laces

And eat all the tulips, hip hip hooray

 

He fought with the he dogs

And shagged all the she dogs

Such terrible things

Never heard of before

Give me meat and gluttony

I care not a buttony

And he ate all he could

And then went back for more

 

He bit sinewey lumps

From the ar5es of frumps

And attacked all the postmen

When he could get 'em

He pretended he had rabies

And bit all the babies

And then shagged all the cats

And then eat 'em

 

The people they thought it was really the devil

Holding a dogfest daytime revel

They sent for the Vicar

To drive him away

For the towns never knew such a parafiney

As the little old beagle raised that day

 

And when the blood red sun

Had gone burning down

And the candles were lit

On that little old town

Outside in the gloom

Of that twilight day

The little beagle slept

As he'd has his day

 

woof woof

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Darter]

lol, some poetic licence there ...

[Bitch]

SAl, be honoured the Beagle doesn't pee up any old post

[Darter]

I love the way Patten can describe that feeling of overwhelming, heart-stopping desire ....

 

Fingers Have Bruised Your Skin the Way a Fallen Peach is Bruised

 

You arrive at the party late,

Though awake, your mouth still looks asleep,

A half-open trap, swollen and relaxed.

One look from you turns me inside out -

I can only guess

Whose fingers beneath that dress

Have bruised your skin the way

A fallen peach is bruised.

You walk up close.

The scent of you evokes a bed's oasis.

 

Brian Patten

 

[Jeff Hamnett TSF]

its my view all the best poems, ideas theories phrases have been used better in music.

 

it might take me a while but heres the challenge.

 

come up with the prose ill try and find the song. maybe derivative but i think it will be either better or out in a wider audience.

[Darter]

Good idea Jeff xx

[Jeff Hamnett TSF]

eden rock , a memory of better times and a hope for a future beyond the current mediocrity.

 

 

my put up is coney island , van morrison.

 

Coming down from downpatrick

Stopping off at st. john

[Uncle Urchin]

'Tis all a game of nights and days

Where destiny, with men for pieces plays

Hither and Sliver

Checks and Mates and Slays

And when finished

Back in the cupboard lays

 

Omar Khyam

[Darter]

This one by Duffy is so poignant. She is likely to be our next Poet Laureate, by the way - the first woman to occupy that position. I will post some more of her poetry from her volume "Rapture", which charts the start, progress and end of a love affair she had - it is the most moving verse I have read for years.

 

Prayer

 

Some days, although we cannot pray, a prayer

utters itself. So, a woman will lift

her head from the sieve of her hands and stare

at the minims sung by a tree, a sudden gift.

 

Some nights, although we are faithless, the truth

enters our hearts, that small familiar pain;

then a man will stand stock-still, hearing his youth

in the distant Latin chanting of a train.

 

Pray for us now. Grade 1 piano scales

console the lodger looking out across

a Midlands town. Then dusk, and someone calls

a child's name as though they named their loss.

 

Darkness outside. Inside, the radio's prayer -

Rockall. Malin. Dogger. Finisterre.

 

Carol Ann Duffy

[Darter]

Originally Posted By: thespursfan

eden rock , a memory of better times and a hope for a future beyond the current mediocrity.

my put up is coney island , van morrison.

my view is the song is more than the written word.
could be his lover as an adult or his parents as a child, ive always seen it as a family memory.

the last lines compare well


I had not thought that it would be like this.

wouldnt it be great if it was like this all the time?

Love this Jeff and a good point you make xx

[Darter]

Larkin was always afraid of death. This poem, his finest in my opinion, sums it up. When it ws published, it upset some of his friends as it shows his torment so clearly.

 

Aubade

 

I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.

Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.

In time the curtain-edges will grow light.

Till then I see what's really always there:

Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,

Making all thought impossible but how

And where and when I shall myself die.

Arid interrogation: yet the dread

Of dying, and being dead,

Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.

The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse

- The good not done, the love not given, time

Torn off unused - nor wretchedly because

An only life can take so long to climb

Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never;

But at the total emptiness for ever,

The sure extinction that we travel to

And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,

Not to be anywhere,

And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.

 

This is a special way of being afraid

No trick dispels. Religion used to try,

That vast, moth-eaten musical brocade

Created to pretend we never die,

And specious stuff that says No rational being

Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing

That this is what we fear - no sight, no sound,

No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,

Nothing to love or link with,

The anasthetic from which none come round.

 

And so it stays just on the edge of vision,

A small, unfocused blur, a standing chill

That slows each impulse down to indecision.

Most things may never happen: this one will,

And realisation of it rages out

In furnace-fear when we are caught without

People or drink. Courage is no good:

It means not scaring others. Being brave

Lets no one off the grave.

Death is no different whined at than withstood.

 

Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape.

It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know,

Have always known, know that we can't escape,

Yet can't accept. One side will have to go.

Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring

In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring

Intricate rented world begins to rouse.

The sky is white as clay, with no sun.

Work has to be done.

Postmen like doctors go from house to house.

 

Philip Larkin

 

[Darter]

Here's another beautiful one by Duffy ...

 

Words, Wide Night

 

Somewhere on the other side of this wide night

and the distance between us, I am thinking of you.

The room is turning slowly away from the moon.

 

This is pleasurable. Or shall I cross that out and say

it is sad? In one of the tenses I'm singing

an impossible song of desire that you cannot hear.

 

La lala la. See? I close my eyes and imagine the dark hills I would have to cross

to reach you. For I am in love with you

 

and this is what it is like or what it is like in words.

Carol Ann Duffy

 

[Eastside Urchin]

i'm in love with the girl next door

Smell my finger!

 

 

 

A classic poem by myself and the eastside boys

[Bitch]

Beautiful UM, truly touching. The next time the poetry corner members sit we'll disect your poem and probably make you a bard.

[Bitch]

Keep yours coming Sal. Though they don't have the depth and underlying tones of great works such as UM's i enjoy the lightness of them.

[Darter]

Love Lesson

 

When, unexpectedly, Love returns from its disappointments,

And flopping into your arms, lying says,

"This time I have come back to stay,

All other bodies were at best a compromise,"

Then if you are wise

You will choose to believe its lies.

 

Brian Patten