The pieta
Day: August 15, 2017
Stay a while here with his holy shadow
Sing a song to help the dying soldier
Sing a song to ease him on the way
Release him from your weary shoulder
And let him sleep in shadows of dismay
It doesn’t matter that your heart is broken
It doesn’t matter he has got no bed
At last the love you feel has opened
And before he dies, you are by silence wed
Sing a song to help him with his leaving~
Sing as softly as a little bird
There is no evil that he is concealing
And you yourself have heard his final words.
And when his soul flies from the open window
You cannot stop it with your wifely heart
Stay a while here with his holy shadow
And then rise to your feet and so depart
We’re only human we feel sorrow
We’re only human, how we grieve
With trembling legs and belly hollow
Appearances like this do not deceive
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A polyester jump suit for Mary?
Mary sat in her dining room listening to Sir Michael Atiyah on the Today programme where he was talking about very advanced Group Theory
.Many years ago she had known this great man, though he had scarcely noticed her despite her big blue eyes and skinny legs displayed beneath her home made mini-dress.That was very fortunate as she was there as a tutor not as a marriage breaker.Why her mother had supplied her with such mini dresses, she had often wondered,
Going online, she saw a sale on at Welvi, the store for larger ladies.There was an orange culotte jumpsuit made of polyester for £10
Look at this, she called to her friend Annie.A real bargain in my view.
Well, said Annie, suppose you were in the country climbing a hill and you needed to have a wee.
I never thought of that, Mary said shyly.
Moreover polyester is too clammy for summer and not warm enough for winter, besides it looks transparent.I don’t think Stan would like it.
Well, he’s not here now, said Mary sadly.And transparent plastic trousers are in fashion.Do you wear plastic knickers underneath?
No, you’d have to wear a jewelled thong, said Annie.I bet that would make men look at you.Well, not your face…
I’ve never worn a thong.Do they hurt, asked Mary politely.
Yes, I’ve got one on now, said Annie nervously.It’s really hurting me.I’d better ring 999 and ask Dave the paramedic to advise me
Hi called Dave, what is wrong today?
Annie is in pain from a thong, Mary cried
I’ll be round in 2 minutes
Dave ran up the hall into the bijou kitchen
Where is the thong ,he asked gently
Where do you think, Annie shouted?
She lifted up her chambray skirt and showed him her pink lace knicker substitute.
Can you take it off, he asked tenderly?
I have run out of clean knickers, she informed him scientifically.
Well in the past women wore cotton petticoats but no knickers.It was more healthy.But with short thin skirts if you fell over all the world would see your mound of Venus
That’s an exaggeration, Annie said.All the world is not looking at me
Ah, but someone could have a video camera and you might be on the News.You’d better go to Marks and buy some more proper knickers.
Now, shall I make you a cup of tea?The NHS is here to care for you.As you know
Lovely, cried Mary.Annie go upstairs and take my knickers and put that thong in the laundry basket.I will wash it for you and you can hang it in your bathroom to give an impression of your taste to visitors.On the other hand, men would be disappointed to see you really wore cotton high waisted pants and not a sort of mini star spangled banner.
All right, said Annie but Stan would have liked them
I like them, mewed Emile.I love you, Annie.I wish I were a man,I would go to bed with you right now.I have got a French letter from Soraya.She’e been in Paris and wrote to me on real paper.
Wow, a cat using the subjunctive and reading French letters said Mary.That is a surprise.
I don’téven know what subjunctive is, screamed Annie rudely
And so say all of us
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Although my ears were ringing with its rhymes
I edited my sonnet sixty times
It didn’t seem so many to my mind
Although my ears were ringing with its rhymes
To criticise myself seems quite unkind
What seemed to be a metre was none such
I could not sing it like Gray’s Elegy
My language late at night seems Double Dutch
But writing will, like loving, pleasure me.
If only we could edit when we speak
Instead of blurting out “the honest truth”
To stop our malice making others bleak
Or injuring their hearts with words uncouth.
When we reflect, we learn to see our speech
As something not entirely out of reach.
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The dignity of worth, the repaired woe?
We are not afraid as once we were
In 1963 when fingers groped
To end the Cuban missile crisis there.
Do we feel unreal or don’t we care
That we are on the edge of loss of hope?
We are not afraid as once we were
Have we so much News we can’t take more?
We struggle in our day life just to cope
Who ends the nuclear crisis that is here?
Have we split off feelings of despair
In case this anguish blocks our little throats
We are not afraid nor numb, it’s clear
Can we find again or now acquire
The dignity of worth, the consoled woe?
Who will navigate such wild desire?
The envy we seem locked in does require
Destruction of the other as its foe
We are not afraid as once we were
Of nuclear crisis and its dead dismay
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Poetry and politics
https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2010/dec/15/poetry-protest-politics
“But is protest poetry the preserve of the spoken word poet? In the 1970s, American poet Richard Wilbur, symbol of all things urbane and learned, offered “To the Student Strikers”, urging reflection and calm during the Vietnam war. In “A Miltonic Sonnet for Mr Johnson”, he suggests that Thomas Jefferson “would have wept to see small nations dread / The imposition of our cattle-brand, / With public truth at home mistold or banned, / And in whose term no army’s blood was shed.” However, Wilbur cautions that when “poets begin preaching to the choir, it takes the adventure and variety out of the poetry.”
So is this poetry’s role: to approach unrest and upheaval slant, and not head-on? And has poetry on the page been more effective in documenting the aftermath of great events? Both the late Ken Smith and Sean O’Brien have documented the intellectual legacy of post-industrial and rural communities recovering their identities after decades of decline. Ken Smith, son of a farm labourer, produced a poetry imbued with a melancholy sense of those like his father who, as O’Brien noted in Smith’s obituary, had “left / not a mark, not a footprint”.”
How my heart sings 