Day: September 29, 2025

Against sadness

Against sadness:no-one here can weep
Nor lounge about in melancholy deep.
Was Van Gogh senseless to permit his muse.
For his masterpieces ,was the price too steep?
We see the yellow chair but not his views
Nor his mind where technique made such leaps.
Nor was his journey broadcast on the news.
Against sadness.

Happiness or joy is hard to find
When we rest, the News preys on our minds
Yet some are cold towards the slaughtered priest
His nose a beak of bone in old face lined
Now Muslims go to Mass and join Christ’s feast
Against sadness.

What rages in the mind make men kill thus?
In many wars the innocents fare worse.
But these are our near neighbours so we weep
And wonder how to end the frightening curse
The sins we once committed hold us deep
We hold our hands out wanting to be nursed
Against sadness

An interview with Wendy Cope

Photo0316.jpghttps://www.poetryarchive.org/interview/wendy-cope-interview

 

“What do you see as the role of humour in poetry?

I don’t set out to write humorous poems it’s just sometimes my sense of humour gets into them – well quite often. As a reader I suppose I laugh when I recognise something – I think laughter often is when you recognise something is true but you’d never actually allowed yourself to think that or you’d never heard it put quite so well. I think it’s possible for a poem to be funny and serious at the same time and I get very annoyed with the assumption that if a poem is funny then it can’t be saying anything important and deeply felt. Some of my poems are just playful and could accurately be described as ‘light verse’ but I think in a lot of my poems, although there’s humour in them, they are saying something that matters and something that’s deeply felt and I don’t think…I think those things can co-exist in the same poem.”