https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2025/jan/23/secret-lowry-gravedigger-eric-tucker-northern-life-factory-pub?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

Pray father give me your blessing

Oh we don’t do confessions anymore and the Catholic church.

I don’t care what other people do I want to confess my sins now.

Oh well if you insist carry on but you’re supposed to be in the confessional box so I won’t know who you are

Oh don’t worry about that.

Well what have you done wrong?

I used the wrong cutlery when I went to a meal in a hotel with some clients but that’s not a sin is it?

Well it could be a sin if you did it to try to humiliate somebody even to humiliate yourself.

But why would I want to humiliate myself?

Well you know people are very strange and many people are cruel to themselves

Well that is me something to think about. Making myself suffer all these years thinking it was a good thing and now I find it’s a sin.

Any other sins?

Well I need to look at a list really because I probably haven’t heard of some of them for example adultery.

Well you must have heard of it otherwise you wouldn’t have said it would you?

Very true but so many years I was puzzled about what it was I thought it was something that adults did which in one sense was true but I didn’t realize it was anything to do with sex.

Well what else could people vdo that was wicked?

They could hit somebody or swear at somebody or steal the housekeeping money from the wife’s purse

Why would you give your wife  housekeeping money and then steal it back?

Well you wanted her to think that you were generous so you will give her the money but then in the night you could steal it back and she wouldn’t know that it was you

So it’s a combination of deceit and lying and theft my goodness in this carries on I’ll have to take you to the police station

The police weren’t bothered about this sort of trivia not when we’ve got young children being murdered in a dancing class.

Yes I do see what you mean nevertheless the existence of greater evil does not give us licence to commit smaller evils

Now do you repent of these sins?

Yes I do I agree it’s very wrong because it made my wife very unhappy and although it wasn’t a adultery in the sexual sense nevertheless it was very bad to do that to an adult especially while I’m supposed to love.

Well do you love her?

Yes when I’m feeling alright I do but when I’m feeling bad because I’ve lost my job or I’ve been gambling and bu lost money there then it’s harder too love anyone even my own children because my feelings of guilt and horror are too strong for me to be able to focus on anybody else.

Well if you don’t feel that you can stop doing these things then we’ll have to find someone to help you. There are places where gamblers can get help for example.

But suppose I don’t want to go

In that case you’re making yourself more likely to do bad things and to harm your family and other people

Yes it all seems so easy just talking to you here but when it comes to the crunch it is hard

But you see this is how you show your love for your family and your friends by being brave enough to get help for your weaknesses which otherwise will harm them not to mention harming yourself but that’s for you to think about

Alright I will absolve you from your sins as long as you promise me that you will never do these things again.

Yes I am very thankful I spoke to you. I know definitely will get help if I find I’m getting tempted too much.

Very well my child.

I’m not really your child am I m after all you are a Catholic priest

No you’re not my child but I was married at one time and my wife died so I decided I would enter the religious life.

Do you think that was a good idea?

Yes I think so because I can help people who are in a sense like my children would have been in my wife hadn’t died and so I feel I’m using my paternal feelings and instincts to make society better. You can’t deny that God will be pleased if society gets better

I suppose that’s true but there’s so much badness.

Just start small that’s all you have to do. We might be weak but we can all do small things.

And so  say all of us

Mioaw

Snow clouds hang like canopies forlorn,
Tinged with grey from lack of proper care,
While from the Channel sing the dread foghorns

Sailors in the night long for new dawn
Fear boats of refugees may still sail there
Snow clouds hang like canopies well torn

A dinghy holds the Saviour lately born
There is no space on earth safe from great fear
F rom the Channel sigh the families drowned

From maternal’ space, Jesu is torn
His father holds his arms around those dear
Snow clouds hang, are lacy wings no more

The hearts of British ” natives” have turned sour
Into Jesu’s side we thrust our spears
Tune the channel.Requiems need scores

All lives now, and all of time is here
Do not mistake the song of silent choirs.
Snow clouds hang like canopies forlorn,
While in the Channel, reckless are the horns

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/michael-longley

I

Known for using classical allusions to cast provocative light on contemporary concerns—including Northern Ireland’s “Troubles”—Longley’s poetry is also marked by sharp observation of the natural world, deft use of technique, and deeply felt emotion. His debut volume, No Continuing City (1969), heralded the arrival of a new voice from a region which had already produced recognized talents like Seamus Heaney and Derek Mahon. Longley’s early influences were English poets like Philip Larkin, Louis MacNeice, World War I poets, as well as masters from the classical tradition. The critic Langdon Hammer has described Longley’s poems as masterpieces of “lucidity, economy, sincerity … by means of meticulous, unpretentious technique.” When asked in a 1998 interview about the formal discipline that helps him produce four- and two-line poems, Longley replied, “Was it Tennyson who said that a perfect lyric inscribes the shape of an S? That sense of a gesture, you know, the way you use your hand if you’re bowing, if you’re reaching out to shake somebody’s hand, if you’re going to stroke a cat, if you’re holding a woman’s hand to take her on to the dance floor.”

Longley’s work engages diverse subjects, including Homeric literature, the landscape of Carrigskeewaun, jazz, Walter Mitty, and the politics of Northern Ireland. On the public and political responsibilities of being a Northern Irish poet, he has commented, “Though the poet’s first duty must be to his imagination, he has other obligations—and not just as a citizen. He would be inhuman if he did not respond to tragic events in his own community, and a poor artist if he did not seek to endorse that response imaginatively.” Reviewing his Selected Poems (1993), critic Fran Brearton praised in particular Longley’s more political poems, noting his “use of a compassionate yet unsentimental voice, and an attention to detail which restores specificity at a point in history when it is most in danger of being lost in abstraction—numbers, dates, death-tolls counted beyond comprehension.”

Longley is married to the critic Edna Longley. They live in Belfast, Ireland.

Poems by Michael Longley

• The Design
• The Quilt

See All Poems by 

This wonderful poet from Northern Ireland has died aged 85

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/michael-longley

“All shall be well,and all manner of things shall be well” St Julian of Norwich

Trust the unknown force that grew you, From the joining of two cells.

Act of love, of mutual giving,

Created you,a brand new self.

Trust the dark,the unseen aspects

Of the life we all must live.

Trust that there is wisdom elsewhere,

To your emptiness to give.

Wait in patience for the time

When inspiration comes at last

Trust in darkness,silence,

lowness.

Opposition forms the cross.

Pain is bearable in lowness,

Like the worm in  earth I dwell.

When I look I see the sunrise

And I trust all shall be well.

The blank paged notebooks where you used to write
First with pencil then with ballpoint pen
The Freeling novels you read in the night

These special objects bring you to my sight
I see your face, you disappear again
To blank paged notebooks where you used to write

The reading lamp showed in its small clear light
Your telephone, your desk, your writing plan
The Freeling novels you read in the night

My heart feels strange, my feelings re- ignite
The fires of love quelled by the sudden rain
Oh, blank paged notebooks where you used to write

I did not let you go without a fight
But once accepted, I endured the pain
I read the books that you read in the night

The force that makes the wheat produce its grain
Also kills as freely as blood stains
In blank paged notebooks where you used to write
Where do you read now in endless night?

With gladness all our hearts are touched

When small flowers rise from living dust

When butterflies grow warm and live

When long striped bees with sun arrive

Yet all is slow and nothing’s rushed

But throw off darkness like a crust.

As with the sun each person’s  blessed

We heave away long words contrived

To win  sweet praise from dull old minds

With gladness

Our hearts expand within our chests

The heart will beat  the mind at best

No more with number games derived

Our eyes look out at what’s alive

With gladness

My aunt looked more lik mother than  mother did herself

She was not averse to smiling and using emotional wealth

Her eyes were blue like summer especially when she  smiled

Her hair was brown and curly, but never excessively styled

Her arms were plump and rounded and so they matched her face.

How I longed to lose myself in her deep embrace.

Her husband was on the railways he never earned that much

She brought him just two children they lived on tea and cake

She had not got much money but sheb knew very well how to bake

She never knew I loved her so, that was my mistake

She looked quite like my mother but alas she was my aunt.

We never shared our feelings. this is my lament

Our brother, Aneurin Bevan,  we can feel your pain

There is no fun,  what will be done

On earth, especially in Britain?

Give us this day our daily bread, save us from 1 losing our free bus passes

Forgive us our mistakes as we forgive those who mistake us

We  unconsciously wanted the kingdom  the power suits and the glory

Forgive us our naivety,

Save us from our own evil

Amen

In the haunted pub
We ate hot food and wondered
What is common sense?

In the sky ,snow hung
The  park was  icy and black
The farm was quiet

What is common? Sense?
What have we lost since that time?
Now we live nonsense.

Where is the humour?
The wronged kindness of  nonsense
The futility

Who says what is true?
Who speaks what is  silent , lost?
Who is the channel?

What is true has left.
“Maybe” hangs from black branches
Like dead fruit or  leaf

The autumn  orange
The senselessness of speeches
The withering   glance

The edge  of our  land
Borders are  more anguished
Cannot connect us

New laws and rules
Trial  by separation
The barbed rust   pierces

There is no heartland
There is no inside at all
Nowhere to  live well

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2010/04/humor-and-poetry

Extract:

In 1993, I took a left turn one day out of my MFA program and found myself at the National Poetry Slam in San Francisco. There I discovered several poets who were funny for the sake of being funny. Particularly Hal Sirowitz from New York (“don’t stick your arm out the window, mother said” and Matt Cook from Milwaukee (“it was easy to write the Great American Novel, back when there were only five American novels”) Both poets initially delighted me and confounded me: There are no similes, a voice in my head said. What would Tom Lux (my first teacher) say? the voice continued. Despite my resistance, I believe those poets gave me a kind of permission to explore humor a little more vigorously in my second book, The Forgiveness Parade (1998), for “I thought the word loin and the word lion were the same thing. I thought celibate was a kind of fish”. Perhaps in that book there were places where I was too vigorous in my pursuit: looking back there are a few poems that are just a little too jokey somehow, a little one-dimensional.

I am becoming aware of how some humor can set a roadblock for the poetic speaker, making it impossible for the speaker to get back to a serious place. And how some other (less frequent) uses of humor can leave that door open. I want to leave that door open

‘No person ever looks miserable who feels that he has the right to make a demand on you’, Goethe once remarked.

Evoking the beauty of the stars far away,
I like to watch geese at the end of the day.
Patterns and poems disclose other worlds.
Feel the hand of a baby with the fingers all curled

See the trust and the smile when the mother is home,
To create entire worlds for the one she has borne.
For chaos and panic or not far away
Even in adults who don’t care to say.

The little hands touch me so deeply, so well;
How come the world is diving to hell?
How can we kill little wains by the score
Was it for this that I opened your door?

Was it for this that love electrified us,
And we were lost in each other, in the holy white dove.
Was it for war that we gave love our wombs
Making more soldiers and filling more tombs?

The bombs are a-loading they’re having parades.
It’s not North Korea, it’s Washington, dude.
Let the tanks roll on Corrie and the Bedouin tribes.
Let the allies laugh blindly as the Lord Jesus dies.

O take me, dear mother.Please take me away
I can’t see no point in saying my prayers.
The leaders’ religions are making God frown.
The desert is empty, the tents all dragged down.

The centuries of living so free , so mobile;
The holy land blessing as they pause for while.
The little black tents like wombs of the night
Are all gone to shredders as we sing, Silent Night.

I had gone my ways assuming that it was my business in life to get things done. But now, deeper than all my practical ambitions and belief in action, was … the fact that the forms in which man expresses his sense of being alive are as powerful a force for change, though in a different way, than any deliberate attempt to get things done, because it is these which change men’s hearts—particularly one’s own heart. (E, 140)

The still small voice still speaks but we don’t hear

We have our headphones on when god is near

We must not miss the music nor the news

We must look at stats and likes and count the views

Yet I think we can be quite sincere.

The voice of Man or God can be revered

The still small voice.

And in the name of

privacy concealed

What is hidden  needs to be revealed

We think that God is powerful despite clues

He does not bomb the helpless for the News

Only when we listen are we healed

The still small voice

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/valzhyna-mort

Time will fell

A word in the sand…

At last a Peace Fire in the Riddle East.

The prisoners may be deceased

Human sacrifice when will it end?

God has fled

Too much blood shed

We’re not afraid just of bad things in our lives like losing people or treasures or jobs.

No we are not just afraid of the bad things but we’re also afraid of being overwhelmed by joy by beauty by love

We think we want love or to be knocked out with joy

But often the only way this can happen is when we are not expecting it

Is this why dating websites don’t work very well?

I’ve been overwhelmed several times by the stunning beauty of buildings like St Paul’s Cathedral.

That happened as I was in a car in the city but I’d lost track of where exactly we were and so I was not expecting to see a floodlit building when I did

It was a marvelous experience but I wonder how often I have blocked things off because either I think I know what it is I’ve already seen that I don’t need to look at it again

Oh because in some way it’s fearful as well. I think Westminster Abbey is fearful inside because it’s so massive.

Could it be the same as people?

We do and we do not wish to be overwhelmed by people.

Also is it just the English who don’t like to talk about such emotions?

Maybe not. Maybe it’s modern life we don’t have time to be knocked out by something beautiful and  be  lying on the ground looking up at the cathedral, when we should be at a meeting or during the supermarket shopping etc

York is said to be the most beautiful city in Europe or one of the most beautiful but I know someone who lives there and she said to me one day

Oh, do you get used to it you don’t really notice it.

How can we stop getting like that so that we can see at least some things a fresh with new eyes?

Until it’s happened to you, you don’t know that it’s possible.

It could happen in a bad way as Hitler was said to have hypnotic power. I don’t have enough evidence of this but it would make things more easy to understand if you’ve been overwhelmed by the evil in somebody else it might kill you or it might make you worship them.

That’s the trouble with political parties.

They themselves or others want to know absolutely everything clearly what are they going to do what are they not going to do but surely they will have to see this country with New eyes hopefully a labour government is more likely to have sympathy for the poor. But they’re clone there’s no point having sympathy unless you’ve got the power to do something to make the Econony stronger, to make it grow.

Maybe we don’t want to think certain thoughts. We don’t want to think that there’s no magic one that can be waved after 14 years of austerity and civil conflict

It’s good to be able to be shocked by what you perceive.

It’s not good to be cynical. Because they’re new do not actually want to know or to see how things could be different because we claim nothing is any good anyway

Conversation is a form of play

We take our turns to let the other say

When we pray we hope that God will hear

We send our spoken music without fear

If no one responds what shall we do?

The mouth turns dry our lips are sealed  with glue

I wonder who we talk to as we moan

Repeating cliches drop like  dead grey stones.

You think you speak to me but you are wrong

I hear no music and I hear no song

It’s hard to leave a gap for others words

when we fear their sharpness like small swords

But in the end we must hear or die.

Yet if none will speak they tell no lie

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2025/jan/18/66-days-to-rediscover-boredom-how-long-does-it-take-to-change-a-habit?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

Dear Annie

I am so sorry that I have to email you rather than writing a letter by hand and since I have to dictate it it is probably going to be full of arrows.

I will try to edit it before I send but one is often blind to one zone mistakes.

It is like when I dictator poem I don’t notice the areas in it until I have published it on my blog which is most unfortunate for my reputation of meticulous care and precision although to be honest that’s not really suitable for poetry is it?

It shows that we don’t see what’s there but we only see what we’re expecting to see and in some cases this can produce a terrible result

Ironically now I’m hoping for some humorous mistakes to come into this letter it’s being done much more accurately than normal I wonder why that is question mark is it because I’m speaking more rapidly or is it just shake her incidents?

Sheer coincidence

When there is an area like the end of the last sentence it’s interesting that the line that’s typed rhymes with the one that I own dictators but it does not come out the same as what I have dictated usually

So this translation this is not done word by word but by the overall meaning of this paragraph even sometimes you forget to the end of a paragraph and then you look up and you see the first sentence you wrote is being changed even though that’s the correct one

So then you have to go back an older at the beginning and then you don’t know where you will end up do you when you change the beginning will you have to rewrite the entire thing?

I am disappointed because there are not enough mistakes no and I was rely on the mistakes to make this letter numerous but still what is humor two and the numerate?

Well if only all the population were literate things will be much worse because the people who can’t read at the moment are prevented from reading the sun the daily mail the telegraph and any other newspaper you like to mention and if they can’t read then they can’t read online so they can’t look at Facebook not that I hate Facebook but it depends on what you’re doing with it xxx

It’s very sad that people use Facebook to get the news not realizing that the news is not the news it’s a selection of news or all of lies who knows but when something is in print people believe it

There’s something about the written word that seems to have more authority than the spoken word is that why people think the Bible is the literal word of god?

Practices the little word of god

Perhaps it is the little word of god or the literal word of god or the little word of somebody else who is not named m

I can’t remember now why I began to write you so I think I better stop for the moment and I’ll do this tomorrow morning when I’m fresh. At least I’m with freshfield and I am at the moment

I sent him a sleeping a lot now I seem to be sleeping a lot but I don’t know why unless it’s the winter or perhaps I’m beginning to recover from my serious infection at last but whatever sleep we get wood we ever be satisfied

Because we can’t control it or at least if we try to conserve it it makes it worse

When I was young I never thought about it I would get into bed and go to sleep then I would woken up and it was time to get up

But nowadays some people start thinking in the afternoon I wonder if I’m going to sleep tonight and what will I do tomorrow if I’m tired and even if they’re waking up one hour earlier than usual but then start worrying about the fact that I’ve had one hour less sleep and they would like

We can’t control most we can’t control most things in life especially with regard to our bodies so we have to trust them

If you have good parents and you feel secure then you will see sleep will be welcome to you and it will be easy to get but when you are older and you feel more insecure then you want to be sure or something but you can’t be.

Search for the better not even to think about it

Sincerely

A well wisher

https://www.thetimes.com/article/1718ef98-60a5-11e6-a879-604d7c629235?shareToken=7d20c38f585de6b7d679e78f7b393a6d

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2025/jan/16/everything-we-were-taught-about-success-is-wrong-how-to-find-true-fulfilment-in-your-life-and-career?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

.  From time and place and season I feel lost,

Disorientated , missing tracks well worn.

Do not suppose I’m unaware of cost,

Nor label me with epithets of scorn.

For usual paths lead to the usual place

. The safest way to live and perhaps to die.

But wandering through the woods I find new space

and in wild grasses with the fox I lie.

Through distant trees, i see a way to go

As narrow as a slit in pallid stonm

This is my destined way, I seem to know

And courage rises even as I moan.

Remember when we’re lost , we may then find Another way,a place,another mind.

When red sun drops and cooling night rolls in
Darkness masks both danger and our vision
Ancient minds fear day won’t come again
Courage for the delicate seems thin
We wrestle with our indecision
When low sun drops and a new night rolls in
But now , fresh stricken by the dread of sin
Who protects us from derision?
Our ancient mind fears day won’t come again
As we sleep we’re entertained within
Bold dreams squander all illusion
When sunset comes the darkest night rolls in
In  dreams we see  new life  arising
Then fancy turns to full communion
The ancient mind dreads day won’t come again
Despite such angst, our sacred life began
When sperm leaped up in proud confusion.
When deep sun dropped and a new night rolled in
All human hearts cried,Day shall come again”