I saw your soul like that of a wild bird
Someone other guided me to act
Deep inside my voice had been unlocked
I sang the psalms and then a lullaby
Not aware in thought that you would die.
I fed you with a teaspoon the mashed fish
From a plate as good as one might wish
Like a little child you tried your best
You winked at me and gazed like one who’s blessed
You sat up with a brighter face at last
Then lay back and God knows all the rest
Oh, don’t go yet ,my darling,I am here
The floor of heaven came down among my tears
Made of sumptuous satin golden,dear.
For a little moment it hung low
Then it rose and took you in its glow
I saw your soul like that of a wild bird
Taken by the Power who sent the Word
A sheet of tears fell down from my closed eyes
It’s hard ,too hard when those you love must die
Share this:
Just watch a single leaf as it unfurls
What kind of camera shows the changing light
Upon the yellow blossom as it waves?
The wind has dropped ,the breeze is here, but slight
And on the flowers I in languor gaze
The red leaves of the acers now unfurl-
Two side by side but different in their glow.
The light accentuates them as they curl
Gives them time to unwind and be slow.
Without the breeze the colour varies less.
It’s flatter, less like Monet, yet still bright.
And as a grey cloud sags across the West
It puts my dreams of colour into flight.
Yearn not for special tools to catch the world.
Just watch a single leaf as it unfurls
Share this:
The Irish border with English police WTF
‘Bloody hell’: English police could patrol Northern Ireland border after no-deal Brexit
Despite a wealth of history suggesting that it’s a very bad idea, UK politicians have reportedly devised detailed plans to deploy English police officers in Northern Ireland in the event of a no-deal Brexit.
Share this:
The heron seems to smile
The heron seems to smile upon its prey
Why did God make this bird be that way?
Could it live on grass and bits of moss?
I guess it is the protein it would miss.
We do much worse things than do the birds
We damage other people by our words.
We also steal more money from the poor
Even when the hangman’s at the door.
No,I don’t feel guilty being rich
It seems that I use money as a crutch
I’ll give my winter coats to Charity
I’ll dress by drying leaves fresh off a tree
I’ll get a little couch inside the shed
And hear the beetles laughing in my bed
I guess a beetle will not know my name
Just like men, oh, dear, are they the same?
Share this:
Poetry and the Reformation
Photo by Mike Flemming copyright
https://www.cairn-int.info/article-E_RHR_2261_0032–from-reformation-to-renaissance.htm
Extract
Two undeniable facts remain: the Anglican Reformation did not actually lead to any form of poetic engagement nor did it produce the sort of politically inspired poetry that is associated with the French epic poems of Agrippa d’Aubigné.[1] One of the rare exceptions was a sonnet by Milton “On…[1] It was not until the beginning of the seventeenth century that the first poems bearing the spiritual influences of the Reformation appeared. This is a result of the transposition whereby England is neither the birthplace nor the promised land of the Reformation, but a significant hub where the continental prototypes were adapted under Anglicanism and subsequently exported in its new idiosyncratic form to the New World, the chosen land of the Puritans. A complete overview of the subject would also include the Puritan literature of New England,[2] See Perry Miller, ed., The American Puritans. Their…[2] but this would merely highlight the rarity of poetry amongst a generation of pragmatic colonists, who were far more preoccupied with establishing permanent settlements than making an epic gesture that would aggrandize them in the eyes of all posterity.
6
However, back in England at the beginning of the seventeenth century, poetry was undergoing a reformation. The long reign of Elizabeth I (1558–1603) was conducive to political stability, to the flourishing of the arts, and a literature enriched by court poets such as Philip Sydney (1554–1586) and Edmund Spenser (1552–1599), who embroidered versions around the myth of the Virgin Queen that were both epic (The Faerie Queene, 1590–1599) and pastoral (Arcadia, 1590). At court there was a throng of fine and erudite minds whose rhetorical education drew not only on the Greco-Roman culture brought back into favor by the humanists, but also on the Bible, the core text for the schools of rhetoric based on the reformation of knowledge initiated by John Colet (1466–1519, a friend of Erasmus and Thomas More, and founder of St. Paul’s School in London). Many of these poets were no longer alive when the translation of the King James Bible was published in 1611 (Sydney died in 1586, Spenser in 1599). Nevertheless, as humanists, the poets were highly knowledgeable and were able to translate, gloss, or imitate the Psalms without fail.
7
By the time the great metaphysical poets (Donne, Herbert, Vaughan, Crashaw) provided spirituality in English poetry, with its real momentum during the first years of the seventeenth century, these rhetorical exercises around the Psalms had already become great classics, thus allowing a young poet to shape his style through his juvenilia, before embarking on original creative works. Thus, the English were initiated at the same school as Racan, Corneille, and Racine, or again Gryphius and Angelus Silesius. In addition to Sydney, it is worth noting: the Scotsman and Lutheran George Buchanan (1506–1582), author of a Latin Paraphrase of all the Psalms (written in 1566), a work which was re-published twenty-six times in the course of one hundred and fifty years; the court poet Thomas Carew (1594–1640) who wrote his paraphrases in English; and the sacred epigrams rendered in Latin by two metaphysical poets, the Anglican George Herbert (1593–1633: Passio Discerpta – Rendings from the Passion, and Lucus – the Sacred Grove) and the Puritan-born Catholic Richard Crashaw (1612–1649, Epigrammatum Liber, 1634). All these examples are in fact more interesting from a linguistic rather than a stylistic point of view in that they are the last remnants of neo-Latin[3] See Pierre Laurens and Claudie Balavoine, ed., Musae…[3] literature of English origin. Having left these schoolboy exercises behind, a seventeenth century English poet would henceforth write in his mother tongue, and especially so when he sought to move nearer to God.
8
Why then were these poets so drawn to the Psalms? It was not particular to the English, but to the very essence of the Reformation in its most profound form. By making the human voice heard with its full spectrum of contradictory emotions, they opened the way for lyricism, which had already been heartily encouraged by the devotia moderna, promoting the individual piety of the layman through the ideal of the imitation of Christ (Low Countries, fourteenth century). Subjectivity then would know no bounds. It would be possible for every human being to seek in the voice of David the accents that corresponded to his own voice and then to cry in wonder: “Oh, to vex me, contraries meet in one,”[4] John Donne (1572–1631), Divine Poems, vol. 1, No. 19,…[4] and from this torment draw almost unlimited poetic inspiration.
9
Amongst human nature’s innumerable contradictions carried within this voice, there is the clash of a resounding paradox: to allow humans to speak enables the voice of God to be heard more than ever. What the Reformation poet seeks above all is a dialogue. Perhaps it is the fear of being crushed by the Calvinistic theory of double predestinationism, which would have God isolated in a state of transcendence so distant, indeed so remote, that any communication with Him would be threatened. God would surely then become a complete alterity, to be approached only with fear and trembling (Luther), for this God might only manifest himself in the form of some spiritual death sentence, like the prophetic writing on the wall telling Balthazar of his imminent end.[5] See Rembrandt, The Writing on the Wall, The National…[5] The hope of salvation (revealed in the inamissible grace of the conversion) transforms a person into an anxious lookout, forced to watch relentlessly lest he be blind or deaf to the signs that God may send to make known his will.
Share this:
The soul becomes transparent as it sails
As the heart grows weaker, memory fails
The home familiar made itself feel strange
Although he smiled at me, he was too pale
As the heart grows weaker, so perception fails
The soul becomes transparent as it sails
Through the heavens with its candle flame
As the heart grows weaker, memory fails
The home once known, felt odd, he fled his cage.
Share this:
Stan and his mistress
Stan is feeling low and sad
His good wife Mary has gone mad.
Stan is feeling Guilt and Fear
He knows now that it’s wrong to leer.
Stan has been a naughty boy.
He let a mistress with him toy.
But Mary found his mobile phone
When she was at home all alone.
His mistress lived next door to him
Which made it simpler for to sin.
While Mary worked hard teaching maths
The lovers lingered in the bath.
He was meant to do the chores.
Chopping wood and painting doors.
He had to bake the cakes and bread.
So the household would be fed.
But Stan into temptation fell,
As did his neighbour Anne as well.
They enjoyed so many hugs,
And lying down on woolly rugs.
So, Mary, she was most appalled.
She screamed and yelled and cried and bawled.
So Stan has gone for therapy.
What sort of changes will he see?
He lies down on a long brown couch.
Behind which the therapist crouches.
He says to Stan,”now let it rip.
I want your mouth to be unzipped.”
Was your mother kind to you?
Did she train you on the loo?
Did she wash yopur mouth with soap?
Was she prone to sulk and mope?
Stan thought this man verbose.
So he kept his own lips close.
When he got the bill to pay.
He told the therapist,”No way”
“You have been the one to talk.”
He glared like a crusading hawk.
“You should pay me,not I pay you!”
What was his therapist going to do!
“I’m glad you’ve managed to speak out.
Your sanity is not in doubt.
I’ll tear the bill up for this week.
And next time I want you to speak.”
So Stan unleashed his every thought
Just as the Freudians once had taught.
I don’t know how he feels inside.
But language is a useful guide.
And as he sees his therapist,
His mistress is not greatly missed.
He wanted more attention,
So now his bad ways are all gone!
He got a part time job as well.
So he could pay his therapy bill.
Mary is still teaching maths.
And now it’s she with whom he baths!
Advertisements
Share this:
He helped the homeless, addicts and the scared
My many sins in marriage were disclosed
He taught me Chess,I won, he was annoyed
Yet did not tell me till his dying days
He must have sulked to cover his dismay
All at once he poured out my mistakes
I was too brilliant for a man unwise
Who married me because I had blue eyes
I knew the villain when we watched TV
Now I see the true villain was me.
Yet he seemed most learned as he spoke
His weighed his words that helped so many folk
While I struggled teaching maths, it’s hard
He helped the homeless, addicts and the scared
Then I cooked his dinner, fed the cat
Fit for nothing much,I darned my hat
Now all that I assumed for forty years
Hid his anger when I thought he cared
Was our love a play within a play
I held his dearest hands, he passed away
Share this:
Mother’s song
He smiled at me so broadly I was mazed
He thought I was his mother,not the case
He asked me where I’d spent my honeymoon
I don’t know.Oh Scarborough,flowers bloomed
Why did your boss sport a wooden leg?
He got in in the war, he lost his head
Mother you look stunning, on he smiled
Where is Dad? I’m sorry, he has died
So why have you not married since that time?
He gazed on me entranced, and not by rhymes
No-one ‘s asked me yet;he seemed surprised
Never mind that, is the washing dry?
Mother, now you ‘re blessed with big blue eyes
I felt so sad,I would have sobbed and cried.
If it made him happy,was I wrong
Being like a mother till the end?
Share this:
Marriage holds a breeze but not a storm
Would you be more gentle,dear,I cried
She’d pushed my head as if it were a stone
I only want my hair washed, not to die
And BTW why are you using Tide
Shampoo is much kinder,on I moaned~
Could you be more gentle,dear,I cried
I ‘m glad you don’t use Ariel, suicide
She wrote about the Moon, her love and home
Did she want her hair washed, not to die?
In Spain she bought sardines so she could fry
In the wilds of Devon left alone
Ted was getting famous, not his wife
I re-enter time ,I let her dye
My hair is purple rinsed from the white foam
Did Plath want her hair dyed, not to die?
Marriage holds a breeze but not a storm
The rose had pricked her finger with its thorn
Could we be more gentle if we tried?
We all need human love or we will die
Share this:
He kissed my hand,I knew what was afoot
He kissed my hand,I knew what was afoot
He followed me on Facebook every day
I get these butterflies inside my gut
I never fall in love with porn or smut
Or men who ask me out to make me pay
He kissed my hand, I knew what was afoot
We went to Lyons cafe, it was shut
We fried an egg and ate it in our way
I got those butterflies inside my gut
I could have made it funny, should I flirt?
He ate my buttered toast like it was prey
He kissed my hand, I knew what was afoot
I did not lead him on, for it might hurt
He had to be the one who led the way
I got no butterflies inside my gut
He kissed my hand and asked me to a Play
He wrote it all himself, my fiance!
He kissed my hand,I knew what was afoot
I tell a lie, I never said I would.
Share this:
In my heart I still yearn for his gaze
In my heart I still yearn for his gaze
In which I lived, felt real and was engaged
Critical, he did not always praise.
In my soul I still desire his gaze
Driving through bright summer fields all day
Flowers exquisite yanked me from my page
In my heart I still yearn for his gaze
In which I lived, felt real , and was engaged
Share this:
The laws of the exuberant middle
There must be shades of grey in human life
Or shades of blue that we see in the sky
Not I am right and you are wrong, not strife
If I’m black does that mean you are white?
You may be grey or beige, oh, laugh and cry
There must be shades of grey in human life.
Not every man is well loved by a wife
Some are deft and some will never try
I ‘m both right and wrong, there is no strife
No woman loves all men, however lithe.
Our purpose is indeed a need to pry
There must be shades of grey in human life.
As in connubial bliss the lovers writhe
Others filled with hatred want to die
I am right and you are wrong, that’s twice
I don’t write a memoir, I ‘m dead shy
Yet I’m as bold as brass when all’s awry
There must be colours softer than straight lines
Using fuzzy logic, let’s not lie
Share this:
There are limits
Share this:
Look at me and read me like a book
|
|
Share this:
Enigmatic like a midday dream
The fallen sun makes black the trees that lean
Its liquid centre thrown up wild and bright
Enigmatic like a midday dream
The pinky edges shift in sun’s bent beams
Do they convey the aura of the light?
The fallen sun makes black the trees that lean
I wonder where my haunted eyes have been
In the forests deeper than the night
Enigmatic like a midday dream
Schizoid, lacking affect, a slit scream
Destroying what is left of love and sight
The fallen sun makes black the trees that lean
Here we saw wild primrose by the stream
The castle of the Tudors soft in blight
Enigmatic like a midday dream
Bewildered people kill their own insight
Toss their fears , into the weak to bite
The failing sun as pure as boiling screams
Enigmatic are our midnight dreams
Share this:
Just be kind
The Tilley lamp and its dramatic hiss
Affected me like clocks do in the night
I crouched beneath the blankets in my fear
Red light from its centre pained my sight
Feverish, alone and still a child
I lay in darkness with no mother there
Tense as if to run when lions came
Pretending to be dead , that might deter.
I had a dream when they surrounded me
They spoke in human voices, she is dead
I froze into paralysis and fear
My heart was thumping like a lump of lead
Children’s fears destroy their peace of mind
To the young, we must at least be kind
Share this:
Poetry and social change
Extract
On Poetry & Social Change: Claudia Rankine Discusses Adrienne Rich at New Yorker
In the most recent New Yorker, Claudia Rankine discusses Adrienne Rich’simpact on her poetry, and explores Rich’s lifelong engagement with literature and social justice movements. More:
In answer to the question “Does poetry play a role in social change?,” Adrienne Rich once answered:
Yes, where poetry is liberative language, connecting the fragments within us, connecting us to others like and unlike ourselves, replenishing our desire. . . . In poetry words can say more than they mean and mean more than they say. In a time of frontal assaults both on language and on human solidarity, poetry can remind us of all we are in danger of losing—disturb us, embolden us out of resignation.
There are many great poets, but not all of them alter the ways in which we understand the world we live in; not all of them suggest that words can be held responsible. Remarkably, Adrienne Rich did this, and continues to do this, for generations of readers.
Rich’s desire for a transformative writing that would invent new ways to be, to see, and to speak drew me to her work in the early nineteen-eighties, while I was a student at Williams College. Midway through a cold and snowy semester in the Berkshires, I read for the first time James Baldwin’s “The Fire Next Time,” from 1962, and two collections by Rich, her 1969 “Leaflets” and her 1971–1972 “Diving into the Wreck.” In Baldwin’s text I underlined the following:
Most people guard and keep; they suppose that it is they themselves and what they identify with themselves that they are guarding and keeping, whereas what they are actually guarding and keeping is their system of reality and what they assume themselves to be. One can give nothing whatever without giving oneself—that is to say, risking oneself.
Share this:
The lore and lure of numbers like strange fish
Infinities of different orders point
Like signposts on tbe hills where walkers pass
To places where just gods were pleased to haunt
The common sense reproach will ever taunt
Those who sail on other seas unclassed
Infinities of different orders point
We are not the same in what we want
We have an image of our secret wish
In places where the magic gods would haunt
In a little line we cannot count
The many numbers as they jostle past
Infinities of different orders want.
Do not be afraid, we were not taught
The lore and lure of numbers like strange fish
In little ponds where gods hung out to haunt
The goat herds counted flocks and just with this
The transcendental numbers fly up in a mass
Infinities of different orders point
To numbers even G-d can never count
Share this:
Different sizes of infinity
https://www.businessinsider.com/the-different-sizes-of-infinity-2013-11?r=US&IR=T
Extract
Infinity is a powerful concept. Philosophers, artists, theologians, scientists, and people from all walks of life have struggled with ideas of the infinite and the eternal throughout history.
Infinity is also an extremely important concept in mathematics. Infinity shows up almost immediately in dealing with infinitely large sets — collections of numbers that go on forever, like the natural, or counting numbers: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and so on.
Infinite sets are not all created equal, however. There are actually many different sizes or levels of infinity; some infinite sets are vastly larger than other infinite sets.
Share this:
She lied on the sofa
She lied on the sofa
No. she lay on the sofa.
She got laid on the sofa?
I think she did lie
She had allies on the sofa
But did she lie down?
Well,we can’t lie up.
Yet some lie their way up but you don’t need to lie to go down
Oh,I shall have to lie down myself but not on myself
I’ll lie low
Why, are you hiding?
I just can’t lie.I am hiding from G-d
So your words are your song?
I like psalms without stings
Allah is Lord
Songs without words.
That is the end of today’s lesson from Oxford UK
a
Share this:
Brown studies
I wonder how I’d feel from day to day If I knew not prime numbers and their play If I’d never heard of “e” and “pi” And still believed that God lived in the sky Even though I’ve not done maths for years I fall into brown studies next to squares Ellipses please me with their enclosed space Sequential numbers tilt my mind to grace. Calculus is nonsense in its way Where nothing re-appears to our dismay It comes and goes like waves do on the beach Where men would stand up on a box to preach. Ah,shall I never know my other life Where to the grace of words I would be wife?
Share this:
Gravity
Oh, do not let the sun fall in despair
As desolation haunts our souls today
Leaving us in darkness cold and bare
Can’t some God or other make life fair?
I bet they’re angry , we no longer pray
Oh, do not let the sun fall in despair
There is no father, mother anywhere
No priest to bless the house , its ghosts to lay
Leaving us in darkness cold and bare
I fear the sun is heavier than air;
Though what is Mass, some form of ecstasy?
Oh, do not let the sun fall in despair
Who holds up the pillars, who would dare
While scholars smile at such complexity?
All their minds are focused on the rare
The broken altars crack, whoever cares?
The Church has never been what Jesus saw
Oh, do not let our hearts fall to despair
Living in such darkness cold and bare
Share this:
The future is still fiction, if it’s there.
This is a terza rima
The little leaves are red brown in the sun
The branches turned out shapes are full of joy
Little glitters play on leaves for fun
Eden was not totally destroyed
We return there in these glances rare
As nature and our friendships we enjoy
Living now, we never should defer
The sights, the dreams we harbour every day
The future is still fiction, if it’s there.
The maple does not ask the quetion, why?
Seek meaning for its life and its affairs
Like it we must now live before we die
Share this:
Weapons of Lass Destruction
Compulsive Flirting Disorder Symphony
Theresa May Losing Certain Election Imitation Syndrome for Triangle and Drum
Underflirting and/or under talking Syndrome Quarte for piano and oboe
” Underwired Bra Accident Disorder” a new play by Miguel Strain
Shapewear Excessive Itch Disorder: latest writings of the nouveau cliches
Side Zip Trouser Stress Incontinence and its effect on schizophrenic cats
Lack of Public Conveniences Obsessive Anxiety Syndrome set to be played on a harp
Side Zip Trouser Lumbago Dances
Fear of Wearing Skirts Syndrome:Ballet Trouseau
Fear of Knicker Elastic Phobia and Rondeau in G minor
Fear of Wire coming out of Bra in Public : Concerto for three wire strung violas and gutted cello by Lady Katepotatos Ph.D [Clotsford and Lambridge]
Share this:
It couldn’t be done
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44314/it-couldnt-be-done
It Couldn’t Be Done
Somebody said that it couldn’t be done
But he with a chuckle replied
That “maybe it couldn’t,” but he would be one
Who wouldn’t say so till he’d tried.
So he buckled right in with the trace of a grin
On his face. If he worried he hid it.
He started to sing as he tackled the thing
That couldn’t be done, and he did it!
Somebody scoffed: “Oh, you’ll never do that;
At least no one ever has done it;”
But he took off his coat and he took off his hat
And the first thing we knew he’d begun it.
With a lift of his chin and a bit of a grin,
Without any doubting or quiddit,
He started to sing as he tackled the thing
That couldn’t be done, and he did it.
There are thousands to tell you it cannot be done,
There are thousands to prophesy failure,
There are thousands to point out to you one by one,
The dangers that wait to assail you.
But just buckle in with a bit of a grin,
Just take off your coat and go to it;
Just start in to sing as you tackle the thing
That “cannot be done,” and you’ll do it.
Share this:
The silent visions of the deepest nights
The secrets of the numbers are in sight
Patience and perception bring us near
The silent visions of the dreamsweet nights
Is there yet a growing sense of light
As we tiptoe through the maze in doubt and fear?
The secrets of the numbers are in sight
Yet overthinking , blindness, causes blight
The rose corrupted worms into ideas
The silent visions of the deepest nights
The panic fear, the sudden stormy flight
As into blackest woods the driver steers
The secrets of the numbers are alright
Missed out again, shall we make change or fight?
The guides unnumbered, different ways will veer
The awkward visions of the dreaming night
Give up your self,oh,care no more what’s here
In the depths his mighty words are spears
The secrets of the numbers have no site
Nor silent visions in the haunted night.
Share this:
Unelected Minister, Prime liar.
Some thinner branches tremble with desire
Reaching out beyond the shrub’s wide shape
The sun has drawn them up with its great fire
Yet, without learning, there is no Messiah.
No support exists, they sulk and drape
The thinner branches trembling with desire
To greatness and to height they had aspired
Now will they turn out sullen as they mope?
The sun has drawn them up with its great fire
Like the politicians who conspire
The European failure stole our hopes
Though little Hitlers tremble with desire
Unelected Minister, Prime liar.
Will he ever cross the final tape?
The sun has drawn Men up with its great fire.
As the West evolved through crime and rape
We were thought Enlightened in our scope
We loved the Inquisition, loved the fires
The gods have punished us and never tire.
Share this:
The phones are smarter than we are ourselves
I like to go out in the country to see lambs gambling in the meadows as the horses are racing all day.
I told a lie once.I said, I will when I get married.
I must make a will, so I am told.From what?
The sausages are rolling the pastry. They are just like pins.
I don’t know what language cows speak.Moo,moo.Metoo# I blame the paypal bulls,
The cats are at it now MioawMiaow2#.How did they l earn about unacceptable behaviour when they don’t even speak English or read the Telegraph?
Apparently our soles are black and desperately need someone who can dye for them
I believe in salvation as long as I can pick who gets it.Do you get that?
I’d prefer an immobile phone but who makes them?
Smartphones implies we are stupid,How did they know?
Share this:
The universal suffrage of the dark
Nothingness has caught me by the throat Tossed me to the innards of its prayer Joan of Arc unhorsed in a nightmare Burgundy makes offers for her coat When we’re real and know the here and now Do we entertain our thoughts and dare To let perception grow in all its flair Lamenting foreign insights we won’t know From the mountain, I see Windermere I see Coniston and Morecambe Bay I see sheep and flat green fields arrayed The shadows of the hills , the dread, the fear Where can we be now on this our March? The moon, the sky , the aluminium arc The universal suffrage of the dark The rights of strangers, the Triumphal Arch
How my heart speaks 