December 2004 - The Owl by Edward Thomas

This poem could perhaps be re-titled "Compassion" for it describes that very special stretching of the self in which we can encompass others and their suffering and feel it as our own. Compassion comes to Thomas as he revels in his comforts, brought to him by a single cry of an owl, taking him instantly back out into the cold winter night.

A poem to contemplate as we enjoy our Christmas season.

Downhill I came, hungry, and yet not starved,
Cold, yet had heat within me that was proof
Against the north wind; tired, yet so that rest
Had seemed the sweetest thing under a roof.

Then at the inn I had food, fire, and rest,
Knowing how hungry, cold, and tired was I.
All of the night was quite barred out except
An owl's cry, a most melancholy cry.

Shaken out long and clear upon the hill
No merry note, nor cause of merriment,
But one telling me plain what I escaped
And others could not, that night, as in I went.

And salted was my food, and my repose,
Salted and sobered too, by the bird's voice
Speaking for all who lay under the stars,
Soldiers and poor, unable to rejoice.

November 2004 - The Wood Fire by Ellen Sturgis Hooper

I found this gem of a poem hidden within the text of Thoreau's 'Walden'. So hidden is it in fact, that it is listed by many internet sources as actually written by Thoreau himself even though he clearly makes no claim to it.

This quibble aside, it is a beautiful poem which, as we begin once again to light the Padley Wood fires, is a pleasure to read as we warm our toes.

This bright wood-fire
So like to that which warmed and lit
My youthful days - how doth it flit
Back on the periods nigher,
Relighting and rewarming with its glow
The bright scenes of my youth - all gone out now.
How eagerly its flickering blaze doth catch
On every point now wrapped in time's deep shade,
Into what wild grotesqueness by its flash
And fitful chequering is the picture made!
When I am glad or gay,
Let me walk forth into the brilliant sun,
And with congenial rays be shone upon;
When I am sad, or thought-bewitched would be,
Let me glide forth in moonlight's mystery,
But never, while I live this changeful life,
This past and future with all wonders rife,
Never, bright flame, may be denied to me
Thy dear, life-imaging, close sympathy.
What but my hopes shot upward e'er so bright?
What but my fortunes sunk so low in night?

Why art thou banished from our hearth and hall,
Thou who art welcomed and beloved by all?
Was thy existence then too fanciful
For our life's common light, who are so dull?
Did thy bright gleam mysterious converse hold
With our congenial souls? secrets too bold?
Well, we are safe and strong, for now we sit
Beside a hearth where no dim shadows flit,
Where nothing cheers nor saddens, but a fire
Warms feet and hands - nor does to more aspire;
By whose compact, utilitarian heap
The present may sit down and go to sleep,
Nor fear the ghosts who from the dim past walked,
And with us by the unequal light of the old wood-fire talked.

October 2004 - Margaritae Sorori by W. E. Henley

We came across this poem in an old Penguin anthology we picked up for 50p from a second-hand bookshop in Hampstead. On leafing through the volume, these three beautiful stanzas leaped out. It is a poem which truly embodies peace, the peace of a life completed with a joyful satisfaction. Someone once said that we should go to our death as we go to our bed and Henley is saying just that.

A late lark twitters from the quiet skies:
And from the west,
Where the sun, his day's work ended,
Lingers as in content,
There falls on the old, grey city
An influence luminous and serene,
A shining peace.

The smoke ascends
In a rosy-and-golden haze. The spires
Shine and are changed. In the valley
Shadows rise. The lark sings on. The sun,
Closing his benediction,
Sinks, and the darkening air
Thrills with a sense of the triumphing night—
Night with her train of stars
And her great gift of sleep.

So be my passing!
My task accomplish'd and the long day done,
My wages taken, and in my heart
Some late lark singing,
Let me be gather'd to the quiet west,
The sundown splendid and serene,
Death.

September 2004 - Aubade by Philip Larkin

The title of this poem can be translated as "a song to greet the dawn". Larkin's greeting is a grim but honest one as he speaks of his early morning thoughts - his great fear of death. This fear can be found throughout Larkin's work and it is clear from this poem that unlike the majority of people he was able to clearly contemplate the absolute fact of death. Though this was obviously a source of horror for him I feel that it played a large part in the sympathetic beauty of his poetry. He understood the frailty and weakness of humanity, the sadness inherent in fleeting happiness and our need to constantly distract ourselves from what ultimately awaits.

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 anaesthetic 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.

August 2004 - High Tor August by June Hayes

(written in honour of Larkin - "What will survive of us is love")

I wrote this poem last year in an attempt to capture the feeling of a perfect summer's day spent in a place that is very special to us.

Back again on this hillside
On the hottest recorded day,
Watching the air hang suspended,
Purple blue filling the void
Between our feet in the tired grass
And the white cliff across the valley.
We read poems to the earth
And feel it listen,
We open white fizzy wine
Hold our glasses high in a toast
To the day, to the place,
To ourselves so small and fragile
Amongst the tormentil,
Beneath the unripe hawthorn berries.
We are a patch of colour
To those people standing close as they dare
To the steamy edge of High Tor.
The guide books tell us
This gigantic shelf is like a thick book
Set on edge, with each page
The story of an age.
I wonder if one summer
When we visit here no more,
Some climber tentatively gripping
Upon the high face of the Tor
Will find lodged there upon it
A tiny shelf of us,
Of wine, of poetry, of love.

July 2004 - Birches by Robert Frost

A favourite poem from Robert Frost this month. 'Birches' contains everything I most enjoy about Frost. The whole poem has a relaxed musing style - the poet is talking partly to the reader, partly to himself during which he beautifully describes his childhood game of climbing and swinging on birch trees. I particularly like the comparison of bent and trailing branches with

"... girls on hands and knees that throw their hair
Before them over their heads to dry in the sun."

The final section of the poem continue the arboreal theme with the excellent simile "life is too much like a pathless wood" and the comparison of the struggles of life with those of finding one's way through a tangled undergrowth. And so Frost dreams of the freedom of his childhood birch-swinging days and taking a sabbatical from the cares of life - climbing away from troubles but always with a view to swinging back and starting afresh. The typical Frost aphorism of the last line is in itself a summary of the poem.

When I see birches bend to left and right
Across the lines of straighter darker trees,
I like to think some boy's been swinging them.
But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay.
Ice-storms do that. Often you must have seen them
Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning
After a rain. They click upon themselves
As the breeze rises, and turn many-coloured
As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.
Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal shells
Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust
Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away
You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.
They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,
And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed
So low for long, they never right themselves:
You may see their trunks arching in the woods
Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground,
Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair
Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.
But I was going to say when Truth broke in
With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm,
I should prefer to have some boy bend them
As he went out and in to fetch the cows--
Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,
Whose only play was what he found himself,
Summer or winter, and could play alone.
One by one he subdued his father's trees
By riding them down over and over again
Until he took the stiffness out of them,
And not one but hung limp, not one was left
For him to conquer. He learned all there was
To learn about not launching out too soon
And so not carrying the tree away
Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise
To the top branches, climbing carefully
With the same pains you use to fill a cup
Up to the brim, and even above the brim.
Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,
Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.
So was I once myself a swinger of birches.
And so I dream of going back to be.
It's when I'm weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
From a twig's having lashed across it open.
I'd like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate wilfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth's the right place for love:
I don't know where it's likely to go better.
I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

June 2004 - Adlestrop by Edward Thomas

Sometimes a poem can capture within a few seemingly simple lines a feeling both intense and fleeting - such a poem is Adlestrop. Edward Thomas' famous poem begins with a musing answer to an imagined question and the following lines read as a dreamy reminiscence - the memory of a place and a moment.

So clear and perfectly chosen are the words Thomas uses that the reader is transferred instantly to that empty country station, to the heat of summer and to the birdsong - we truly do remember Adlestrop.

Yes, I remember Adlestrop -
The name, because one afternoon
Of heat the express-train drew up there
Unwontedly. It was late June.

The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat.
No one left and no one came
On the bare platform. What I saw
Was Adlestrop - only the name

And willows, willow-herb, and grass,
And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry,
No whit less still and lonely fair
Than the high cloudlets in the sky.

And for that minute a blackbird sang
Close by, and round him, mistier,
Farther and farther, all the birds
Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.

May 2004 - After dark vapours... by John Keats

This is one of my favourite Keats sonnets - I enjoy it both for its delicious imagery and for the insight it gives into the poet's mind as he embarks upon the brief and intense period that will produce his greatest works. Keats knew all too well what is was to suffer ill-health, both from his own experience and those around him. In this poem, he revels in the grateful pleasure to be found in the simplest things when suffering is (perhaps only briefly) dispelled.

The "dark vapours" can also be seen as Keats' depressive doubts about his own abilities and his recent choice to give up medicine in order to concentrate on poetry. The calm acceptance of the final lines however, shows Keats as stoical in the face of destiny - he will be a poet, though time may be short and death ever-near.

After dark vapours have oppress'd our plains
For a long dreary season, comes a day
Born of the gentle South, and clears away
From the sick heavens all unseemly stains.
The anxious month, relieved of its pains,
Takes as a long-lost right the feel of May;
The eyelids with the passing coolness play
Like rose leaves with the drip of Summer rains.
The calmest thoughts come round us; as of leaves
Budding; fruit ripening in stillness; Autumn suns
Smiling at eve upon the quiet sheaves;
Sweet Sappho's cheek; a smiling infant's breath;
The gradual sand that through an hour-glass runs;
A woodland rivulet; a Poet's death.

April 2004 - O What a Luxury by Garrison Keillor

It's the month for levity again and so we have another offering from Mr Keillor who shares with us his joy in one of life's simpler pleasures...

O what a luxury it be
how exquisite, what perfect bliss
so ordinary and yet chic
to pee to piss to take a leak

to feel your bladder just go free
and open up the Mighty Miss
and all your cares float down the creek
to pee to piss to take a leak

for gentlemen of great physique
who can hold water for one week
for ladies who one-quarter cup
of tea can fill completely up
for folks in urinalysis
for Viennese and Greek and Swiss
for little kids just learning this
for everyone it's pretty great
to urinate

of course for men it's much more grand
women sit or squat
we stand
and hold the fellow in our hand
and proudly watch the mighty arc
adjust the range and make our mark
on stones or post for rival men
to smell and not come back again

women are so circumspect
but men can piss to great effect
with terrible hydraulic force
can make a stream or change its course

can put out fires or cigarettes
and sometimes
laying down our bets
late at night outside the
bars
we like to aim up at the stars

March 2004 - The Throstle by Alfred Lord Tennyson

This spring the dawn chorus seems to have begun particularly early and always taking the leading role in this beautiful aubade is the song thrush - always the first and most ecstatic of singers. To reflect the pleasure this little bird is giving us, this month's poem is Tennyson's "The Throstle" in which the poet puts words into the thrush's song and enters into a conversation with it. The whole poem encompasses perfectly the blithe spirit of spring.

"Summer is coming, summer is coming,
I know it, I know it, I know it.
Light again, leaf again, life again, love again,"
Yes, my wild little poet.

Sing the new year in under the blue,
Last year you sang it as gladly,
"New, new, new, new!" Is it then so new
That you should carol so madly?

"Love again, song again, nest again, young again,"
Never a prophet so crazy!
And hardly a daisy as yet, little friend,
See, there is hardly a daisy.

"Here again, here, here, here, happy year!"
O warble unchidden, unbidden!
Summer is coming, is coming, my dear,
And all the winters are hidden.

February 2004 - The Lake Isle of Innisfree by William Butler Yeats

The theme of this poem is escape (something we all long to do occasionally) and that very human feeling that somewhere, somehow, there is a better life waiting to be lived. For Yeats, this life was to be found on Innisfree and his poem's moving vision makes one long to be there too. Like all the best poems, it is a pleasure to read aloud, with every word conveying to the reader the sense of peace. The alliteration almost seems unintentional as in:

"...lake water lapping
With low sounds by the shore"

which perfectly conjures up the constant movement of the lake. I also enjoy the delicious phrase "bee-loud glade" and the repetition of "dropping" in the second stanza:

"For peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning",

a line which carries with it its own sense of the calm for which Yeats longed.

I will arise and go now,
And go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there,
Of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean rows will I have there,
A hive for the honey bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there,
For peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning
To where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer,
And noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now,
For always night and day
I hear lake water lapping
With low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway
Or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.

Kingsley Amis is not generally known for his poetry, which is, I think, unfortunate, as this simple poem shows. Amis as poet displayed perhaps more of his true character than could be found within his novels and the subject of this poem is regret - regret at precious time wasted. There is always a fragility about time spent within a family with the looming inevitability of so many different partings and it is this fragility which I think Amis captures so perfectly here.

That cold winter evening
The fire would not draw,
And the whole family hung
Over the dismal grate
Where rain-soaked logs
Bubbled, hissed and steamed.
Then, when the others had gone
Up to their chilly beds,
And I was ready to go,
The wood began to flame
In clear rose and violet,
Heating the small hearth.

Why should that memory cling
Now the children are all grown up,
And the house - a different house -
Is warm at any season?