December 2005 - Happiness by Jane Kenyon

Sometimes we think that we will never be happy again: we despair. Then one day, we suddenly are happy, even though we may not know why.

The strange, elusive nature of this thing we call happiness, its coming and its going, is the subject of this poem. I must admit, though, that its final four lines are what won me over - happiness indeed to have written them!

There's just no accounting for happiness,
or the way it turns up like a prodigal
who comes back to the dust at your feet
having squandered a fortune far away.

And how can you not forgive?
You make a feast in honor of what
was lost, and take from its place the finest
garment, which you saved for an occasion
you could not imagine, and you weep night and day
to know that you were not abandoned,
that happiness saved its most extreme form
for you alone.

No, happiness is the uncle you never
knew about, who flies a single-engine plane
onto the grassy landing strip, hitchhikes
into town, and inquires at every door
until he finds you asleep midafternoon
as you so often are during the unmerciful
hours of your despair.

It comes to the monk in his cell.
It comes to the woman sweeping the street
with a birch broom, to the child
whose mother has passed out from drink.
It comes to the lover, to the dog chewing
a sock, to the pusher, to the basket maker,
and to the clerk stacking cans of carrots
in the night.
It even comes to the boulder
in the perpetual shade of pine barrens,
to rain falling on the open sea,
to the wineglass, weary of holding wine.

November 2005 - Prayer by Carol Ann Duffy

A poem about the human condition and the loneliness of modern life. In our faithless world, we still need comfort, either that provided by Nature or the realisation that we are not actually alone in our loneliness.

Some days, although we cannot pray, a prayer
utters itself. So, a woman will lift
her head from the sieve of her hands and stare
at the minims sung by a tree, a sudden gift.

Some nights, although we are faithless, the truth
enters our hearts, that small familiar pain;
then a man will stand stock-still, hearing his youth
in the distant Latin chanting of a train.

Pray for us now. Grade 1 piano scales
console the lodger looking out across
a Midlands town. Then dusk, and someone calls
a child's name as though they named their loss.

Darkness outside. Inside, the radio's prayer -
Rockall. Malin. Dogger. Finisterre.

October 2005 - October by Edward Thomas

October carries a wistfulness within all its beauties, and sadness within happiness is the theme of this poem. Thomas wonders whether his sense of melancholy in response to a perfect autumn day is really happiness in disguise.

The green elm with the one great bough of gold
Lets leaves into the grass slip, one by one, --
The short hill grass, the mushrooms small milk-white,
Harebell and scabious and tormentil,
That blackberry and gorse, in dew and sun,
Bow down to; and the wind travels too light
To shake the fallen birch leaves from the fern;
The gossamers wander at their own will.
At heavier steps than birds' the squirrels scold.
The rich scene has grown fresh again and new
As Spring and to the touch is not more cool
Than it is warm to the gaze; and now I might
As happy be as earth is beautiful,
Were I some other or with earth could turn
In alternation of violet and rose,
Harebell and snowdrop, at their season due,
And gorse that has no time not to be gay.
But if this be not happiness, -- who knows?
Some day I shall think this a happy day,
And this mood by the name of melancholy
Shall no more blackened and obscured be.

September 2005 - Places We Love by Ivan V. Lalic

A poem about space and time and our place within it, or perhaps its place within us. A Buddhist would understand quite well the poet's meaning, as would Edgar Allen Poe when he wrote "All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream." A beautiful poem to ponder.

Places we love exist only through us,
Space destroyed is only illusion in the constancy of time,
Places we love we can never leave,
Places we love together, together, together,

And is this room really a room, or an embrace,
And what is beneath the window: a street or years?
And the window is only the imprint left by
The first rain we understood, returning endlessly,

And this wall does not define the room, but perhaps the night
In which your son began to move in your sleeping blood,
A son like a butterfly of flame in your hall of mirrors,
The night you were frightened by your own light,

And this door leads into any afternoon
Which outlives it, forever peopled
With your casual movements, as you stepped,
Like fire into copper, into my only memory;

When you go, space closes over like water behind you,
Do not look back: there is nothing outside you,
Space is only time visible in a different way,
Places we love we can never leave.

August 2005 - Happiness by Raymond Carver

A poem about real happiness, not the kind sought by those who take exotic holidays or who spend huge amounts on 'consumer durables'. It's about that sudden simple sensation which can overwhelm one in the most ordinary of situations, the knowledge that you are happy. I've been lucky enough to experience it and so, obviously, has Raymond Carver.

So early it's still almost dark out.
I'm near the window with coffee,
and the usual early morning stuff
that passes for thought.

When I see the boy and his friend
walking up the road
to deliver the newspaper.

They wear caps and sweaters,
and one boy has a bag over his shoulder.
They are so happy
they aren't saying anything, these boys.

I think if they could, they would take
each other's arm.
It's early in the morning,
and they are doing this thing together.

They come on, slowly.
The sky is taking on light,
though the moon still hangs pale over the water.

Such beauty that for a minute
death and ambition, even love,
doesn't enter into this.

July 2005 - A Bay in Anglesey by John Betjeman

This month in honour of a wonderful weekend we recently spent by the sea, I am offering a sea poem by John Betjeman. His sea was the west coast, ours was the east, but it still captures the essential maritime mood.

Too lazy, almost, to sink and lift
Round low peninsulas pink with thrift.

The water, enlarging shells and sand,
Grows greener emerald out from land

And brown over shadowy shelves below
The waving forests of seaweed show.

Here at my feet in the short cliff grass
Are shells, dried bladderwrack, broken glass,

Pale blue squills and yellow rock roses.
The next low ridge that we climb discloses

One more field for the sheep to graze
While, scarcely seen on this hottest of days,

Far to the eastward, over there,
Snowdon rises in pearl-grey air.

Multiple lark-song, whispering bents,
The thymy, turfy and salty scents

And filling in, brimming in, sparkling and free
The sweet susurration of incoming sea.

June 2005 - When You are Old by William Butler Yeats

A mysterious poem, this, and strangely haunting. It speaks, I think, of the ever-changing phases of a person's life and of how eventually we all turn from our physical connection with life and its 'loves' towards our own mountains and stars of the spirit.

WHEN you are old and gray and full of sleep
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true;
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face.

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead,
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

May 2005 - You by Dennis O'Driscoll

I was lucky enough to first encounter this poem when it was being read out on a radio program very early one morning as I was getting blearily out of bed and getting dressed. By the end of the poem my grim morning mood had lifted and I felt that I had been given a pat on the head by a very compassionate being.

Keep a copy by your bed and see if it helps you too!

Be yourself: show your flyblown eyes
to the world, give no cause for concern,
wash the paunchy body whose means you
live within, suffer the illnesses
that are your prerogative alone -

the prognosis refers to nobody but you;
you it is who gets up every morning
in your skin, you who chews your dinner
with your mercury-filled teeth, gaining
garlic breath or weight, you dreading,

you hoping, you regretting, you interloping.
The earth has squeezed you in, found you space;
any loss of face you feel is solely yours -
you with the same old daily moods, debts,
intuitions, food fads, pet hates, Achilles' heels.

You carry on as best you can the task of being,
whole time, you; you in wake and you in dream,
at all hours, weekly, monthly, yearly, life,
full of yourself as a tallow candle is of fat,
wallowing in self-denial, self esteem.

April 2005 - The New House by Edward Thomas

A poem which touches upon the theme of our inescapable knowledge of our ultimate fate - both a curse and a gift. Here, Thomas standing in his new house, both understands and accepts what is to come.

NOW first, as I shut the door,
I was alone
In the new house; and the wind
Began to moan.

Old at once was the house,
And I was old;
My ears were teased with the dread
Of what was foretold,

Nights of storm, days of mist, without end;
Sad days when the sun
Shone in vain: old griefs and griefs
Not yet begun.

All was foretold me; naught
Could I foresee;
But I learnt how the wind would sound
After these things should be.

March 2005 - Spring by Philip Larkin

As Spring very slowly approaches, this poem by Philip Larkin perfectly captures the feeling which can creep up on one in middle age - that spring (and youth!) is wasted on the young. I particularly like the first line of the final stanza - "And those she has least use for see her best".

Green-shadowed people sit, or walk in rings,
Their children finger the awakened grass,
Calmly, a cloud stands, calmly a bird sings,
And, flashing like a dangled looking-glass,
Sun lights the balls that bounce, the dogs that bark,
The branch-arrested mist of leaf, and me,
Threading my pursed-up way across the park,
An indigestible sterility.

Spring, of all seasons most gratuitous,
Is fold of untold flower, is race of water,
Is earth’s most multiple, excited daughter;

And those she has least use for see her best,
Their paths grown craven and circuitous,
Their visions mountain-clear, their needs immodest.

February 2005 - Nothing by James Fenton

A poem about unrequited love in honour of Valentine's day. James Fenton speaks of that simple, sad truth which most of us have to accept at some point in our lives - the fact that we just aren't wanted.

I take a jewel from a junk shop tray
And wish I had a love to buy it for.
Nothing I choose will make you turn my way.
Nothing I give will make you love me more.

I know that I've embarrassed you too long
And I'm ashamed to linger at your door.
Whatever I embark on will be wrong.
Nothing I do will make you love me more.

I cannot work. I cannot read or write.
How can I frame a letter to implore.
Eloquence is a lie. The truth is trite.
Nothing I say will make you love me more.

So I replace the jewel in the tray
And laughingly pretend I'm far too poor.
Nothing I give, nothing I do or say,
Nothing I am will make you love me more.

January 2005 - O sweet spontaneous by E.E. Cummings

An ecological poem to begin 2005. Cummings is suggesting that the earth is ultimately above the stupidities of its human inhabitants and will calmly roll on with its seasons whatever we do. Sadly, I think that we have to ask what kind of a spring will it one day answer us with?

O sweet spontaneous
earth how often have
the
doting

fingers of
prurient philosophers pinched
and
poked

thee
,has the naughty thumb
of science prodded
thy

beauty .how
often have religions taken
thee upon their scraggy knees
squeezing and

buffeting thee that thou mightest conceive
gods
(but
true

to the incomparable
couch of death thy
rhythmic
lover

thou answerest

them only with

spring)