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LITERATURA INGLESA III

ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE SECOND HALF OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

SHORT ANTHOLOGY OF ENGLISH POETRY

2014-2015

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Required reading for UNIT 2. Poetry in the Fifties: Writing against the grain

Philip Larkin Aubade 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.

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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. http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/178058 Church going Once I am sure there's nothing going on I step inside, letting the door thud shut. Another church: matting, seats, and stone, And little books; sprawlings of flowers, cut For Sunday, brownish now; some brass and stuff Up at the holy end; the small neat organ; And a tense, musty, unignorable silence, Brewed God knows how long. Hatless, I take off My cycle-clips in awkward reverence, Move forward, run my hand around the font. From where I stand, the roof looks almost new- Cleaned or restored? Someone would know: I don't. Mounting the lectern, I peruse a few Hectoring large-scale verses, and pronounce "Here endeth" much more loudly than I'd meant. The echoes snigger briefly. Back at the door I sign the book, donate an Irish sixpence, Reflect the place was not worth stopping for.

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Yet stop I did: in fact I often do, And always end much at a loss like this, Wondering what to look for; wondering, too, When churches fall completely out of use What we shall turn them into, if we shall keep A few cathedrals chronically on show, Their parchment, plate, and pyx in locked cases, And let the rest rent-free to rain and sheep. Shall we avoid them as unlucky places? Or, after dark, will dubious women come To make their children touch a particular stone; Pick simples for a cancer; or on some Advised night see walking a dead one? Power of some sort or other will go on In games, in riddles, seemingly at random; But superstition, like belief, must die, And what remains when disbelief has gone? Grass, weedy pavement, brambles, buttress, sky, A shape less recognizable each week, A purpose more obscure. I wonder who Will be the last, the very last, to seek This place for what it was; one of the crew That tap and jot and know what rood-lofts were? Some ruin-bibber, randy for antique, Or Christmas-addict, counting on a whiff Of gown-and-bands and organ-pipes and myrrh? Or will he be my representative, Bored, uninformed, knowing the ghostly silt Dispersed, yet tending to this cross of ground Through suburb scrub because it held unspoilt So long and equably what since is found Only in separation -- marriage, and birth, And death, and thoughts of these -- for whom was built This special shell? For, though I've no idea What this accoutred frowsty barn is worth, It pleases me to stand in silence here; A serious house on serious earth it is, In whose blent air all our compulsions meet, Are recognised, and robed as destinies. And that much never can be obsolete, Since someone will forever be surprising A hunger in himself to be more serious, And gravitating with it to this ground,

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Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in, If only that so many dead lie round.

http://www.artofeurope.com/larkin/lar5.htm Sad Steps Groping back to bed after a piss I part thick curtains, and am startled by The rapid clouds, the moon's cleanliness. Four o'clock: wedge-shadowed gardens lie Under a cavernous, a wind-picked sky. There's something laughable about this, The way the moon dashes through clouds that blow Loosely as cannon-smoke to stand apart (Stone-coloured light sharpening the roofs below) High and preposterous and separate - Lozenge of love! Medallion of art! O wolves of memory! Immensements! No, One shivers slightly, looking up there. The hardness and the brightness and the plain Far-reaching singleness of that wide stare Is a reminder of the strength and pain Of being young; that it can't come again, But is for others undiminished somewhere. http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/178054 Talking In Bed Talking in bed ought to be easiest, Lying together there goes back so far, An emblem of two people being honest. Yet more and more time passes silently. Outside, the wind's incomplete unrest Builds and disperses clouds about the sky, And dark towns heap up on the horizon. None of this cares for us. Nothing shows why At this unique distance from isolation

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It becomes still more difficult to find Words at once true and kind, Or not untrue and not unkind. http://giron.itgo.com/Talking.htm

John Betjeman

A Subaltern's Love Song

(Please see that the poem in the Addenda is incorrect due to a change in the order of

the stanzas) Miss J.Hunter Dunn, Miss J.Hunter Dunn, Furnish'd and burnish'd by Aldershot sun, What strenuous singles we played after tea, We in the tournament - you against me! Love-thirty, love-forty, oh! weakness of joy, The speed of a swallow, the grace of a boy, With carefullest carelessness, gaily you won, I am weak from your loveliness, Joan Hunter Dunn Miss Joan Hunter Dunn, Miss Joan Hunter Dunn, How mad I am, sad I am, glad that you won, The warm-handled racket is back in its press, But my shock-headed victor, she loves me no less. Her father's euonymus shines as we walk, And swing past the summer-house, buried in talk, And cool the verandah that welcomes us in To the six-o'clock news and a lime-juice and gin. The scent of the conifers, sound of the bath, The view from my bedroom of moss-dappled path, As I struggle with double-end evening tie, For we dance at the Golf Club, my victor and I. On the floor of her bedroom lie blazer and shorts, And the cream-coloured walls are be-trophied with sports, And westering, questioning settles the sun, On your low-leaded window, Miss Joan Hunter Dunn. The Hillman is waiting, the light's in the hall, The pictures of Egypt are bright on the wall,

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My sweet, I am standing beside the oak stair And there on the landing's the light on your hair. By roads "not adopted", by woodlanded ways, She drove to the club in the late summer haze, Into nine-o'clock Camberley, heavy with bells And mushroomy, pine-woody, evergreen smells. Miss Joan Hunter Dunn, Miss Joan Hunter Dunn, I can hear from the car park the dance has begun, Oh! Surry twilight! importunate band! Oh! strongly adorable tennis-girl's hand! Around us are Rovers and Austins afar, Above us the intimate roof of the car, And here on my right is the girl of my choice, With the tilt of her nose and the chime of her voice. And the scent of her wrap, and the words never said, And the ominous, ominous dancing ahead. We sat in the car park till twenty to one And now I'm engaged to Miss Joan Hunter Dunn. http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoem.do?poemId=1537

Christmas

The bells of waiting Advent ring, The Tortoise stove is lit again And lamp-oil light across the night Has caught the streaks of winter rain In many a stained-glass window sheen From Crimson Lake to Hookers Green. The holly in the windy hedge And round the Manor House the yew Will soon be stripped to deck the ledge, The altar, font and arch and pew, So that the villagers can say 'The church looks nice' on Christmas Day. Provincial Public Houses blaze, Corporation tramcars clang, On lighted tenements I gaze, Where paper decorations hang, And bunting in the red Town Hall

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Says 'Merry Christmas to you all'. And London shops on Christmas Eve Are strung with silver bells and flowers As hurrying clerks the City leave To pigeon-haunted classic towers, And marbled clouds go scudding by The many-steepled London sky. And girls in slacks remember Dad, And oafish louts remember Mum, And sleepless children's hearts are glad. And Christmas-morning bells say 'Come!' Even to shining ones who dwell Safe in the Dorchester Hotel. And is it true, This most tremendous tale of all, Seen in a stained-glass window's hue, A Baby in an ox's stall ? The Maker of the stars and sea Become a Child on earth for me ? And is it true? For if it is, No loving fingers tying strings Around those tissued fripperies, The sweet and silly Christmas things, Bath salts and inexpensive scent And hideous tie so kindly meant, No love that in a family dwells, No carolling in frosty air, Nor all the steeple-shaking bells Can with this single Truth compare - That God was man in Palestine And lives today in Bread and Wine. http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/john_betjeman/poems/787

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Stevie Smith

Not Waving but Drowning

Nobody heard him, the dead man,

But still he lay moaning:

I was much further out than you thought

And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking

And now he's dead

It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,

They said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always

(Still the dead one lay moaning)

I was much too far out all my life

And not waving but drowning.

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15801

Our Bog is Dood Our Bog is dood, our Bog is dood, They lisped in accents mild, But when I asked them to explain They grew a little wild. How do you know your Bog is dood My darling little child? We know because we wish it so That is enough, they cried, And straight within each infant eye Stood up the flame of pride, And if you do not think it so You shall be crucified. Then tell me, darling little ones, What's dood, suppose Bog is? Just what we think, the answer came, Just what we think it is. They bowed their heads. Our Bog is ours And we are wholly his. But when they raised them up again They had forgotten me Each one upon each other glared In pride and misery

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For what was dood, and what their Bog They never could agree. Oh sweet it was to leave them then, And sweeter not to see, And sweetest of all to walk alone Beside the encroaching sea, The sea that soon should drown them all, That never yet drowned me. http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/our-bog-is-dood/

Pretty Why is the word pretty so underrated? In November the leaf is pretty when it falls The stream grows deep in the woods after rain And in the pretty pool the pike stalks He stalks his prey, and this is pretty too, The prey escapes with an underwater flash But not for long, the great fish has him now The pike is a fish who always has his prey And this is pretty. The water rat is pretty His paws are not webbed, he cannot shut his nostrils As the otter can and the beaver, he is torn between The land and water. Not torn, he does not mind. The owl hunts in the evening and it is pretty The lake water below him rustles with ice There is frost coming from the ground, in the air mist All this is pretty, it could not be prettier. Yes, it could always be prettier, the eye abashes It is becoming an eye that cannot see enough, Out of the wood the eye climbs. This is prettier A field in the evening, tilting up. The field tilts to the sky. Though it is late The sky is lighter than the hill field All this looks easy but really it is extraordinary Well, it is extraordinary to be so pretty. And it is careless, and that is always pretty This field, this owl, this pike, this pool are careless, As Nature is always careless and indifferent

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Who sees, who steps, means nothing, and this is pretty. So a person can come along like a thiefpretty! Stealing a look, pinching the sound and feel, Lick the icicle broken from the bank And still say nothing at all, only cry pretty. Cry pretty, pretty, pretty and youll be able Very soon not even to cry pretty And so be delivered entirely from humanity This is prettiest of all, it is very pretty. Stevie Smith, Pretty from New Selected Poems. Copyright 1972 by Stevie Smith. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation. http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/176222

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Ted Hughes

Wind

This house has been far out at sea all night, The woods crashing through darkness, the booming hills, Winds stampeding the fields under the window Floundering black astride and blinding wet Till day rose; then under an orange sky The hills had new places, and wind wielded Blade-light, luminous black and emerald, Flexing like the lens of a mad eye. At noon I scaled along the house-side as far as The coal-house door. Once I looked up -- Through the brunt wind that dented the balls of my eyes The tent of the hills drummed and strained its guyrope, The fields quivering, the skyline a grimace, At any second to bang and vanish with a flap; The wind flung a magpie away and a black- Back gull bent like an iron bar slowly. The house Rang like some fine green goblet in the note That any second would shatter it. Now deep In chairs, in front of the great fire, we grip Our hearts and cannot entertain book, thought, Or each other. We watch the fire blazing, And feel the roots of the house move, but sit on, Seeing the window tremble to come in, Hearing the stones cry out under the horizons.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_74vwf8fcw

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Pike

Pike, three inches long, perfect Pike in all parts, green tigering the gold. Killers from the egg: the malevolent aged grin. They dance on the surface among the flies. Or move, stunned by their own grandeur, Over a bed of emerald, silhouette Of submarine delicacy and horror. A hundred feet long in their world. In ponds, under the heat-struck lily pads- Gloom of their stillness: Logged on last year's black leaves, watching upwards. Or hung in an amber cavern of weeds The jaws' hooked clamp and fangs Not to be changed at this date: A life subdued to its instrument; The gills kneading quietly, and the pectorals. Three we kept behind glass, Jungled in weed: three inches, four, And four and a half: red fry to them- Suddenly there were two. Finally one With a sag belly and the grin it was born with. And indeed they spare nobody. Two, six pounds each, over two feet long High and dry and dead in the willow-herb- One jammed past its gills down the other's gullet: The outside eye stared: as a vice locks- The same iron in this eye Though its film shrank in death. A pond I fished, fifty yards across, Whose lilies and muscular tench Had outlasted every visible stone Of the monastery that planted them-

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Stilled legendary depth: It was as deep as England. It held Pike too immense to stir, so immense and old That past nightfall I dared not cast But silently cast and fished With the hair frozen on my head For what might move, for what eye might move. The still splashes on the dark pond, Owls hushing the floating woods Frail on my ear against the dream Darkness beneath night's darkness had freed, That rose slowly toward me, watching.

http://literaturenubd.blogspot.com.es/2012/04/pike-by-ted-hughes-from-first-year.html

You can listen to Ted Hughes reading this poem at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvk-lHIs9GI

Examination at the Womb-Door

Who owns those scrawny little feet? Death Who owns this bristly scorched-looking face? Death Who owns these still-working lungs? Death Who owns this utility coat of muscles? Death Who owns these unspeakable guts? Death Who owns these questionable brains? Death All this messy blood? Death These minimum-efficiency eyes? Death This wicked little tongue? Death This occasional wakefulness? Death Given, stolen, or held pending trial? Held Who owns the whole rainy, stony earth? Death Who owns all of space? Death Who is stronger than hope? Death Who is stronger than the will? Death

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Stronger than love? Death Stronger than life? Death But who is stronger than Death? Me, evidently Pass, Crow

http://poetry.rapgenius.com/Ted-hughes-examination-at-the-womb-door-annotated#note-826740

Daffodils

Remember how we picked the daffodils? Nobody else remembers, but I remember. Your daughter came with her armfuls, eager and happy, Helping the harvest. She has forgotten. She cannot even remember you. And we sold them. It sounds like sacrilege, but we sold them. Were we so poor? Old Stoneman, the grocer, Boss-eyed, his blood-pressure purpling to beetroot (It was his last chance, He would die in the same great freeze as you) , He persuaded us. Every Spring He always bought them, sevenpence a dozen, 'A custom of the house'. Besides, we still weren't sure we wanted to own Anything. Mainly we were hungry To convert everything to profit. Still nomads-still strangers To our whole possession. The daffodils Were incidental gilding of the deeds, Treasure trove. They simply came, And they kept on coming. As if not from the sod but falling from heaven. Our lives were still a raid on our own good luck. We knew we'd live forever. We had not learned What a fleeting glance of the everlasting Daffodils are. Never identified The nuptial flight of the rarest epherma- Our own days! We thought they were a windfall.

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Never guessed they were a last blessing. So we sold them. We worked at selling them As if employed on somebody else's Flower-farm. You bent at it In the rain of that April-your last April. We bent there together, among the soft shrieks Of their jostled stems, the wet shocks shaken Of their girlish dance-frocks- Fresh-opened dragonflies, wet and flimsy, Opened too early. We piled their frailty lights on a carpenter's bench, Distributed leaves among the dozens- Buckling blade-leaves, limber, groping for air, zinc-silvered- Propped their raw butts in bucket water, Their oval, meaty butts, And sold them, sevenpence a bunch- Wind-wounds, spasms from the dark earth, With their odourless metals, A flamy purification of the deep grave's stony cold As if ice had a breath- We sold them, to wither. The crop thickened faster than we could thin it. Finally, we were overwhelmed And we lost our wedding-present scissors. Every March since they have lifted again Out of the same bulbs, the same Baby-cries from the thaw, Ballerinas too early for music, shiverers In the draughty wings of the year. On that same groundswell of memory, fluttering They return to forget you stooping there Behind the rainy curtains of a dark April, Snipping their stems. But somewhere your scissors remember. Wherever they are. Here somewhere, blades wide open, April by April Sinking deeper Through the sod-an anchor, a cross of rust.

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http://www.poemhunter.com/i/ebooks/pdf/ted_hughes_2011_6.pdf

Hawk Roosting

I sit in the top of the wood, my eyes closed. Inaction, no falsifying dream Between my hooked head and hooked feet: Or in sleep rehearse perfect kills and eat. The convenience of the high trees! The air's buoyancy and the sun's ray Are of advantage to me; And the earth's face upward for my inspection. My feet are locked upon the rough bark. It took the whole of Creation To produce my foot, my each feather: Now I hold Creation in my foot Or fly up, and revolve it all slowly - I kill where I please because it is all mine. There is no sophistry in my body: My manners are tearing off heads - The allotment of death. For the one path of my flight is direct Through the bones of the living. No arguments assert my right: The sun is behind me. Nothing has changed since I began. My eye has permitted no change. I am going to keep things like this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=md_5IXqXg_E

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Sylvia Plath Balloons Since Christmas they have lived with us, Guileless and clear, Oval soul-animals, Taking up half the space, Moving and rubbing on the silk Invisible air drifts, Giving a shriek and pop When attacked, then scooting to rest, barely trembling. Yellow cathead, blue fish--- Such queer moons we live with Instead of dead furniture! Straw mats, white walls And these traveling Globes of thin air, red, green, Delighting The heart like wishes or free Peacocks blessing Old ground with a feather Beaten in starry metals. Your small Brother is making His balloon squeak like a cat. Seeming to see A funny pink world he might eat on the other side of it, He bites, Then sits Back, fat jug Contemplating a world clear as water. A red Shred in his little fist.

http://www.internal.org/Sylvia_Plath/Balloons

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The Beekeepers Daughter

A garden of mouthings. Purple, scarlet-speckled, black The great corollas dilate, peeling back their silks. Their musk encroaches, circle after circle, A well of scents almost too dense to breathe in. Hieratical in your frock coat, maestro of the bees, You move among the many-breasted hives, My heart under your foot, sister of a stone. Trumpet-throats open to the beaks of birds. The Golden Rain Tree drips its powders down. In these little boudoirs streaked with orange and red The anthers nod their heads, potent as kings. To father dynasties. The air is rich. Here is a queenship no mother can contest --- A fruit that's death to taste: dark flesh, dark parings. In burrows narrow as a finger, solitary bees Keep house among the grasses. Kneeling down I set my eyes to a hole-mouth and meet an eye Round, green, disconsolate as a tear. Father, bridegroom, in this Easter egg Under the coronal of sugar roses The queen bee marries the winter of your year. http://www.internal.org/Sylvia_Plath/The_Beekeepers_Daughter

Daddy

You do not do, you do not do Any more, black shoe In which I have lived like a foot For thirty years, poor and white, Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.

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Daddy, I have had to kill you. You died before I had time--- Marble-heavy, a bag full of God, Ghastly statue with one gray toe Big as a Frisco seal And a head in the freakish Atlantic Where it pours bean green over blue In the waters off the beautiful Nauset. I used to pray to recover you. Ach, du. In the German tongue, in the Polish town Scraped flat by the roller Of wars, wars, wars. But the name of the town is common. My Polack friend Says there are a dozen or two. So I never could tell where you Put your foot, your root, I never could talk to you. The tongue stuck in my jaw. It stuck in a barb wire snare. Ich, ich, ich, ich, I could hardly speak. I thought every German was you. And the language obscene An engine, an engine, Chuffing me off like a Jew. A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen. I began to talk like a Jew. I think I may well be a Jew. The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna Are not very pure or true. With my gypsy ancestress and my weird luck And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack I may be a bit of a Jew. I have always been scared of you, With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.

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And your neat mustache And your Aryan eye, bright blue. Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You---- Not God but a swastika So black no sky could squeak through. Every woman adores a Fascist, The boot in the face, the brute Brute heart of a brute like you. You stand at the blackboard, daddy, In the picture I have of you, A cleft in your chin instead of your foot But no less a devil for that, no not Any less the black man who Bit my pretty red heart in two. I was ten when they buried you. At twenty I tried to die And get back, back, back to you. I thought even the bones would do. But they pulled me out of the sack, And they stuck me together with glue. And then I knew what to do. I made a model of you, A man in black with a Meinkampf look And a love of the rack and the screw. And I said I do, I do. So daddy, I'm finally through. The black telephone's off at the root, The voices just can't worm through. If I've killed one man, I've killed two--- The vampire who said he was you And drank my blood for a year, Seven years, if you want to know. Daddy, you can lie back now. There's a stake in your fat black heart And the villagers never liked you. They are dancing and stamping on you.

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They always knew it was you. Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through.

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/178960

Lady Lazarus I have done it again. One year in every ten I manage it----- A sort of walking miracle, my skin Bright as a Nazi lampshade, My right foot A paperweight, My featureless, fine Jew linen. Peel off the napkin O my enemy. Do I terrify?------- The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth? The sour breath Will vanish in a day. Soon, soon the flesh The grave cave ate will be At home on me And I a smiling woman. I am only thirty. And like the cat I have nine times to die. This is Number Three. What a trash To annihilate each decade. What a million filaments. The Peanut-crunching crowd Shoves in to see

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Them unwrap me hand and foot ------ The big strip tease. Gentleman , ladies These are my hands My knees. I may be skin and bone, Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman. The first time it happened I was ten. It was an accident. The second time I meant To last it out and not come back at all. I rocked shut As a seashell. They had to call and call And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls. Dying Is an art, like everything else. I do it exceptionally well. I do it so it feels like hell. I do it so it feels real. I guess you could say I've a call. It's easy enough to do it in a cell. It's easy enough to do it and stay put. It's the theatrical Comeback in broad day To the same place, the same face, the same brute Amused shout: 'A miracle!' That knocks me out. There is a charge For the eyeing my scars, there is a charge For the hearing of my heart--- It really goes.

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And there is a charge, a very large charge For a word or a touch Or a bit of blood Or a piece of my hair on my clothes. So, so, Herr Doktor. So, Herr Enemy. I am your opus, I am your valuable, The pure gold baby That melts to a shriek. I turn and burn. Do not think I underestimate your great concern. Ash, ash--- You poke and stir. Flesh, bone, there is nothing there---- A cake of soap, A wedding ring, A gold filling. Herr God, Herr Lucifer Beware Beware. Out of the ash I rise with my red hair And I eat men like air. http://www.sylviaplathforum.com/ll.html Child Your clear eye is the one absolutely beautiful thing. I want to fill it with color and ducks, The zoo of the new Whose names you meditate --- April snowdrop, Indian pipe, Little

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Stalk without wrinkle, Pool in which images Should be grand and classical Not this troublous Wringing of hands, this dark Ceiling without a star. http://www.internal.org/Sylvia_Plath/Child

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Geoffrey Hill

In Memory of Jane Fraser

When snow like sheep lay in the fold And winds went begging at each door, And the far hills were blue with cold, And a cold shroud lay on the moor, She kept the siege. And every day We watched her brooding over death Like a strong bird above its prey. The room filled with the kettles breath. Damp curtains glued against the pane Sealed time away. Her body froze As if to freeze us all, and chain Creation to a stunned repose. She died before the world could stir. In March the ice unloosed the brook And water ruffled the suns hair. Dead cones upon the alder shook.

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/178121

Requiem for the Plantagenet Kings

For whom the possessed sea littered, on both shores, Ruinous arms; being fired, and for good, To sound the constitution of just wars, Men, in their eloquent fashion, understood. Relieved of soul, the dropping-back of dust, Their usage, pride, admitted within doors; At home, under caved chantries, set in trust, With well-dressed alabaster and proved spurs They lie; they lie; secure in the decay Of blood, blood-marks, crowns hacked and coveted,

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Before the scouring fires of trial-day Alight on men; before sleeked groin, gored head, Budge through the clay and gravel, and the sea Across daubed rock evacuates its dead. http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/178122 September Song Undesirable you may have been, untouchable you were not. Not forgotten or passed over at the proper time. As estimated, you died. Things marched, sufficient, to that end. Just so much Zyklon and leather, patented terror, so many routine cries. (I have made an elegy for myself it is true) September fattens on vines. Roses flake from the wall. The smoke of harmless fires drifts to my eyes. This is plenty. This is more than enough. http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/september-song/

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Tony Harrison

Heredity

How you became a poet's a mystery!

Wherever did you get your talent from?

I say: I had two uncles, Joe and Harry-

one was a stammerer, the other dumb.

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/heredity/

National Trust

Bottomless pits. There's on in Castleton,

and stout upholders of our law and order

one day thought its depth worth wagering on

and borrowed a convict hush-hush from his warder

and winched him down; and back, flayed, grey, mad, dumb.

Not even a good flogging made him holler!

O gentlemen, a better way to plumb

the depths of Britain's dangling a scholar,

say, here at the booming shaft at Towanroath,

now National Trust, a place where they got tin,

those gentlemen who silenced the men's oath

and killed the language that they swore it in.

The dumb go down in history and disappear

and not one gentleman's been brough to book:

Mes den hep tavas a-gollas y dyr

(Cornish-)

'the tongueless man gets his land took.'

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http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/national-trust/

Book Ends

I

Baked the day she suddenly dropped dead

we chew it slowly that last apple pie.

Shocked into sleeplessness you're scared of bed.

We never could talk much, and now don't try.

You're like book ends, the pair of you, she'd say,

Hog that grate, say nothing, sit, sleep, stare

The 'scholar' me, you, worn out on poor pay,

only our silence made us seem a pair.

Not as good for staring in, blue gas,

too regular each bud, each yellow spike.

At night you need my company to pass

and she not here to tell us we're alike!

You're life's all shattered into smithereens.

Back in our silences and sullen looks,

for all the Scotch we drink, what's still between 's

not the thirty or so years, but books, books, books.

II

The stone's too full. The wording must be terse.

There's scarcely room to carve the FLORENCE on it--

Come on, it's not as if we're wanting verse.

It's not as if we're wanting a whole sonnet!

After tumblers of neat Johnny Walker

(I think that both of us we're on our third)

you said you'd always been a clumsy talker

and couldn't find another, shorter word

for 'beloved' or for 'wife' in the inscription,

but not too clumsy that you can't still cut:

You're supposed to be the bright boy at description

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and you can't tell them what the fuck to put!

I've got to find the right words on my own.

I've got the envelope that he'd been scrawling,

mis-spelt, mawkish, stylistically appalling

but I can't squeeze more love into their stone.

http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/tony_harrison/poems/12690

Long Distance

I

Your bed's got two wrong sides. You life's all grouse.

I let your phone-call take its dismal course:

Ah can't stand it no more, this empty house!

Carrots choke us wi'out your mam's white sauce!

Them sweets you brought me, you can have 'em back.

Ah'm diabetic now. Got all the facts.

(The diabetes comes hard on the track

of two coronaries and cataracts.)

Ah've allus liked things sweet! But now ah push

food down mi throat! Ah'd sooner do wi'out.

And t'only reason now for beer 's to flush

(so t'dietician said) mi kidneys out.

When I come round, they'll be laid out, the sweets,

Lifesavers, my father's New World treats,

still in the big brown bag, and only bought

rushing through JFK as a last thought.

II

Though my mother was already two years dead

Dad kept her slippers warming by the gas,

put hot water bottles her side of the bed

32

and still went to renew her transport pass.

You couldn't just drop in. You had to phone.

He'd put you off an hour to give him time

to clear away her things and look alone

as though his still raw love were such a crime.

He couldn't risk my blight of disbelief

though sure that very soon he'd hear her key

scrape in the rusted lock and end his grief.

He knew she'd just popped out to get the tea.

I believe life ends with death, and that is all.

You haven't both gone shopping; just the same,

in my new black leather phone book there's your name

and the disconnected number I still call.

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/long-distance-ii/

Turns

I thought it made me look more 'working class'

(as if a bit of chequered cloth could bridge that gap!)

I did a turn in it before the glass.

My mother said: It suits you, your dad's cap.

(She preferred me to wear suits and part my hair:

You're every bit as good as that lot are!)

All the pension queue came out to stare.

Dad was sprawled beside the postbox (still VR) ,

his cap turned inside up beside his head,

smudged H A H in purple Indian ink

and Brylcreem slicks displayed so folks migh think

he wanted charity for dropping dead.

He never begged. For nowt! Death's reticence

crowns his life, and me, I'm opening my trap

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to busk the class that broke him for the pence

that splash like brackish tears into our cap.

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/turns/

Marked with D.

When the chilled dough of his flesh went in an oven

not unlike those he fuelled all his life,

I thought of his cataracts ablaze with Heaven

and radiant with the sight of his dead wife,

light streaming from his mouth to shape her name,

'not Florence and not Flo but always Florrie.'

I thought how his cold tongue burst into flame

but only literally, which makes me sorry,

sorry for his sake there's no Heaven to reach.

I get it all from Earth my daily bread

but he hungered for release from mortal speech

that kept him down, the tongue that weighed like lead.

The bakers man that no one will see rise

and England made to feel like some dull oaf

is smoke, enough to sting one persons eyes

and ash (not unlike flour) for one small loaf.

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/marked-with-d/

34

Benjamin Zephaniah

Dis-poetry

Watch and listen to Zepahnia performing the poem at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2jSG2dmdfs

Talking Turkeys, at

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4AgPSjzXkw

Don`t worry, be happy, at

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4AgPSjzXkw

The Death of Joy Gardner

They put a leather belt around her 13 feet of tape and bound her Handcuffs to secure her And only God knows what else, She's illegal, so deport her Said the Empire that brought her She died, Nobody killed her And she never killed herself. It is our job to make her Return to Jamaica Said the Alien Deporters Who deports people like me, It was said she had a warning That the officers were calling On that deadly July morning As her young son watched TV. An officer unplugged the phone Mother and child were now alone When all they wanted was a home A child watch Mummy die,

35

No matter what the law may say A mother should not die this way Let human rights come into play And to everyone apply. I know not of a perfect race I know not of a perfect place I know this is not a simple case Of Yardies on the move, We must talk some Race Relations With the folks from immigration About this kind of deportation If things are to improve. Let it go down in history The word is that officially She died democratically In 13 feet of tape, That Christian was over here Because pirates were over there The Bible sent us everywhere To make Great Britain great. Here lies the extradition squad And we should all now pray to God That as they go about their job They make not one mistake, For I fear as I walk the streets That one day I just may meet Officials who may tie my feet And how would I escape. I see my people demonstrating And educated folks debating The way they're separating The elder from the youth, When all they are demanding Is a little overstanding They too have family planning Now their children want the truth. As I move around I am eyeing So many poets crying And so many poets trying To articulate the grief, I cannot help but wonder How the alien deporters

36

(As they said to press reporters) Can feel absolute relief.

http://benjaminzephaniah.com/rhymin/the-death-of-joy-gardner/

Bought and Sold

Smart big awards and prize money Is killing off black poetry Its not censors or dictators that are cutting up our art. The lure of meeting royalty And touching high society Is damping creativity and eating at our heart. The ancestors would turn in graves Those poor black folk that once were Slaves would wonder How souls were sold And check our strategies, The empire strikes back and waves Tamed warriors bow on parades When they have done what theyve been told They get their OBEs (Order of the British Empire) Dont take my word, go check the verse Cause every laureate gets worse A family that you cannot fault as muse will mess your mind, And yeah, you may fatten your purse And surely they will check you First when subjects need to be amused With paid for prose and rhymes. Take your prize, now write more, Faster, Fuck the truth! Now youre an actor do not fault your benefactor Write, publish and review, You look like a dreadlock Rasta, You look like a ghetto blaster, But you cant diss your paymaster And bite the hand that feeds you.

37

What happened to the verse of fire Cursing cool the empire What happened to the soul rebel that Marley had in mind, This bloodstained, stolen empire Rewards you and you conspire, (Yes Marley said that time will tell) Now look theyve gone and joined. We keep getting this beating Its bad history repeating It reminds me of those capitalists that say Look you have a choice, Its sick and self-defeating if your dispossessed keep weeping And we give these awards meaning But we end up with no voice.

38

Grace Nichols

My Gran Visits England

My Gran was a Caribbean lady As Caribbean as could be She came across to visit us In Shoreham by the sea. She'd hardly put her suitcase down when she began a digging spree Out in the back garden To see what she could see And she found: That the ground was as groundy That the frogs were as froggy That the earthworms were as worthy That the weeds were as weedy That the seeds were as seedy That the bees were as busy as those back home And she paused from her digging And she wondered And she looked at her spade And she pondered Then she stood by a rose As a slug passed by her toes And she called to my Dad as she struck pose after pose, 'Boy, come and take my photo the place cold, But wherever there's God's earth, I'm at home.' From Under the Moon and Under the Sea

http://www.poetryline.org.uk/poems/my-gran-visits-england-508