Frank Skinner does a “ordinary bloke likes poetry” podcast. It is very good. The song he thinks works as well on the page as in the ear is No Particular Place To Go by Chuck Berry. He’s right. The lyrics are poetry!
Ridin’ along in my automobile
My baby beside me at the wheel
I stole a kiss at the turn of a mile
My curiosity runnin’ wild
Cruisin’ and playin’ the radio
With no particular place to go
Ridin’ along in my automobile
I was anxious to tell her the way I feel
So I told her softly and sincere
And she leaned and whispered in my ear
Cuddlin’ more and drivin’ slow
With no particular place to go
No particular place to go
So we parked way out on the Kokomo
The night was young and the moon was gold
So we both decided to take a stroll
Can you imagine the way I felt?
I couldn’t unfasten her safety belt!
Ridin’ along in my calaboose
Still tryin’ to get her belt a-loose
All the way home, I held a grudge
For the safety belt that wouldn’t budge
Cruisin’ and playin’ the radio
With no particular place to go
Bob Dylan would be an obvious other, having won a Nobel prize, but I don’t enjoy reading his lyrics much. Leonard Cohen has a few.
Does The Afterword have any favourite lyrics that are just as good as poetry?
It is a general rule that songwriters make lousy poets and poets make lousy songwriters. Leonard Cohen is an exception because he did both a knew the difference. When people refer to lyrics as poetic what they typically mean is that there are lots of evocative words (‘gold’, ‘God’, ‘soul’, you get the idea), not that they are written with the discipline of a poem. They don’t have to be; they’re only part of the finished article.
Song lyrics, including Dylan’s, can excel for a line or a couplet but rarely survive amputation from the music, and I’m not sure that No Particular Place to Go does, though it could be that we’re all too familiar with the rattling rhythm of the song not to hear the melody as we read. Chuck Berry is a good call, but I would opt for Promised Land.
Clive James is another example of a writer who excelled in both fields
The problem with citing well-known lyrics as stand-alone poetry is that it’s impossible for most people to mentally uncouple lyric from song, which undoubtedly sways one’s opinion. You very rarely hear people quoting shit songs, even though there must be numerous examples of great poetry let down by its musical container. (And yes, I am saying that the primary determinant of a good song is the music.)
And oddly, poetry rarely takes well to a tune. There are many many instances of even very otherwise decent tunesmiths, adding music to the poems of others. It never works. Unless you can convince me otherwise.
Golden Slumbers?
Imperial Walls?
Golden Hair by James Joyce was made into a decent song by Syd Barrett.
Yes indeed!
Mike Scott makes a decent fist of it on An Appointment With Mr Yeats.
I thought of that, but the sum is greater in two separate parts.
Christina Rossetti wrote a poem called “A Christmas Carol”. Holst and Darke wrote little tunes for it and it has done quite well as “In the Bleak Mid-winter”.
Blake wrote a very long poem called Jerusalem and a little untitled poem that began “And did those feet in ancient time”. Over a century later Parry added a tune that made it very popular.
A poem by Yeats called “The Sally Gardens” had the tune added later.
I was going to add a poem of Eleanor Farjeon’s made famous by Cat Stevens with a little help from Rick Wakeman. However, it seems “Morning has broken” was written to fit the metre of a pre-existing Scottish folk tune, so it doesn’t count.
Many people have put one of the A Shropshire Lad poems to music.
” … poetry rarely takes well to a tune. It never works. Unless you can convince me otherwise.”
This is well worth a listen and a look (the CDs are beautifully packaged in a small hardback book). It may still not convince you though . . .
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leave_Your_Sleep
Hmmm, I’ll give it a listen, but, as much as I like the perfumed Ms Merchant, she does sometimes go up her own arse. When this came out I was of an opinion this was one of those times.
A Swedish favourite of mine, Sofie Livebrant has done this sort of thing on multiple albums. My fav is “Weep the Time Away” from 2021, based on poetry by Emily Brontë, but I also really enjoy “Emily and I”, which is poetry by Emily Dickinson set to music.
She’s also helped on some of Sofia Karlsson’s album projects, like “Svarta Ballader”, which is also brilliant – but all in Swedish – poetry by the Swedish poet Dan Andersson.
Here’s an exemple of Sofie Livebrant from “Weep the Time Away” (I think I’ve posted it here before – unfortunately there aren’t too many videos from her on YouTube so I can’t choose from all of the tracks):
There are phrases and lines from the likes of Dylan, Cohen, Springsteen etc which are moving, and, yes poetic. But fact, there is not one complete song in the Rock canon that can be described as poetry. And that’s exactly how it should be.
I think Leonard Cohen’s Everybody Knows works.
Dylan’s songs work best with his delivery. Very clearly expressed with the feeling or meaning he intended apparent, mostly. At least in his best work.
This is how I tell it
O’ but it’s long
One Sunday morning
O’ One son is gone
Against the weather dawning
Over the sea
My father said what I had become
No one should be
Outside I look lived in
Like the bones in a shrine
How am I forgiven
O’ I’ll give it time
This I learned without warning
Holding my brow
In time we thought I would kill him
O’ but I didn’t know how
I said it’s your God I don’t believe in
No your bible can’t be true
Knocked down by the long lie
He cried I fear what waits for you
I can hear those bells
Spoken and gone
I feel relief I feel well
Now he knows he was wrong
Ring ‘em cold for my father
Frozen underground
Jesus I wouldn’t bother
He belongs to me now
Something sad keeps moving
So I wandered around
I fell in love with the burden
Holding me down
Bless my mind I miss
Being told how to live
What I learned without knowing
How much more I owe than I can give
This is how I tell it
O’ but it’s long
One Sunday morning
One son is gone
Jeff Tweedy
Lovely, magnificent song but without the music – bit sixth-form student hoping to do Modern English at Cambridge?
You can see the words and phrasing conforming to an even meter as required by a consistent set of chords and bars. Great lyrics, not poetry.
But poetry these days doesn’t look
like that anymore.
All regular and everything.
It looks
more like this. And
it doesn’t rhyme.
Or scan.
Try this one, Gary
Strange to behold
Is the stone of this wall:
Broken by fate
And the strongholds are bursten
And the work of giants decaying;
The roofs are fallen
The towers are tottering
Mouldering palaces roofless
Weather-marked masonry shattering
Shelters time-scarred
Tempest-marred
Undermined of old
Earth’s grasp holdeth its mighty builders.
Tumbled, crumbled
In gravel’s harsh grip,
Till a hundred generations
Of men pass away
Till a hundred generations
Of men pass away
I don’t know that song at all (I don’t listen to lyrics much), but the poem is lovely.
I know what you mean. My wife always berates me for never knowing the words to songs. In truth I don’t need to, perhaps why I am as happy with Gaelic, Breton, Wolof or whatever. To the extent that Gwenno’s latest album I don’t like so much, as she has reverted to English (from Cornish and Welsh.)
It was my response to the following, Tiggs: “There are many many instances of even very otherwise decent tunesmiths, adding music to the poems of others. It never works. Unless you can convince me otherwise.”
It’s part of an AngloSaxon poem, apparently inscribed on the walls of a Roman bathhouse in the city of Bath. I think it works both as poetry and as a song.
I can’t find a YT clip on its own – but it’s in this sequence, starting at about 3m 15s. Do you think it works as a song?
Yes. I think it does. There is a definite melody, even a bit of a hook, and none of the vowels are over stretched to fit.
Huzzah!
I’m probably a philistine but I find quite a lot of poetry hard to read with the fractured lines etc. I’m sure there’s a reason for writing it like that but I don’t know what it is. I like Brian Bilston because he’s often fun, usually clever and sometimes deeply moving. And readable.
There’s an interview somewhere with Simon Armitage – Poet Laureate, The Scaremongers – where he very clearly says that music and lyrics, and poetry are very different beasts
It was with Mark Ellen at the Larmer Tree festival (I think). His point was that poetry has its own internal rhythm and doesn’t need, in fact clashes with, music. Most of what people call poetry which are actually lyrics are just fairly well written and use “poetic” devices but that doesn’t make them poetry even if they are great meaningful lyrics.
Absolutely this!
Another poet who has written lyrics, most recently the Poetry in Motion collaboration with Katherine Priddy. This is lovely.
Tunes always win surely in music. Any list of the best of Dylan or Cohen (certainly mine) basically includes the songs you can hum along to (which is why I love Dylan more than Cohen). The lyrics are the cherry on top, they can be enjoyed or ignored.
I’ve listened to Dylan for many thousands of hours but I was once given his complete lyrics in book form and I’ve never once opened it. It’s currently doing duty holding up my monitor…
I have the book of Roddy Frame lyrics and some of them work very well as just words. Some of them are definitely poetic…
Amazing grace filled guiding light,
See her safely home tonight etc. – Surf
… whether they’re poetry or not is surely subjective. Pam Ayres is poetry to some.
Strangely enough I recently heard a good example of a successful (in my opinion at least) poem set to music. It is by the Pet Shop Boys and is a recording of the Kipling Poem ‘The way through the woods”. The long versions is particularly good.
I agree that it is far more problematic to find good examples of lyrics as poetry but a few NIck Cave lyrics make the transition better than many, in particular ‘into my arms”
I love lyrics & have a few which I think hold up as standalone pieces of poetry.
Simon Armitage & his work with LYR is an obvious choice & his collection Never Good With Horses is wonderful, which makes sense as he is poet first and foremost.
Nick Cave can work here & this one from Grinderman 2 is poetry in it’s own right to me
Psychedelic invocations
Of Mata Hari at the station
I give to you
A Java princess of Hindu birth
A woman of flesh, a child of the earth
I give to you
The hanging gardens of Babylon
Miles Davis, the black unicorn
I give to you
The Palaces on Montezuma
And the gardens of Akbar’s Tomb
I give to you
The Spider Goddess and the Needle Boy
And the slave-dwarves that they employ
I give to you
A custard-coloured super-dream
Of Ali McGraw and Steve McQueen
I give to you
C’mon baby, let’s get out of the cold
And gimme gimme gimme your precious love
For me to hold
The Epic of Gilgamesh
A pretty little black A-line dress
I give to you
The spinal cord of JFK
Wrapped in Marilyn Monroe’s negligee
I give to you
I want nothing in return
Just the softest little breathless word
I ask of you
A word contained in a grain of sand
That can barely walk, can’t even stand
I ask for you
C’mon baby, let’s get out of the cold
And gimme gimme gimme your precious love
For me to hold
I love LYR
Bobbie Gentry – Seasons Come Seasons Go
Dogwood blossoms float against the ice encrusted creek bank
A tender blade of new green grass
Is bravely pushing upward through the melting snow
The spring breathes ruffles through my hair
And whispers softly everywhere
Telling secrets in my eyes
Search the countryside for your hello
The seasons come, the seasons go
Lightning darts among the pines
Caught in a summer rainstorm
Soaking wet, I look upon the new plowed earth
With rivulets between each row
I almost feel you next to me
And it stirs a memory
That hangs suspended with a sigh
And gently weaves its way through my bedroom window
The seasons come, the seasons go
See the grain laid scattered
In a trail that leads to nowhere
The rustling leaves beneath my feet
Swirl in a colorful kaleidoscope
A thousand spans of outstretched wings
Circle briefly, hovering
And they swiftly fly away
Leaving me to stay and face December snow
The seasons come, the seasons go
Ice encases blades of grass
Encouraging the wind to pass
And in the frosty morning sun
And a field of diamonds beckon waving to and fro
I stare into the fire a while
Think of you, my love, and smile
Wishing you were here with me
Sharing the security I know
The seasons come, the seasons go
Now that’s a good one!
Poems are a lot harder to memorise than lyrics. I can remember well over 173 song lyrics, including The Message by Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five, but I’ve only memorised a few poems. I recently memorised a Shakespeare sonnet. I saw Dame Judi Dench recite one on the Graham Norton Show and she was lauded and applauded and everything so I thought I ought to learn one too in order to harness the same degree of widespread admiration. She chose number 29, so I chose the next one up, Number 30. I memorised it during my daily swim and it took me about three weeks. It’s all about a bloke, Shakespeare probably, and how he occasionally gets broody and dwells on his past and has himself a right old moan about stuff he’s already previously moaned about, like wasted time and lack of achievement and lost love and dead friends and stuff like that. But if he stops thinking about all that shit and thinks about his “dear friend” instead, he’s all chuffed again, so that’s nice.
There was an article by James Marriott in the Times a few weeks ago which mentioned learning poems.. He is a very interesting and amusing writer, but for a thirty year old, he does seem at times to be sliding into premature middle age. In the article, as far as I remember, he was bemoaning the fact that children don’t have to learn poetry by heart. Maybe not, but I’m 63 and we didn’t have to at school, and talking to one of my oldest friends, a teacher of English for forty years, he said it had never been done at any school he taught at, in Britain and abroad.
Did anyone have to do this? Shortly before he died, Clive James published a selection of poems to learn by heart, and said he was glad he had to do this at school. I think it would have killed the subject stone dead for me. If lines stick in your mind, that’s one thing, but learning for the sake of it, I can’t see the point. If you want easy to access to poetry, isn’t that what books are for?
Weirdly, I actually enjoy the memorising process for its own sake. I have no idea why, I just do. Mostly while swimming. And once memorised, the poem or monologue or whatever stays in my head forever (like so many song lyrics do). In fact, there are two things I’d love to understand about actors. One is the classic question: how do they memorise so many lines? It would take me forever to learn an entire Shakespeare play. The other is: do they then have everything they’ve memorised in their memory forever, as happens with me?
Doesn’t the poetry book get soggy when you jump in the pool?
I usa a Kindle.
Doesn’t the electricity and water have a bad reaction or is it in a waterproof case?
I don’t really use a Kindle. I only said that because I’m hilarious. I try to memorise a line before getting in the water (sea, not pool) and repeat it while swimming. Then I try to make it two lines. Then three. Then four. After which, five. Then six. Then seven. Then eight. Then nine. Then ten. Then eleven. Then twelve. And so on until I get to fourteen, which is the last line of the sonnet.
Why not write the whole sonnet on a large sheet of cardboard and make a placard with it, stick it in the sand and read as you swim past.
The visual representation may help you remember it easier.
Oddly, I use @gary ‘s technique while swimming too, but with songs, those few where the lyrics have stuck. They have to be of the right metre for my pitiful stroke, but get me round my allotted 400 metres. They tend to be lugubrious folkie fare: Gresford Disaster, Oakham Poachers or, more cheerily, Arthur McBride. In my head, clearly. I wouldn’t swim for fear of attracting the mythical and mystical massive pike of Dostil Quarry.
I had to learn poems at school. Maybe that’s why I don’t listen to lyrics much.
Me too. I can still recite some of them. Or one, that being WBYeats’ An Irish Airman Forsees His Death, learnt for the Elocution Prize. I came second, beaten by a big boy, who went on to be an ac-tor.
I suppose this has sufficient narrative to be classed as a ballad – if, indeed, it works at all as poetry.
They crossed over the border the hour before dawn, moving in lines through the day.
Most of our planes were destroyed on the ground where they lay.
Waiting for orders we held in the wood: word from the front never came.
By evening the sound of the gunfire was miles away.
I softly move through the shadows, slip away through the trees
Crossing their lines in the mist in the fields on our hands and our knees
And all that I ever was able to see –
The fire in the air, glowing red, silhouetting the smoke on the breeze.
All summer they drove us back through the Ukraine – Smolensk and Viasma soon fell.
By Autumn we stood with our backs to the town of Orel.
Closer and closer to Moscow they come, riding the wind like a bell.
General Guderian stands at the crest of the hill.
Winter brought with it the rains: oceans of mud filled the roads,
Gluing the tracks of their tanks to the ground, while the skies filled with snow
And all that I ever was able to see –
The fire in the air glowing red, silhouetting the snow on the breeze
In the footsteps of Napoleon, the shadow figures stagger through the winter;
Falling back before the gates of Moscow, standing in the wings like an avenger;
And far away behind their lines, the partisans are stirring in the forest,
Coming unexpectedly upon their outposts, growing like a promise.
You’ll never know, you’ll never know which way to turn, which way to look: you’ll never see us
As we steal into the blackness of the night you’ll never know, you’ll never hear us
And evening sings in a voice of amber, the dawn is surely coming.
The morning road leads to Stalingrad, and the sky is softly humming.
Two broken Tigers on fire in the night flicker their souls to the wind.
We wait in the lines for the final approach to begin.
It’s been almost four years that I’ve carried a gun: at home, it will almost be spring.
The flames of the Tiger are lighting the road to Berlin.
I quickly move through the ruins that bow to the ground.
The old men and children they send out to face us, they can’t slow us down
And all that I ever was able to see –
The eyes of the city are opening – now it’s the end of the dream
I’m coming home, I’m coming home – now you can taste it in the wind: the war is over
And I listen to the clicking of the train wheels as we roll across the border
And now they ask about the time that I was caught behind the lines and taken prisoner:
“They only held me for a day, a lucky break” I say – they turn and listen closer…
I’ll never know, I’ll never know, why I was taken from the line with all the others
to board a special train and journey deep into the heart of holy Russia
And it’s cold and damp in the transit camp and the air is still and sullen
and the pale sun of October whispers the snow will soon be coming
And I wonder when I’ll be home again and the morning answers “never”
And the evening sighs and the steely, Russian skies go on,
forever…
Beautiful. I think poems were originally designed as a device to aid memory when telling a story (Iliad & Odyssey). A narrative is not a handicap in a poem.
I thought of posting …. And the Band Played Waltzing Mathilda – the theme of war seems to make for elegant writing whether poetry, ballads or song.
I’ve always enjoyed the Richard Lovelace’s poem “To Althea, From Prison” which appeared Fairport Convention’s album Nine.
Quite a few Burns poems have been done, but the answer of course is Donovan whose recorded quite a few poems.
I have frequently used the wonderful Billy Bragg song ‘Goodbye Goodbye’ as a poem when I am conducting funeral services … it works brilliantly
Goodbye to all my friends
The time has come for me to go.
Goodbye to all the souls
Who sailed with me so long.
The day has come at last
The sail strength at the mast
The years have quickly passed away.
Goodbye to all my friends
The time has come for me to say
Goodbye to all my friends
Who’ve sailed with me along the way.
The bells have all been rung
The songs have all been sung
This long river has run its course.
Goodbye to all my friends
The time has come for me to go.
Goodbye to all the souls
Who sailed with me so long.
The coffee pot is cold
The jokes have all been told
The last stone has been rolled away.
Goodbye to all my friends
The time has come for me to say
Goodbye to all the souls
Who’ve sailed with me along the way.
Goodbye
Goodbye, goodbye.
Goodbye, goodbye.
Goodbye, goodbye.
Goodbye, goodbye.
I bought that album on release, then terribly upset by that song, feeling Billy was trying to tell us he was dying.
Surprised no mention yet of Jamaican/Caribbean music whether it be Toasting or the likes of Linton Kwesi Johnson, Roger Robinson or Anthony Joseph which seems to marry poetry and music with ease
Quite right. However “with ease” might be a stretch. Ask Dennis Bovell, Disrupt and Jason Yarde. They might use different adjectives.
(Best wishes to Yarde who suffered a stroke on tour with Joseph in 2022).
Amazed no one has mentioned young Johnny Clarke from Salford…
His own albums were poems with musical backing, and although I’m sure he was very glad of the late career boost The Arctic Monkeys gave him in general he’s not a fan.
https://list.co.uk/news/interview-john-cooper-clarke-on-how-poetry-and-music-work-16410
The advantage that the Dub Poets have (see Hoops above) is that the Jamaican/Caribbean way of talking has a natural musical rhythm to it. LKJ certainly changed his way of writing after his first LP to better for the music.
Inspired by and perfectly evoking the horrors of the IWM’s Holocaust exhibition,
this Clive James lyric for a Pete Atkin song also works as a poem.
I live in the shadow of a hill
A hill of little shoes
I love but I shiver with a chill
A chill I never lose
I live, I love, but where are they?
Where are their lives, their loves? All blown away
And every little shoe is a foot that never grew
Another day
If you could find a pair and put them on the floor
Make a mark in the air like the marks beside your door
When you were growing
You’d see how tall they were
And the buckles and the laces they could do up on their own
Or almost could
With their tongue-tips barely showing
Tell you how small they were
And then you’d think of little faces looking fearfully alone
And how they stood
In their bare feet being tall for the last time
Just to be good
And that was all they were
They were like you in the same year but you grew up
They were barely even here before they suddenly weren’t there
And while you got dressed for bed they did the same but they were led
Into another room instead
And they were all blown away into thin air
I live in the shadow of a hill
A hill of little shoes
I love but I shiver with a chill
A chill I never lose
And I caught that cold when I was chosen to grow old
In the shadow of a hill of little shoes
That’s brilliant, and very moving.
It’s one of the featured songs in this lovely book:
Couple more lovely Clive James lyrics as set to music by Pete Atkin
Senior Citizens
You’ve seen the way they get around
With nothing beyond burdens left to lose
The drying spine that bends them near the ground
The way their ankles fold over their shoes
They’ve had their day and half of the day after
And all the shares they ever held in laughter
Are now just so many old engravings
Their sands have run out long before their savings
And the fun ran out so long before the sands
They’ve lost touch with the touch of other hands
That once came to caress and then to help
A single tumble means a broken hip
The hair grows thinner on the scalp
And thicker on the upper lip
And who is there to care, or left to please?
It’s so easy when we’re young
For me to wield a silver tongue
And cleverly place you among
The girls the boys have always sung
It’s so simple when it’s you
For me to coax from my guitar
The usual on how fine you are
Like this calm night, like that bright star
And the rest would follow on
The rest would follow on
And there’ll be time to try it all
I’m sure the thrill will never pall
The sand will take so long to fall
The neck so slim, the glass so tall
Between us There is Nothing
Between us
The streets are swept away
The tablecloth is all the world
The rest is just the passing day
Outside of this are Soho and the far-flung islands
The stripjoints in the alleys
and the grainhulks anchored in the bay
Between us
The wristwatch comes to rest
The sunlight’s in your hands and eyes
By which the bread and wine are blessed
Away from here are Soho and the green seas in the west
The trainee seagulls contour-flying
through the swell’s long trough and crest
Between us there is nothing but the shadow
Of the future that will never let us go
To be together
Between us there is nothing but the snowline
Of the country where you will not be mine
Its savage weather
Between us
A wineglass learns to cry
But only we will reach the end
The rest is just a passing-by
Outside of this are Soho and the mangrove deltas
The dustbins in the doorways
and the Spanish goldtrails in the sky
Between us there is nothing but a promise
Of the future that will make no place for us
To be together
Between us there is nothing but the condor
And the miles of air towards the valley floor
A falling feather
Between us
There is nothing
That’s lovely. Reminds me of this, great lyrics…
Hello In There
John Prine
We had an apartment in the city
And me and Loretta liked living there
Well, it’d been years since the kids had grown
A life of their own
And left us alone
John and Linda live in Omaha
And Joe is somewhere on the road
We lost Davy in the Korean War
And I still don’t know what for
Don’t matter anymore
You know that old trees just grow stronger
And old rivers grow wilder every day
Old people just grow lonesome
Waiting for someone to say
“Hello in there, hello”
Me and Loretta, we don’t talk much more
She sits and stares through the back door screen
And all the news just repeats itself
Like some forgotten dream
That we’ve both seen
Someday I’ll go and call up Rudy
We worked together at the factory
But what could I say if he asks, “What’s new?”
“Nothin’, what’s with you?
Nothin’ much to do”
You know that old trees just grow stronger
And old rivers grow wilder every day
Old people just grow lonesome
Waiting for someone to say
“Hello in there, hello”
So if you’re walkin’ down the street sometime
And spot some hollow, ancient eyes
Please don’t just pass ’em by and stare
As if you didn’t care
Say, “Hello in there, hello”
Nothing, absolutely nothing, without JPs voice and the music
Harsh. Lovely words, even better with JP.
Re: Clive James lyrics for Pete Atkin.
Yeah – the lyrics to the fist three albums especially are just outstanding.
Jaygee (above) chose “Senior Citizens”. I might go for “Carnations on the Roof”.
Was thinking of posting that. Reminds me a lot of my Dad.
Gave King at Nightfall a spin this am and had a bit of a cry when that one came on
Oh don’t temp me. One Dad song and I’m in bits. See Jackson Browne “Daddy’s Song”.
I’ll save it for when I’m on my own. With a whisky. (My dad’s drink).
It’s a bit of an epic but it works as a standalone poem for me.
Joanne Newsom – Emily from the album Ys
The meadowlark and the chim-choo-ree and the sparrow
set to the sky in a flying spree, for the sport of the pharaoh.
Little while later, the Pharisees dragged a comb through the meadow.
Do you remember what they called up to you and me, in our window?
There is a rusty light on the pines tonight;
sun pouring wine, lord, or marrow, into the
bones of the birches, and the spires of the churches, jutting out from the shadows;
the yoke, and the axe, and the old smokestacks, and the bale, and the barrow —
and everything sloped, like it was dragged from a rope, in the mouth of the south below.
We’ve seen those mountains kneeling, felten and grey.
We thought our very hearts would up and melt away,
from that snow in the nighttime,
just going and going
and the stirring of wind chimes
in the morning
in the morning
Helps me find my way back in
from the place where I have been —
And, Emily, I saw you last night by the river.
I dreamed you were skipping little stones across the surface of the water —
frowning at the angle where they were lost, and slipped under forever,
in a mud-cloud, mica-spangled, like the sky’d been breathing on a mirror.
Anyhow, I sat by your side, by the water.
You taught me the names of the stars overhead, that I wrote down in my ledger —
though all I knew of the rote universe were those Pleiades, loosed in December,
I promised you I’d set them to verse, so I’d always remember
That the meteorite is the source of the light,
And the meteor’s just what we see;
And the meteoroid is a stone that’s devoid of the fire that propelled it to thee.
And the meteorite’s just what causes the light,
And the meteor’s how it’s perceived;
And the meteoroid’s a bone thrown from the void, that lies quiet in offering to thee.
*
You came and lay a cold compress upon the mess I’m in;
threw the windows wide, and cried amen amen amen.
The whole world stopped to hear you hollering.
And you looked down, and saw, now, what was happening:
The lines are fading in my kingdom
(though I have never known the way to border them in);
so the muddy mouths of baboons and sows, and the grouse, and the horse, and the hen
grope at the gate of the looming lake that was once a tidy pen.
And the mail is late, and the great estates are not lit from within.
The talk in town’s becoming downright sickening.
In due time we will see the far buttes lit by a flare.
I’ve seen your bravery, and I will follow you there
And row through the nighttime,
so healthy,
gone healthy all of a sudden,
In search of a midwife
who can help me
who can help me,
help me find my way back in.
And there are worries where I’ve been.
And say, say, say, in the lee of the bay
don’t be bothered.
Leave your troubles here,
where the tugboats shear the water from the water
(flanked by furrows, curling back, like a match held up to a newspaper).
Emily, they’ll follow your lead by the letter.
And I make this claim, and I’m not ashamed to say I knew you better.
What they’ve seen is just a beam of your sun that banishes winter.
Let us go! Though we know it’s a hopeless endeavor.
The ties that bind, they are barbed and spined, and hold us close forever.
Though there is nothing would help me come to grips with
a sky that is gaping and yawning,
there is a song I woke with on my lips,
as you sailed your great ship towards the morning.
*
Come on home. The poppies are all grown knee-deep by now.
Blossoms all have fallen, and the pollen ruins the plow.
Peonies nod in the breeze,
and while they wetly bow
with hydrocephalitic listlessness,
ants mop up their brow.
And everything with wings is restless, aimless, drunk and dour;
butterflies and birds collide at hot, ungodly hours.
And my clay-colored motherlessness rangily reclines —
Come on home, now! All my bones are dolorous with vines.
Pa pointed out to me, for the hundredth time tonight,
the way the ladle leads to a dirt-red bullet of light.
Squint skyward and listen —
loving him, we move within his borders:
just asterisms in the stars’ set order.
We could stand for a century,
staring,
with our heads cocked,
in the broad daylight, at this thing:
Joy,
landlocked in bodies that don’t keep —
dumbstruck with the sweetness of being,
till we don’t be.
Told: take this.
And eat this.
Told: the meteorite is the source of the light,
And the meteor’s just what we see;
And the meteoroid is a stone that’s devoid of the fire that propelled it to thee.
And the meteorite is just what causes the light,
And the meteor’s how it’s perceived;
And the meteoroid’s a bone thrown from the void that lies quiet in offering to thee.
Absolutely, this is beautiful.
Dear god, that’s awful beyond belief..
No. It’s actually very good.
Let us not forget that the mighty Idlewild had t shirts with the logo of “Support your local poet”, and then released this, featuring the estimable Edwin Morgan:
You remind me, I have a Roddy Woomble (Idlewild) curated album of, mainly, Scottish poets tagged with Scottish bands.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballads_of_the_Book
I don’t recall it being great, but was well worth the£1.50 I paid for it, at Barras Market.
These words are suitably terse for poetry:
Love for the party love for the nation
Love for the fix for the fabrication
Love for the corpse for the corporation
Love for the death and for the defecation
Romance and assassination
Give me the love for the genocide
Give me love
There have been quite a few instances of song lyrics being published later, supposedly as poetry. Also many an attempt to fit existing poems to music in various genres.
Generally, the results for both are pretty disappointing.
I refer you to Imperial Walls, mentioned above – an existing (Anglo Saxon) poem set to music. I think it works.
Here’s one, can’t make up my mind about it…
I’m looking in my little black book to see if I was right or rongwrong –
Within the confines of whoremonger logic – to even try to sing this song
I could have asked the I Ching – but that would have taken up too much time
And with the time being 4/4, I didn’t see there was no time to lose.
If things got bad, it could always turn into a blues
Like they do back home on the Delta Grunt and Groan.
I’m looking in my little black book of European logic – still I can’t make head or tail of it!
If I could only read between the lines, think of all the treasures I might find:
Learn the secret of trance and levitation; liberate my soul in six easy lessons.
Meanwhile I’ll stay at home and listen to Schoenberg in the bath
And leave you to the geometry of my laugh –
To which you’re welcome, if it helps you at all
To get your rocks off and have a ball.
Never let it be thought that we have nothing to share:
We drink the same water and we breathe the same air.
Deep down inside, we need each other just the same –
You need me to laugh at…
and I need you to blame.
John Cale has written music for Dylan Thomas poems, though I’m not convinced by them