Apparently it’s World Poetry Day. Here’s one of my favourite short poems…
Here we are all, by day; by night we’re hurl’d
By dreams, each one into a several world.
Robert Herrick
I could’ve posted the entire text of Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself”, and had you reading for the next hour but instead lets share bite-sized gems of poetic brevity.
I was rather taken by this short poem by Erin Hansen recently:
There is freedom waiting for you,
On the breezes of the sky,
And you ask “What if I fall?”
Oh but my darling,
What if you fly?
Ah man. I usually do Larkin’s “Aubade” as my Poetry Day stock-in, but it’s not that short.
Let’s have some Rilke instead. It’s only a wee extract from the first Duino elegy, but I love it.
Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels’ hierarchies
and even if one of them pressed me suddenly against his heart:
I would be consumed in that overwhelming existence.
For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, which we are still just able to endure,
and we are so awed because it serenely disdains to annihilate us.
Every angel is terrifying.
It’s even better in German, and of course there’s lots more. I briefly wanted to call my band’s second album “Ein Jeder Engel ist Schrecklich” but it’s a) horribky pretentious and b) basically unpronounceable for most English speaking types.
The Hinds By Kathleen Jamie
Walking in a waking dream
I watched nineteen deer
pour from ridge to glen-floor,
then each in turn leap,
leap the new-raised
peat-dark burn. This
was the distaff side;
hinds at their ease, alive
to lands held on long lease
in their animal minds,
and filing through a breach
in a never-mended dyke,
the herd flowed up over
heather-slopes to scree
where they stopped, and turned to stare,
the foremost with a queenly air
as though to say: Aren’t we
the bonniest companie?
Come to me,
you’ll be happy, but never go home.
(Kathleen Jamie is, I think, Scotland’s greatest living writer. This is from her newest book. Here’s a good article on it… http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2015/oct/05/poem-of-the-week-the-hinds-by-kathleen-jamie)
I was going to take something of a liberty and republish HP Saucecraft’s beautiful poem about his father, which he posted on the parish notice board last October. But I lost my nerve, deciding it would be presumptuous of me to do so.
Instead, I should like to invite the author himself to share it afresh. It would be a pity not to, as it is one of the best things I’ve read in the past year or so.
Adam had ’em
That’s Fleas by the way
Okay, a more serious one. This one is by Matsuo Bashō:
Summer grasses,
All that remains
Of soldiers’ dreams.
Dorothy Parker gave good short.
Resumé
Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren’t lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.
A chicken is a noble beast,
a cow is much forlorner,
standing in the pouring rain,
a leg at every corner.
William Topaz McGonagall
I saw this guy, Steve Turner, at a festival about 30 years ago
I am on the kids’ side
in the war against adults.
I don’t want to stand still.
I don’t want to sit still.
I don’t want to be quiet.
I believe that strangers
are for starting at,
bags are for looking into,
paper is for scribbling on.
I want to know Why.
I want to know How.
I wonder What if.
I am on the kids’ side
in the war against tedium.
I’m for going home
when stores get packed.
I’m for sleeping
when parties get dull.
I’m for kicking stones
when conversation sags.
I’m for making noises.
I’m for playing jokes
especially in life’s
more Serious Bits.
I am on the kids’ side.
See my sneaky grin,
watch me dance, see me run.
Spit on the carpet, rub it in,
pick my nose in public,
play rock stars in the mirror.
I am on the kids’ side.
I want to know why we’re not moving.
I’m fed up. I want to go out.
What’s that? Can I have one?
It isn’t fair. Who’s that man?
It wasn’t me, i was pushed.
When are we going to go?
I am on the kids’ side
putting fun back into words.
Ink pink pen and ink
you go out because you stink.
Stephen Turner is a burner,
urner, murner, purner.
Stephen, weven, peven,
reven, teven, Turnip Top.
I am on the kids’ side
in the war against apathy.
Mum, I want to do something.
It must be my turn next
When can we go out?
I am on the kids’ side
and when I grow up,
I want to be a boy
Spring has sprung
The grass is riz
I wonder where the birdie is?
They say the birdie’s on the wing
But that’s absurd
Of course the wing is on the bird.
Anon
Armpit Kestrel, I say bye bye
I lift my arm and away you fly
Electric Trapeze Ferret, it’s really not your fault
That the crowd went home when you couldn’t find a volt