Anthology 17

The workstorm rages. Time for a poem... Here's one by Emily Dickinson, born on this day in 1830 - a poet with a voice so entirely, sharply distinctive and original that it still startles.

A Bird, came down the Walk - 

He did not know I saw -

He bit an Angle Worm in halves

And ate the fellow, raw, 

 

And then, he drank a Dew

From a convenient Grass -

And then hopped sidewise to the Wall

To let a Beetle pass -

 

He glanced with rapid eyes,

That hurried all abroad -

They looked like frightened Beads, I thought,

He stirred his Velvet Head. - 

 

Like one in danger, Cautious,

I offered him a Crumb,

And he unrolled his feathers, 

And rowed him softer Home -

 

Than Oars divide the Ocean,

Too silver for a seam,

Or Butterflies, off Banks of Noon,

Leap, plashless as they swim.

Pot, Kettle?

I awoke this morning to news that the likes of Google are protesting vigorously over state surveillance of online communications. Fair enough - but hang on a minute, I thought. I'm a Googlemail user, and every time I open my inbox (why does that phrase always sound faintly indecent - or is it just me?) I am confronted with ample evidence of Google's relentless surveillance of my supposedly private correspondence. Not that I particulary mind, but those ads that keep popping up all over the page are clearly triggered by supposed clues gleaned from my emails. Sometimes they're vaguely appropriate (though there's never yet been one I've picked up on), sometimes they're comically wide of the mark. Today's clutch has included  familiar 'are you owed money?' messages from banks, Are You Writing A Book? (go away), Mezzanine Flooring (where did that come from?), Shipping to Malaysia (??) and Grit Bins. Hmm. To raise the tone, I sent a mail to myself asking where I could buy a Lamborghini (not that I would, even if I drove). Straight away I got an exclusive invitation to the Armani private sale (not that I would...). Clearly Google are using much the same kind of surveillance technology as the State; the difference is that they can't claim they're doing it to keep us safe - they're doing it to flog us stuff.

The Big O

It was on this day in 1988 that Roy Orbison died, at the early age of 52. I remember it well as I heard the news the next day, on my birthday. Much has been said and written about Orbison's beautiful, broken-hearted voice, which Elvis regarded as the greatest he had ever heard. Dwight Yoakam described it as being like 'the cry of an angel falling backward through an open window'. Well yes, it's all true...
I was interested to find a link to this, his last substantial interview - in which he talks of, among other things, his faith - on the invaluable Books Inq blog yesterday.
But here is Roy duetting with Emmylou Harris - two great voices for the price of one. Enjoy (or weep, or both)...

Anthology 16

Here's something to counteract the chill of a blowy December day - John Clare observing a sultry high summer noon. As usual with Clare, he doesn't bother with punctuation, but this is a correct and regular English sonnet. As usual too, the poet is absent. Clare is a seeing eye and a hearing ear, his verse a rapt notation of the natural world around him. He describes it tenderly, with a clear eye and scrupulous care.

Noon
The midday hour of twelve the clock counts oer
A sultry stillness lulls the air asleep
The very buzz of flye is heard no more
Nor faintest wrinkles oer the waters creep
Like one large sheet of glass the waters shine
Reflecting on their face the burnt sunbeam
The very fish their sturting play decline
Seeking the willow shadows side the stream
And where the hawthorn branches oer the pool
The little bird forsaking song and nest
Flutters on dripping twigs his limbs to cool
And splashes in the stream his burning breast
O free from thunder for a sudden shower
To cherish nature in this noon-day hour.

['sturting' means contending]

Magimiks Bilong Yesus (and other useful terms)

I happened upon this little wordlist yesterday and it made me laugh, so I pass it on in the interest of spreading good cheer. It also shows remarkable creative ingenuity in making a handful of words express a wide range of meanings, sometimes achieving a kind of poetry. This particular form of pidgin English is called Tok Pisin and is widely spoken in Papua New Guinea. In Tok Pisin, Prince Philip is known as 'oldfella Pili-Pili him bilong Misis Kwin'. On the island of Tanna in Vanuatu, where the Prince is revered as the errant son of a local mountain god, he is known more respectfully as 'number one bigfella him bilong Misis Queen'.

liklik box you pull him he cry you push him he cry – an accordion
• bigfella iron walking stick him go bang along topside – a rifle
• skru bilong han (screw belong arm) – elbow
• gras bilong het (grass belong head) – hair
• maus gras (mouth grass) – moustache
• gras bilong fes (grass belong face) – beard
• bel hevi (belly heavy) – the heavy sinking feeling that often accompanies extreme sadness
• magimiks bilong Yesus (Magimix belong Jesus) – helicopter
• pen bilong maus (pen belong mouth) – lipstick
• bun nating (bone nothing) – a very thin person
• tit i gat windua bilong em (teeth have window belong him) – a broken-off tooth
• sikispela lek (six legs) – man with two wives
• susok man (shoe sock man) – urbanite
• frok-bel (frog belly) – obese person
• pato-lek (duck legs) – waddling person
• emti tin (empty tin) – person who speaks nonsense
• flat taia (flat tire) – exhausted person
• smok balus (smoke bird) – jet airplane
• poket bruk (pocket broken) – out of money
• bagarap (bugger up) – broken, to break down
• haus moni (house money) – bank
• haus sik (house sick) – hospital
• belhat (belly hot) – angry

R.S. Thomas again

Over on The Dabbler, I look at R.S. Thomas as a great comic figure. But, lest we forget, he was also a great poet (or something very like it), and a tender, true and complicated heart beat beneath that  rebarbative surface. It speaks here in this beautiful  late poem that attests to the enduring love in his strange and difficult relationship with his wife Mildred (Elsi), to whom he was married for 51 years. It's a delicate and subtle piece of work, its artistry concealed by its deftly managed, seemingly natural flow. And it was written by the glowering man in the Dabbler photograph...

Luminary

My luminary,
my morning and evening
star. My light at noon
when there is no sun
and the sky lowers. My balance
of joy in a world
that has gone off joy's
standard. Yours the face
that young I recognised
as though I had known you
of old. Come, my eyes
said, out into the morning
of a world whose dew
waits for your footprint.
Before a green altar
with the thrush for priest
I took those gossamer
vows that neither the Church
could stale nor the Machine
tarnish, that with the years
have grown hard as flint,
lighter than platinum
on our ringless fingers. 

From Piccadilly Weepers to the Great Hippocampus Question, via Dundreary and Lincoln

'Towards the end of an autumn afternoon an elderly man with a thin face and grey Piccadilly weepers pushed open the swing-door leading into the vestibule of a certain famous library...'
  So begins The Tractate Middoth, a ghost story by M.R. James (of which a TV adaptation is promised this Christmas). 'Piccadilly weepers', eh? I vaguely knew they were some kind of face whiskers, but what I didn't know was that they are the same style as the (slightly) better known Dundrearies, extravagant sidewhiskers that were strangely popular among Victorian gents. 
 Why Dundrearies? They were named for Lord Dundreary, a stage character who sported them in the popular play Our American Cousin by Tom Taylor. Dundreary was the very epitome of the brainless but good-natured English aristo (a kind of precursor of the great Bertie Wooster). Originally conceived as a minor character, Dundreary grew to monstrous proportions thanks to the actor Edward Askew Sothern, who gradually expanded the role with a profusion of ad-libs and stage business until Lord Dundreary became the main attraction of the play. Dundreary's mangling of English proverbs - often conflating two, as in 'Birds of a feather gather no moss' - started a brief but intense fashion for such 'Dundrearyisams', which were thought howlingly funny at the time. 
 The most famous performance of Our American Cousin was of course at Ford's Theatre in Washington, DC, on April 14, 1865 - in the course of which Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. His killer John Wilkes Booth timed his shot for a moment when the uproarious laughter of the audience would mask the sound. Booth fired after this sure-fire comic gem, which always (as it were) slayed them: 'Don't know the manners of good society, eh?' [says Asa Trenchard to Mrs Mountchessington] 'Well, I guess I know enough to turn you inside out - you sockdologising old man-trap!' Cue gales of helpless laughter.
 Such was the fame of Lord Dundreary that Charles Kingsley wrote a speech for him - on the Great Hippocampus Question - as a parody of the kind of debates then raging around evolutionary theory. You can actually see and hear this speech (somewhat unsettlingly) on YouTube. The reader does a great job but doesn't sound much like an English aristo. Quite mad.