Anthology 3

The Welsh poet - Welsher than Welsh, though he could only write poetry in English - R.S. Thomas has appeared on this blog before, especially around the time I was reading Byron Rogers' classic biography of the great man (as here and here). In this short, intense poem, Thomas wrests his attention from his thankless parish and his absent God to look back and forgive his parents...

SORRY

Dear parents,
I forgive you my life,
Begotten in a drab town,
The intention was good;
Passing the street now,
I see still the remains of sunlight.

It was not the bone buckled;
You gave me enough food
To renew myself.
It was the mind's weight
Kept me bent, as I grew tall.

It was not your fault.
What should have gone on,
Arrow aimed from a tried bow
At a tried target, has turned back,
Wounding itself
With questions you had not asked.

Anthology. 2

Here is a poem by the great Elizabeth Bishop, demonstrating one of the things she does best - the inhabiting of a non-human life. It also demonstrates the 'particularity' of her work, the extraordinary intensity of her focus in a short poem that moves effortlessly between the vast and the minute...

SANDPIPER

The roaring alongside he takes for granted,
and that every so often the world is bound to shake.
He runs, he runs to the south, finical, awkward,
in a state of controlled panic, a student of Blake.

The beach hisses like fat. On his left, a sheet
of interrupting water comes and goes
and glazes over his dark and brittle feet.
He runs, he runs straight through it, watching his toes.

- Watching, rather, the spaces of sand between them
where (no detail too small) the Atlantic drains
rapidly backwards and downwards. As he runs,
he stares at the dragging grains.

The world is a mist. And then the world is
minute and vast and clear. The tide
is higher or lower. He couldn't tell you which.
His beak is focussed; he is preoccupied,

looking for something, something, something.
Poor bird, he is obsessed!
The millions of grains are black, white, tan, and gray
mixed with quartz grains, rose and amethyst.

Anthology for Hard Times? 1.

I'm likely to be engulfed in a NigeCorp workstorm for a week or so. On days when I'm not able to post anything substantial of my own, what I'm planning to do is to put up a succession of short poems, with little or no comment (feel free to add your own) - a kind of mini-anthology for hard times. Sweet are the uses of  adversity...
  Here, to start the ball rolling, is Geoffrey Hill's rich, dense evocation of 'Platonic England', written in the form of an Italian (not English!) sonnet:

THE LAUREL AXE

Autumn resumes the land, ruffles the woods   

with smoky wings, entangles them. Trees shine   

out from their leaves, rocks mildew to moss-green;   

the avenues are spread with brittle floods.

Platonic England, house of solitudes,   

rests in its laurels and its injured stone,   

replete with complex fortunes that are gone,   

beset by dynasties of moods and clouds.

It stands, as though at ease with its own world,   

the mannerly extortions, languid praise,   

all that devotion long since bought and sold,

the rooms of cedar and soft-thudding baize,   

tremulous boudoirs where the crystals kissed   

in cabinets of amethyst and frost.

 

Craig

You can find me on The Dabbler today, remembering a terrible but talented man, Edward Gordon Craig.

Talking B*ll*cks

I'm indebted to Brit (it's that man again!) for this story from the incomparable BBC Science website, which he describes, accurately enough, as 'beyond parody'. Like most such 'stories', it proceeds from confidently assertive headline through a process of gradual deflation to a long tail of caveats and provisos that are as good as saying 'Take no notice of any of the above'. You have to wonder why it crossed their minds to investigate testicle size in the first place - was it part of a more general experiment, or just the one measurement? And how exactly does one measure testicle size/volume? Is there special equipment? The mind boggles... For myself I'm quite sure that men with larger noses make more hands-on fathers - I think this hypothesis should be put to the test without delay. These things matter!   

A Green Thought

In a sparkling Dabbler Diary, Brit remarks how strange it is that, just when life was promising to get easier and easier ad infinitum, we started to make it that little bit harder for ourselves - all in the name of 'being green' (elaborate separating out of household waste, slow-lighting bulbs etc). I suspect these minor inconveniences we inflict on ourselves - like so much else about the 'green' movement - are 'spilt religion'. These gestures are the equivalent of penances that we impose on ourselves to make up for having things so easy. Human nature is basically religious, whichever way you cut it, and these little 'penances' are consolatory formal rituals of a secular religion, providing similar rewards but at a considerably lower cost and (unlike religion) a feelgood smugness with no downside. This is surely one of the reasons the 'green' movement is so strong and so deeply embedded in (ostensibly) post-religious societies; it fills a gap. Its essentially religious nature would also explain the extent of delusional insanity involved in such gestures as the British Parliament voting for binding legislation to cut 'carbon emissions' by a wholly unachievable 80 percent.  You can't be too virtuous, can you? (or too smug?)...
  Meanwhile, if you want energy-saving bulbs, switch to halogen - they give good strong light at the flick of a switch, just like an old-fashioned light bulb.

Retroprogressive News etc.

Retroprogressives will be glad to note that today is International Cassette Store Day. Like vinyl, the cassette is not going away - nor is there any real reason why it should; it is, again like vinyl, a format with its own particular qualities and much to commend it. Which reminds me - I must replace my last Walkman, which finally packed up a few months ago...
  Meanwhile I learn from the local paper that a girl who works part-time in a Greggs bakery in Thornton Heath has caused a stir on The X Factor, singing Read All About It and One Night Only. The paper is moved to list some other songs that a Greggs employee might sing. They range from No Woman No Pie to Bohemian Bap-sody by way of Lady in Bread, Sausage Roll with It, Doughnut Look Back in Anger, Everything I Do I Do It for Choux, Ain't No Sunshine When She's Scone, Patsy Dutchie on the Left Hand Side and Total Eclipse of the Tart.
  No Bob Dylan songs included there, alas - no Like a Rolling Scone, nor If Not for Choux (nor even I Want Choux), not to mention One More Cup of Coffee and indeed Gotta Serve Somebody.