Re: poetry thread

[Guest]

...I will not post when I'm drunk
...I will not post when I'm drunk
...I will not post when I'm drunk
...I will not post when I'm drunk

that means you won't post at all?

Edit: You have a pm my dear

I won't send Moony strange pms
I won't send Moony strange pms
I won't send Moony strange pms
I won't send Moony strange pms

[Guest]

What...never?

[Guest]

Don't worry... I can't keep my promises

[Guest]

ABANDONED CHURCH

(Ballad of the Great War)

I had a son named Juan.
I had a son.
He was lost through the arches on the Friday of the dead.
I saw him play on the final ladders of the mass
and he tossed a small tin can into the priest's heart.
I have pounded on the coffins. My son! My son!
I took out a hen's foot from behind the moon and then
I understood my daughter was a fish
into which the wagons retreat.
I had a daughter.
I had a dead fish under the censer's ashes.
I had a sea. Of what? My God! A sea!
I rose to ring the bells but the fruit had worms
and the blown-out tapers
ate the spring wheat.
I saw the transparent stork of alcohol
cleanse the blackened heads of agonizing soldiers
and I saw the rubber cabins
where goblets twirled full of tears.
In the anemones of the offertory I'll find you, my heart,
when the priest raises the mule and the ox on his strong arms
to chase away the nocturnal frogs surrounding the frozen landscape of the chalice.
I had a son who was a giant,
but the dead are stronger and know how to devour pieces of sky.
If my son had been a bear,
I would not fear the secrecy of caimans
or see the sea tied to the trees
to be raped and wounded by pounding regiments.
If my son had been a bear!
I'll wrap myself in this hard canvas not to feel the moss's cold.
I know well they'll give me a sleeve, a tie;
but in the center of the mass I'll break the helm and then
there will come to the stone the madness of penguins and gulls
who will force those sleeping and singing in corners to say:
He had a son!
A son! A son
who was only his, because he was!
His son! His son!



IGLESIA ABANDONADA

(BALADA DE LA GRAN GUERRA)

Yo tenía un hijo que se llamaba Juan.
Yo tenía un hijo.
Se perdió por los arcos un viernes de todos los muertos.
Le vi jugar en las últimas escaleras de la misa
y echaba un cubito de hojalata en el corazón del sacerdote.
He golpeado los ataúdes. ¡Mi hijo! ¡Mi hijo! ¡Mi hijo!
Saqué una pata de gallina por detrás de la luna y luego
comprendí que mi niña era un pez
por donde se alejan las carretas.
Yo tenía una niña.
Yo tenía un pez muerto bajo la ceniza de los incensarios.
Yo tenía un mar. ¿De qué? ¡Dios mío! ¡Un mar!
Subí a tocar las campanas, pero las frutas tenían gusanos.
y las cerillas apagadas
se comían los trigos de la primavera.
Yo vi la transparente cigüeña de alcohol
mondar las negras cabezas de los soldados agonizantes
y vi las cabañas de goma
donde giraban las copas llenas de lágrimas.
En las anémonas del ofertorio te encontraré, ¡corazón mío!,
cuando el sacerdote levanta la mula y el buey con sus fuertes brazos,
para espantar los sapos nocturnos que rondan los helados paisajes del cáliz.
Yo tenía un hijo que era un gigante,
pero los muertos son más fuertes y saben devorar pedazos de cielo.
Si mi niño hubiera sido un oso,
yo no temería el sigilo de los caimanes,
ni hubiese visto el mar amarrado a los árboles
para ser fornicado y herido por el tropel de los regimientos.
¡Si mi niño hubiera sido un oso!
Me envolveré sobre esta lona dura para no sentir el frío de los musgos.
Sé muy bien que me darán una manga o la corbata;
pero en el centro de la misa yo romperé el timón y entonces
vendrá a la piedra la locura de pingüinos y gaviotas
que harán decir a los que duermen y a los que cantan por las esquinas:
él tenía un hijo.
¡Un hijo! ¡Un hijo! ¡Un hijo
que no era más que suyo, porque era su hijo!
¡Su hijo! ¡Su hijo! ¡Su hijo!



By Federico García Lorca

[Guest]

Poet in New York

Nothing that poet Federico Garcia Lorca experienced in his native Spain or elsewhere in Europe quite prepared him for the nine glorious and terrible months that he spent in New York City in 1929. Here he encountered the city's teeming multitudes, the imposing splendor of its architecture which rose vertically to the heavens, and the economic disparities that divided the metropolis between extremes of rich and poor. He spent frenzied passionate days in Gotham overwhelmed by the city's beauty and vigor, both enamored and repelled by the city. All this is set down in Poet in New York, a series of thirty-five poems. New York, a city where Lorca felt one could (literally) be:

Murdered by the sky.
Among the forms that move toward the snake
and the forms searching for crystal
I will let my hair grow.
(…)
Stumbling onto my face, different every day.
Murdered by the sky!

Living in the dorms at Columbia University, Lorca became enraptured with Harlem and empathized with its African-American denizens and culture. "Being born in Granada," Lorca wrote, "has given me a sympathetic understanding of all those who are persecuted - the Gypsy, the black, the Jew, the Moor, which all (Grandians) have inside them." African-American spirituals and jazz recalled for Lorca a particularly emotional form of flamenco, the cante jondo or 'deep song' of his native Spain. In The King of Harlem, Lorca exalts:

Oh Harlem! Harlem!
There is no anguish compared to your oppressed reds,
to your blood shaken inside the dark eclipse,
to your garnet violence, deaf and mute in the shadows,
to your great prisoner king in his janitor's uniform.

Yet Lorca cannot hide the genuine affection that he develops towards the city that nurtured generations upon generations of immigrants or its wonderfully idiosyncratic inhabitants:

Not for one moment, beautiful old Walt Whitman,
have I not seen your beard full of butterflies,
or your corduroy shoulders worn away by the moon…

Lorca, the flâneur, looks on with the eyes of the dazzled and repelled European, always the foreigner, as he wanders the great American city.

Best known for his plays The House of Bernarda Alba and Blood Wedding, Lorca wrote Poet in New York at the outbreak of the Great Depression. He returned to Spain in 1930, and, perhaps because of his support for the Republicans, he was abducted by a group of Spanish Nationalists and executed in June, 1936.

Poet in New York, Federico Garcia Lorca, A Bilingual Edition (tr. by Pablo Medina, and Mark Statman)
http://www.ecognoscente.com/months/march09/09.html


Excerpt:



I
Poemas de la soledad en Columbia University

Furia color de amor,
amor color de olvido.
—Luis Cernuda

I
Poems of Solitude at Columbia University

Fury, the color of love,
love, the color of forgetting.
—Luis Cernuda


VUELTA DE PASEO

Asesinado por el cielo,
entre las formas que van hacia la sierpe
y las formas que buscan el cristal,
dejaré crecer mis cabellos.
Con el árbol de muñones que no canta
y el niño con el blanco rostro de huevo.
Con los animalitos de cabeza rota
y el agua harapienta de los pies secos.
Con todo lo que tiene cansancio sordomudo
y mariposa ahogada en el tintero.
Tropezando con mi rostro distinto de cada día.
¡Asesinado por el cielo!


BACK FROM A WALK

Murdered by the sky.
Among the forms that move toward the snake
and the forms searching for crystal
I will let my hair grow.
With the limbless tree that cannot sing
and the boy with the white egg face.
With the broken-headed animals
and the ragged water of dry feet.
With all that is tired, deaf-mute,
and a butterfly drowned in an inkwell.
Stumbling onto my face, different every day.
Murdered by the sky!

1910
(Intermedio)

Aquellos ojos míos de mil novecientos diez
no vieron enterrar a los muertos,
ni la feria de ceniza del que llora por la madrugada,
ni el corazón que tiembla arrinconado como un caballito de mar.
Aquellos ojos míos de mil novecientos diez
vieron la blanca pared donde orinaban las niñas,
el hocico del toro, la seta venenosa
y una luna incomprensible que iluminaba por los rincones
los pedazos de limón seco bajo el negro duro de las botellas.
Aquellos ojos míos en el cuello de la jaca,
en el seno traspasado de Santa Rosa dormida,
en los tejados del amor, con gemidos y frescas manos,
en un jardín donde los gatos se comían a las ranas.
Desván donde el polvo viejo congrega estatuas y musgos,
cajas que guardan silencio de cangrejos devorados
en el sitio donde el sueño tropezaba con su realidad.
Allí mis pequeños ojos.
No preguntarme nada. He visto que las cosas
cuando buscan su curso encuentran su vacío.
Hay un dolor de huecos por el aire sin gente
y en mis ojos criaturas vestidas ¡sin desnudo!

New York, agosto 1929


1910
(Interlude)

My eyes in 1910
never saw the dead being buried,
or the ashen festival of a man weeping at dawn,
or the heart that trembles cornered like a sea horse.
My eyes in 1910
saw the white wall where girls urinated,
the bull’s muzzle, the poisonous mushroom,
and a meaningless moon in the corners
that lit up pieces of dry lemon under the hard black of bottles.
My eyes on the pony’s neck,
in the pierced breast of a sleeping Saint Rose,
on the rooftops of love, with whimpers and cool hands,
in a garden where the cats ate frogs.
Attic where old dust gathers statues and moss,
boxes keeping the silence of devoured crabs
in a place where sleep stumbled onto its reality.
There my small eyes.
Don’t ask me anything. I’ve seen that things
find their void when they search for direction.
There is a sorrow of holes in the unpeopled air
and in my eyes clothed creatures—undenuded!

New York, August 1929

[eddie]

John Donne by Nicholas Robins – review

By Vera Rule

guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 1 November 2011 12.20 GMT


John Donne
by Nicholas Robins

"Poetic Lives," this series calls itself, although poetic is never the initial adjective you'd apply to John Donne's existence: a muddle of lust and love, a scrabble for worldly preferment and heavenly redemption, with too many childen round his understocked table and a cellar overflowing with damp. The book is pamphlet format – a fine idea, especially as it shows off the handsome typography for the selection of poems included – but therefore needs the tone of a John Aubrey to carry off its brevity; a tone lighter, sharper and far more prejudiced one way and another than the voice Robins has adopted. He could probably do Aubreyesque – he works for the Globe theatre – and comes alive when making the odd connections between Donne and his rather aged son-in-law, the actor-manager Edward Alleyn; or in his description of Donne performing sermons, with "a most particular grace", author and actor all at once, in the great outdoor pulpit at St Paul's, which he made a stage for the divine.

[Guest]

THE SUN RISING.
by John Donne

BUSY old fool, unruly Sun,
Why dost thou thus,
Through windows, and through curtains, call on us ?
Must to thy motions lovers' seasons run ?
Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide
Late school-boys and sour prentices,
Go tell court-huntsmen that the king will ride,
Call country ants to harvest offices ;
Love, all alike, no season knows nor clime,
Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.

Thy beams so reverend, and strong
Why shouldst thou think ?
I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink,
But that I would not lose her sight so long.
If her eyes have not blinded thine,
Look, and to-morrow late tell me,
Whether both th' Indias of spice and mine
Be where thou left'st them, or lie here with me.
Ask for those kings whom thou saw'st yesterday,
And thou shalt hear, "All here in one bed lay."

She's all states, and all princes I ;
Nothing else is ;
Princes do but play us ; compared to this,
All honour's mimic, all wealth alchemy.
Thou, Sun, art half as happy as we,
In that the world's contracted thus ;
Thine age asks ease, and since thy duties be
To warm the world, that's done in warming us.
Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere ;
This bed thy center is, these walls thy sphere.

[eddie]

Precinct likes this one:
**************************************************************************************************

THE ECSTACY.

by John Donne


WHERE, like a pillow on a bed,
A pregnant bank swell'd up, to rest
The violet's reclining head,
Sat we two, one another's best.

Our hands were firmly cemented
By a fast balm, which thence did spring ;
Our eye-beams twisted, and did thread
Our eyes upon one double string.

So to engraft our hands, as yet
Was all the means to make us one ;
And pictures in our eyes to get
Was all our propagation.

As, 'twixt two equal armies, Fate
Suspends uncertain victory,
Our souls—which to advance their state,
Were gone out—hung 'twixt her and me.

And whilst our souls negotiate there,
We like sepulchral statues lay ;
All day, the same our postures were,
And we said nothing, all the day.

If any, so by love refined,
That he soul's language understood,
And by good love were grown all mind,
Within convenient distance stood,

He—though he knew not which soul spake,
Because both meant, both spake the same—
Might thence a new concoction take,
And part far purer than he came.

This ecstasy doth unperplex
(We said) and tell us what we love ;
We see by this, it was not sex ;
We see, we saw not, what did move :

But as all several souls contain
Mixture of things they know not what,
Love these mix'd souls doth mix again,
And makes both one, each this, and that.

A single violet transplant,
The strength, the colour, and the size—
All which before was poor and scant—
Redoubles still, and multiplies.

When love with one another so
Interanimates two souls,
That abler soul, which thence doth flow,
Defects of loneliness controls.

We then, who are this new soul, know,
Of what we are composed, and made,
For th' atomies of which we grow
Are souls, whom no change can invade.

But, O alas ! so long, so far,
Our bodies why do we forbear?
They are ours, though not we ; we are
Th' intelligences, they the spheres.

We owe them thanks, because they thus
Did us, to us, at first convey,
Yielded their senses' force to us,
Nor are dross to us, but allay.

On man heaven's influence works not so,
But that it first imprints the air ;
For soul into the soul may flow,
Though it to body first repair.

As our blood labours to beget
Spirits, as like souls as it can ;
Because such fingers need to knit
That subtle knot, which makes us man ;

So must pure lovers' souls descend
To affections, and to faculties,
Which sense may reach and apprehend,
Else a great prince in prison lies.

To our bodies turn we then, that so
Weak men on love reveal'd may look ;
Love's mysteries in souls do grow,
But yet the body is his book.

And if some lover, such as we,
Have heard this dialogue of one,
Let him still mark us, he shall see
Small change when we're to bodies gone.

[eddie]

Woman Catching Fleas. c.1630.
Georges de la Tour.
Musée Historique, Nancy



THE FLEA.
by John Donne


MARK but this flea, and mark in this,
How little that which thou deniest me is ;
It suck'd me first, and now sucks thee,
And in this flea our two bloods mingled be.
Thou know'st that this cannot be said
A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead ;
Yet this enjoys before it woo,
And pamper'd swells with one blood made of two ;
And this, alas ! is more than we would do.

O stay, three lives in one flea spare,
Where we almost, yea, more than married are.
This flea is you and I, and this
Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is.
Though parents grudge, and you, we're met,
And cloister'd in these living walls of jet.
Though use make you apt to kill me,
Let not to that self-murder added be,
And sacrilege, three sins in killing three.

Cruel and sudden, hast thou since
Purpled thy nail in blood of innocence?
Wherein could this flea guilty be,
Except in that drop which it suck'd from thee?
Yet thou triumph'st, and say'st that thou
Find'st not thyself nor me the weaker now.
'Tis true ; then learn how false fears be ;
Just so much honour, when thou yield'st to me,
Will waste, as this flea's death took life from thee.

[Guest]

THE ECSTACY.

We owe them thanks, because they thus
Did us, to us, at first convey,
Yielded their senses' force to us,
Nor are dross to us, but allay.

...alloy? (I know it doesn't fit the rhyme)

[eddie]

Satire III: Of Religion
by John Donne

Kind pity chokes my spleen; brave scorn forbids
Those tears to issue which swell my eyelids;
I must not laugh, nor weep sins and be wise;
Can railing, then, cure these worn maladies?
Is not our mistress, fair Religion,
As worthy of all our souls' devotion
As virtue was in the first blinded age?
Are not heaven's joys as valiant to assuage
Lusts, as earth's honour was to them? Alas,
As we do them in means, shall they surpass
Us in the end? and shall thy father's spirit
Meet blind philosophers in heaven, whose merit
Of strict life may be imputed faith, and hear
Thee, whom he taught so easy ways and near
To follow, damn'd? Oh, if thou dar'st, fear this;
This fear great courage and high valour is.
Dar'st thou aid mutinous Dutch, and dar'st thou lay
Thee in ships' wooden sepulchres, a prey
To leaders' rage, to storms, to shot, to dearth?
Dar'st thou dive seas, and dungeons of the earth?
Hast thou courageous fire to thaw the ice
Of frozen North discoveries? and thrice
Colder than salamanders, like divine
Children in th' oven, fires of Spain and the Line,
Whose countries limbecs to our bodies be,
Canst thou for gain bear? and must every he
Which cries not, "Goddess," to thy mistress, draw
Or eat thy poisonous words? Courage of straw!
O desperate coward, wilt thou seem bold, and
To thy foes and his, who made thee to stand
Sentinel in his world's garrison, thus yield,
And for forbidden wars leave th' appointed field?
Know thy foes: the foul devil, whom thou
Strivest to please, for hate, not love, would allow
Thee fain his whole realm to be quit; and as
The world's all parts wither away and pass,
So the world's self, thy other lov'd foe, is
In her decrepit wane, and thou loving this,
Dost love a wither'd and worn strumpet; last,
Flesh (itself's death) and joys which flesh can taste,
Thou lovest, and thy fair goodly soul, which doth
Give this flesh power to taste joy, thou dost loathe.
Seek true religion. O where? Mirreus,
Thinking her unhous'd here, and fled from us,
Seeks her at Rome; there, because he doth know
That she was there a thousand years ago,
He loves her rags so, as we here obey
The statecloth where the prince sate yesterday.
Crantz to such brave loves will not be enthrall'd,
But loves her only, who at Geneva is call'd
Religion, plain, simple, sullen, young,
Contemptuous, yet unhandsome; as among
Lecherous humours, there is one that judges
No wenches wholesome, but coarse country drudges.
Graius stays still at home here, and because
Some preachers, vile ambitious bawds, and laws,
Still new like fashions, bid him think that she
Which dwells with us is only perfect, he
Embraceth her whom his godfathers will
Tender to him, being tender, as wards still
Take such wives as their guardians offer, or
Pay values. Careless Phrygius doth abhor
All, because all cannot be good, as one
Knowing some women whores, dares marry none.
Graccus loves all as one, and thinks that so
As women do in divers countries go
In divers habits, yet are still one kind,
So doth, so is Religion; and this blind-
ness too much light breeds; but unmoved, thou
Of force must one, and forc'd, but one allow,
And the right; ask thy father which is she,
Let him ask his; though truth and falsehood be
Near twins, yet truth a little elder is;
Be busy to seek her; believe me this,
He's not of none, nor worst, that seeks the best.
To adore, or scorn an image, or protest,
May all be bad; doubt wisely; in strange way
To stand inquiring right, is not to stray;
To sleep, or run wrong, is. On a huge hill,
Cragged and steep, Truth stands, and he that will
Reach her, about must and about must go,
And what the hill's suddenness resists, win so.
Yet strive so that before age, death's twilight,
Thy soul rest, for none can work in that night.
To will implies delay, therefore now do;
Hard deeds, the body's pains; hard knowledge too
The mind's endeavours reach, and mysteries
Are like the sun, dazzling, yet plain to all eyes.
Keep the truth which thou hast found; men do not stand
In so ill case, that God hath with his hand
Sign'd kings' blank charters to kill whom they hate;
Nor are they vicars, but hangmen to fate.
Fool and wretch, wilt thou let thy soul be tied
To man's laws, by which she shall not be tried
At the last day? Oh, will it then boot thee
To say a Philip, or a Gregory,
A Harry, or a Martin, taught thee this?
Is not this excuse for mere contraries
Equally strong? Cannot both sides say so?
That thou mayest rightly obey power, her bounds know;
Those past, her nature and name is chang'd; to be
Then humble to her is idolatry.
As streams are, power is; those blest flowers that dwell
At the rough stream's calm head, thrive and do well,
But having left their roots, and themselves given
To the stream's tyrannous rage, alas, are driven
Through mills, and rocks, and woods, and at last, almost
Consum'd in going, in the sea are lost.
So perish souls, which more choose men's unjust
Power from God claim'd, than God himself to trust.

[Guest]

Yoga Alumnae
by Maya Angelou

A Lotus, A Cobra, A Downward-Facing Dog,
Names of positions long since mastered,
Marked on your exams.

You, created only a little saner than
The Moonies, have crouched eight weeks in
The candlelit classroom,
Have lain as long
Face down in extreme pain,
Your mouths spilling chants
Learned phonetically.

The Instructor cries out today, you may stand on your head,
But do not hurt your neck.

Each of you a spacy hippie,
Delicate and spookily thin,
From eating nothing but miso soup.
Yes, today I call you to your classrooms,
And you will study yoga no more. Come,
Clad in leotards and I will play the music
The CD Store Guy gave to me when I asked if
He had any John Tesh.

So teach the Yuppie, the Muscle Boy, the Geek,
The Working Mom and the Scary Punk Squatter, the Clique,
The Wannabe, the Hipster, the Star, the Snob,
The Pickup Artist, the Model, the Slob.
They stretch. They all stretch
The muscles of the Soul.

Come to me, here beside the Exercise Mat.
Plant your shoes in a locker, sit beside the Exercise Mat.

Each of you, graduate of some passed
Two-month course, has been paid for.

Here on the pulse of this new day
May you have the grace under pressure to look
Straight into your student's eyes, into
Your pupil's face, your acolyte
And say simply
Very simply
With hope
I'm sorry you threw your back out,
please for the love of God don't sue me.

[eddie]

'Your Lifelong Prisoner' – Liu Xiaobo's poem from prison

New book by the jailed dissident and Nobel peace prizewinner contains a moving tribute to his wife, the poet Liu Xia

The Observer, Saturday 12 November 2011


Liu Xiaobo and his wife, the poet Liu Xia, in 2002. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images


To Xia


My dear,
I'll never give up the struggle for freedom from the oppressors'
jail, but I'll be your willing prisoner for life.


I'm your lifelong prisoner, my love
I want to live in your dark insides
surviving on the dregs in your blood


inspired by the flow of your estrogen


I hear your constant heartbeat
drop by drop, like melted snow from a mountain stream
if I were a stubborn, million-year rock
you'd bore right through me
drop by drop

day and night


Inside you
I grope in the dark
and use the wine you've drunk
to write poems looking for you
I plead like a deaf man begging for sound
Let the dance of love intoxicate your body


I always feel
your lungs rise and fall when you smoke
in an amazing rhythm
you exhale my toxins
I inhale fresh air to nourish my soul


I'm your lifelong prisoner, my love
like a baby loath to be born
clinging to your warm uterus
you provide all my oxygen
all my serenity


A baby prisoner
in the depths of your being
unafraid of alcohol and nicotine
the poisons of your loneliness
I need your poisons
need them too much


Maybe as your prisoner
I'll never see the light of day
but I believe
darkness is my destiny
inside you
all is well


The glitter of the outside world
scares me
exhausts me
I focus on
your darkness –
simple and impenetrable


Reprinted by permission of Harvard University Press from No Enemies, No Hatred: Selected Essays and Poems by Xiaobo Liu. Copyright © 2012 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College.

[eddie]

The Christmas Truce

A poem for Armistice Day

Carol Ann Duffy
guardian.co.uk, Friday 11 November 2011 22.55 GMT


Illustration by David Roberts


Christmas Eve in the trenches of France,
the guns were quiet.
The dead lay still in No Man's Land –
Freddie, Franz, Friedrich, Frank . . .
The moon, like a medal, hung in the clear, cold sky.

Silver frost on barbed wire, strange tinsel,
sparkled and winked.
A boy from Stroud stared at a star
to meet his mother's eyesight there.
An owl swooped on a rat on the glove of a corpse.

In a copse of trees behind the lines,
a lone bird sang.
A soldier-poet noted it down – a robin
holding his winter ground –
then silence spread and touched each man like a hand.

Somebody kissed the gold of his ring;
a few lit pipes;
most, in their greatcoats, huddled,
waiting for sleep.
The liquid mud had hardened at last in the freeze.

But it was Christmas Eve; believe; belief
thrilled the night air,
where glittering rime on unburied sons
treasured their stiff hair.
The sharp, clean, midwinter smell held memory.

On watch, a rifleman scoured the terrain –
no sign of life,
no shadows, shots from snipers,
nowt to note or report.
The frozen, foreign fields were acres of pain.

Then flickering flames from the other side
danced in his eyes,
as Christmas Trees in their dozens shone,
candlelit on the parapets,
and they started to sing, all down the German lines.

Men who would drown in mud, be gassed, or shot,
or vaporised
by falling shells, or live to tell,
heard for the first time then –
Stille Nacht. Heilige Nacht. Alles schläft, einsam wacht …

Cariad, the song was a sudden bridge
from man to man;
a gift to the heart from home,
or childhood, some place shared …
When it was done, the British soldiers cheered.

A Scotsman started to bawl The First Noel
and all joined in,
till the Germans stood, seeing
across the divide,
the sprawled, mute shapes of those who had died.

All night, along the Western Front, they sang,
the enemies –
carols, hymns, folk songs, anthems,
in German, English, French;
each battalion choired in its grim trench.

So Christmas dawned, wrapped in mist,
to open itself
and offer the day like a gift
for Harry, Hugo, Hermann, Henry, Heinz …
with whistles, waves, cheers, shouts, laughs.

Frohe Weinachten, Tommy! Merry Christmas, Fritz!
A young Berliner,
brandishing schnapps,
was the first from his ditch to climb.
A Shropshire lad ran at him like a rhyme.

Then it was up and over, every man,
to shake the hand
of a foe as a friend,
or slap his back like a brother would;
exchanging gifts of biscuits, tea, Maconochie's stew,

Tickler's jam … for cognac, sausages, cigars,
beer, sauerkraut;
or chase six hares, who jumped
from a cabbage-patch, or find a ball
and make of a battleground a football pitch.

I showed him a picture of my wife.
Ich zeigte ihm
ein Foto meiner Frau.
Sie sei schön, sagte er.
He thought her beautiful, he said.

They buried the dead then, hacked spades
into hard earth
again and again, till a score of men
were at rest, identified, blessed.
Der Herr ist mein Hirt … my shepherd, I shall not want.

And all that marvellous, festive day and night,
they came and went,
the officers, the rank and file,
their fallen comrades side by side
beneath the makeshift crosses of midwinter graves …

… beneath the shivering, shy stars
and the pinned moon
and the yawn of History;
the high, bright bullets
which each man later only aimed at the sky.

The Christmas Truce, by Carol Ann Duffy, illustrated by David Roberts, is published by Picador (£5.99).

[Guest]

Ive written a 'bush foods of the area' unit to teach the kids, so I thought of this:
(I wish it would rain)

in the Wet

In the Wet
flueggia drips white berries,

red bush cherries beckon,

neon-orange strings
of devil’s twine spill
from trees or weave
the shell-grit ledges,

giddee-giddee seeds
like match- heads rest,
midnight black and red,
in pods like stars just burst,

batwing-coral blossoms drop
their scarlet bunches
from naked branches,

and pale-green avicennia leaves
encrusted beneath with grey salt

are washed clean

and everything sweetens
and gleams

in the wet-season rain.

[Guest]

main street Tennant Creek
blue moon

While mum and dad are in the shop
a jeep screeches to a stop
and a uniformed cop
saunters out and clubs
an unresisting unkempt youth till blood
matts his straw blond hair
spatters his black face.

I turn my eyes away alarmed
ashamed…afraid of my sister who
rides in the jeep like a queen through these towns
darting scorching sidelong glances
at furtively receptive eyes
and whispering as she elbows me and gestures
with her chin… ‘those half-castes are gorgeous’;

and I see their hunger,
as she squirms on the seat beside me, primping.

and half an hour later that paddy van
like a meat wagon pulls up beside the youth
and the baton swings and…and I realise
his ‘loitering’ was enticed by the heat from her gaze.


and as I recoil from his total defeat,
her eyes shine at the thought of her power

an interlude
in main street Tennant Creek
in nineteen sixty-seven

[Guest]

flueggia / whire cherry

[Guest]

native cherry


devil's twine

[Guest]

giddee giddee

[Guest]

bat-wing coral tree

[Guest]

salt-encrusted avicennia (grey mangrove) leaf

[Guest]

main street tennant creek 1960s

[Guest]

blue moon

[Guest]

what's in a name

...ah once in a blue moon once in a blue moon
she chanted when she heard strange things
with a tinge of miracle happen then

...and so it is with a touch of expectant abandon
she enters the animal bar

[Nah Ville Sky Chick]

salt-encrusted avicennia (grey mangrove) leaf

I have an urge to lick that

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