Written by
D. H. Lawrence |
I wish it were spring in the world.
Let it be spring!
Come, bubbling, surging tide of sap!
Come, rush of creation!
Come, life! surge through this mass of mortification!
Come, sweep away these exquisite, ghastly first-flowers,
which are rather last-flowers!
Come, thaw down their cool portentousness, dissolve them:
snowdrops, straight, death-veined exhalations of white and purple crocuses,
flowers of the penumbra, issue of corruption, nourished in mortification,
jets of exquisite finality;
Come, spring, make havoc of them!
I trample on the snowdrops, it gives me pleasure to tread down the jonquils,
to destroy the chill Lent lilies;
for I am sick of them, their faint-bloodedness,
slow-blooded, icy-fleshed, portentous.
I want the fine, kindling wine-sap of spring,
gold, and of inconceivably fine, quintessential brightness,
rare almost as beams, yet overwhelmingly potent,
strong like the greatest force of world-balancing.
This is the same that picks up the harvest of wheat
and rocks it, tons of grain, on the ripening wind;
the same that dangles the globe-shaped pleiads of fruit
temptingly in mid-air, between a playful thumb and finger;
oh, and suddenly, from out of nowhere, whirls the pear-bloom,
upon us, and apple- and almond- and apricot- and quince-blossom,
storms and cumulus clouds of all imaginable blossom
about our bewildered faces,
though we do not worship.
I wish it were spring
cunningly blowing on the fallen sparks, odds and ends of the old, scattered fire,
and kindling shapely little conflagrations
curious long-legged foals, and wide-eared calves, and naked sparrow-bubs.
I wish that spring
would start the thundering traffic of feet
new feet on the earth, beating with impatience.
I wish it were spring, thundering
delicate, tender spring.
I wish these brittle, frost-lovely flowers of passionate, mysterious corruption
were not yet to come still more from the still-flickering discontent.
Oh, in the spring, the bluebell bows him down for very exuberance,
exulting with secret warm excess,
bowed down with his inner magnificence!
Oh, yes, the gush of spring is strong enough
to toss the globe of earth like a ball on a water-jet
dancing sportfully;
as you see a tiny celluloid ball tossing on a squirt of water
for men to shoot at, penny-a-time, in a booth at a fair.
The gush of spring is strong enough
to play with the globe of earth like a ball on a fountain;
At the same time it opens the tiny hands of the hazel
with such infinite patience.
The power of the rising, golden, all-creative sap could take the earth
and heave it off among the stars, into the invisible;
the same sets the throstle at sunset on a bough
singing against the blackbird;
comes out in the hesitating tremor of the primrose,
and betrays its candour in the round white strawberry flower,
is dignified in the foxglove, like a Red-Indian brave.
Ah come, come quickly, spring!
come and lift us towards our culmination, we myriads;
we who have never flowered, like patient cactuses.
Come and lift us to our end, to blossom, bring us to our summer
we who are winter-weary in the winter of the of the world.
Come making the chaffinch nests hollow and cosy,
come and soften the willow buds till they are puffed and furred,
then blow them over with gold.
Coma and cajole the gawky colt’s-foot flowers.
Come quickly, and vindicate us.
against too much death.
Come quickly, and stir the rotten globe of the world from within,
burst it with germination, with world anew.
Come now, to us, your adherents, who cannot flower from the ice.
All the world gleams with the lilies of death the Unconquerable,
but come, give us our turn.
Enough of the virgins and lilies, of passionate, suffocating perfume of corruption,
no more narcissus perfume, lily harlots, the blades of sensation
piercing the flesh to blossom of death.
Have done, have done with this shuddering, delicious business
of thrilling ruin in the flesh, of pungent passion, of rare, death-edged ecstasy.
Give us our turn, give us a chance, let our hour strike,
O soon, soon!
Let the darkness turn violet with rich dawn.
Let the darkness be warmed, warmed through to a ruddy violet,
incipient purpling towards summer in the world of the heart of man.
Are the violets already here!
Show me! I tremble so much to hear it, that even now
on the threshold of spring, I fear I shall die.
Show me the violets that are out.
Oh, if it be true, and the living darkness of the blood of man is purpling with violets,
if the violets are coming out from under the rack of men, winter-rotten and fallen,
we shall have spring.
Pray not to die on this Pisgah blossoming with violets.
Pray to live through.
If you catch a whiff of violets from the darkness of the shadow of man
it will be spring in the world,
it will be spring in the world of the living;
wonderment organising itself, heralding itself with the violets,
stirring of new seasons.
Ah, do not let me die on the brink of such anticipation!
Worse, let me not deceive myself.
|
Written by
Amy Clampitt |
past parentage or gender
beyond sung vocables
the slipped-between
the so infinitesimal
fault line
a limitless
interiority
beyond the woven
unicorn the maiden
(man-carved worm-eaten)
God at her hip
incipient
the untransfigured
cottontail
bluebell and primrose
growing wild a strawberry
chagrin night terrors
past the earthlit
unearthly masquerade
(we shall be changed)
a silence opens
*
the larval feeder
naked hairy ravenous
inventing from within
itself its own
raw stuffs'
hooked silk-hung
relinquishment
behind the mask
the milkfat shivering
sinew isinglass
uncrumpling transient
greed to reinvest
*
names have been
given (revelation
kif nirvana
syncope) for
whatever gift
unasked
gives birth to
torrents
fixities
reincarnations of
the angels
Joseph Smith
enduring
martyrdom
a cavernous
compunction driving
founder-charlatans
who saw in it
the infinite
love of God
and had
(George Fox
was one)
great openings
|
Written by
Barry Tebb |
THE KINGDOM OF MY HEART
1
The halcyon settled on the Aire of our days
Kingfisher-blue it broke my heart in two
Shall I forget you? Shall I forget you?
I am the mad poet first love
You never got over
You are my blue-eyed
Madonna virgin bride
I shall carve ‘MG loves BT’
On the bark of every
Wind-bent tree in
East End Park
2
The park itself will blossom
And grow in chiaroscuro
The Victorian postcard’s view
Of avenue upon avenue
With palms and pagodas
Lakes and waterfalls and
A fountain from Versailles.
3
You shall be my queen
In the Kingdom of Deira
Land of many rivers
Aire the greatest
Isara the strong one
Robed in stillness
Wide, deep and dark.
4
In Middleton Woods
Margaret and I played
Truth or dare
She bared her breasts
To the watching stars.
5
“Milk, milk,
Lemonade, round
The corner
Chocolate spread”
Nancy chanted at
Ten in the binyard
Touching her ****,
Her ****, her bum,
Margaret joined in
Chanting in unison.
6
The skipping rope
Turned faster
And faster, slapping
The hot pavement,
Margaret skipped
In rhythm, never
Missing a beat,
Lifting the pleat
Of her skirt
Whirling and twirling.
7
Giggling and red
Margaret said
In a whisper
“When we were
Playing at Nancy’s
She pushed a spill
Of paper up her
You-know-what
She said she’d
Let you watch
If you wanted.”
8
Margaret, this Saturday morning in June
There is a queue at the ‘Princess’ for
The matin?e, down the alley by the blank
Concrete of the cinema’s side I hide
With you, we are counting our picture
Money, I am counting the stars in your
Hair, bound with a cheap plastic comb.
9
You have no idea of my need for you
A lifetime long, every wrong decision
I made betrayed my need; forty years on
Hear my song and take my hand and move
Us to the house of love where we belong.
10
Margaret we sat in the cinema dark
Warm with the promise of a secret kiss
The wall lights glowed amber on the
Crumbling plaster, we looked with longing
At the love seats empty in the circle,
Vowing we would share one.
11
There is shouting and echoes
Of wild splashing from York
Road baths; forty years on
It stirs my memory and
Will not be gone.
12
The ghosts of tramtracks
Light up lanes
To nowhere
In Leeds Ten.
Every road
Leads nowhere
In Leeds Nine.
Motorways have cut
The city’s heart
In two; Margaret,
Our home lies buried
Under sixteen feet
Of stone.
13
Our families moved
And we were lost
I was not there to hear
The whispered secret
Of your first period.
14
God is courage’s infinite ground
Tillich said; God, give me enough
To stand another week without her
Every day gets longer, every sleep
Less deep.
15
Why can’t I find you,
Touch you,
Bind your straw-gold hair
The colour of lank
February grass?
16
Under the stone canopy
Of the Grand Arcade
I pass Europa Nightclub;
In black designer glass
I watch the faces pass
But none is like your’s,
No voice, no eyes,
No smile at all
Like your’s.
17
From Kirkstall Lock
The rhubarb crop
To Knostrop’s forcing sheds
The roots ploughed up
Arranged in beds
Of perfect darkness
Where the buds burst
With a pip, rich pink
Stalks and yellow leaves
Hand-picked by
Candle-light to
Keep the colour right
So every night the
Rhubarb train
Could go from Leeds
To Covent Garden.
18
The smell of Saturday morning
Is the smell of freedom
How the bounds may grow
Slowly slowly as I go.
“Rag-bone rag-bone
White donkey stone”
Auntie Nellie scoured
Her door step, polished
The brass knocker
Till I saw my face
Bunched like a fist
Complete with goggles
Grinning like a monkey
In a mile of mirrors.
19
Every door step had a stop
A half-stone iron weight
To hold it back and every
Step was edged with donkey
Stone in yellow or white
From the ragman or the potman
With his covered cart jingling
Jangling as it jerked hundreds
Of cups on hooks pint and
Half pint mugs and stacks of
Willow-patterned plates
From Burmantofts.
20
We heard him a mile off
Nights in summer when
He trundled round the
Corner over the cobbles
Jamming the wood brake
Blocks whoaing the horses
With their gleaming brasses
And our mams were always
Waiting where he stopped.
21
Double summer-time made
The nights go on for ever
And no-one cared any more
How long we played what
Or where and we were left
Alone and that’s all I wanted
Then or now to be left alone
Never to be called in from
The Hollows never to be
Called from Margaret.
22
City of back-to-backs
From Armley Heights
Laid out in rows
Like trees or grass
I watch you pass.
23
The Aire is slow and almost
Still
In the Bridgefield
The Joshua Tetley clock
Over the Atkinson Grimshaw
Print
Is stopped at nineteen fifty
Four
The year I left.
24
Grimshaw’s home was
Half a mile away
In Knostrop Hall
Margaret and I
Climbed the ruined
Walls her hair was
Blowing in the wind
Her eyes were stars
In the green night
Her hands were holding
My hands.
25
Half a century later
I look out over Leeds Nine
What little’s left is broken
Or changed Saturday night
Is silent and empty
The paths over the Hollows
Deserted the bell
Of St. Hilda’s still.
26
On a single bush
The yellow roses blush
Pink in the amber light
Night settles on the
Fewstons and the Copperfields
No mothers’ voices calling us.
Lilac and velvet clover
Grew all over the Hollows
It was all the luck
We knew and when we left
Our luck went too.
27
Solid black
Velvet basalt
Polished jet
Millstone grit
Leeds Town Hall
Built with it
Soaks up the fog
Is sealed with smog
Battered buttressed
Blackened plinths
White lions’ paws
Were soft their
Smiles like your’s.
28
Narrow lanes, steep inclines,
Steps, blank walls, tight
And secret openings’
The lanes are your hips
The inclines the lines
Of your thighs, the steps
Your breasts, blank walls
Your buttocks, tight and
Secret openings your
Taut vagina’s lips.
29
There is a keening and a honing
And a winnowing in the wind
I am the surge and flow
In Winwaed’s water the last breath
Of Elmete’s King.
I am Penda crossing the Aire
Camping at Killingbeck
Conquered by Aethalwald
Ruler of Deira.
30
Life is a bird hovering
In the Hall of the King
Between darkness and darkness flickering
The stone of Scone at last lifted
And borne on the wind, Dunedin, take it
Hold it hard and fast its light
Is leaping it is freedom’s
Touchstone and firestone.
31
Eir, Ayer or Aire
I’ll still be there
Your wanderings off course
Old Ea, Old Eye, Dead Eye
Make no difference to me.
Eg-an island - is Aire’s
True source, names
Not places matter
With the risings
Of a river
Ea land-by-water
I’ll make my own way
Free, going down river
To the far-off sea.
32
Poetry is my business, my affair.
My cri-de-coeur, jongleur
Of Mercia and Elmete, Margaret,
Open your door I am heaping
Imbroglios of stars on the floor
Meet me by the Office Lock
At midnight or by the Town Hall Clock.
33
Nennius nine times have I knocked
On the door of your grave, nine times
More have I made Pilgrimage to Elmete’s
Wood where long I lay by beck and bank
Waiting for your tongue to flame
With Pentecostal fire.
34
Margaret you rode in the hollow of my hand
In the harp of my heart, searching for you
I wandered in Kirkgate Market’s midnight
Down avenues of shuttered stalls, our secrets
Kept through all the years.
From the Imperial on Beeston Hill
I watch the city spill glass towers
Of light over the horizon’s rim.
35
The railyard’s straights
Are buckled plates
Red bricks for aggregate
All lost like me
Ledsham and Ledston
Both belong to Leeds
But Ledston Luck
Is where Aire leads.
36
Held of the Crown
By seven thanes
In Saxon times
‘In regione Loidis’
Baeda scripsit
Leeds, Leeds,
You answer
All my needs.
37
A horse shoe stuck for luck
Behind a basement window:
Margaret, now we’ll see
What truth there is
In dreams and poetry!
I am at one with everyone
There is poetry
Falling from the air
And you have put it there.
38
The sign for John Eaton Street
Is planted in the back garden
Of the transport caf? between
The strands of a wire mesh fence
Straddling the cobbles of a street
That is no more, a washing line
And an abandoned caravan.
39
‘This open land to let’
Is what you get on the Hollows
Thousands of half-burned tyres
The rusty barrel of a Trumix lorry
Concrete slabs, foxgloves and condoms,
The Go-Kart Arena’s signboards,
Half the wall of Ellerby Lane School.
40
There is a mermaid singing
On East Street on an IBM poster
Her hair is lack-lustre
Her breasts are facing the camera
Her tail is like a worn-out brush.
Chimney stacks
Blind black walls
Of factories
Grimy glass
Flickering firelight
In black-leaded grates.
41
Hunslet de Ledes
Hop-scotch, hide and seek,
Bogies-on-wheels
Not one tree in Hunslet
Except in the cemetery
The lake filled in
For fifty years,
The bluebell has rung
Its last perfumed peal.
42
I couldn’t play out on Sunday
Mam and dad thought us a cut
Above the rest, it was another
Test I failed, keeping me and
Margaret apart was like the Aztecs
Tearing the heart from the living flesh.
43
Father, your office job
Didn’t save you
From the drugs
They never gave you.
44
Isaiah, my son,
You made it back
From Balliol to Beeston
At a run via the
Playing fields of Eton.
There is a keening and a honing
And a winnowing in the wind
Winwaed’s water with red bluid blent.
|
Written by
Anne Bronte |
A fine and subtle spirit dwells
In every little flower,
Each one its own sweet feeling breathes
With more or less of power.
There is a silent eloquence
In every wild bluebell
That fills my softened heart with bliss
That words could never tell.
Yet I recall not long ago
A bright and sunny day,
'Twas when I led a toilsome life
So many leagues away;
That day along a sunny road
All carelessly I strayed,
Between two banks where smiling flowers
Their varied hues displayed.
Before me rose a lofty hill,
Behind me lay the sea,
My heart was not so heavy then
As it was wont to be.
Less harassed than at other times
I saw the scene was fair,
And spoke and laughed to those around,
As if I knew no care.
But when I looked upon the bank
My wandering glances fell
Upon a little trembling flower,
A single sweet bluebell.
Whence came that rising in my throat,
That dimness in my eye?
Why did those burning drops distil --
Those bitter feelings rise?
O, that lone flower recalled to me
My happy childhood's hours
When bluebells seemed like fairy gifts
A prize among the flowers,
Those sunny days of merriment
When heart and soul were free,
And when I dwelt with kindred hearts
That loved and cared for me.
I had not then mid heartless crowds
To spend a thankless life
In seeking after others' weal
With anxious toil and strife.
'Sad wanderer, weep those blissful times
That never may return!'
The lovely floweret seemed to say,
And thus it made me mourn.
|
Written by
Kathleen Raine |
Primrose, anemone, bluebell, moss
Grow in the Kingdom of the Cross
And the ash-tree's purple bud
Dresses the spear that sheds his blood.
With the thorns that pierce his brow
Soft encircling petals grow
For in each flower the secret lies
Of the tree that crucifies.
Garden by the water clear
All must die who enter here!
|
Written by
Edmund Blunden |
Friend whom I never saw, yet dearest friend,
Be with me travelling on the byeway now
In April's month and mood: our steps shall bend
By the shut smithy with its penthouse brow
Armed round with many a felly and crackt plough:
And we will mark in his white smock the mill
Standing aloof, long numbed to any wind,
That in his crannies mourns, and craves him still;
But now there is not any grain to grind,
And even the master lies too deep for winds to find.
Grieve not at these: for there are mills amain
With lusty sails that leap and drop away
On further knolls, and lads to fetch the grain.
The ash-spit wickets on the green betray
New games begun and old ones put away.
Let us fare on, dead friend, O deathless friend,
Where under his old hat as green as moss
The hedger chops and finds new gaps to mend,
And on his bonfires burns the thorns and dross,
And hums a hymn, the best, thinks he, that ever was.
There the grey guinea-fowl stands in the way,
The young black heifer and the raw-ribbed mare,
And scorn to move for tumbril or for dray,
And feel themselves as good as farmers there.
From the young corn the prick-eared leverets stare
At strangers come to spy the land — small sirs,
We bring less danger than the very breeze
Who in great zig-zag blows the bee, and whirs
In bluebell shadow down the bright green leas;
From whom in frolic fit the chopt straw darts and flees.
The cornel steepling up in white shall know
The two friends passing by, and poplar smile
All gold within; the church-top fowl shall glow
To lure us on, and we shall rest awhile
Where the wild apple blooms above the stile;
The yellow frog beneath blinks up half bold,
Then scares himself into the deeper green.
And thus spring was for you in days of old,
And thus will be when I too walk unseen
By one that thinks me friend, the best that there has been.
All our lone journey laughs for joy, the hours
Like honey-bees go home in new-found light
Past the cow pond amazed with twinkling flowers
And antique chalk-pit newly delved to white,
Or idle snow-plough nearly hid from sight.
The blackbird sings us home, on a sudden peers
The round tower hung with ivy's blackened chains,
Then past the little green the byeway veers,
The mill-sweeps torn, the forge with cobwebbed panes
That have so many years looked out across the plains.
But the old forge and mill are shut and done,
The tower is crumbling down, stone by stone falls;
An ague doubt comes creeping in the sun,
The sun himself shudders, the day appals,
The concourse of a thousand tempests sprawls
Over the blue-lipped lakes and maddening groves,
Like agonies of gods the clouds are whirled,
The stormwind like the demon huntsman roves —
Still stands my friend, though all's to chaos hurled,
The unseen friend, the one last friend in all the world.
|
Written by
Anne Bronte |
A fine and subtle spirit dwells
In every little flower,
Each one its own sweet feeling breathes
With more or less of power.
There is a silent eloquence
In every wild bluebell
That fills my softened heart with bliss
That words could never tell.
Yet I recall not long ago
A bright and sunny day,
'Twas when I led a toilsome life
So many leagues away;
That day along a sunny road
All carelessly I strayed,
Between two banks where smiling flowers
Their varied hues displayed.
Before me rose a lofty hill,
Behind me lay the sea,
My heart was not so heavy then
As it was wont to be.
Less harassed than at other times
I saw the scene was fair,
And spoke and laughed to those around,
As if I knew no care.
But when I looked upon the bank
My wandering glances fell
Upon a little trembling flower,
A single sweet bluebell.
Whence came that rising in my throat,
That dimness in my eye?
Why did those burning drops distil --
Those bitter feelings rise?
O, that lone flower recalled to me
My happy childhood's hours
When bluebells seemed like fairy gifts
A prize among the flowers,
Those sunny days of merriment
When heart and soul were free,
And when I dwelt with kindred hearts
That loved and cared for me.
I had not then mid heartless crowds
To spend a thankless life
In seeking after others' weal
With anxious toil and strife.
'Sad wanderer, weep those blissful times
That never may return!'
The lovely floweret seemed to say,
And thus it made me mourn.
|
Written by
Anne Bronte |
That summer sun, whose genial glow
Now cheers my drooping spirit so
Must cold and distant be,
And only light our northern clime
With feeble ray, before the time
I long so much to see.
And this soft whispering breeze that now
So gently cools my fevered brow,
This too, alas, must turn --
To a wild blast whose icy dart
Pierces and chills me to the heart,
Before I cease to mourn.
And these bright flowers I love so well,
Verbena, rose and sweet bluebell,
Must droop and die away.
Those thick green leaves with all their shade
And rustling music, they must fade
And every one decay.
But if the sunny summer time
And woods and meadows in their prime
Are sweet to them that roam --
Far sweeter is the winter bare
With long dark nights and landscapes drear
To them that are at Home!
|
Written by
Robert William Service |
He wrote a letter in his mind
To answer one a maid had sent;
He sought the fitting word to find,
As on by hill and rill he went.
By bluebell wood and hawthorn lane,
The cadence sweet and silken phrase
He incubated in his brain
For days and days.
He wrote his letter on a page
Of paper with a satin grain;
It did not ring, so in a rage
He tore it up and tried again.
Time after time he drafted it;
He polished it all through the night;
He tuned and pruned till bit by bit
He got it right.
He took his letter to the post,
Yet long he held it in his hand.
Strangely his mood had veered, almost
Reversed,--he could not understand.
The girl was vague, the words were vain;
April romance had come to grief . . .
He tore his letter up again,--
Oh blest relief!
|