Written by
Barry Tebb |
Here is a silence I had not hoped for
This side of paradise, I am an old believer
In nature’s bounty as God’s grace
To us poor mortals, fretting and fuming
At frustrated lust or the scent of fame
Coming too late to make a difference
Blue with white vertebrae of cloud forms
Riming the spectrum of green dark of poplars
Lined like soldiers, paler the hue of hawthorn
With the heather beginning to bud blue
Before September purple, yellow ragwort
Sways in the wind as distantly a plane hums
And a lazy bee bumbles by.
A day in Brenda’s flat, mostly play with Eydie,
My favourite of her seven cats, they soothe better
Than Diazepan for panic
Seroxat for grief
Zopiclone to make me sleep.
I smoke my pipe and sip blackcurrant tea
Aware of the ticking clock: I have to be back
To talk to my son’s key nurse when she comes on
For the night shift. Always there are things to sort,
Misapprehensions to untangle, delusions to decipher,
Lies to expose, statistics to disclose, Trust Boards
And team meetings to attend, ‘Mental Health Monthly’
To peruse, funds for my press to raise – the only one
I ever got will leave me out of pocket.
A couple sat on the next bench
Are earnestly discussing child custody, broken marriages,
Failed affairs, social service interventions –
Even here I cannot escape complexity
"I should never have slept with her once we split"
"The kids are what matters when it comes to the bottom line"
"Is he poisoning their minds against me?"
Part of me nags to offer help but I’ve too much
On already and the clock keeps ticking.
"It’s a pity she won’t turn round and clip his ear"
But better not to interfere. Damn my bloody superego
Nattering like an old woman or Daisy nagging
About my pipe and my loud voice on buses –
No doubt she’s right – smoking’s not good
And hearing about psychosis, medication and end-on-sections
Isn’t what people are on buses for.
I long for a girl in summer, pubescent
With a twinkle in her eye to come and say
"Come on, let’s do it!"
I was always shy in adolescence, too busy reading Baudelaire
To find a decent whore and learn to score
And now I’m probably impotent with depression
So I’d better forget sex and read more of Andr? Green
On metaphor from Hegel to Lacan and how the colloquium
At Bonneval changed analytic history, a mystery
I’ll not unravel if I live to ninety.
Ignorance isn’t bliss, I know enough to talk the piss
From jumped-up SHO’s and locums who’d miss vital side effects
And think all’s needed is a mother’s kiss.
I’ll wait till the heather’s purple and bring nail scissors
To cut and suture neatly and renew my stocks
Of moor momentoes vased in unsunny Surrey.
Can you believe it? Some arseholes letting off fireworks
On the moor? Suburban excesses spread like the sores
Of syphilis and more regulations in a decade of Blair
Than in the century before.
"Shop your neighbours. Prove it. Bring birth certificates to A&E
If you want NHS treatment free. Be careful not to bleed to death
While finding the certificate. Blunkett wants us all to have ID
Photo cards, genetic codes, DNA database, eye scans, the lot –
And kiss good-bye to the last bits of freedom we’ve got"
"At the end of the day she shopped me and all I’d done
Was take a few pound from the till ’cos Jenny was ill
And I didn’t have thirteen quid to get the bloody prescription done"
To-morrow I’ll be back in the Great Wen,
Two days of manic catching up and then
Thistledown, wild wheat, a dozen kinds of grass,
The mass of beckoning hills I’d love to make
A poet’s map of but never will.
"Oh to break loose" Lowell’s magic lines
Entice me still but slimy Fenton had to have his will
And slate it in the NYB, arguing that panetone
Isn’t tin foil as Lowell thought. James you are a dreadful bore,
A pedantic creep like hundreds more, five A4 pages
Of sniping and nit-picking for how many greenbacks?
A thousand or two I’d guess, they couldn’t pay you less
For churning out such a king-size mess
But not even you can spoil this afternoon
Of watching Haworth heather bloom.
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Written by
Mihai Eminescu |
'Tis eve on the hillside, the bagpipes are distantly wailing,
Flocks going homewards, and stars o'er the firmament sailing,
Sound of the bubbling spring sorrow's legend narrating,
And beneath a tall willow for me, dear one, you are waiting.
The wandering moon up the heavens her journey is wending,
Big-eyed you watch through the boughs her gold lantern ascending,
Now over the dome of the sky all the planets are gleaming,
And heavy your breast with its longing, your brow with its dreaming.
Cornfields bright flooded with beams by the clouds steeply drifted,
Old cottage gables of thatch to the moonlight uplifted,
The tall wooden arm of the well in the wind softly grating,
And the shepherd-boy's pipe from the sheep-pen sad "doina" relating.
The peasants, their scythes on their backs, from their labour are coming,
The sound of the "toaca" its summons more loudly is drumming,
While the clang of the village church bell fills the evening entire,
And with longing for you like a ****** my soul is on fire.
O, soon will the village be silent and scarce a light burning,
O, soon eager steps to the hillside again I'll be turning,
And all the night long I will clasp you in love's hungry fashion,
And in secret we'll tell to each other the tale of our passion.
Till at last we will fall fast asleep neath the shade of that willow,
Your lips drawn aside in a smile and your breast for my pillow,
O, to live one such beautiful night all these wonders fulfilling
And barter the rest of existence, who would not be willing?
English version by Corneliu M. Popescu
Transcribed by Catalina Stoica
School No. 10, Focsani, Romania
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Written by
Rainer Maria Rilke |
What I have already learned as a lover,
I see you, beloved, learning angrily;
then for you it distantly departed,
now your destiny stands in all the stars.
Over your breasts we will together contend:
since as glowingly shining they've ripened,
so also your hands desire to touch them
and their own pleasure superintend.
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Written by
Francesco Petrarch |
SESTINA IV. Chi è fermato di menar sua vita. HE PRAYS GOD TO GUIDE HIS FRAIL BARK TO A SAFE PORT. Who is resolved to venture his vain lifeOn the deceitful wave and 'mid the rocks,Alone, unfearing death, in little bark,Can never be far distant from his end:Therefore betimes he should return to portWhile to the helm yet answers his true sail. The gentle breezes to which helm and sailI trusted, entering on this amorous life,And hoping soon to make some better port,Have led me since amid a thousand rocks,And the sure causes of my mournful endAre not alone without, but in my bark. Long cabin'd and confined in this blind bark,I wander'd, looking never at the sail,Which, prematurely, bore me to my end;Till He was pleased who brought me into lifeSo far to call me back from those sharp rocks,That, distantly, at last was seen my port. As lights at midnight seen in any port,Sometimes from the main sea by passing bark,Save when their ray is lost 'mid storms or rocks;So I too from above the swollen sailSaw the sure colours of that other life,And could not help but sigh to reach my end. [Pg 83]Not that I yet am certain of that end,For wishing with the dawn to be in port,Is a long voyage for so short a life:And then I fear to find me in frail bark,Beyond my wishes full its every sailWith the strong wind which drove me on those rocks. Escape I living from these doubtful rocks,Or if my exile have but a fair end,How happy shall I be to furl my sail,And my last anchor cast in some sure port;But, ah! I burn, and, as some blazing bark,So hard to me to leave my wonted life. Lord of my end and master of my life,Before I lose my bark amid the rocks,Direct to a good port its harass'd sail! Macgregor.
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Written by
Rupert Brooke |
Voices out of the shade that cried,
And long noon in the hot calm places,
And children's play by the wayside,
And country eyes, and quiet faces --
All these were round my steady paces.
Those that I could have loved went by me;
Cool gardened homes slept in the sun;
I heard the whisper of water nigh me,
Saw hands that beckoned, shone, were gone
In the green and gold. And I went on.
For if my echoing footfall slept,
Soon a far whispering there'd be
Of a little lonely wind that crept
From tree to tree, and distantly
Followed me, followed me. . . .
But the blue vaporous end of day
Brought peace, and pursuit baffled quite,
Where between pine-woods dipped the way.
I turned, slipped in and out of sight.
I trod as quiet as the night.
The pine-boles kept perpetual hush;
And in the boughs wind never swirled.
I found a flowering lowly bush,
And bowed, slid in, and sighed and curled,
Hidden at rest from all the world.
Safe! I was safe, and glad, I knew!
Yet -- with cold heart and cold wet brows
I lay. And the dark fell. . . . There grew
Meward a sound of shaken boughs;
And ceased, above my intricate house;
And silence, silence, silence found me. . . .
I felt the unfaltering movement creep
Among the leaves. They shed around me
Calm clouds of scent, that I did weep;
And stroked my face. I fell asleep.
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Written by
Barry Tebb |
I struggled through streets of
Bricked-up, boarded-up houses,
Mostly burned-out, keeping
To the middle of the road,
Watching the abandoned gardens
With here and there a house
Still lived in, curtained
Against the daylight and distantly
I saw the iron railings of the school
I’d taught in thirty years before.
The same brick buildings, hop scotch
Squares and rounders posts
And the sign, ‘Welcome to Wyther Park
Primary School’. The wooden prefabs
Where I taught poetry nine till four
Replaced by newer prefabs of I don’t
Know what, hidden in trees with
Thirty years more growth, one playground
Grassed over, with benches and tables
Like a pub garden, yet there was the same
Innocence still, my inner sense declared.
I sat on a stone seat by the bridge
Over the canal, watching the pylons
Stretching away to Kirkstall Forge,
By the steps to the railway where
Once the station stood that took us
Every year to Flamborough Head.
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