Happy National Poetry Month!

[bironic]

Have a poem about writing.


Personal Helicon

for Michael Longley

As a child, they could not keep me from wells
And old pumps with buckets and windlasses.
I loved the dark drop, the trapped sky, the smells
Of waterweed, fungus and dank moss.

One, in a brickyard, with a rotted board top.
I savoured the rich crash when a bucket
Plummeted down at the end of a rope.
So deep you saw no reflection in it.

A shallow one under a dry stone ditch
Fructified like any aquarium.
When you dragged out long roots from the soft mulch
A white face hovered over the bottom.

Others had echoes, gave back your own call
With a clean new music in it. And one
Was scaresome, for there, out of ferns and tall
Foxgloves, a rat slapped across my reflection.

Now, to pry into roots, to finger slime,
To stare, big-eyed Narcissus, into some spring
Is beneath all adult dignity. I rhyme
To see myself, to set the darkness echoing.

Seamus Heaney, Eleven Poems, 1965

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ETA: Oh! And everyone should go read catilinarian's gorgeous half-sestina, Holy Week. Gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous.

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Share a favorite of yours in comments?

Other links:

- "when faces called flowers float out of the ground" by ee cummings from musesfool
- "A Story That Could Be True" by William Stafford from pwcorgigirl
- "What is it to be human?" by Waldo Williams from nightdog_barks
- Excerpt from Milton's Paradise Lost from elynittria
- "Instructions" by Neil Gaiman from thewlisian_afer
- "West Wall" by W.S. Merwin from pwcorgigirl

Comments

[jadesfire.livejournal.com]

I'll take pretty much anything by WB Yeats, but this is a particular favourite:

When you are old

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim Soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;
And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

[bironic.livejournal.com]

Mm, that's a lovely one.

How sad is it, I wonder, that now it's making me think of Rodney in "The Last Man"?

[jadesfire.livejournal.com]

*grin* Keen, perhaps, but definitely not sad. Focussed. That's a better word ;)

[poorfrances.livejournal.com]

Heh, I posted this several days ago for no reason, might as well claim I knew it was poetry month! Losses (http://poorfrances.livejournal.com/96181.html) by Randall Jarrell.

[pwcorgigirl.livejournal.com]

Seamus Heaney never disappoints, and these bits are so lovely -- the trapped sky, a clean new music, to set the darkness echoing.

Here's a little snippet of Walt Whitman's that I love:

"This is thy hour O Soul, thy free flight into the wordless,
Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done,
Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the themes thou lovest best.
Night, sleep, and the stars." -- A Clear Midnight by Walt Whitman

[bironic.livejournal.com]

An introspective night owl's poem, for sure. Pretty.

Did I ever tell you about the Walt Whitman Mall here on LI, across the street from Whitman's birthplace, where, when they remodeled the mall several years ago, they spray-painted excerpts of his poems in leaf shapes onto the outside walls -- but ended each excerpt abruptly at the base or stem of each leaf, so none of them are complete?

[phinnia.livejournal.com]

Funeral Blues

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He is Dead.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the woods;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

W.H. Auden

[bironic.livejournal.com]

Mm, I love that poem. It's such a beautiful portrait of overwhelming grief.

[poorfrances.livejournal.com]

I want to hear you read your poem! You should start a thing where people have to read one of their favorite poems in a voice posts.

[bironic.livejournal.com]

Ha. Except I sound like a 13-year-old girl with nasal congestion on the phone.

[poorfrances.livejournal.com]

Everyone hates their own voice! I don't like mine much either, that's why it's good to practice.

Hey, I'll do it if you will.

[bironic.livejournal.com]

I'll think about it ...