Poetry tour

So the dead poets tour was also completed. I got to travel from Hull to Cornwall, taking in London and surrounds. I never made it Bournemouth to see the resting place for Shelley's heart, traffic and weather stymied that trip on the way down. I also stomped around East Coker (nr Yoevil) churchyard for an hour looking for T.S. Eliot's memorial, only to find later there were 2 churches in this tiny town, and I was at the wrong one. But I got to see Larkin's grave and his workplace at the University of Hull. Betjeman's graveyard was by an ancient church that was for years buried in sand dunes, and then dug up in the Victorian era and was as fittingly picturesque as should be.





I did get to see where Keats lived (above) and gosh right next door they have a lovely public library.


Just look at the ceiling of it.






I didn't get to Rome for Byron, but did get to see the most marvellous 'documentary' on him made by Rupert Everett. An interview with Everett here on it http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/jul/17/g2-interview-rupert-everett. It is well worth finding and watching.

Fiction!

Librarians are supposed to know a thing or two
Why then did I happen to find
In the fiction shelves, these books most of all
Strange to find and remember
Not all librarians know what is false and what is true

pome

And I have not forgotten
That what is left behind
Nobody really sees
Left unused, between
What has been written so often on these same keys

Nor is it what it often seems
What gain, what loss
This new winter
Coming, once again, how often
New dawning of cold mornings
Old ones not forgotten

Your summer, beginning again
An unknown opening story
And I have nothing to give
That hasn’t been given
Except again, words unbidden
And restless nights, taken as given

And all that sits is what's left between
Unused, unseen
What remains?
Just the imprint on the keys

La Lotta Continua

The swimming lessons continue (forever it seems) and so thus does the Fourth work in the series provisionally now titled ‘La lotta continua’






previous works (in the series) here presented
though perhaps you somewhat resented
†
an abstracted piece of land
captured by camera in recording hand
†
grassland flood plain scarcely unique
injected with the abject object oblique
†
a tire for art, a trolley for love
me a replacement for the great god above
†
and now the final picture for your rapt attention
O, and such a novel invention
†
to confound your little expectation
by merely changing the camera direction
†
and for all its apparent false modesty
and I admit, my artistic integrity
†
I have still turned the world upside down
by merely moving around
†
and you now with your shattered expectations and confirmed conceits
watch, see the grass grows ever at your feet

Wind reply (again again)

You flatter yourself, mud bound stick
I care not at all that animals, crawling and venal
May scavenge from you, creeping and gnawing away under your bark
And at your too solid heart

Tree reply (again again)

Yes, I will stay
While you may go
But I think I have the happier lot
You spread yourself, only to hide what you have not

You could go wherever
But yet you come back to me
Do you think it is flattery

And yes the animals may also share me
And is that I sense, jealousy

Wind reply (again)

Ha, I do not hold on
Because I have no need
Things have no use
For a being that is free

But, speak your case as you may
You are still trapped
And those small animals you do not protect
They use you and you do not see
They will hollow you more than me

So stay where you are rooted
With your colours and smell
You are indeed a very obvious thing
And wait, as you must do
Until I come again

Tree reply

I did not complain
Am I not at least allowed to state my case
But with you there is no use
You are both silent and noisily blind to your abuse

True, my branches reach out and spread
But you know they are not for you, but the sun instead
And you snatch my seed and send it away
So I stand alone, when around me a forest could have grown

Yes, I will pass and thankfully too
But while here I am rooted and real
I give scent and colour and fruit
I hold the earth in place to keep the soil from your theft
I protect and warm the small things within me
And you moving void only take
But cannot even hold
And let drop, someplace else

Tho discussing any form of 'art' is alien, I think I should say that this series is not saying anything about me or using metaphor. The first part wrote itself in a dream, and the following just followed, make/take of it what you will. I feel stupidly that actually it is a conversation with very little to do with me.

Wind reply

It is not I to blame
For I am trapped and wrapped around this either wet or muddy sphere
Look above there is the vast openness that is what I see
My brother winds cross the heavens
Are warmed and blown by mighty suns
And ride with comets
That is where I belong

I do not blow against the trees
It is they that impede me
Sticking out their arms to pull me in
Do you not hear me moan as they detain me
And yet they stick their seed within me
Speak what of leaves, of tiny things, but yet there are a billion
But they all will pass, also these rocks these trees
And I will always blow, do not complain to me

Tree

Every day I am raped by the wind
It pushes against me, trying to get underneath my bark, my skin
It moves about me sometimes hard, sometimes with the pretence of caress
It touches my leaves, flaps them about, it knows they are my coloured pride
But it will strip them from me
Meanwhile
The wind's tarts the birds sit in me and shriek

It has always been thus
When first I came up to discover the light
It tried to push me flat
When I grew my first leaves to show the sun, it used them against me
I had to push back underground, holding firm to the earth where it could not go
I held on
So I who love above all the sun am forced to spread myself amongst the dark

In the end it will strip me of my branches
Its constant sucking breathe will dry me out, and then uproot me
Then even my lower hidden parts it will have and lick around