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Marion Arnott
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Posted: Mon Nov 02, 2015 4:23 pm |
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Joined: Tue Mar 06, 2007 12:46 am Posts: 3347
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The Darkling Thrush - Poem by Thomas Hardy
I leant upon a coppice gate, When Frost was spectre-gray, And Winter's dregs made desolate The weakening eye of day. The tangled bine-stems scored the sky Like strings of broken lyres, And all mankind that haunted nigh Had sought their household fires.
The land's sharp features seemed to me The Century's corpse outleant, Its crypt the cloudy canopy, The wind its death-lament. The ancient pulse of germ and birth Was shrunken hard and dry, And every spirit upon earth Seemed fervorless as I.
At once a voice arose among The bleak twigs overhead, In a full-hearted evensong Of joy illimited. An aged thrush, frail, gaunt and small, With blast-beruffled plume, Had chosen thus to fling his soul Upon the growing gloom.
So little cause for carolings Of such ecstatic sound Was written on terrestrial things Afar or nigh around, That I could think there trembled through His happy good-night air Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew, And I was unaware.
Thomas Hardy
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Marion Arnott
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Posted: Thu Nov 26, 2015 5:02 pm |
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Joined: Tue Mar 06, 2007 12:46 am Posts: 3347
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"At Castle Boterel"
As I drive to the junction of lane and highway, And the drizzle bedrenches the waggonette, I look behind at the fading byway, And see on its slope, now glistening wet, Distinctly yet
Myself and a girlish form benighted In dry March weather. We climb the road Beside a chaise. We had just alighted To ease the sturdy pony's load When he sighed and slowed.
What we did as we climbed, and what we talked of Matters not much, nor to what it led,— Something that life will not be balked of Without rude reason till hope is dead, And feeling fled.
It filled but a minute. But was there ever A time of such quality, since or before, In that hill's story? To one mind never, Though it has been climbed, foot-swift, foot-sore, By thousands more.
Primaeval rocks form the road's steep border, And much have they faced there, first and last, Of the transitory in Earth's long order; But what they record in colour and cast Is—that we two passed.
And to me, though Time's unflinching rigour, In mindless rote, has ruled from sight The substance now, one phantom figure Remains on the slope, as when that night Saw us alight.
I look and see it there, shrinking, shrinking, I look back at it amid the rain For the very last time; for my sand is sinking, And I shall traverse old love's domain Never again.
March 1913
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Marion Arnott
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Posted: Mon Jan 18, 2016 5:24 pm |
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Joined: Tue Mar 06, 2007 12:46 am Posts: 3347
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A poem for David Bowie:
Bowie On Heddon Street '72 by Mike Newell
The London drizzle falls the same
as softly as it did the night,
the camera caught in failing light
the famous phonebox, currant red
with Ziggy Stardust in the frame
A tinted showbiz biscuit tin
which drew the viewer in.
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An atmosphere that seemed
to speak
Of basement studios, upstairs flats,
bell-push models, queenly spats
And rent collected once a week
from burned-out boys who’d known
Joe Meek.
In England, done with swinging now,
its party over, drab new nights
Of keg-beer pubs and candle stubs
the IRA and mid-week subs
Wildcat strikes at factory gates
an apathetic audience waits.
The Sixties now are firmly dead
A man from Mars arrives instead
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What was it in the water then
that forged a breed of pop messiahs
From underfed suburban lads
grown up by gas convector fires?
Skinny, pale, with poor dentition
---------------------------------- What was it in the water then that forged a breed of pop messiahs From underfed suburban lads grown up by gas convector fires? Skinny, pale, with poor dentition Actor, clothes-horse, pop musician In David’s case, all three in one, An odyssey which he’d begun in sixty watts of Bromley sun. ---------------------------------- When Ziggy sang and played guitar No one, yet, had gone that far In Sutton Coldfield, Aylesbury, Bucks and Sunderland they’d cheer The brickies bellowed, “’Ello, ducks!” the dads asked, “Is ’e queer? Gets harder now to tell the boys from girls, with every year.” The critics, too, blew cold and hot. But critics do. Why would they not? ---------------------------------- The Seventies then bedded in in feather boa and satin fl are The suburbs sat like Hamelin awaiting anthems on the air From some pied piper not yet heard to woo them with a magic word: the oddball kid, the bookish geek the one their classmates labelled “freak”, Sequestered in their rooms all week. They’re captivated by his eyes “You’re not alone!” the Starman cries. ---------------------------------- Now of his band, what shall we say? The Spiders, not from Mars but Hull Were best of any of their day If Kingston upon Hull, the name did not roll off the tongue the same, The Spiders seemed to play guitars as if they really were from Mars Now all the teenage kooks who went To hear these boys from Hull – and Kent Remember, late in middle-age, how Ziggy broke the gender cage. ---------------------------------- And when we dig his records out from hard-drives, iPods, racks or shelves And shed a tear, we find the truth is also, that we mourn our youth. Immortal youth, its peerless light that twinkles in the ageless night Until we find how frail we are Crashing in the same old car. ---------------------------------- In Heddon Street in January The phone-box now is gone Where fans took pictures of themselves Once Ziggy had moved on Where did they go, those slips of boys? Grown up with steam trains in their eyes And rockets in the Dan Dare skies Above the dingy terraced streets of Britain after war? America, by any score, would seem some kind of Shangrila Best slap some lippy on, then, kid and bring your best guitar. America eats talent like a wolf devours a lamb, With tenderising powder which can turn your mind to spam. That’s when you have to wrestle with your inner Peter Pan. Then, if the boy stops swinging, he may just become a man. ---------------------------------- But even politicians cough, describing him as nice. They missed him at the kick-off now they’re gagging for a slice. He helped bring down the Berlin Wall it’s said, young Bromley Dave Fashion icon, futurist... and genius. Oh, behave! ---------------------------------- The ones who’ll really miss him, are the girls then in their teens Recalling that one weekday night he burst on to their screens Instantly monopolising all their magazines Promoting moral panic from St Mawes to Milton Keynes They won’t remember mourning any pop star in this way And won’t know why they’re weeping in the middle of the day. He was Youth and he was Beauty he was talented and clever So stunningly original and... They thought he’d live for ever. ---------------------------------- In Heddon Street in January The sun falls on a plaque Like an actor taking encores in a Mayfair cul-de-sac. And here beside the doorway are his flowers in a stack But Ziggy Stardust’s never coming back. And all the worldly traffic may resume its migraine rumble While all the Babylonian showbiz rumour mills can crumble. Let legend be his epitaph The lily needs no gilding Ladies and gentlemen... Mr Bowie’s left the building.
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Marion Arnott
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Posted: Tue Jan 26, 2016 12:34 am |
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Joined: Tue Mar 06, 2007 12:46 am Posts: 3347
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Marion Arnott
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Posted: Tue May 03, 2016 10:29 pm |
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Joined: Tue Mar 06, 2007 12:46 am Posts: 3347
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Bound for HellRelated Poem Content Details
BY MARINA TSVETAEVA
TRANSLATED FROM THE RUSSIAN BY STEPHEN EDGAR . Hell, my ardent sisters, be assured,
Is where we’re bound; we’ll drink the pitch of hell—
We, who have sung the praises of the lord
With every fiber in us, every cell.
We, who did not manage to devote
Our nights to spinning, did not bend and sway
Above a cradle—in a flimsy boat,
Wrapped in a mantle, we’re now borne away.
Every morning, every day, we’d rise
And have the finest Chinese silks to wear;
And we’d strike up the songs of paradise
Around the campfire of a robbers’ lair,
We, careless seamstresses (our seams all ran,
Whether we sewed or not)—yet we have been
Such dancers, we have played the pipes of Pan:
The world was ours, each one of us a queen.
First, scarcely draped in tatters, and disheveled,
Then plaited with a starry diadem;
We’ve been in jails, at banquets we have reveled:
But the rewards of heaven, we’re lost to them,
Lost in nights of starlight, in the garden
Where apple trees from paradise are found.
No, be assured, my gentle girls, my ardent
And lovely sisters, hell is where we're bound.
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Marion Arnott
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Posted: Sun May 22, 2016 6:36 pm |
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Joined: Tue Mar 06, 2007 12:46 am Posts: 3347
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Letter To A Friend About Girls
Philip Larkin
After comparing lives with you for years I see how I’ve been losing: all the while I’ve met a different gauge of girl from yours. Grant that, and all the rest makes sense as well: My mortification at your pushovers, Your mystification at my fecklessness— Everything proves we play in separate leagues. Before, I couldn’t credit your intrigues Because I thought all girls the same, but yes, You bag real birds, though they’re from alien covers.
Now I believe your staggering skirmishes In train, tutorial and telephone booth, The wife whose husband watched away matches While she behaved so badly in a bath, And all the rest who beckon from that world Described on Sundays only, where to want Is straightway to be wanted, seek to find, And no one gets upset or seems to mind At what you say to them, or what you don’t: A world where all the nonsense is annulled,
And beauty is accepted slang for yes. But equally, haven’t you noticed mine? They have their world, not much compared with yours, But where they work, and age, and put off men By being unattractive, or too shy, Or having morals—anyhow, none give in: Some of them go quite rigid with disgust At anything but marriage: that’s all lust And so not worth considering; they begin Fetching your hat, so that you have to lie
Till everything’s confused: you mine away For months, both of you, till the collapse comes Into remorse, tears, and wondering why You ever start such boring barren games —But there, don’t mind my saeva indignatio: I’m happier now I’ve got things clear, although It’s strange we never meet each other’s sort: There should be equal chances, I’d’ve thought. Must finish now. One day perhaps I’ll know What makes you be so lucky in your ratio
—One of those ‘more things’, could it be? Horatio.
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Marion Arnott
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Posted: Mon Jun 20, 2016 5:38 pm |
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Joined: Tue Mar 06, 2007 12:46 am Posts: 3347
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Longing
Come to me in my dreams, and then By day I shall be well again! For so the night will more than pay The hopeless longing of the day.
Come, as thou cam'st a thousand times, A messenger from radiant climes, And smile on thy new world, and be As kind to others as to me!
Or, as thou never cam'st in sooth, Come now, and let me dream it truth, And part my hair, and kiss my brow, And say, My love why sufferest thou?
Come to me in my dreams, and then By day I shall be well again! For so the night will more than pay The hopeless longing of the day.
Matthew Arnold
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