Category: poetry

MID WEEK METRICAL

Okay, let’s have another Larkin. Very different from last week’s, but lovely I think.

An Arundel Tomb

Side by side, their faces blurred,
The earl and countess lie in stone,
Their proper habits vaguely shown
As jointed armour, stiffened pleat,
And that faint hint of the absurd –
The little dogs under their feet.

Such plainness of the pre-baroque
Hardly involves the eye, until
It meets his left-hand gauntlet, still
Clasped empty in the other; and
One sees, with a sharp tender shock,
His hand withdrawn, holding her hand.

They would not think to lie so long.
Such faithfulness in effigy
Was just a detail friends would see:
A sculptor’s sweet commissioned grace
Thrown off in helping to prolong
The Latin names around the base.

They would no guess how early in
Their supine stationary voyage
The air would change to soundless damage,
Turn the old tenantry away;
How soon succeeding eyes begin
To look, not read. Rigidly they

Persisted, linked, through lengths and breadths
Of time. Snow fell, undated. Light
Each summer thronged the grass. A bright
Litter of birdcalls strewed the same
Bone-littered ground. And up the paths
The endless altered people came,

Washing at their identity.
Now, helpless in the hollow of
An unarmorial age, a trough
Of smoke in slow suspended skeins
Above their scrap of history,
Only an attitude remains:

Time has transfigures them into
Untruth. The stone fidelity
They hardly meant has come to be
Their final blazon, and to prove
Our almost-instinct almost true:
What will survive of us is love.

Philip Larkin

MID WEEK METRICAL

In an attempt to raise the tone of this blog, I have decided that every Wednesday we will try and improve our minds with poetry. Let’s start nice and easy, with a famous poem by acclaimed twentieth century British poet, Phillip Larkin.

This Be The Verse

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.

Julius Chingono 1946-2011

Many thanks to Writers International-Zimbabwe and amaBooks for posting news of the sad passing of Zimbabwean poet and short story writer Julius Chingono.

Born in 1946, Chingono was the son of a farmworker, and worked for most of his life as a blaster on the mines. Made redundant in 1999, he worked intermittently as a rock-blasting contractor. WIN – Zimbabwe gives a fine description of his work: “His often deceptively simple poetry was written with compassion and clarity, feeling deeply as he did for the hardships of the poor and marginalised, while his honesty, humour and ironic eye made him a sharp and witty observer of those who abused their station through corruption and hypocrisy.” His full obituary can be read here.

The finest tribute to a man is always his work.

A FAKE

An underpaid clerk
came back
from lunch
picking his teeth clean
with a matchstick
to impress a co-worker,
the girl at the switchboard
whose lunch was
steak and chips
Yet his meal was
a half-hour long nap
and half a litre of water
drunk
from a tap
in the park.

A SILHOUETTE

His eyes are see-through.
Through them I see
a yawning empty bread bin
a fridge stands
astounded
by its chilling emptiness
a stove, cold,
sits huddled in a corner
finds nothing to warm up
for mice swept the pantry
before seeking refuge
in refuse pits
in the neighbourhood.
Cockroaches left jackets
on hangers of webs
bills are forming
a small mound
on a formica table.

Yet – whenever I ask
How he is doing
he replies:
‘Fine. And you?’

For many more examples, look here, and if you want to hear the man himself, reading his work, please listen here.