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A Poem a day keeps the melancholy away

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  • Registered Users Posts: 3,745 ✭✭✭Eliot Rosewater


    The last few lines of that William Blake poem actually feature in a song End of the Night by The Doors!


  • Registered Users Posts: 119 ✭✭walter sobchak


    fontinalis wrote: »
    Think this is called the parable of the old man and the young by Wilfred Owen.

    So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went,
    And took the fire with him, and a knife.
    And as they sojourned both of them together,
    Isaac the first-born spake and said, My Father,
    Behold the preparations, fire and iron,
    But where the lamb, for this burnt-offering?
    Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps,
    And builded parapets and trenches there,
    And stretchèd forth the knife to slay his son.
    When lo! an Angel called him out of heaven,
    Saying, Lay not they hand upon the lad,
    Neither do anything to him. Behold.
    A ram, caught in a thicket by its horns;
    Offer the Ram of Pride instead of him.
    But the old man would not so, but slew his son,
    And half the seed of Europe, one by one.

    On the same theme, is The Story of Isaac by Leonard Cohen.... it's a song, but I think his work still counts as poetry...

    Well, the door it opened slowly,
    my father he came in,
    I was nine years old.
    He stood so tall above me,
    and his blue eyes they were shining
    and his voice was very cold.
    He said, "I've had a vision
    and you know I'm strong and holy,
    I must do what I've been told."
    So we started up the mountain,
    I was running, he was walking,
    and his axe was made of burning gold.

    Well, the trees they got much smaller,
    yes, the lake was just like a lady's mirror
    when we stopped to drink some wine.
    When he threw the bottle over,
    I heard it break one minute later
    and he put his hand on mine.
    Thought I saw an eagle
    but it might have been a vulture,
    I never could decide.
    Then my father built an altar,
    he looked once behind his shoulder,
    I guess he knew I would not hide.

    You who build these altars now
    to sacrifice our children,
    you must not do it anymore.
    Your scheme is not a vision
    and you never ever have been tempted
    by a demon let alone a god.
    You who stand above them now,
    your hatchets blunt and bloody,
    you were not there before.
    When I lay upon the mountain
    and my father's hand was trembling
    with the beauty, I mean the beauty of the word.

    And if you call me brother now,
    forgive me but I must inquire,
    "Just according to whose plan?"
    When it all comes down to dust
    I will kill you if I must,
    I will help you if I can.
    When it all comes down to dust
    I will help you if I must,
    I'll kill you if I can.
    And have mercy, mercy on our uniforms,
    the man of peace, the man of war.
    The peacock spreads his deadly fan.


    (from a live version, slight changes to the recorded version)


  • Registered Users Posts: 352 ✭✭liogairmhordain


    Boys dream of native girls who bring breadfruit,
    Whatever they are,
    As bribes to teach them how to execute
    Sixteen sexual positions on the sand;
    This makes them join (the boys) the tennis club,
    Jive at the Mecca, use deodorants, and
    On Saturdays squire ex-schoolgirls to the pub
    By private car.

    Such uncorrected visions end in church
    Or registrar:
    A mortgaged semi- with a silver birch;
    Nippers; the widowed mum; having to scheme
    With money; illness; age. So absolute
    Maturity falls, when old men sit and dream
    Of naked native girls who bring breadfruit,
    Whatever they are.

    (Philip Larkin)


  • Registered Users Posts: 1,784 ✭✭✭Monkeybonkers


    I never read poetry but this was one of my favourites from school and I still like it today:


    The Listeners
    by Walter De La Mare

    'Is there anybody there?' said the Traveller,
    Knocking on the moonlit door;
    And his horse in the silence champed the grasses
    Of the forest's ferny floor:
    And a bird flew up out of the turret,
    Above the Traveller's head
    And he smote upon the door again a second time;
    'Is there anybody there?' he said.
    But no one descended to the Traveller;
    No head from the leaf-fringed sill
    Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes,
    Where he stood perplexed and still.
    But only a host of phantom listeners
    That dwelt in the lone house then
    Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight
    To that voice from the world of men:
    Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair,
    That goes down to the empty hall,
    Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken
    By the lonely Traveller's call.
    And he felt in his heart their strangeness,
    Their stillness answering his cry,
    While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,
    'Neath the starred and leafy sky;
    For he suddenly smote on the door, even
    Louder, and lifted his head:-
    'Tell them I came, and no one answered,
    That I kept my word,' he said.
    Never the least stir made the listeners,
    Though every word he spake
    Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house
    From the one man left awake:
    Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,
    And the sound of iron on stone,
    And how the silence surged softly backward,
    When the plunging hoofs were gone


    I think there's a nice bit of mystery to this poem. Who is the man? To whom did he make the promise? Who are the listeners?
    One of the few poems that I remember and can still quote passages from.
    Also honourable mention must go to 'If' by Rudyard Kipling. I know Eliot has mentioned it already but I think it deserves another. I only read it out for my friend and his mother recently. It's a classic!

    Apologies for the dark writing. When I copied the poem it turned this colour.

    Great idea for a thread btw


  • Registered Users Posts: 235 ✭✭asea


    I haled me a woman from the street,
    Shameless, but, oh, so fair!
    I bade her sit in the model's seat
    And I painted her sitting there.

    I hid all trace of her heart unclean;
    I painted a babe at her breast;
    I painted her as she might have been
    If the Worst had been the Best.

    She laughed at my picture and went away.
    Then came, with a knowing nod,
    A connoisseur, and I heard him say;
    "'Tis Mary, the Mother of God."

    So I painted a halo round her hair,
    And I sold her and took my fee,
    And she hangs in the church of Saint Hillaire,
    Where you and all may see.

    Robert W Service


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  • Registered Users Posts: 75 ✭✭Siobhers


    i carry your heart with me - E. E. Cummings
    i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
    my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
    i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
    by only me is your doing,my darling)
    i fear
    no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
    no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
    and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
    and whatever a sun will always sing is you

    here is the deepest secret nobody knows
    (here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
    and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
    higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
    and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

    i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 1,175 ✭✭✭Red_Marauder


    Just a short one, by Coleridge, and one of my favourites.

    What If You Slept...

    What if you slept
    And what if
    In your sleep
    You dreamed
    And what if
    In your dream
    You went to heaven
    And there plucked a strange and beautiful flower
    And what if
    When you awoke
    You had that flower in you hand
    Ah, what then?

    I heard John Burnside quote it recently. He talked about how in his life, through psychiatric problems and other life stresses, he often awoke from bad experiences clutching a metaphorical flower. It is important to remember that all of our experiences, no matter how negative, no matter how detached or lonely they seem at the time, can have positive repercussions, just like waking up with a flower from a dream.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 23 hermunkla


    I only became aware of this beautiful poem when attention was given to the movie of the same name. It inspires hope and, perhaps, courage. This is a reference to `iNVICTUS` in an earlier thread.


  • Registered Users Posts: 3,745 ✭✭✭Eliot Rosewater


    The rhyming scheme in this one is pretty interesting. Initially the rhyming lines are self-contained, ie a few lines will rhyme and then that rhyme will be finished with and replaced. However as the poem develops the rhymes become entangled. Ok, its hard to explain!


    After Apple Picking - Robert Frost

    My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree
    Toward heaven still,
    And there's a barrel that I didn't fill
    Beside it, and there may be two or three
    Apples I didn't pick upon some bough.
    But I am done with apple-picking now.
    Essence of winter sleep is on the night,
    The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.
    I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight
    I got from looking through a pane of glass
    I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough
    And held against the world of hoary grass.
    It melted, and I let it fall and break.
    But I was well
    Upon my way to sleep before it fell,
    And I could tell
    What form my dreaming was about to take.
    Magnified apples appear and disappear,
    Stem end and blossom end,
    And every fleck of russet showing clear.
    My instep arch not only keeps the ache,
    It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.
    I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.

    And I keep hearing from the cellar bin
    The rumbling sound
    Of load on load of apples coming in.
    For I have had too much
    Of apple-picking: I am overtired
    Of the great harvest I myself desired.
    There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,
    Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.
    For all
    That struck the earth,
    No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble,
    Went surely to the cider-apple heap
    As of no worth.
    One can see what will trouble
    This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.
    Were he not gone,
    The woodchuck could say whether it's like his
    Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,
    Or just some human sleep.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 109 ✭✭pretentiouslad


    Regarding Invictus, I think i'll learn it off too, never heard of that poem before but it's amazingly accessible and easy to relate to! brilliant!


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  • Moderators, Arts Moderators, Recreation & Hobbies Moderators, Sports Moderators Posts: 9,469 Mod ✭✭✭✭BossArky


    Great last verse in this one:

    On Raglan Road - Patrick Kavanagh

    On Raglan Road on an autumn day I met her first and knew
    That her dark hair would weave a snare that I might one day rue;
    I saw the danger, yet I walked along the enchanted way,
    And I said, let grief be a fallen leaf at the dawning of the day.

    On Grafton Street in November we tripped lightly along the ledge
    Of the deep ravine where can be seen the worth of passion's pledge,
    The Queen of Hearts still making tarts and I not making hay -
    O I loved too much and by such and such is happiness thrown away.

    I gave her gifts of the mind I gave her the secret sign that's known
    To the artists who have known the true gods of sound and stone
    And word and tint. I did not stint for I gave her poems to say.
    With her own name there and her own dark hair like clouds over fields of May

    On a quiet street where old ghosts meet I see her walking now
    Away from me so hurriedly my reason must allow
    That I had wooed not as I should a creature made of clay -
    When the angel woos the clay he'd lose his wings at the dawn of day


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 407 ✭✭OxfordComma


    Ceasefire by Michael Longley
    Put in mind of his own father and moved to tears
    Achilles took him by the hand and pushed the old king
    Gently away, but Priam curled up at his feet and
    Wept with him until their sadness filled the building.

    Taking Hector's corpse into his own hands Achilles
    Made sure it was washed and, for the old king's sake,
    Laid out in uniform, ready for Priam to carry
    Wrapped like a present home to Troy at daybreak.

    When they had eaten together, it pleased them both
    To stare at each other's beauty as lovers might,
    Achilles built like a god, Priam good-looking still
    And full of conversation, who earlier had sighed:

    'I get down on my knees and do what must be done
    And kiss Achilles' hand, the killer of my son.[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]'[/FONT]


  • Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 6,488 ✭✭✭Denerick


    1fahy4 wrote: »
    Ceasefire by Michael Longley

    Put in mind of his own father and moved to tears
    Achilles took him by the hand and pushed the old king
    Gently away, but Priam curled up at his feet and
    Wept with him until their sadness filled the building.

    Taking Hector's corpse into his own hands Achilles
    Made sure it was washed and, for the old king's sake,
    Laid out in uniform, ready for Priam to carry
    Wrapped like a present home to Troy at daybreak.

    When they had eaten together, it pleased them both
    To stare at each other's beauty as lovers might,
    Achilles built like a god, Priam good-looking still
    And full of conversation, who earlier had sighed:

    'I get down on my knees and do what must be done
    And kiss Achilles' hand, the killer of my son.[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]'[/FONT]


    I think I wrote about this poem in my Leaving cert. beautiful.


  • Registered Users Posts: 71 ✭✭PADRAGON


    Come to the edge
    im afraid
    come to the edge
    i will fall
    come to the edge
    and she came
    and he pushed her
    and she flew


    No idea who wrote this but wow.


  • Registered Users Posts: 5,016 ✭✭✭Blush_01


    Gacela of the Dark Death

    I want to sleep the dream of the apples,
    to withdraw from the tumult of cemetries.
    I want to sleep the dream of that child
    who wanted to cut his heart on the high seas.

    I don't want to hear again that the dead do not lose their blood,
    that the putrid mouth goes on asking for water.
    I don't want to learn of the tortures of the grass,
    nor of the moon with a serpent's mouth
    that labors before dawn.

    I want to sleep awhile,
    awhile, a minute, a century;
    but all must know that I have not died;
    that there is a stable of gold in my lips;
    that I am the small friend of the West wing;
    that I am the intense shadows of my tears.

    Cover me at dawn with a veil,
    because dawn will throw fistfuls of ants at me,
    and wet with hard water my shoes
    so that the pincers of the scorpion slide.

    For I want to sleep the dream of the apples,
    to learn a lament that will cleanse me to earth;
    for I want to live with that dark child
    who wanted to cut his heart on the high seas.

    Federico García Lorca

    I originally read this in a different translation, but I can't find it. I think it's so impressive and beautiful - I'll keep hunting for the original translation I read.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 324 ✭✭Joe Cool


    Porphyria's Lover

    The rain set early in to-night,
    The sullen wind was soon awake,
    It tore the elm-tops down for spite,
    And did its worst to vex the lake:
    I listen'd with heart fit to break.
    When glided in Porphyria; straight
    She shut the cold out and the storm,
    And kneel'd and made the cheerless grate
    Blaze up, and all the cottage warm;
    Which done, she rose, and from her form
    Withdrew the dripping cloak and shawl,
    And laid her soil'd gloves by, untied
    Her hat and let the damp hair fall,
    And, last, she sat down by my side
    And call'd me. When no voice replied,
    She put my arm about her waist,
    And made her smooth white shoulder bare,
    And all her yellow hair displaced,
    And, stooping, made my cheek lie there,
    And spread, o'er all, her yellow hair,
    Murmuring how she loved me—she
    Too weak, for all her heart's endeavour,
    To set its struggling passion free
    From pride, and vainer ties dissever,
    And give herself to me for ever.
    But passion sometimes would prevail,
    Nor could to-night's gay feast restrain
    A sudden thought of one so pale
    For love of her, and all in vain:
    So, she was come through wind and rain.
    Be sure I look'd up at her eyes
    Happy and proud; at last I knew
    Porphyria worshipp'd me; surprise
    Made my heart swell, and still it grew
    While I debated what to do.
    That moment she was mine, mine, fair,
    Perfectly pure and good: I found
    A thing to do, and all her hair
    In one long yellow string I wound
    Three times her little throat around,
    And strangled her. No pain felt she;
    I am quite sure she felt no pain.
    As a shut bud that holds a bee,
    I warily oped her lids: again
    Laugh'd the blue eyes without a stain.
    And I untighten'd next the tress
    About her neck; her cheek once more
    Blush'd bright beneath my burning kiss:
    I propp'd her head up as before,
    Only, this time my shoulder bore
    Her head, which droops upon it still:
    The smiling rosy little head,
    So glad it has its utmost will,
    That all it scorn'd at once is fled,
    And I, its love, am gain'd instead!
    Porphyria's love: she guess'd not how
    Her darling one wish would be heard.
    And thus we sit together now,
    And all night long we have not stirr'd,
    And yet God has not said a word!

    Robert Browning


  • Registered Users Posts: 318 ✭✭useurename


    no other word will do.for thats what it was.gravy
    gravy these past ten years
    alive,sober,working,loving and
    being loved by a good woman.eleven years
    ago he was told he had ten months to live
    at the rate he was going. and he was going
    nowhere but down.so he changed his ways
    somehow.he quit drinking! and the rest
    after that it was all gravy,every minute
    of it,up to and incuding when he was told about,
    well,somethings that were breaking down and
    building up inside his head."don't weep for me"
    he said to his friends."i'm a lucky man.
    i've had ten years longer than i or anyone
    expected.pure gravy.and don't forget it

    "gravy" by raymond carver
    i really love this poem.


  • Registered Users Posts: 147 ✭✭ulysses32


    In my Craft or sullen Art
    In my craft or sullen art
    Exercised in the still night
    When only the moon rages
    And the lovers lie abed
    With all their griefs in their arms,
    I labour by singing light
    Not for ambition or bread
    Or the strut and trade of charms
    On the ivory stages
    But for the common wages
    Of their most secret heart.

    Not for the proud man apart
    From the raging moon I write
    On these spindrift pages
    Nor for the towering dead
    With their nightingales and psalms
    But for the lovers, their arms
    Round the griefs of the ages,
    Who pay no praise or wages
    Nor heed my craft or art

    Dylan Thomas

    A fabulous poem that reminds me of what the word "work" really means!


  • Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 6,488 ✭✭✭Denerick


    I think this may have been posted before, but I'm not sure. Either way I don't care. Its one of my favourite poems. :)

    Rudyard Kipling
    If


    If you can keep your head when all about you
    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
    If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
    But make allowance for their doubting too;
    If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
    Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
    Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
    And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

    If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
    If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
    If you can meet with triumph and disaster
    And treat those two imposters just the same;
    If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
    Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
    Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
    And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools;

    If you can make one heap of all your winnings
    And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
    And lose, and start again at your beginnings
    And never breath a word about your loss;
    If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
    To serve your turn long after they are gone,
    And so hold on when there is nothing in you
    Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on";

    If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
    Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch;
    If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
    If all men count with you, but none too much;
    If you can fill the unforgiving minute
    With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
    Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
    And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!


  • Registered Users Posts: 2,912 ✭✭✭pog it


    One of my favourite writers, she is a member of the Aosdána: This one is from the collection 'Carrying the Songs'.

    Hazelnuts

    I thought that I knew what they meant
    when they said that wisdom is a hazelnut.
    You have to search the scrub
    for hazel thickets,
    gather the ripened nuts,
    crack the hard shells,
    and only then taste the sweetness at wisdom's kernel.

    But perhaps it is simpler.
    Perhaps it is we who wait in thickets
    for fate to find us
    and break us between its teeth
    before we can start to know anything.


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  • Registered Users Posts: 2,629 ✭✭✭raah!


    Not sure how effective this poem is as a deterrent of melancholy, but I like it.

    Sad Steps

    Groping back to bed after a piss
    I part thick curtains, and am startled by
    The rapid clouds, the moon's cleanliness.

    Four o' clock: wedge shadowed gardens lie
    Under a cavernous, a wind picked sky.
    There's somethign laughable about this,

    The way the moon dashes through clouds that blow
    Loosely as cannon smoke to stand apart
    (Stone-coloured light sharpening the roofs below)

    High and preposterous and separate--
    Lozenge of love! Medallion of art!
    O wolves of memory! Immensements! No,

    One shivers slightly, looking up there.
    The hardness and the brightness and the plain
    Far-reaching singleness of that wide stare

    Is a reminder of the strength and pain
    Of being young; that it can't come again,
    But is for others undiminished somewhere


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 8,048 ✭✭✭Amazotheamazing


    Here's a small little poem I was lucky enough to hear Liam Clancy recite in concert, the man knew how to deliver a line.

    HIGH AND LOW

    He stumbled home from Clifden fair
    With drunken song, and cheeks aglow.
    Yet there was something in his air
    That told of kingship long ago.
    I sighed -- and inly cried
    With grief that one so high should fall so low.

    He snatched a flower and sniffed its scent,
    And waved it toward the sunset sky.
    Some old sweet rapture through him went
    And kindled in his bloodshot eye.
    I turned -- and inly burned
    With joy that one so low should rise so high.

    -- James H. Cousins


  • Registered Users Posts: 2,630 ✭✭✭Plowman


    This post has been deleted.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 9 breen.a


    or in the sun trapped shed in that ''chest hospital'' .


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 8,048 ✭✭✭Amazotheamazing


    'The Workmans Friend' by Flann O'Brien

    When things go wrong and will not come right,
    Though you do the best you can,
    When life looks black as the hour of night -
    A PINT OF PLAIN IS YOUR ONLY MAN.

    When money's tight and hard to get
    And your horse has also ran,
    When all you have is a heap of debt -
    A PINT OF PLAIN IS YOUR ONLY MAN.

    When health is bad and your heart feels strange,
    And your face is pale and wan,
    When doctors say you need a change,
    A PINT OF PLAIN IS YOUR ONLY MAN.

    When food is scarce and your larder bare
    And no rashers grease your pan,
    When hunger grows as your meals are rare -
    A PINT OF PLAIN IS YOUR ONLY MAN.

    In time of trouble and lousey strife,
    You have still got a darlint plan
    You still can turn to a brighter life -
    A PINT OF PLAIN IS YOUR ONLY MAN.


  • Registered Users Posts: 3,674 ✭✭✭Mardy Bum


    IN A STATION OF THE METRO by Ezra Pound

    The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
    Petals on a wet, black bough.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 47 214horatio


    The birds sang in the wet trees
    And I listened to them it was a hundred years from now
    And I was dead and someone else was listening to them.
    But I was glad I had recorded for him
    The melancholy.

    Patrick Kavanagh

    Genius


  • Registered Users Posts: 3,745 ✭✭✭Eliot Rosewater


    There was an Old Man in a boat,
    Who said, 'I'm afloat, I'm afloat!'
    When they said, 'No! you ain't!'
    He was ready to faint,
    That unhappy Old Man in a boat.


  • Registered Users Posts: 3,745 ✭✭✭Eliot Rosewater


    Her strong enchantments failing,
    Her towers of fear in wreck,
    Her limbecks dried of poisons
    And the knife at her neck,

    The Queen of air and darkness
    Begins to shrill and cry,
    'O young man, O my slayer,
    To-morrow you shall die.'

    O Queen of air and darkness,
    I think 'tis truth you say,
    And I shall die to-morrow;
    But you will die to-day.


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  • Registered Users Posts: 31 Polynomial


    A classic by Derek Mahon, and a wonderful painting that illuminates it:

    Courtyards in Delft
    Derek Mahon

    Oblique light on the trite, on brick and tile--
    Immaculate masonry, and everywhere that
    Water tap, that broom and wooden pail
    To keep it so. House-proud, the wives
    Of artisans pursue their thrifty lives
    Among scrubbed yards, modest but adequate.
    Foliage is sparse, and clings. No breeze
    Ruffles the trim composure of those trees.

    No spinet-playing emblematic of
    The harmonies and disharmonies of love;
    No lewd fish, no fruit, no wide-eyed bird
    About to fly its cage while a virgin
    Listens to her seducer, mars the chaste
    Perfection of the thing and the thing made.
    Nothing is random, nothing goes to waste.
    We miss the dirty dog, the fiery gin.

    That girl with her back to us who waits
    For her man to come home for his tea
    Will wait till the paint disintegrates
    And ruined dikes admit the esurient sea;
    Yet this is life too, and the cracked
    Out-house door a verifiable fact
    As vividly mnemonic as the sunlit
    Railings that front the houses opposite.

    I lived there as a boy and know the coal
    Glittering in its shed, late-afternoon
    Lambency informing the deal table,
    The ceiling cradled in a radiant spoon.
    I must be lying low in a room there,
    A strange child with a taste for verse,
    While my hard-nosed companions dream of fire
    And sword upon parched veldt and fields of rain-swept gorse.


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