A Poem a day keeps the melancholy away

katemarch wrote: »

@barney4001 - that is so sad :-(

It was written by jmac from belfast forum,yes very well done i thought

A smile to remember

Charles Bukowski

We had goldfish
and they circled around and around
in the bowl on the table near the heavy drapes
covering the picture window and
my mother, always smiling, wanting us all
to be happy, told me, 'be happy Henry!'
and she was right: it's better to be happy if you can

but my father continued to beat her
and me several times a week while
raging inside his 6-foot-two frame
because he couldn't understand
what was attacking him from within.

my mother, poor fish,
wanting to be happy,
beaten two or three times a week,
telling me to be happy:

'Henry, smile!
why don't you ever smile?'

and then she would smile,
to show me how,
and it was the saddest smile I ever saw.

one day the goldfish died,
all five of them,
they floated on the water,
on their sides,
their eyes still open,
and when my father got home
he threw them to the cat
there on the kitchen floor
and we watched
as my mother smiled.

By Seamus Heaney

We used to have blackberry bushes out in our back-garden growing up. Sweet, sweet berries!
kerry4sam

Reboot Banagher Horse Fair…

Banagher Horse Fair will be held in 2015, to spite the fact it officially is illegal. Yes, there is talk of leagalizing cannabis, but horse fairs are illegal... You could not make it up... #onlyinireland






We will see you, as a sure thing, in September
On the Main Street among the proud horses there
We’ll walk among crowds, dogs, the shady folk and the shades
At the 2015 Banagher Horse Fair…
Make sure your car has no green diesel
And your horse is not on hormones as well
Bring cash to buy a nag and some naggins
The pubs may be shut, or open, who can tell?
What has become of a free nation
When to hold a horse fair is rebellious to do?
We had that freedom even under the British:
Was it for that Babser held guns with the brave few?
Reboot Ireland some say, stating with the rural
Ireland is nothing without its heart…
Its heart is here, kept alive by us, the activists
Rebooting Banagher Horse Fair will be a start!


More Than Just Another Memory

They Took from Us

Long May Horses **** the Streets

Just Doing Our Job

By Charles Bukowski

The further away I am from the human race, the better I feel.
Even though I write about the human race, the further away from them I am the better I feel.
Two inches is great. Two miles is great. Two thousand miles is beautiful. As long as I’m able to eat.
They feed me because I feed them. I don’t like to be near them, when somebody even brushes against me with an elbow in a crowd I react.
I do not like the human race. I don’t like their heads. I don’t like their faces. I don’t like their feet. I don’t like their conversations.
I don’t like their hairdos. I don’t like their automobiles. I don’t like their dogs or their cats or their roses.

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

W.H. Auden

I rewatched "The History Boys" recently and it reminded me of some great poems, including this one. Great reading of it below (mind you, I'd listen to him reading the phone book):

Fern Hill ~ Dylan Thomas
May 15, 2015 at 3:48am
Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
The night above the dingle starry,
Time let me hail and climb
Golden in the heydays of his eyes,
And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves
Trail with daisies and barley
Down the rivers of the windfall light.

And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns
About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,
In the sun that is young once only,
Time let me play and be
Golden in the mercy of his means,
And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves
Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold,
And the sabbath rang slowly
In the pebbles of the holy streams.

All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay
Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air
And playing, lovely and watery
And fire green as grass.
And nightly under the simple stars
As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,
All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars
Flying with the ricks, and the horses
Flashing into the dark.

And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white
With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all
Shining, it was Adam and maiden,
The sky gathered again
And the sun grew round that very day.
So it must have been after the birth of the simple light
In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm
Out of the whinnying green stable
On to the fields of praise.

And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house
Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,
In the sun born over and over,
I ran my heedless ways,
My wishes raced through the house high hay
And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows
In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs
Before the children green and golden
Follow him out of grace,

Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me
Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,
In the moon that is always rising,
Nor that riding to sleep
I should hear him fly with the high fields
And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.
Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.

~ ~ ~ Dylan Thomas ~ ~ ~ ~

The Ballad of Reading Gaol (excerpt)

Yet each man kills the thing he loves
By each let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!

Some kill their love when they are young,
And some when they are old;
Some strangle with the hands of Lust,
Some with the hands of Gold:
The kindest use a knife, because
The dead so soon grow cold.

Some love too little, some too long,
Some sell, and others buy;
Some do the deed with many tears,
And some without a sigh:
For each man kills the thing he loves,
Yet each man does not die.

Oscar Wilde

For the week that's in it , let us celebrate 'the love that dare not speak its name '

The Look

The heron's the look of the river.
The moon's the look of the night.
The sky's the look of forever.
Snow is the look of white.

The bees are the look of the honey.
The wasp is the look of pain.
The clown is the look of funny.
Puddles are the look of rain.

The whale is the look of the ocean.
The grave is the look of the dead.
The wheel is the look of motion.
Blood is the look of red.

The rose is the look of the garden.
The girl is the look of the school.
The snake is the look of the Gorgon.
Ice is the look of cool.

The clouds are the look of the weather.
The hand is the look of the glove.
The bird is the look of the feather.
You are the look of love.

Carol Ann Duffy

The first openly gay Poet Laureate

Stop All The Clocks

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 for ever: 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 wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

W.H Auden

Can we really deny fulfilment to such a love as this ?

And to finish this historic week of great Gay poets ( heads-up Manach for our 2nd C.P. Cavafy entry)( and to Mr Nice guy for another Housman) we have Auden's tribute to the great Voltaire and the notion that the struggle never ends and who surely is on the Yes side .

Voltaire At Ferney

Perfectly happy now, he looked at his estate.
An exile making watches glanced up as he passed
And went on working; where a hospital was rising fast,
A joiner touched his cap; an agent came to tell
Some of the trees he'd planted were progressing well.
The white alps glittered. It was summer. He was very great.
Far off in Paris where his enemies
Whsipered that he was wicked, in an upright chair
A blind old woman longed for death and letters. He would write,
"Nothing is better than life." But was it? Yes, the fight
Against the false and the unfair
Was always worth it. So was gardening. Civilize.
Cajoling, scolding, screaming, cleverest of them all,
He'd had the other children in a holy war
Against the infamous grown-ups; and, like a child, been sly
And humble, when there was occassion for
The two-faced answer or the plain protective lie,
But, patient like a peasant, waited for their fall.
And never doubted, like D'Alembert, he would win:
Only Pascal was a great enemy, the rest
Were rats already poisoned; there was much, though, to be done,
And only himself to count upon.
Dear Diderot was dull but did his best;
Rousseau, he'd always known, would blubber and give in.
Night fell and made him think of women: Lust
Was one of the great teachers; Pascal was a fool.
How Emilie had loved astronomy and bed;
Pimpette had loved him too, like scandal; he was glad.
He'd done his share of weeping for Jerusalem: As a rule,
It was the pleasure-haters who became unjust.
Yet, like a sentinel, he could not sleep. The night was full of wrong,
Earthquakes and executions: soon he would be dead,
And still all over Europe stood the horrible nurses
Itching to boil their children. Only his verses
Perhaps could stop them: He must go on working: Overhead,
The uncomplaining stars composed their lucid song.

W.H Auden

Vote Yes for equality , but most of all vote.

I'd like to offer up one more by A.E. Housman (1859-1936) as I found it very powerful. In fact, I think they should teach this one in schools. It was believed to have been written following the trial of Oscar Wilde. Obviously the references to hair were necessary due to the laws against homosexuality at the time.

Oh Who is That Young Sinner?

A.E. Housman

Oh who is that young sinner with the handcuffs on his wrists?
And what has he been after that they groan and shake their fists?
And wherefore is he wearing such a conscience-stricken air?
Oh they're taking him to prison for the colour of his hair.

'Tis a shame to human nature such a head of hair as his;
In the good old times 'twas hanging for the colour that it is;
Though hanging isn't bad enough and flaying would be fair
For the nameless and abominable colour of his hair.

Oh a deal of pains he's taken and a pretty price he's paid
To hide his poll or dye it of a mentionable shade;
But they've pulled the beggar's hat off for the world to see and stare,
And they're taking him to justice for the colour of his hair.

Now 'tis oakum for his fingers and the treadmill for his feet,
And the quarry-gang of Portland in the cold and in the heat,
And between his spells of labour in the time he has to spare
He can curse the God that made him for the colour of his hair.