Wormwood Scrubs Prison in West London is colloquially known as "The Scrubs".

Ken Smith was poet in residence at the prison and this poem is taken from his collection "Wormwood", which describes the experiences and feelings of inmates.

THE BEE DANCE

Let the grey dust thicken on the landings,
let the spiders tick in the wall,
let the locks rust and the keys be lost.

This is the yellow hive of my skull
where the bees dance on the honeycomb
their tales of direction and distance.

They tell how high the sun is, how far
to sweet marjoram, borage and thyme,
and the tall green masts of the sunflowers.

Ken Smith (From "Poems on the Underground")

Annabelle Despard is a bilingual poet who writes in Norwegian and makes her own translations into English.

The Tube poster marked the first publication of the English text of this poem.

SHOULD YOU DIE FIRST

Should You Die First
Let me at least collect your smells
as specimens: your armpits, woollen sweater,
fingers yellow from smoke. I'd need
to take an imprint of your foot
and make recordings of your laugh.

These archives I shall carry into exile;
my body a St Helena where ships no longer dock,
a rock in the ocean, an outpost where the wind howls
and polar bears beat down the door.

Annabelle Despard

STAY

I have changed the numbers on my watch,
And now perhaps something else will change.
Now perhaps
At precisely 2 a.m.
You will not get up
And gathering your things together
Go forever.
Perhaps now you will find it is
Far too early to go,
Or far too late,
And stay forever.

Brian Patten

More from the Underground

SATURDAY MORNING

Everyone who made love the night before
was walking around with flashing red lights
on top of their heads-a white-haired old gentlemen,
a red-faced schoolboy, a pregnant woman
who smiled at me from across the street
and gave a little secret shrug,
as if the flashing red light on her head
was a small price to pay for what she knew.

Hugo Williams

Continuing "Poems On The Underground"

DAY TRIP

Two women, seventies, hold hands
on the edge of Essex,
hair in strong nets,
shrieked laughter echoing gulls
as shingle sucks from under feet
easing in brine.

There must be an unspoken point
when the sea feels like
their future. No longer paddling,
ankles submerge in lace,
in satin ripple.
Dress hems darken.

They do not risk their balance
for the shimmering of ships
at the horizon's sweep
as, thigh deep, they inch on
fingers splayed, wrists bent,
learning to walk again.

Carol Satyamurti

Proud readers
Hide behind tall newspapers.

The young are all arms and legs
Knackered by youth.

Tourists sit bolt upright
Trusting in nothing.

Only the drunk and the crazy
Aspire to converse.

Only the poet
Peruses his poem among the adverts.

Only the elderly person
Observes the request that the seat be offered to an elderly person.

D.J.Enright

I am going undergound.

THEY ARE NOT LONG

Vitae summa brevis spem nos vetat incohare longam (Horace)

They are not long, the weeping and the laughter,
Love and desire and hate:
I think they have no portion in us after
We pass the gate.

They are not long, the days of wine and roses:
Out of a misty dream
Our path emerges for a while, then closes
Within a dream.

Today, the last of the three poems from Wendy Cope's "Greek Island Triolets".

ARBOREAL

We hugged a tree last night
And all of us enjoyed it.
Ecstatic, by moonlight,
We hugged a tree last night.
Trees can't put up a fight -
That oak could not avoid it.
We hugged it good and tight -
I hope the tree enjoyed it.

(Yes, I know it's not an oak)

On Wednesday I posted here "The Fly", one of Wendy Cope's three "Greek Island Triolets".

Here it is.

Why did I buy this Mark and Spencer's T-shirt

And, having done so, fail to take it back?

An average English-frump-beside-the-sea-shirt -

Why did I buy this Marks and Spencer's T-shirt?

I needed something ace. This is a B-shirt,

Fit only to be worn beneath a mac.

Why did I buy this Marks and Spencer's T-shirt?

Shall I wash it once and take it back?

P.S. A 'triolet' is a poem or stanza of eight lines with a rhyme scheme abaaabab, in which the fourth and seventh lines are the same as the first, and the eighth line is the same as the second.

And, yes, I know that the t-shirt in my picture is by Nike and not Marks and Spencer. It was the best I could do!

A WORD BEFORE SLEEP

Life tells us lies, inimitably,
Beyond all expectations, outdoing other liars.
You know, when all your veins are trembling,
You recognise it - life!

It is as if you're lying in a field of rye,
In ringing blueness, falling heat (and so what if it's lies
You're lying in), the sound of bees through honeysuckle
Rejoice. You have been called.

No, don't reproach me, my dear friend -
Our souls are easily bewitched ,
Already now, my head is entering a dream.
Why did you sing?

Your quietnesses are a clean, white book,
Your 'yesses' savage clay.
I bend my head towards them, quietly.
The palm of my hand - life.

Wendy Cope

This fly believes I'm dead.
I cannot lift a finger.
He buzzes round my head.
This fly believes I'm dead -
A body on a bed,
Safe place for him to linger.
This fly believes I'm dead.
I cannot lift a finger.

(From "Greek Island Triolets" - Wendy Cope)

Today we are moving on from Sara Teasdale.

But we are staying with women writers with this reflective poem about the self, by Wendy Cope.

BY THE ROUND POND

You watch yourself. You watch the watcher too -
A ghostly figure on the garden wall.
And one of you is her, and one is you,
If either of you exists at all.

How strange to be the one behind a face,
To have a name and know that it is yours,
To be in this particular green place,
To see a snail advance, to see it pause.

You sit quite still and wonder when you'll go.
It could be now. Or now. Or now. You stay.
Who's making up the plot? You'll never know.
Minute after minute swims away.

Wendy Cope

I think it is probably time to move on from Sara Teasdale - at least for the time being.

So, I'm sorry Sara - It's goodbye for now.

There is no magic any more,
We meet as other people do,
You work no miracle for me
Nor I for you.

You were the wind and I the sea --
There is no splendor any more,
I have grown listless as the pool
Beside the shore.

But though the pool is safe from storm
And from the tide has found surcease,
It grows more bitter than the sea,
For all its peace.

Sara Teasdale

If I could have your arms tonight-
But half the world and the broken sea
Lie between you and me.

The autumn rain reverberates in the courtyard,
Beating all night against the barren stone,
The sound of useless rain in the desolate courtyard
Makes me more alone.

If you were here, if you were only here-
My blood cries out to you all night in vain
As sleepless as the rain.

Sara Teasdale

What do I care, in the dreams and the languor of spring,
That my songs do not show me at all?
For they are a fragrance, and I am a flint and a fire,
I am an answer, they are only a call.

But what do I care, for love will be over so soon,
Let my heart have its say and my mind stand idly by,
For my mind is proud and strong enough to be silent,
It is my heart that makes my songs, not I.

Sara Teasdale

For a few days now I have shared with you some of the poems of Sara Teasdale - and there are more to come!

She is a rewarding writer.

Here are some of her comments on Life:

"I have no riches but my thoughts. Yet these are wealth enough for me."

And today's poem:

HOUSES OF DREAMS

You took my empty dreams
And filled them every one
With tenderness and nobleness,
April and the sun.

The old empty dreams
Where my thoughts would throng
Are far too full of happiness
To even hold a song.

Oh, the empty dreams were dim
And the empty dreams were wide,
They were sweet and shadowy houses
Where my thoughts could hide.

But you took my dreams away
And you made them all come true --
My thoughts have no place now to play,
And nothing now to do.

Sara Teasdale

My heart is heavy with many a song
Like ripe fruit bearing down the tree,
But I can never give you one --
My songs do not belong to me.

Yet in the evening, in the dusk
When moths go to and fro,
In the gray hour if the fruit has fallen,
Take it, no one will know.

Sara Teasdale

It is enough for me by day

To walk the same bright earth with him;

Enough that over us by night

The same great roof of stars is dim.

I have no care to bind the wind

Or set a fetter on the sea --

It is enough to feel his love

Blow by like music over me.

Sarah Teasdale

Today I go back to the work of Sara Teasdale with this typical short poem.

THE NET

I made you many and many a song,
Yet never one told all you are --
It was as though a net of words
Were flung to catch a star;

It was as though I curved my hand
And dipped sea-water eagerly,
Only to find it lost the blue
Dark splendor of the sea.

Sara Teasdale

I am taking some time off over the next fortnight, so postings to this blog may be rather erratic.

It is,of course, about a relationship, or rather the loss of one.

Once more into my arid days like dew,
Like wind from an oasis, or the sound
Of cold sweet water bubbling underground,
A treacherous messenger, the thought of you
Comes to destroy me; once more I renew
Firm faith in your abundance, whom I found
Long since to be but just one other mound
Of sand, whereon no green thing ever grew.
And once again, and wiser in no wise,
I chase your colored phantom on the air,
And sob and curse and fall and weep and rise
And stumble pitifully on to where,
Miserable and lost, with stinging eyes,
Once more I clasp,--and there is nothing there.

Summer sings no more

Remembering, remembering . . . .

SONNET XLIII

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply,
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.
Thus in winter stands the lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone,
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

I mentioned a couple of days ago that Millay led a bohemian lifestyle and experienced many close relationships with both men and women.

It appears from this poem that she was seldom constant in her affections!

I SHALL FORGET YOU

I shall forget you presently, my dear,

So make the most of this, your little day,

Your little month, your little half a year,

Ere I forget, or die, or move away,

And we are done forever; by and by

I shall forget you, as I said, but now,

If you entreat me with your loveliest lie

I will protest you with my favorite vow.

I would indeed that love were longer-lived,

And oaths were not so brittle as they are,

But so it is, and nature has contrived

To struggle on without a break thus far,–

Whether or not we find what we are seeking

Is idle, biologically speaking.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Following yesterday's poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay, I shall for the next few days be featuring more of her work.

However, I shall try to avoid the excesses of her gloom and set the mood with this.

INDIFFERENCE

I said, -- for Love was laggard, O, Love was slow to come,

"I'll hear his step and know his step when I am warm in bed;

But I'll never leave my pillow, though there be some

As would let him in -- and take him in with tears!" I said.

I lay, -- for Love was laggard, O, he came not until dawn,

I lay and listened for his step and could not get to sleep;

And he found me at my window with my big cloak on,

All sorry with the tears some folks might weep!

Today a poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay, the American lyrical poet and playwright (1892-1950) who was the first woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.

I KNOW I AM BUT SUMMER TO YOUR HEART

I know I am but summer to your heart,
And not the full four seasons of the year;
And you must welcome from another part
Such noble moods as are not mine, my dear.
No gracious weight of golden fruits to sell
Have I, nor any wise and wintry thing;
And I have loved you all too long and well
To carry still the high sweet breast of Spring.
Wherefore I say: O love, as summer goes,
I must be gone, steal forth with silent drums,
That you may hail anew the bird and rose
When I come back to you, as summer comes.
Else will you seek, at some not distant time,
Even your summer in another clime.

Yes, this week the children are returning to school and the days are becoming noticeably shorter.

MOTHER, SUMMER, I

My mother, who hates thunder storms,
Holds up each summer day and shakes
It out suspiciously, lest swarms
Of grape-dark clouds are lurking there;
But when the August weather breaks
And rains begin, and brittle frost
Sharpens the bird-abandoned air,
Her worried summer look is lost,

And I her son, though summer-born
And summer-loving, none the less
Am easier when the leaves are gone
Too often summer days appear
Emblems of perfect happiness
I can't confront: I must await
A time less bold, less rich, less clear:
An autumn more appropriate.

Philip Larkin

Today I return to the black American poet Langstone Hughes.

This poem continues that theme.

AS I GREW OLDER

It was a long time ago.
I have almost forgotten my dream.
But it was there then,
In front of me,
Bright like a sun--
My dream.
And then the wall rose,
Rose slowly,
Slowly,
Between me and my dream.
Rose until it touched the sky--
The wall.
Shadow.
I am black.
I lie down in the shadow.
No longer the light of my dream before me,
Above me.
Only the thick wall.
Only the shadow.
My hands!
My dark hands!
Break through the wall!
Find my dream!
Help me to shatter this darkness,
To smash this night,
To break this shadow
Into a thousand lights of sun,
Into a thousand whirling dreams
Of sun!

Langston Hughes

I am finishing my series of poems by Hilaire Belloc with this little gem

DOUBLE BEDS

The world is full of double beds
And most delightful maidenheads,
Which being so, there’s no excuse
For sodomy or self-abuse.

Hilaire Belloc

HENRY KING

The Chief Defect of Henry King
Was chewing little bits of String.
At last he swallowed some which tied
Itself in ugly Knots inside.

Physicians of the Utmost Fame
Were called at once; but when they came
They answered, as they took their Fees,
"There is no Cure for this Disease.

"Henry will very soon be dead.''
His Parents stood about his Bed
Lamenting his Untimely Death,
When Henry, with his Latest Breath,

Cried, "Oh, my Friends, be warned by me,
That Breakfast, Dinner, Lunch, and Tea
Are all the Human Frame requires...''
With that, the Wretched Child expires.

Hilaire Belloc

The Microbe is so very small
You cannot make him out at all,
But many sanguine people hope
To see him through a microscope.
His jointed tongue that lies beneath
A hundred curious rows of teeth;
His seven tufted tails with lots
Of lovely pink and purple spots,
On each of which a pattern stands,
Composed of forty separate bands;
His eyebrows of a tender green;
All these have never yet been seen--
But Scientists, who ought to know,
Assure us that they must be so....
Oh! let us never, never doubt
What nobody is sure about!

Hilaire Belloc