HUG 'O WAR

I will not play at tug o' war.
I'd rather play at hug o' war,
Where everyone hugs
Instead of tugs,
Where everyone giggles
And rolls on the rug,
Where everyone kisses,
And everyone grins,
And everyone cuddles,
And everyone wins.

Shel Silverstein

I have been trying, with little success, to write a poem linking Autumn with growing old.

Here are Shakespeare's thoughts on the subject.

SONNET 73

That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou see’st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west;
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death’s second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see’st the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire
Consum’d with that which it was nourish’d by.
This thou perceiv’st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

THE MEN THAT DON'T FIT IN

There's a race of men that don't fit in,
A race that can't stay still;
So they break the hearts of kith and kin,
And they roam the world at will.
They range the field and they rove the flood,
And they climb the mountain's crest;
Theirs is the curse of the gypsy blood,
And they don't know how to rest.

If they just went straight they might go far;
They are strong and brave and true;
But they're always tired of the things that are,
And they want the strange and new.
They say: "Could I find my proper groove,
What a deep mark I would make!"
So they chop and change, and each fresh move
Is only a fresh mistake.

And each forgets, as he strips and runs
With a brilliant, fitful pace,
It's the steady, quiet, plodding ones
Who win in the lifelong race.
And each forgets that his youth has fled,
Forgets that his prime is past,
Till he stands one day, with a hope that's dead,
In the glare of the truth at last.

He has failed, he has failed; he has missed his chance;
He has just done things by half.
Life's been a jolly good joke on him,
And now is the time to laugh.
Ha, ha! He is one of the Legion Lost;
He was never meant to win;
He's a rolling stone, and it's bred in the bone;
He's a man who won't fit in.

Robert W. Service

DANSE RUSSE

If I when my wife is sleeping
and the baby and Kathleen
are sleeping
and the sun is a flame-white disc
in silken mists
above shining trees,—
if I in my north room
dance naked, grotesquely
before my mirror
waving my shirt round my head
and singing softly to myself:
"I am lonely, lonely.
I was born to be lonely,
I am best so!"
If I admire my arms, my face,
my shoulders, flanks, buttocks
against the yellow drawn shades,—

Who shall say I am not
the happy genius of my household?

William Carlos Williams

MID-TERM BREAK

I sat all morning in the college sick bay
Counting bells knelling classes to a close,
At two o'clock our neighbors drove me home.

In the porch I met my father crying--
He had always taken funerals in his stride--
And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow.

The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram
When I came in, and I was embarrassed
By old men standing up to shake my hand

And tell me they were "sorry for my trouble,"
Whispers informed strangers I was the eldest,
Away at school, as my mother held my hand

In hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs.
At ten o'clock the ambulance arrived
With the corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses.

Next morning I went up into the room. Snowdrops
And candles soothed the bedside; I saw him
For the first time in six weeks. Paler now,

Wearing a poppy bruise on the left temple,
He lay in the four foot box as in a cot.
No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.

A four foot box, a foot for every year.

Seamus Heaney


(RTA = "Road Traffic Accident")

FIGHTING WORDS

Say my love is easy had,
Say I'm bitten raw with pride,
Say I am too often sad --
Still behold me at your side.

Say I'm neither brave nor young,
Say I woo and coddle care,
Say the devil touched my tongue --
Still you have my heart to wear.

But say my verses do not scan,
And I get me another man!

Dorothy Parker

GOD'S WORLD

O world, I cannot hold thee close enough!
Thy winds, thy wide grey skies!
Thy mists, that roll and rise!
Thy woods, this autumn day, that ache and sag
And all but cry with colour! That gaunt crag
To crush! To lift the lean of that black bluff!
World, World, I cannot get thee close enough!

Long have I known a glory in it all,
But never knew I this:
Here such a passion is
As stretcheth me apart,—Lord, I do fear
Thou'st made the world too beautiful this year;
My soul is all but out of me,—let fall
No burning leaf; prithee, let no bird call.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

At the beginning of November, my local poetry group is meeting to hear readings of members' work.

Here is my poem:

EMPTY BUT FULL

As Autumn leaves,
Their Summer task complete,
Descend and settle into quiet finality -
So life's long journey falters to its end
In those whose hearts
Once beat their music
To the rhythm of my own.
At rest, in peaceful sleep,
They leave a legacy -
A feast of memories,
Rich as Autumn's ripest fruit,
On which to gorge
And satisfy my hunger
For the love I've lost.

CH

Please add your comments.

Behind all the jokes and japes there lurked a serious and romantic man.

If I could write words
Like leaves on an autumn forest floor,
What a bonfire my letters would make.
If I could speak words of water,
You would drown when I said
"I love you."

Spike Milligan

MIRROR

I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
Whatever I see, I swallow immediately.
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike
I am not cruel, only truthful –
The eye of a little god, four-cornered.
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.

Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me.
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.

Sylvia Plath

This poem is dedicated to "DP" - a great friend, a musician, and a resident of Cleveland,Ohio

HONKY TONK IN CLEVELAND, OHIO

It's a jazz affair, drum crashes and cornet razzes.
The trombone pony neighs and the tuba jackass snorts.
The banjo tickles and titters too awful.
The chippies talk about the funnies in the papers.
The cartoonists weep in their beer.
Ship riveters talk with their feet
To the feet of floozies under the tables.
A quartet of white hopes mourn with interspersed snickers:

"I got the blues.

I got the blues.

I got the blues."

And . . . as we said earlier:

The cartoonists weep in their beer.

Carl Sandburg

Note: If you would like to know more about the writer, go to: http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/28

Here is the second poem on "lighting the fire".

He studied with W.H. Auden at the University of Michigan and went on to become the first black American to be appointed as Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress (later called the Poet Laureate).

THOSE WINTER SUNDAYS

Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he'd call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,

speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love's austere and lonely offices?

Robert Hayden

Today and tomorrow I am going to post poems that portray a simple act - lighting the fire in a home.

The first is by Noel Rowe - an award-winning poet as well as a literary scholar who has taught Australian Literature and creative writing for many years at the University of Sydney.

PENTECOST

It is a simple thing for you to light the fire
early in the morning. You take the wood,
smelling still of earth and air despite the axe,
you take the smallest pieces first, barely more
than splinters, place them cross-wise
on yesterday’s discarded news, and touch it all
with your finger spreading flame until the dead words
begin to glow, and break.

Yesterday, we buried him:
and with him, more than half your life. Habits shaped
for thirty-six years of marriage hang about the house
and wonder what to do. So you, though you know
he will not need his usual cup of tea,
will get up, all the same, will touch
above the fireplace the shelf he made for you, and let
your whole sorrow hang by one hand,
then bend to make the fire,
to take its fierce shadow in your palm

Today I complete my trilogy of poems by the Australian writer, Kevin Hart.

NIGHTS

At times my name gets tired of me
And wanders off into the dark:
Some times it claws me with a bark
Some times it leaves me almost free

And then I cannot see a thing
And flesh is barely tied to soul:
Those nights the density of coal
Those nights when I am not a king

Then hours bunch up to watch me fall
And I am turned into a prayer:
Some nights I circle God’s dark lair
Some nights an endless night is all

© 2005, Kevin Hart

Much of Kevin Hart's poetry is rather obtuse and he once wrote "Good poems lead us from certainty to uncertainty".

Make of it what you will.

MY NAME

There is a silence words can’t touch.
And there’s a name inside my name
Though one my mother never said out loud

She never said it, never once, although
She knew there was another name
That sleeps inside my name

Sleep now, old name,
For no one wants to know of you

My mother, she is dead these dozen years
And she is grown so small
She sleeps inside my name when it is said

I think she sleeps
Within that other name as well, more deeply, far
More quietly, turning only once or twice
Inside that paradise

Sleep now, old love,
It is too late to say a word to you

© 2005, Kevin Hart

I am off to Oz, with this by the Australian poet and literary critic Kevin Hart, who was born in the UK in 1954 and grew up in London and Brisbane.

"Peel me, eat me" !

COME BACK

Come back to me.
The road is waiting quietly outside your door,
the wind is blowing the leaves this way.
It is late afternoon,
the best time for making love; half the world
is sleeping now: no longer sad
the violins fit
into their velvet cases, and lovers there
must do without their eyes.

Come back, I want to tell you how
all of the things I only half-believed before
are true, I want to find
that part of you I never touched
and make it blossom,
I want the clock to count the hours as seconds
until your sorrow is forgotten.

Come back.
Don't watch the sunlight lazing on the street,
don't wait for fruit to grow without a rind.
You know the way,
the heat that's in the flesh by afternoon,
the taste of salt,
the face that fits into your eyes.
I want to know, again,
what it's like to breathe your words;
I want to know, once more,
how it feels
to be peeled and eaten whole, time after time.

Kevin Hart

I am returning today to more serious poetry - something I hope that will be more thought-provoking, beginning with this from an old favourite, Edna St. Vincent Millay.

Then someone comes along and violates your privacy.

BLUEBEARD

This door you might not open, and you did;
So enter now, and see for what slight thing
You are betrayed. . . . Here is no treasure hid,
No cauldron, no clear crystal mirroring
The sought-for truth, no heads of women slain
For greed like yours, no writhings of distress,
But only what you see. . . . Look yet again--
An empty room, cobwebbed and comfortless.
Yet this alone out of my life I kept
Unto myself, lest any know me quite;
And you did so profane me when you crept
Unto the threshold of this room to-night
That I must never more behold your face.
This now is yours. I seek another place.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Today, after one week, I am finishing my series of poems on the theme of 'Sports', as it has become increasingly difficult to find something fresh and interesting.

I have added my own title to remind us of the danger lovers face!

THE MERMAID

A mermaid found a swimming lad,
Picked him for her own,
Pressed her body to his body,
Laughed; and plunging down
Forgot in cruel happiness
That even lovers drown.

William Butler Yeats

FAST SPIN

When we were boys and striding to the wicket,
Learning life while we were playing cricket,
“The bowling good?”we’d ask as we went in;
Departing batsmen scowled & said,”Fast spin”.

Two dreaded words to cause a youngster’s heart
To lose all confidence before the start.
What use technique or grim determination?
Who could survive such awesome combination?

We learned that speed faced up to seems less daunting;
That spin is nothing if the length is wanting;
That some the obstacles will overstate,
While runs come gradually to those who wait.

And later, in life’s seventy over match,
When adversaries threaten to dispatch
Our hopes and dreams before they can begin
Those childhood words come back to us- “Fast spin”.

Arthur Salway

Here is a poem (author unknown) about setting an example.

It is adressed to an Athlete, but could equally apply to anyone who has a young admirer

There are little eyes upon you,
And they're watching night and day;
There are little ears that quickly
Take in every word you say;
There are little hands all eager
To do anything you do;
And a little boy who's dreaming
Of the day he'll be like you.
You're the little fellow's idol,
You're the wisest of the wise,
In his little mind about you,
No suspicions ever rise;
He believes in you devoutly,
Hold, that all you say and do,
He will say and do, in your way
When he's grown up like you.
There's a wide-eyed little fellow,
Who believes you're always right,
And his ears are always open,
And he watches day and night;
You are setting an example
Every day in all you do,
For the little boy who's waiting
To grow up to be like you.

A CRICKETING LEGEND

Alfred Mynn was to the first half of the 19th century what WG Grace was to the second half.

Born in 1807, he was a famous English cricketer during the game's "Roundarm Era".

Cricket was very different then and, as you can see from the photo, there was only one stump.

Mynn was a very large man by cricket standards. He was well over six feet tall and weighed more than 300 pounds.

He was known as "the Lion of Kent" and it was for Kent that most of his greatest feats occurred, though he also played a substantial number of matches for Sussex, MCC and the All-England Eleven (AEE).

In 1836 he scored a hundred for South v North at Leicester but badly injured a leg in the process. He had to return to London laid out on the top of a stagecoach, and it was feared that his leg might have to be amputated. Fortunately he fully recovered.

When Mynn died, William Jeffrey Prowse wrote what was to become one of the most famous pieces of cricket poetry in his memory. The first six stanzas compare Mynn with his contemporaries.

The poem closes with these lines:

With his tall and stately presence, with his nobly moulded form,
His broad hand was ever open, his brave heart was ever warm;
All were proud of him, all loved him. As the changing seasons pass,
As our champion lies a-sleeping underneath the Kentish grass,
Proudly, sadly will we name him - to forget him were a sin.
Lightly lie the turf upon thee, kind and manly Alfred Mynn!

Not very good poetry - but a tribute from an admirer.

While soccer has its day and cricket sleeps
The old pavilion its vigil keeps;
Made fast from wind and rain it is at its best
A place for dogs to sniff and birds to rest,
An incidental thing, but to a few,
Surety in kind for better things to do.
Let’s take a detour from this frosty field
And see what things of interest lie concealed.

Unknown yet well known; none, yet all the same,
Cloned to a likeness by a common game;
The dressing rooms where lesser mortals might
Transform themselves to demi-gods in white,
The seats that secretly lift to provide
Compartments where a cricketer can hide
Metal scoreboard numbers, boundary flags,
Nets and stumps and heavy canvas bags.

And opposite, across the stud-plucked floor
Beyond the glazed half open kitchen door
An ancient water heater, plug pulled out,
A folded dishcloth flung across its spout;
A brown enamel teapot, cups and spoons
Exclusively for match day afternoons
The helpers with the players snatched away
Like swallows with the ever short’ning day.

Cold and silent: sunk within its walls
The echoes of a thousand summer calls;
Shouted batting orders, discontent,
Muffled curses, loud encouragement,
The heavy sounds of boots on hollow boards
And mock abuse that comradeship affords.
And in the nadir of those winter suns
The ghosts of cricket’s long forgotten ones.

Should passers-by imagine they have found
A park or council recreation ground
And wrongly think it offers, if you please,
A place for summer fetes or jamborees
The wooden sentinel reserves its peace
‘Til cricket takes again its summer lease
And strangely driven folk as strangely clad
Resume their rituals with bat and pad.

Arthur Salway

OFF MY GAME

"I'm of my game," the golfer said,
And shook his locks in woe;
"My putter never lays me dead,
My drives will never go;
Howe'er I swing, howe'er I stand,
Results are still the same,
I'm in the burn, I'm in the sand -
I'm off my game!

"Oh, would that such mishaps might fall
On Laidlay or Macfie,
That they might toe or heel the ball,
And sclaff along like me!
Men hurry from me in the street,
And execrate my name,
Old partners shun me when we meet -
I'm off my game!

"Why is it that I play at all?
Let memory remind me
How once I smote upon my ball,
And bunkered it--BEHIND ME.
I mostly slice into the whins,
And my excuse is lame -
It cannot cover half my sins -
I'm off my game!

"I hate the sight of all my set,
I grow morose as Byron;
I never loved a brassey yet,
And now I hate an iron.
My cleek seems merely made to top,
My putting's wild or tame;
It's really time for me to stop -
I'm off my game!"

Andrew Lang

It is proving difficult to find really good poems about Sports.

There is plenty of verse out there on the subject, but most of it is humorous schoolboy doggerel and not real poetry.

So I may not stay with the subject for long.

However, here is something from a surprising source, Siegfried Sassoon, who really belongs with my First World War poets.

DAVID CLEEK

I cannot think that Death will press his claim
To snuff you out or put you off your game:
You’ll still contrive to play your steady round,
Though hurricanes may sweep the dismal ground,
And darkness blur the sandy-skirted green
Where silence gulfs the shot you strike so clean.

Saint Andrew guard your ghost, old David Cleek,
And send you home to Fifeshire once a week!
Good fortune speed your ball upon its way
When Heaven decrees its mightiest Medal Day;
Till saints and angels hymn for evermore
The miracle of your astounding score;
And He who keeps all players in His sight,
Walking the royal and ancient hills of light
Standing benignant at the eighteenth hole,
To everlasting Golf consigns your soul.

Siegfried Sassoon

P.S. I am afraid I do not know anything at all about the cricketer David Cleek. Can anyone oblige?

The WAR is over and I have returned to SPORT with this exuberant poem from John Betjeman.

A SUBALTERN'S LOVE SONG

Miss J. Hunter Dunn, Miss J. Hunter Dunn,
Furnish'd and burnish'd by Aldershot sun,
What strenuous singles we played after tea,
We in the tournament - you against me!

Love-thirty, love-forty, oh! weakness of joy,
The speed of a swallow, the grace of a boy,
With carefullest carelessness, gaily you won,
I am weak from your loveliness, Joan Hunter Dunn.

Miss Joan Hunter Dunn, Miss Joan Hunter Dunn,
How mad I am, sad I am, glad that you won,
The warm-handled racket is back in its press,
But my shock-headed victor, she loves me no less.

Her father's euonymus shines as we walk,
And swing past the summer-house, buried in talk,
And cool the verandah that welcomes us in
To the six-o'clock news and a lime-juice and gin.

The scent of the conifers, sound of the bath,
The view from my bedroom of moss-dappled path,
As I struggle with double-end evening tie,
For we dance at the Golf Club, my victor and I.

On the floor of her bedroom lie blazer and shorts,
And the cream-coloured walls are be-trophied with sports,
And westering, questioning settles the sun,
On your low-leaded window, Miss Joan Hunter Dunn.

The Hillman is waiting, the light's in the hall,
The pictures of Egypt are bright on the wall,
My sweet, I am standing beside the oak stair
And there on the landing's the light on your hair.

By roads "not adopted", by woodlanded ways,
She drove to the club in the late summer haze,
Into nine-o'clock Camberley, heavy with bells
And mushroomy, pine-woody, evergreen smells.

Miss Joan Hunter Dunn, Miss Joan Hunter Dunn,
I can hear from the car park the dance has begun,
Oh! Surrey twilight! importunate band!
Oh! strongly adorable tennis-girl's hand!

Around us are Rovers and Austins afar,
Above us the intimate roof of the car,
And here on my right is the girl of my choice,
With the tilt of her nose and the chime of her voice.

And the scent of her wrap, and the words never said,
And the ominous, ominous dancing ahead.
We sat in the car park till twenty to one
And now I'm engaged to Miss Joan Hunter Dunn.

John Betjeman

"I can't find 'Joan Hunter Dunn' - what on earth's it called?"

Hear John Betjeman introducing and reading his poem at:

http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoem.do?poemId=1537

Today, the final Wilfred Owen poem about World War I.