Over the past few weeks I have veered away from the classical poets and have tried to bring you the work of lesser-known writers.

It is rather sad, but I hope you like it.

CUIUS ANIMAM

He was a kind moment on the way to school.
The face behind a vat of boiling tar,
laying the dark surface of our way.

Did we say more than “What's the time?”
“Time you were in school.”
Was there laughter?

A lonely man. We didn't know
then that grown up is the binding
we put on loose chippings.

Didn't appreciate that we too were
a bright moment on a dark road,
pretending freedoms.

They tracked him in the dew,
his bare feet had wiped the grass's tears.
A good swimmer,

He'd tied a stone around his neck,
but was caught in the fall of an old tree.
Died not of drowning but hypothermia.

They took the door from its hinges
to bear him home, laid him out
in the narrow bed.

Seán Body

(From Wikipedia)

THE ILLITERATE

Touching your goodness, I am like a man
Who turns a letter over in his hand
And you might think this was because the hand
Was unfamiliar but, truth is, the man
Has never had a letter from anyone;
And now he is both afraid of what it means
And ashamed because he has no other means
To find out what it says than to ask someone.

His uncle could have left the farm to him,
Or his parents died before he sent them word,
Or the dark girl changed and want him for beloved.
Afraid and letter-proud, he keeps it with him.
What would you call his feeling for the words
That keep him rich and orphaned and beloved?

William Meredith (1919 - 2007)

Do you remember "Eating Poetry", a poem by the American writer Mark Strand that I posted here some time ago?

Tell me what you think of it.

Mark Strand at the age of 73

GIVING MYELF UP

I give up my eyes which are glass eggs.
I give up my tongue.
I give up my mouth which is the contstant dream of my tongue.
I give up my throat which is the sleeve of my voice.
I give up my heart which is a burning apple.
I give up my lungs which are trees that have never seen the moon.
I give up my smell which is that of a stone traveling through rain.
I give up my hands which are ten wishes.
I give up my arms which have wanted to leave me anyway.
I give up my legs which are lovers only at night.
I give up my buttocks which are the moons of childhood.
I give up my penis which whispers encouragement to my thighs.
I give up my clothes which are walls that blow in the wind
and I give up the ghost that lives in them.
I give up. I give up.
And you will have none of it because already I am beginning
again without anything.

Mark Strand

Footnote: Mark Strand (born April 11, 1934 in Canada) is an American poet, essayist, and translator.

(From Wikipedia))

Today, another poem by the contemporary English poet, James Fenton, who was born in Durham in 1949.

Here is Fenton's take on the subject:

LET'S GO OVER IT ALL AGAIN

Some people are like that.
They split up and then they think:
Hey, maybe we haven't hurt each other to the uttermost.
Let's meet up and have a drink.

Let's go over it all again
Let's rake over the dirt.
Let me pick that scab of yours.
Does it hurt?

Let's go over what went wrong -
How and why and when.
Let's go over what went wrong
Again and again.

We hurt each other badly once.
We said a lot of nasty stuff.
But lately I've been thinking how
I didn't hurt you half enough.

Maybe there's more where that came from,
Something more malign.
Let me damage you again.
For the sake of auld lang syne.

Yes, let me see you bleed again
For the sake of auld lang syne.

James Fenton

It is a long time since I have posted anything by the American poet Robert Frost (1874 -1963).

The theme of my present series of poems is "Love" - and here Frost uses a protracted metaphor about Autumn to describe the end of love.

Robert Frost as a young man

RELUCTANCE

Out through the fields and the woods
And over the walls I have wended;
I have climbed the hills of view
And looked at the world, and descended;
I have come by the highway home,
And lo, it is ended.

The leaves are all dead on the ground,
Save those that the oak is keeping
To ravel them one by one
And let them go scraping and creeping
Out over the crusted snow,
When others are sleeping.

And the dead leaves lie huddled and still,
No longer blown hither and thither;
The last lone aster is gone;
The flowers of the witch hazel wither;
The heart is still aching to seek,
But the feet question "Whither?"

Ah, when to the heart of man
Was it ever less than a treason
To go with the drift of things,
To yield with a grace to reason,
And bow and accept the end
Of a love or a season?

Robert Frost

THIS SHOULD HAVE APPEARED ON MY 'KENDRIVE' BLOG - BUT AS COMMENTS HAVE BEEN MADE I AM LEAVING IT HERE.

MUSLIM TV EVANGELIST PREACHES ALLAH OF LOVE

"He is handsome and charismatic, and his velvety voice makes young women swoon. But his young female fans mostly wear headscarves, and while his gatherings look more fitting for a rockstar, they involve lessons from the Koran.

Moez Masoud, a 29-year-old Egyptian party-goer-turned-preacher, is sweeping the Middle East with his moderate Islamic message to love not just Allah but also others - and to play a full part in the modern world."

You can read the full article and also see/hear him speaking (in English) on a video at:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/02/23/wpreacher123.xml

Alternatively,you can skip the article and go straight to the video at:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/portal/ttv/news.jhtml?bcpid=1137942530&bclid=1155254697&bctid=1428636309

It takes a couple of minutes to load - so be patient.

(It is preceded by a short advertisement)

I will leave you to make what you will of this Walt Whitman poem, as it is capable of several interpretations.

I suppose he does.

Walt Whitman, aged 37

TO A STRANGER

Passing stranger! you do not know
How longingly I look upon you,
You must be he I was seeking,
Or she I was seeking
(It comes to me as a dream)

I have somewhere surely
Lived a life of joy with you,
All is recall'd as we flit by each other,
Fluid, affectionate, chaste, matured,

You grew up with me,
Were a boy with me or a girl with me,
I ate with you and slept with you, your body has become
not yours only nor left my body mine only,

You give me the pleasure of your eyes,
face, flesh as we pass,
You take of my beard, breast, hands,
in return,

I am not to speak to you, I am to think of you
when I sit alone or wake at night, alone
I am to wait, I do not doubt I am to meet you again
I am to see to it that I do not lose you.

Walt Whitman (1819 - 1892)

Adrien Mitchell is a British poet, writer and novelist, born in London in 1932. He has written numerous volumes of poetry.

This poem is one of his shortest.

High Holborn, London

CELIA, CELIA

When I am sad and weary
When I think all hope has gone
When I walk along High Holborn
I think of you with nothing on.

Adrian Mitchell

Moyra Donaldson (born 1956) is an Irish poet from Co Down.

She is currently editor of the political Belfast 'Fortnight Magazine'

INFIDELITIES

After he’d gone,
she found money in the sheets,
fallen when he pulled his trousers off.
Gathering the coins into a small pile
she set them on the window ledge.
They sat gathering dust,guilt,
until one day her husband
scooped them into his pocket.
Small change for a call
he couldn’t make from the house.

Moyra Donaldson

So they were both playing away.

P.S. This poem was first posted here in November 2006

This short poem by Connie Bensley,
born in London in 1929, may stir
memories in some of you!

It is about a one-night stand.

PERMISSIVE SOCIETY

Wake, for the dawn has put the stars to flight,
And in my bed a stranger: so once more,
What seemed to be a good idea last night
Appears, this morning, sober, rather poor.

Connie Bensley

Amy Lawrence Lowell (1874 – 1925) was an American poet of the imagist school who in 1926 posthumously won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.

This short poem describes the mellowness that comes after ten years in a relationship.

A DECADE

When you came, you were like red wine and honey,
And the taste of you burnt my mouth with its sweetness.
Now you are like morning bread.
Smooth and pleasant.
I hardly taste you at all for I know your savour.
But I am completely nourished.

Amy Lowell

P.S. As you will see from the photo above the poem, Amy Lowell was not a slim lady. When she was in London she was ungallantly described as a "hippopoetess"!

Roger MCgough (born 1937) is perhaps best known in the UK through "Poetry Please" - a programme he presents on BBC Radio.

Here is one of his own poems.

SUMMER WITH MONIKA

ten milk bottles standing in the hall
ten milk bottles up against the wall
next door neighbour thinks we’re dead
hasn’t heard a sound, he said
doesn’t know we’ve been in bed
the ten whole days since we were wed
no-one knows and no-one sees
we lovers doing as we please
but people stop and point at these
ten milk bottles a-turning into cheese

ten milk bottles standing day and night
ten different thicknesses and
different shades of white
persistent carol singers without a note to utter
silent carol singers a-turning into butter

now she’s run out of passion
and there’s not much left in me
so maybe we’ll get up and make a cup of tea
and then people can stop wondering
what they’re waiting for
those ten milk bottles a queuing at our door
those ten milk bottles a queuing at our door.

Roger McGough

Have you ever waited for that call that never comes?

MESSAGE

Pick up the phone before it is too late
And dial my number. There's no time to spare
Love is already turning into hate
And very soon I'll start to look elsewhere.

Good, old-fashioned men like you are rare
You want to get to know me at a rate
That's guaranteed to drive me to despair.
Pick up the phone before it is too late.

Well, wouldn't it be nice to consummate
Our friendship while we've still got teeth and hair?
Just bear in mind that you are forty-eight
And dial my number. There's no time to spare.

Another kamikaze love affair?
No chance. This time I'll have to learn to wait
But one more day is more than I can bear
Love is already turning into hate.

Of course, my friends say I exaggerate
And dramatize a lot. That may be fair
But it is no fun being in this state
And very soon I'll start to look elsewhere.

I know you like me but I wouldn't dare
Ring you again. Instead I'll concentrate
On sending thought-waves through the London air
And, if they reach you, please don't hesitate
Pick up the phone.

Wendy Cope

As well as writing poetry, he has worked as a political and literary journalist.

NOTHING

I take a jewel from a junk shop tray
And wish I had a love to buy it for.
Nothing I choose will make you turn my way.
Nothing I give will make you love me more.

I know that I've embarrassed you too long
And I'm ashamed to linger at your door.
Whatever I embark on will be wrong.
Nothing I do will make you love me more.

I cannot work. I cannot read or write.
How can I frame a letter to implore?
Eloquence is a lie. The truth is trite.
Nothing I say will make you love me more.

So I replace the jewel in the tray
And laughingly pretend I'm far too poor.
Nothing I give, nothing I do or say,
Nothing I am will make you love me more.

James Fenton

No, not THAT Alistair Campbell; this one is a poet - not Tony Blair's "Director of Communications and Strategy".

However, that did no last. He was divorced and in 1958 married the actress Meg Anderson.

TO RID MYSELF OF YOU

To rid myself of you,
I went and took a shower.
I scoured most carefully
All the places where

You used to hang around.
I unscrewed each ear
And blew through them until
Their galleries were bare.

I took my eyeballs out
And polished them with spit
Until your image fled;
Then to my nostrils put

A little silver drill,
And after I was through
Those passages retained
Nothing at all of you.

So, why is it at night,
When I cannot sleep,
To my nostrils, eyes and ears
back again you creep?

Alistair Campbell

I first posted this poem by Elizabeth Jennings last Summer, but here it is again in readiness for my poetry evening in May under the title "Making The World Go Round".

ONE FLESH

Lying apart now, each in a separate bed,
He with a book, keeping the light on late,
She like a girl dreaming of childhood,
All men elsewhere - it is as if they wait
Some new event: the book he holds unread,
Her eyes fixed on the shadows overhead.

Tossed up like flotsam from a former passion,
How cool they lie. They hardly ever touch,
Or if they do, it is like a confession
Of having little feeling - or too much.
Chastity faces them, a destination
For which their whole lives were a preparation.

Strangely apart, yet strangely close together,
Silence between them like a thread to hold
And not wind in. And time itself's a feather
Touching them gently. Do they know they're old,
These two who are my father and my mother
Whose fire from which I came, has now grown cold?

Elizabeth Jennings (1926 - 2001)

THE UNDERGROUND

There we were in the vaulted tunnel running,
You in your going away coat speeding ahead
And me, me then like a fleet god gaining
Upon you before you turned into a reed

Or some new white flower japped with crimson
As the coat flapped wild and button afrer button
Sprang off and fell in a trail
Between the Underground and the Albert Hall.

Honeymooning, moonlighting, late for the Proms,
Our echoes die in that corridor and now
I come as Hansel came on the moonlit stone
Retracing the path back, lifting the buttons

To end up in a draughty lamplit station
After the trains have gone, the wet track
bared and tensed as I am, all attention
For your step following and damned if I look back.

Seamus Heaney

Heinrich Heine (1797 - 1856) was born in Dusseldorf.

After 1830, because of German anti-semitism, he settled himself in Paris, where he became famous for his biting wit, irony and masterly lyrics.

A WOMAN

Each loved the other beyond belief;
She lived by her wits and he was a thief.
He played the Fool and fooled the crowd;
She sprawled on the bed and laughed aloud.

The days ticked by with joy and with jest;
At night she swooned upon his breast.
When the policeman came, the skies all cloud,
She thought it funny and laughed aloud.

He sent her a letter, 'Oh come to me,
By day and by night I long for thee.
Love is forever, that's what we vowed.'
She shook her head and laughed aloud.

At six in the morning they hung him high
- For fooling and thieving he had to die.
At seven o'clock he lay stiff in his shroud ;
And she quaffed red wine and laughed aloud.

Heinrich Heine
(Adapted by Dannie Abse)

Gavin Ewart (1916 - 95), born in London and Cambridge-educated, had his first book published when he was 22 years old.

LOVE SONG

As you get older you begin to wonder -
what was all that lightning and thunder
actually about?
It was more than holding hands,
it had a lot to do with glands -
but now you're far out,

floating calmly in a lonely seascape;
very long ago
left behind - what they call Youth
seems now ridiculous, uncouth
(if you want to know).

As you settle into peace, or dourness,
that bitter-sweet, that sweet-and-sourness
is a vanished state;
yet those who never clasped and kissed
don't know exactly what they missed
or what exactly went to waste.

Gavin Ewart

Vernon Scannell (23 January 1922 – 16 November 2007) was a British poet and author. He was at one time a professional boxer, and wrote novels about the sport.

In this poem you will notice the use of boxing terms as metaphor (verses 2 and 6).

Vernon Scannell

A LOVE SONG

I've always been in love with you I swear
'Impossible', they say, yet it is true:
I speak with certainty, for I was there.

When I reeled groggy as the punchbowl air
Was spiced with melody I longed for you;
I've always been in love with you I swear.

My infant whispers to the beat-up bear
Were meant for you, the tears and kisses too;
I speak for certainty, for I was there.

Let experts, calendars and maps declare
I'm nuts or have at least one wobbly screw;
I've always been in love with you I swear.

New kinds of beauty and the wish to share
These riches were rehearsals, as I knew;
I speak with certainty, for I was there.

These shadow-loves were work-outs to prepare
for this, the main event, that they led to;
I've always been in love with you I swear;
I speak with certainty, for I was there,

Vernon Scannell

Owen Sheers (1974 - ) was born in Fiji, where he spent most of his childhood before coming to Britain. He studied at Oxford and the University of East Anglia and at present works for BBC Wales.

ANTONIA'S STORY

She told me how she fell to sleep with the sound of his fists on the door.
Dull thuds that echoed on the stairs,
that became the beat of her heart on the sheet,
the rustle of blood in her ear on the pillow, then sleep.

Of how she slept a dark sleep with only one dream,
of an apple ripening, then falling a fall.
Its loud thud echoing on in the night
in the beat of her heart on the sheet.

And how she woke to the sound of fists on the door
and how she was surprised by the persistence of love.

She told me how she answered the door, and how she
saw him over the policeman's shoulder, lying on the lawn,
and she thought why is he lying on the lawn, so pale and quiet?
Why is he lying asleep and covered in dew?

And then how she saw the broken drainpipe he had tried to climb,
and how she knew he had fallen, ripe in the night,
from the broken drainpipe, which still swung wild,
a madman's finger preaching in the wind.

And then she told me how each night she unlocks the door,
which sometimes gets blown, wild in the wind.
How her feet echo, dull on the stairs, as she climbs to bed
where she falls to sleep, the rustle of blood in her ear,

And how each night he sleeps a dark sleep with only one dream,
of an apple which falls, ripe in the night.
And of how she wakes with the beat of her heart on the sheet,
surprised by the persistence of love.

Owen Sheers

Eavan Boland (Born 1944) is a leading Irish poet and the daughter of the first Irish ambassador to Britain and to the United Nations.

This poem portrays a true event in Ireland in the nineteenth century.

QUARANTINE

In the worst hour of the worst season
of the worst year of a whole people
a man set out from the workhouse with his wife.
He was walking -they were both walking -north.

She was sick with famine fever and could not keep up.
He lifted her and put her on his back.
He walked like that west and north.
Until at nightfall under freezing stars they arrived.

In the morning they were both found dead.
Of cold. Of hunger. Of the toxins of a whole history.
But her feet were held against his breastbone.
The last heat of his flesh was his last gift to her.

Let no love poem ever come to this threshold.
There is no place here for the inexact
praise of the easy graces and sensuality of the body.
There is only time for this merciless inventory:

Their death together in the winter of 1847.
Also what they suffered. How they lived.
And what there is between a man and a woman.
And in which darkness it can best be proved.

Eavan Bolando

Note: The poet wrote:

A man and a woman left the workhouse at the time of the 1847 famine. It was in Carrigstyra in West Cork. Those were very desperate times -there was famine fever and starvation. This incident must have been like hundreds of others and would probably have been forgotten but it was left as an anecdote by a man writing sixty years later. The man and woman walked north, back to their cabin. They died that night. In the morning when they were found, her feet were against his chest. He had tried to warm them as she died -as they both did. When I thought of that account, when it came into the poem in the sequence, it was no longer a local, Irish incident. It had become a dark love story, and an exemplary one.

Alan Brownjohn is a contemporary poet (born in 1931).

OFFICE PARTY

We were throwing out small-talk
On the smoke-weary air,
When the girl with the squeaker
Came passing each chair.

She was wearing a red dress,
Her paper-hat was a blue
Crown with a red tassel,
And to every man who

Glanced up at her, she leant over
And blew down the hole,
So the squeaker inflated
And began to unroll.

She stopped them all talking
With this trickery,
And she didn't leave out anyone
Until she came to me.

I looked up and she met me
With a half-teasing eye
And she took a mild breath and
Went carefully by,

And with cold concentration
To the next man she went,
And squawked out the instrument
To its fullest extent.

And whether she passed me
Thinking that it would show
Too much favour to mock me
I never did know -

Or whether her witholding
Was her cruelty,
And it was that she despised me,
I couldn't quite see -

So it could have been discretion,
And it could have been disgust,
But it was quite unequivocal,
And suffer it I must:

All I know is; she passed me,
Which I did not expect
- And I'd never so craved for
Some crude disrespect.

Alan Brownjohn

Sara Teasdale is one of my favourite poets and you may remember that I posted a series of her poems last year - including this one.

I couldn't resist including it in this new presentation.

THE KISS

Before you kissed me only winds of heaven
Had kissed me, and the tenderness of rain—
Now you have come, how can I care for kisses
Like theirs again?

I sought the sea, she sent her winds to meet me,
They surged about me singing of the south—
I turned my head away to keep still holy
Your kiss upon my mouth.

And swift sweet rains of shining April weather
Found not my lips where living kisses are;
I bowed my head lest they put out my glory
As rain puts out a star.

I am my love's and he is mine forever,
Sealed with a seal and safe forevermore—
Think you that I could let a beggar enter
Where a king stood before?

Sara Teasdale