I have now exhausted my immediate supply of poems by C. Day-Lewis and today I am beginning a week of verse by the Scottish Poet Laureate, Edwin Morgan.
I think you will like his work and I shall tell you more about him tomorrow.
However, if you were reading my blog way back in January 2006, you will have seen there one of his best-known love poems "Strawberries".
He is at his best when writing about relationships, as in this:
ABSENCE
My shadow --
I woke to a wind swirling the curtains light and dark
and the birds twittering on the roofs, I lay cold
in the early light in my room high over London.
What fear was it that made the wind sound like a fire
so that I got up and looked out half-asleep
at the calm rows of street-lights fading far below?
Without fire
Only the wind blew.
But in the dream I woke from, you
came running through the traffic, tugging me, clinging
to my elbow, your eyes spoke
what I could not grasp --
Nothing, if you were here!
The wind of the early quiet
merges slowly now with a thousand rolling wheels.
The lights are out, the air is loud.
It is an ordinary January day.
My shadow, do you hear the streets?
Are you at my heels? Are you here?
And I throw back the sheets.
Edwin Morgan
jollyweez
The empty feeling, the longing, when a loved one is lost. He speaks of that to me. Even a lost child, perhaps? He will be shadowed by that love for the rest of his life - as most of us are. A sweet yearning turned into a poem. I like him. Thank you Colin.