Birds and poetry (2 Viewers)

Thanks for those Christmas poems, Steve. I liked ‘The Shivering Beggar’ very much.

Tanny, a terrific poem, and a great photo! It must be a wonderful sight and sound on Thurstaston hill on Christmas morning – you have captured it brilliantly in your poem.

I have just come across this amusing poem by the Welsh poet R S Thomas on the subject of writing poetry - I hope you enjoy it.

Poetry For Supper

'Listen, now, verse should be as natural
As the small tuber that feeds on muck
And grows slowly from obtuse soil
To the white flower of immortal beauty.'

'Natural, hell! What was it Chaucer
Said once about the long toil
That goes like blood to the poem's making?
Leave it to nature and the verse sprawls,
Limp as bindweed, if it break at all
Life's iron crust. Man, you must sweat
And rhyme your guts taut, if you'd build
Your verse a ladder.'

'You speak as though
No sunlight ever surprised the mind
Groping on its cloudy path.'

'Sunlight's a thing that needs a window
Before it enter a dark room.
Windows don't happen.'

So two old poets,
Hunched at their beer in the low haze
Of an inn parlour, while the talk ran
Noisily by them, glib with prose.

R.S. Thomas


Andrew

Thank you Andrew, Steve and Christine for your comments, it's always nice to receive constructive advice and appreciation for ones efforts. I find writing poetry doesn't come so easy these days, they only come to me on the spur of the moment and then the poem is almost complete without many alterations. Years ago when I was working on a drill ship I could write two or three large poems one after the other about nature, but I think the loneliness and the isolation out in the Indian Ocean allowed my mind to wander towards the wonders of nature and the countryside I had left behind in England. Lets hope I never lose the ability to write. Mind you, my writing can sometimes get me into trouble, especially when I feel passionate about an issue. Thanks again my friends and all the best to you for a happy and healthy new year.
I will toast you all at midnight. B

And a very happy New Year to you Tanny, and to Christine, Steve and everyone else on the thread.


The New Year

He was the one man I met up in the woods
That stormy New Year's morning; and at first sight,
Fifty yards off, I could not tell how much
Of the strange tripod was a man. His body,
Bowed horizontal, was supported equally
By legs at one end, by a rake at the other:
Thus he rested, far less like a man than
His wheel-barrow in profile was like a pig.
But when I saw it was an old man bent,
At the same moment came into my mind
The games at which boys bend thus, High-cockolorum,
Or Fly-the-garter, and Leap-frog. At the sound
Of footsteps he began to straighten himself;
His head rolled under his cape like a tortoise's;
He took an unlit pipe out of his mouth
Politely ere I wished him "A Happy New Year,"
And with his head cast upward sideways muttered --
So far as I could hear through the trees' roar --
"Happy New Year, and may it come fastish, too,"
While I strode by and he turned to raking leaves.

Edward Thomas

Andrew

A Happy New Year to you all!!​

And thankyou for all the poetry I've caught up on!

Bascar - I'm glad you liked my sonnet - some of the stuff you've been putting on is an inspiration to try harder !!!

Is the challenge still on to write our own owl poem ????

If so I'll start thinking about it now as I go out hunting Short Eared Owl shots. With my camera of course

Pat

Heard the poet read this on NPR driving home from work today..


Anticipating The Inauguration Of Barack Obama

Inauguration is the day

The nation's hopes go on display —

When through one man we all convey

Our dream that things will go our way.

His résumé we can't gainsay.

In politics, we know, his play

Is worthy of the NBA.

He proved that in the recent fray,

Though he had help from Tina Fey.

And now this solemn matinee

Awards the winner's bright bouquet.

First, Pastor Warren's going to pray

For everyone who isn't gay.

Obama then will stand and say,

"I take this oath that I'll obey

The statutes of the U. S. A."

In his address, he might portray

The dragons he intends to slay:

How Wall Street's sky will turn from gray

To blue as blues are chased away,

How workers will collect good pay

For turning out a Chevrolet,

How in Iraq we'll end our stay

With shortest possible delay,

How pay-to-play will be passé

So K Street suits will not hold sway.

Yes, how we'll triumph, come what may:

We'll rise up like a good soufflé

'Til life's just like a caberet.

Obamacans will shout hooray

And toast their man with Chardonnay

As commentators all make hay

Comparing him to JFK.

The Beltway types, those still blasé,

Might think that soon, with some dismay,

We'll wonder if his feet are clay.

But that's all for another day.

Calvin Trillin

Andrew, I love Poetry for Supper!

Interesting ,re Obama.Unusual.Many thanks.

Kristina, thanks so much for posting Calvin Trillin's inauguration poem - it's brilliant and captures the mood perfectly. Also very clever to sustain the long a rhyming sound throughout without seeming strained.

Pat, I look forward to your owl poem - thanks in anticipation!

Here are two poems on bird song from Thomas Hardy.

The Selfsame Song

A BIRD sings the selfsame song,
With never a fault in its flow,
That we listened to here those long
Long years ago.

A pleasing marvel is how
A strain of such rapturous rote
Should have gone on thus till now
unchanged in a note!

--But its not the selfsame bird.--
No: perished to dust is he....
As also are those who heard
That song with me.

Thomas Hardy


In a Museum

I
HERE'S the mould of a musical bird long passed from light,
Which over the earth before man came was winging;
There's a contralto voice I heard last night,
That lodges with me still in its sweet singing.
II
Such a dream is Time that the coo of this ancient bird
Has perished not, but is blent, or will be blending
Mid visionless wilds of space with the voice that I heard,
In the full-fuged song of the universe unending.

Thomas Hardy


Andrew

Thanks,Andrew.I like the "Selfsame song" poem,very good.

Another couple of poems from Emily Dickinson:

To hear an oriole sing

To hear an oriole sing
May be a common thing,
Or only a divine.

It is not of the bird
Who sings the same, unheard,
As unto crowd.

The fashion of the ear
Attireth that it hear
In dun or fair.

So whether it be rune,
Or whether it be none,
Is of within;

The “tune is in the tree,”
The sceptic showeth me;
“No, sir! In thee!”

Emily Dickinson


I dreaded that first robin so

I dreaded that first robin so,
But he is mastered now,
And I’m accustomed to him grown,—
He hurts a little, though.

I thought if I could only live
Till that first shout got by,
Not all pianos in the woods
Had power to mangle me.

I dared not meet the daffodils,
For fear their yellow gown
Would pierce me with a fashion
So foreign to my own.

I wished the grass would hurry,
So when ’t was time to see,
He’d be too tall, the tallest one
Could stretch to look at me.

I could not bear the bees should come,
I wished they’d stay away
In those dim countries where they go:
What word had they for me?

They’re here, though; not a creature failed,
No blossom stayed away
In gentle deference to me,
The Queen of Calvary.

Each one salutes me as he goes,
And I my childish plumes
Lift, in bereaved acknowledgment
Of their unthinking drums.

Emily Dickinson


Andrew

Andrew, the Emily Dickinson poems, especially "To hear an oriole sing" are magic!

I know it's been posted before but it sings true for me right now...and it's a classic!


Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Mary Oliver

Yesterday all the past. The language of size
Spreading to China along the trade-routes; the diffusion
Of the counting-frame and the cromlech;
Yesterday the shadow-reckoning in the sunny climates.

Yesterday the assessment of insurance by cards,
The divination of water; yesterday the invention
Of cartwheels and clocks, the taming of
Horses. Yesterday the bustling world of the navigators.

Yesterday the abolition of fairies and giants,
the fortress like a motionless eagle eyeing the valley,
the chapel built in the forest;
Yesterday the carving of angels and alarming gargoyles;

The trial of heretics among the columns of stone;
Yesterday the theological feuds in the taverns
And the miraculous cure at the fountain;
Yesterday the Sabbath of witches; but to-day the struggle

Yesterday the installation of dynamos and turbines,
The construction of railways in the colonial desert;
Yesterday the classic lecture
On the origin of Mankind. But to-day the struggle.

Yesterday the belief in the absolute value of Greek,
The fall of the curtain upon the death of a hero;
Yesterday the prayer to the sunset
And the adoration of madmen. but to-day the struggle.

As the poet whispers, startled among the pines,
Or where the loose waterfall sings compact, or upright
On the crag by the leaning tower:
"O my vision. O send me the luck of the sailor."

And the investigator peers through his instruments
At the inhuman provinces, the virile bacillus
Or enormous Jupiter finished:
"But the lives of my friends. I inquire. I inquire."

And the poor in their fireless lodgings, dropping the sheets
Of the evening paper: "Our day is our loss. O show us
History the operator, the
Organiser. Time the refreshing river."

And the nations combine each cry, invoking the life
That shapes the individual belly and orders
The private nocturnal terror:
"Did you not found the city state of the sponge,

"Raise the vast military empires of the shark
And the tiger, establish the robin's plucky canton?
Intervene. O descend as a dove or
A furious papa or a mild engineer, but descend."

And the life, if it answers at all, replied from the heart
And the eyes and the lungs, from the shops and squares of the city
"O no, I am not the mover;
Not to-day; not to you. To you, I'm the

"Yes-man, the bar-companion, the easily-duped;
I am whatever you do. I am your vow to be
Good, your humorous story.
I am your business voice. I am your marriage.

"What's your proposal? To build the just city? I will.
I agree. Or is it the suicide pact, the romantic
Death? Very well, I accept, for
I am your choice, your decision. Yes, I am Spain."

Many have heard it on remote peninsulas,
On sleepy plains, in the aberrant fishermen's islands
Or the corrupt heart of the city.
Have heard and migrated like gulls or the seeds of a flower.

They clung like burrs to the long expresses that lurch
Through the unjust lands, through the night, through the alpine tunnel;
They floated over the oceans;
They walked the passes. All presented their lives.

On that arid square, that fragment nipped off from hot
Africa, soldered so crudely to inventive Europe;
On that tableland scored by rivers,
Our thoughts have bodies; the menacing shapes of our fever

Are precise and alive. For the fears which made us respond
To the medicine ad, and the brochure of winter cruises
Have become invading battalions;
And our faces, the institute-face, the chain-store, the ruin

Are projecting their greed as the firing squad and the bomb.
Madrid is the heart. Our moments of tenderness blossom
As the ambulance and the sandbag;
Our hours of friendship into a people's army.

To-morrow, perhaps the future. The research on fatigue
And the movements of packers; the gradual exploring of all the
Octaves of radiation;
To-morrow the enlarging of consciousness by diet and breathing.

To-morrow the rediscovery of romantic love,
the photographing of ravens; all the fun under
Liberty's masterful shadow;
To-morrow the hour of the pageant-master and the musician,

The beautiful roar of the chorus under the dome;
To-morrow the exchanging of tips on the breeding of terriers,
The eager election of chairmen
By the sudden forest of hands. But to-day the struggle.

To-morrow for the young the poets exploding like bombs,
The walks by the lake, the weeks of perfect communion;
To-morrow the bicycle races
Through the suburbs on summer evenings. But to-day the struggle.

To-day the deliberate increase in the chances of death,
The consious acceptance of guilt in the necessary murder;
To-day the expending of powers
On the flat ephemeral pamphlet and the boring meeting.

To-day the makeshift consolations: the shared cigarette,
The cards in the candlelit barn, and the scraping concert,
The masculine jokes; to-day the
Fumbled and unsatisfactory embrace before hurting.

The stars are dead. The animals will not look.
We are left alone with our day, and the time is short, and
History to the defeated
May say Alas but cannot help nor pardon.

W. H. Auden

Dolphinbride and Rozinante 2 amazing poems,many thanks for sharing.

It's almost 5 years since Christine started this wonderful thread. I haven't posted for quite a while. The recent poems from Rozinante, Kristina, Andrew (loved the Emily Dickinson), Pat, Tanny (all those wonderful Owls!), Merlin and Steve (The Bird's Carol - brought back memories from schooldays - how I loved that carol! - thank you so much, Steve) have been a joy to read.

Here are two I don't think we've had before:

March

Now I know that Spring will come again,
Perhaps tomorrow: however late I've patience
After this night following on such a day.

While still my temples ached from the cold burning
Of hail and wind, and still the primroses
Torn by the hail were covered up in it,
The sun filled earth and heaven with a great light
And a tenderness, almost warmth, where the hail dripped,
As if the mighty sun wept tears of joy.
But 'twas too late for warmth. The sunset piled
Mountains on mountains of snow and ice in the west:
Somewhere among their folds the wind was lost,
And yet 'twas cold, and though I knew that Spring
Would come again, I knew i had not come,
That it was lost too in those mountains chill.

What did the thrushes know? Rain, snow, sleet, hail,
Had kept them quiet as the primroses.
They had but an hour to sing. On boughs they sang,
On gates, on ground; they sang while they changed perches
And while they fought, if they remembered to fight:
So earnest were they to pack into that hour
Their unwilling hoard of song before the moon
Grew brighter than the clouds. Then 'twas no time
For singing merely. So they could keep off silence
And night, they cared not what they sang or screamed;
Whether 'twas hoarse or sweet or fierce or soft;
And to me all was sweet: they could do no wrong.
Something they knew - I also, while they sang
And after. Not till night had half its stars
And never a cloud, was I aware of silence
Stained with all that hour's songs, a silence
Saying that Spring returns, perhaps tomorrow.

Edward Thomas


Good-Night

The skylarks are far behind that sang over the down;
I can hear no more those suburb nightingales;
Thrushes and blackbirds sing in the gardens of the town
In vain: the noise of man, beast, and machine prevails.
But the call of children in the unfamiliar streets
That echo with a familiar twilight echoing,
Sweet as the voice of nightingale or lark, completes
A magic of strange welcome, so that I seem a king
Among men, beast, machine, bird, child, and the ghost
That in the echo lives and with the echo dies.
The friendless town is friendly; homeless, I am not lost;
Though I know none of these doors, and meet but strangers' eyes.
Never again, perhaps, after to-morrow, shall
I see these homely streets, these church windows alight,
Not a man or woman or child among them all:
But it is All Friends' Night, a traveller's good-night.

Edward Thomas

Nerine

Best wishes to all - now I'm coming out of hibernation (!) I should be around a little more often. Winter is not my favourite time - Spring, hopefully, is on its way! |=)|

Nerine,2 great poems,many thanks-is it really 5yrs since this thread was first posted,how time does fly.
Yes,Spring is around the corner.I was thinking about my little Swallows today,hoping they are keeping safe on their arduous journey.

Nerine, welcome back! It is very good to hear from you again.

Thank you for those two lovely poems. ET has certainly been a source of some great poetry on these pages.

‘The sun filled earth and heaven with a great light
And a tenderness, almost warmth, where the hail dripped,
As if the mighty sun wept tears of joy.’

- wonderful! It makes you feel better, just thinking about it!

Here are two more poems from him, also denoting the spring. (March 3rd was his birthday.)

March the 3rd

Here again (she said) is March the third
And twelve hours singing for the bird
'Twixt dawn and dusk, from half past six
To half past six, never unheard.

'Tis Sunday, and the church-bells end
With the birds' songs. I think they blend
Better than in the same fair days
That shall pronounce the Winter's end.

Do men mark, and none dares say,
How it may shift and long delay,
Somewhere before the first of Spring,
But never fails, this singing day?

When it falls on Sunday, bells
Are a wild natural voice that dwells
On hillsides; but the birds' songs have
The holiness gone from the bells.

This day unpromised is more dear
Than all the named days of the year
When seasonable sweets come in,
Since now we know how lucky we are.

Edward Thomas


Sowing

It was a perfect day
For sowing; just
As sweet and dry was the ground
As tobacco-dust.

I tasted deep the hour
Between the far
Owl's chuckling first soft cry
And the first star.

A long stretched hour it was;
Nothing undone
Remained; the early seeds
All safely sown.

And now, hark at the rain,
Windless and light,
Half a kiss, half a tear,
Saying good-night.

Edward Thomas


Kristina, thank you for posting Mary Oliver’s ‘Wild Geese’ - it is indeed a wonderful poem.

Thanks too, rozinante, for posting Auden’s great poem on the Spanish Civil War. I could never quite understand why he was so strongly disparaging about it in later years even if his political views had changed. It remains, to my mind, a powerful poem with a timeless relevance.


Andrew

Valentine Day tommorrow,I wonder if any poems have been written re birds "in love",quite possible.The species which springs to mind is Doves,always sitting together and "cooing",whispering sweet nothings to each other.
Anyone have any ideas for Valentine day verses?.

Christine, this is my Valentine’s Day offering – conveniently the title reflects the fact that today is also the fifth anniversary of this thread!

A Birthday

My heart is like a singing bird
Whose nest is in a water'd shoot;
My heart is like an apple-tree
Whose boughs are bent with thickset fruit;
My heart is like a rainbow shell
That paddles in a halcyon sea;
My heart is gladder than all these
Because my love is come to me.

Raise me a dais of silk and down;
Hang it with vair and purple dyes;
Carve it in doves and pomegranates,
And peacocks with a hundred eyes;
Work it in gold and silver grapes,
In leaves and silver fleurs-de-lys;
Because the birthday of my life
Is come, my love is come to me.

Christina Georgina Rossetti

Best regards to everyone,

Andrew

Andrew
great poems,
here is a lovely poem from Robert Louis Stevenson loosely connected to a Valentine. It is called Spring Song and although spring is not here yet, it is nice to think that it is not too far away???

regards to you all
Merlin

Spring Song


The air was full of sun and birds,
The fresh air sparkled clearly.
Remembrance wakened in my heart
And I knew I loved her dearly.

The fallows and the leafless trees
And all my spirit tingled.
My earliest thought of love, and Spring's
First puff of perfume mingled.

In my still heart the thoughts awoke,
Came lone by lone together -
Say, birds and Sun and Spring, is Love
A mere affair of weather?

Robert Louis Stevenson

Andrew and Merlin,many thanks.Did not realize it was the 14th Feb,on which this thread was started.Will have to make a special effort for next year.Also we are almost on page 100.
Again a big thanks to all who do contribute,and keep the thread running.