*Poem of the day thread

[heinous seamus]

An old favourite. Never fails:

Trio

Coming up Buchanan Street, quickly, on a sharp winter evening
a young man and two girls, under the Christmas lights -
The young man carries a new guitar in his arms,
the girl on the inside carries a very young baby,
and the girl on the outside carries a chihuahua.
And the three of them are laughing, their breath rises
in a cloud of happiness, and as they pass
the boy says, "Wait till he sees this but!"
The chihuahua has a tiny Royal Stewart tartan coat like a teapot-
holder,
the baby in its white shawl is all bright eyes and mouth like
favours in a fresh sweet cake,
the guitar swells out under its milky plastic cover, tied at the neck
with silver tinsel tape and a brisk sprig of mistletoe.

Orphean sprig! Melting baby! Warm chihuahua!
The vale of tears is powerless before you.
Whether Christ is born, or is not born, you
put paid to fate, it abdicates
under the Christmas lights.
Monsters of the year
go blank, are scattered back,
can't bear this march of three.

And the three have passed, vanished in the crowd
(yet not vanished, for in their arms they wind
the life of men and beasts, and music,
laughter ringing them round like a guard)
at the end of this winter's day.

Edwin Morgan

 

[8115]

Haiku - Jack Kerouac

The windmills of
Oklahoma look
in every direction

 

[Greebo]

A Riddle - On Snow by James Parton

From Heaven I fall, though from earth I begin.
No lady alive can show such a skin.
I'm bright as an angel, and light as a feather,
But heavy and dark, when you squeeze me together.

Though candor and truth in my aspect I bear,
Yet many poor creatures I help to insnare.
Though so much of Heaven appears in my make,
The foulest impressions I easily take.

My parent and I produce one another,
The mother the daughter, the daughter the mother.

 

[8115]

You Don't Know What Love Is
(an evening with Charles Bukowski) by Ramond Carver

You don't know what love is Bukowski said
I'm 51 years old look at me
I'm in love with this young broad
I got it bad but she's hung up too
so it's all right man that's the way it should be
I get in their blood and they can't get me out
They try everything to get away from me
but they all come back in the end
They all came back to me except
the one I planted
I cried over that one
but I cried easy in those days
Don't let me get onto the hard stuff man
I get mean then
I could sit here and drink beer
with you hippies all night
I could drink ten quarts of this beer
and nothing it's like water
But let me get onto the hard stuff
and I'll start throwing people out windows
I'll throw anybody out the window
I've done it
But you don't know what love is
You don't know because you've never
been in love it's that simple
I got this young broad see she's beautiful
She calls me Bukowski
Bukowski she says in this little voice
and I say What
But you don't know what love is
I'm telling you what it is
but you aren't listening
There isn't one of you in this room
would recognize love if it stepped up
and buggered you in the ass
I used to think poetry readings were a copout
Look I'm 51 years old and I've been around
I know they're a copout
but I said to myself Bukowski
starving is even more of a copout
So there you are and nothing is like it should be
That fellow what's his name Galway Kinnell
I saw his picture in a magazine
He has a handsome mug on him
but he's a teacher
Christ can you imagine
But then you're teachers too
here I am insulting you already
No I haven't heard of him
or him either
They're all termites
Maybe it's ego I don't read much anymore
but these people w! ho build
reputations on five or six books
termites
Bukowski she says
Why do you listen to classical music all day
Can't you hear her saying that
Bukowski why do you listen to classical music all day
That surprises you doesn't it
You wouldn't think a crude bastard like me
could listen to classical music all day
Brahms Rachmaninoff Bartok Telemann
Shit I couldn't write up here
Too quiet up here too many trees
I like the city that's the place for me
I put on my classical music each morning
and sit down in front of my typewriter
I light a cigar and I smoke it like this see
and I say Bukowski you're a lucky man
Bukowski you've gone through it all
and you're a lucky man
and the blue smoke drifts across the table
and I look out the window onto Delongpre Avenue
and I see people walking up and down the sidewalk
and I puff on the cigar like this
and then I lay the cigar in the ashtray like this and take a deep breath
and I begin to write
Bukowski this is the life I say
it's good to be poor it's good to have hemorrhoids
it's good to be in love
But you don't know what it's like
You don't know what it's like to be in love
If you could see her you'd know what I mean
She thought I'd come up here and get laid
She just knew it
She told me she knew it
Shit I'm 51 years old and she's 25
and we're in love and she's jealous
Jesus it's beautiful
she said she'd claw my eyes out if I came up here
and got laid
Now that's love for you
What do any of you know about it
Let me tell you something
I've met men in jail who had more style
than the people who hang around colleges
and go to poetry readings
They're bloodsuckers who come to see
if the poet's socks are dirty
or if he smells under the arms
Believe me I won't disappoint em
But I want you to remember this
there's only one poet in this room tonight
only one poet in this town tonight
maybe only one real poet in this country tonight
and that's me
What do any of you know about life
What do any of you know about anything
Which of you here has been fired from a job
or else has beaten up your broad
or else has been beaten up by your broad
I was fired from Sears and Roebuck five times
They'd fire me then hire me back again
I was a stockboy for them when I was 35
and then got canned for stealing cookies
I know what's it like I've been there
I'm 51 years old now and I'm in love
This little broad she says
Bukowski
and I say What and she says
I think you're full of shit
and I say baby you understand me
She's the only broad in the world
man or woman
I'd take that from
But you don't know what love is
They all came back to me in the end too
every one of em came back
except that one I told you about
the one I planted We were together seven years
We used to drink a lot
I see a couple of typers in this room but
I don't see any poets
I'm not surprised
You have to have been in love to write poetry
and you don't know what it is to be in love
that's your trouble
Give me some of that stuff
That's right no ice good
That's good that's just fine
So let's get this show on the road
I know what I said but I'll have just one
That tastes good
Okay then let's go let's get this over with
only afterwards don't anyone stand close
to an open window

 

[Boru]

Gnome

“Spend the years of learning squandering
Courage for the years of wandering
Through a world politely turning
From the loutishness of learning.”


― Samuel Beckett

 

[Greebo]

Indian Summer

In youth, it was a way I had,
To do my best to please.
And change, with every passing lad
To suit his theories.

But now I know the things I know
And do the things I do,
And if you do not like me so,
To hell, my love, with you.

― Dorothy Parker

 

[ShiftyBagLady]

Act of Union by Seamus Heaney

I

To-night, a first movement, a pulse,
As if the rain in bogland gathered head
To slip and flood: a bog-burst,
A gash breaking open the ferny bed.
Your back is a firm line of eastern coast
And arms and legs are thrown
Beyond your gradual hills. I caress
The heaving province where our past has grown.
I am the tall kingdom over your shoulder
That you would neither cajole nor ignore.
Conquest is a lie. I grow older
Conceding your half-independant shore
Within whose borders now my legacy
Culminates inexorably.

II

And I am still imperially
Male, leaving you with pain,
The rending process in the colony,
The battering ram, the boom burst from within.
The act sprouted an obsinate fifth column
Whose stance is growing unilateral.
His heart beneath your heart is a wardrum
Mustering force. His parasitical
And ignmorant little fists already
Beat at your borders and I know they're cocked
At me across the water. No treaty
I foresee will salve completely your tracked
And stretchmarked body, the big pain
That leaves you raw, like opened ground, again

 

[secret squirrel]

Often for sport the crewmen will ensnare
Some albatrosses: vast seabirds that sweep
In lax accompaniment through the air
Behind the ship that skims the bitter deep.

No sooner than they dump them on the floors
These skyborn kings, graceless and mortified,
Feel great white wings go down like useless oars
And drag pathetically at either side.

That sky-rider: how gawky now, how meek!
How droll and ugly he that shone on high!
The sailors poke a pipestem in his beak,
Then limp to mock this cripple born to fly.

The poet is so like this prince of clouds
Who haunted storms and sneered at earthly slings;
Now, banished to the ground, to cackling crowds,
His giant wings prevent him from walking.

L' Albatros-Charles Baudelaire

 

[butchersapron]

One in memory of the 30 000 killed by south korean troops this day and the following weeks in 1948 after the jeju uprising:

Officially 39,285 homes were demolished and more than half of the island’s villages destroyed, concentrated mostly around Halla Mountain. Of 400 villages, only 170 remained. According to a report by the National Commission on the Jeju April 3 Incident, 25,000 to 30,000 people were killed or simply vanished, with upwards of 4,000 more fleeing to Japan as the government sought to quell the uprising. As the island’s population was at most 300,000 at the time, the official toll was one-tenth of the inhabitants. However, some Jeju people claim that as many as 40,000 islanders were killed in the suppression. This clash led to many deaths of U.S. military personnel, Korean police and right-wing youth alliance members, as well as the guerillas and civilians who were branded as traitors and sympathizers.

Yŏngbyŏn, Leaves of Reed

On the day a new sanctuary was set up
at the tavern for right-wing extremists

On the day the gods of the old sanctuary
who had delivered the wine all at once disappeared

On the day the sun solemnly rose
like the dawn in the city
where the massacre was to begin

The day a priest who had lost speech and held his tongue aloft
as he wept by the trash at the roadside

Don't cry, child born peacefully,
don't cry, don't cry

Listen to the light
as mother sister distant Yŏngbyŏn,
the sound of water fallen on the reed leaves
open their flesh

- Huh Su-gyung

 

[Ceej]

I bumped into someone today that I used to babysit for...and he's just become a grandparent. Bugger me, time flies.


WHEN you are old and gray and full of sleep
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true;
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face.

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead,
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.
WB Yeats​

​

 

[tom_craggs]

Going to a friends funeral on Monday. This is a special poem.

In Blackwater Woods ​

​

Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars​

​

of light,
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfillment,​

​

the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders​

​

of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is​

​

nameless now.
Every year
everything
I have ever learned​

​

in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side​

​

is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world​

​

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it​

​

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.​

​

~ Mary Oliver ~​

 

[Greebo]

"How can I keep from singing?"
My life goes on in endless song
above earth's lamentations,
I hear the real, though far-off hymn
that hails a new creation.

Through all the tumult and the strife
I hear it's music ringing,
It sounds an echo in my soul.
How can I keep from singing?

While though the tempest loudly roars,
I hear the truth, it liveth.
And though the darkness 'round me close,
songs in the night it giveth.

No storm can shake my inmost calm,
while to that rock I'm clinging.
Since love is lord of heaven and earth
how can I keep from singing?

When tyrants tremble in their fear
and hear their death knell ringing,
when friends rejoice both far and near
how can I keep from singing?

In prison cell and dungeon vile
our thoughts to them are winging,
when friends by shame are undefiled
how can I keep from singing?

 

[Brubricker]

The Timbered Choir
by Wendell Berry

Even while I dreamed I prayed that what I saw was only fear and no foretelling,
for I saw the last known landscape destroyed for the sake
of the objective, the soil bludgeoned, the rock blasted.
Those who had wanted to go home would never get there now.

I visited the offices where for the sake of the objective the planners planned
at blank desks set in rows. I visited the loud factories
where the machines were made that would drive ever forward
toward the objective. I saw the forest reduced to stumps and gullies; I saw
the poisoned river, the mountain cast into the valley;
I came to the city that nobody recognized because it looked like every other city.
I saw the passages worn by the unnumbered
footfalls of those whose eyes were fixed upon the objective.

Their passing had obliterated the graves and the monuments
of those who had died in pursuit of the objective
and who had long ago forever been forgotten, according
to the inevitable rule that those who have forgotten forget
that they have forgotten. Men, women, and children now pursued the objective
as if nobody ever had pursued it before.

The races and the sexes now intermingled perfectly in pursuit of the objective.
the once-enslaved, the once-oppressed were now free
to sell themselves to the highest bidder
and to enter the best paying prisons
in pursuit of the objective, which was the destruction of all enemies,
which was the destruction of all obstacles, which was the destruction of all objects,
which was to clear the way to victory, which was to clear the way to promotion, to salvation, to progress,
to the completed sale, to the signature
on the contract, which was to clear the way
to self-realization, to self-creation, from which nobody who ever wanted to go home
would ever get there now, for every remembered place
had been displaced; the signposts had been bent to the ground and covered over.

Every place had been displaced, every love
unloved, every vow unsworn, every word unmeant
to make way for the passage of the crowd
of the individuated, the autonomous, the self-actuated, the homeless
with their many eyes opened toward the objective
which they did not yet perceive in the far distance,
having never known where they were going,
having never known where they came from.

 

[Pickman's model]

EASTER 1916
William Butler Yeats

I HAVE met them at close of day
Coming with vivid faces
From counter or desk among grey
Eighteenth-century houses.
I have passed with a nod of the head
Or polite meaningless words,
Or have lingered awhile and said
Polite meaningless words,
And thought before I had done
Of a mocking tale or a gibe
To please a companion
Around the fire at the club,
Being certain that they and I
But lived where motley is worn:
All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

That woman's days were spent
In ignorant good-will,
Her nights in argument
Until her voice grew shrill.
What voice more sweet than hers
When, young and beautiful,
She rode to harriers?
This man had kept a school
And rode our winged horse;
This other his helper and friend
Was coming into his force;
He might have won fame in the end,
So sensitive his nature seemed,
So daring and sweet his thought.
This other man I had dreamed
A drunken, vainglorious lout.
He had done most bitter wrong
To some who are near my heart,
Yet I number him in the song;
He, too, has resigned his part
In the casual comedy;
He, too, has been changed in his turn,
Transformed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

Hearts with one purpose alone
Through summer and winter seem
Enchanted to a stone
To trouble the living stream.
The horse that comes from the road.
The rider, the birds that range
From cloud to tumbling cloud,
Minute by minute they change;
A shadow of cloud on the stream
Changes minute by minute;
A horse-hoof slides on the brim,
And a horse plashes within it;
The long-legged moor-hens dive,
And hens to moor-cocks call;
Minute by minute they live:
The stone's in the midst of all.

Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
That is Heaven's part, our part
To murmur name upon name,
As a mother names her child
When sleep at last has come
On limbs that had run wild.
What is it but nightfall?
No, no, not night but death;
Was it needless death after all?
For England may keep faith
For all that is done and said.
We know their dream; enough
To know they dreamed and are dead;
And what if excess of love
Bewildered them till they died?
I write it out in a verse -
MacDonagh and MacBride
And Connolly and Pearse
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

 

[Ceej]

tom_craggs - I love Mary Oliver, that's a spectacular poem. I read her 'When Death Comes' poem at a funeral a few years ago. I'm sorry for your loss.

 

[Ceej]

Upper St
Now the rain is falling
And the petals that have already fallen,
pink and white, float around us as we walk,
your smile suggesting how close you are to forgetting
the lover who so recently left you.
And so we continue, ducking into a corner pub,
and there, facing you, I catch myself doubting
if I will ever feel more closely drawn to you
and I can tell we are both wondering
about this dwindling distance between us
and how perilously a kiss would close that space.

John Harvey

 

[Brubricker]

The Difference
by John Whitworth

The difference between men and women is like that between animals and plants.
- G.W.F. Hegel

Free men are Kings of men and women are their Queens,
It’s like poetry and daffodils, like sausages and beans,
But, when two ride out together, then there’s one must ride behind,
So, though Justice is a woman, she is blind, blind, blind.
Men want cars and football. Women want romance.
Men are like animals. Women are like plants.

The King was in the counting house, counting out his money,
The Queen was in the parlour, eating bread and honey.
The money buys the honey but it buys a whole lot more
For honey keeps a woman sweet and that’s what honey’s for.
Men want sex and alcohol. Women want to dance.
Men are like animals. Women are like plants.

The King was on the battlefield directing all his battles.
The Queen was at the big parade, parading all his chattels.
The Queen was at the big parade applauding her applause:
HURRAH-HURRAH-HURRAH for all the boys who win the wars.
Men want power and politics. Women want nuance.
Men are like animals. Women are like plants.

The King was in the bedroom telling fortunes to the Queen:
Big Men and Little Women that’s the way it’s always been.
The Big Men get to organise the Little Women’s lives
And machete-wielding persons kill their next-door neighbours’ wives.
Men are in the driving seat, women in a trance.
Men are like animals. Women are like plants.

There’s history and herstory but they are not the same.
When the man is up and doing then the woman gets the blame.
She was poor but she was honest, victim of a rich man’s whim.
When the in-laws make the outlaws then the outlook’s pretty grim.
Men want this and this and this. Women want a chance.
Men are like animals. Women are like plants.

 

[Dillinger4]

At first they go for the easiest prey,
With the fewest defenses erected;
With no powerful lobbies to fight for their rights,
People these days who live unprotected.

But you're not in this grouping, you've plenty to eat,
Don't frequent food banks at month's close;
So you figure, this really is quite sad, that's true,
But heck, it's no skin off my nose.

Then cuts in health care, for the aged, the poor,
But you're not yet old, nor quite poor;
So you shrug, figure maybe there's no other way,
And such cuts you can safely ignore

Next vets take their hits, college student aid falls,
And maybe you're getting to feel,
The axe is beginning to chop down your way,
This reality, though, ain't quite real.

Then finally it's your turn, to share in the pain,
To join with the gang on this queue;
In order the richest can more wealth pile on,
You'll pay for this trickle up, too.

 

[ShiftyBagLady]

The Ice-Cart
by Wilfred Gibson

Perched on my city office-stool,
I watched with envy, while a cool
And lucky carter handled ice. . . .
And I was wandering in a trice,
Far from the grey and grimy heat
Of that intolerable street,
O'er a sapphire berg and emerald floe,
Beneath the still, cold ruby glow
Of everlasting Polar night,
Bewildered by the queer half-light,
Until I stumbled, unawares,
Upon a creek where big white bears
Plunged headlong down with flourished heels
And floundered after shining seals
Through shivering seas of blinding blue.
And as I watched them, ere I knew,
I'd stripped, and I was swimming too,
Among the sea-pack, young and hale,
And thrusting on with threshing tail,
With twist and twirl and sudden leap
Through crackling ice and salty deep--
Diving and doubling with my kind,
Until, at last, we left behind
Those big, white, blundering bulks of death,
And lay, at length, with panting breath
Upon a far untravelled floe,
Beneath a gentle drift of snow--
Snow drifting gently, fine and white,
Out of the endless Polar night,
Falling and falling evermore
Upon that far untravelled shore,
Till I was buried fathoms deep
Beneath the cold white drifting sleep--
Sleep drifting deep,
Deep drifting sleep. . . .

The carter cracked a sudden whip:
I clutched my stool with startled grip.
Awakening to the grimy heat
Of that intolerable street.

 

[tom_craggs]

Thanks Ceej...

 

[Ceej]

In a week when we've heard more euphemisms than we can shake a stick at.....

Sans pretension by Henry Normal


We say 'cul de sac'
To make 'dead end' sound sunny.
We say 'nouveau riche'
Instead of working class with money.
We call art 'avant-garde'
When we don't understand it.
Jumble sales sell 'bric-a-brac'
Which must be French for shit.
Let's call a spud a spud,
No more lies or elaborate word contortions.
Chips are chips
Not pomme frites or french fries.
Why say 'haute cuisine' when you mean 'smaller portions'.
No more saying we had a 'tete a tete'
When you mean you've been nagging
Bragging or just chin wagging,
And no more calling it a 'menage a trois'
When you mean three people shagging.

 

[secret squirrel]

In a week when we've heard more euphemisms than we can shake a stick at.....

Sans pretension by Henry Normal


We say 'cul de sac'
To make 'dead end' sound sunny.
We say 'nouveau riche'
Instead of working class with money.
We call art 'avant-garde'
When we don't understand it.
Jumble sales sell 'bric-a-brac'
Which must be French for shit.
Let's call a spud a spud,
No more lies or elaborate word contortions.
Chips are chips
Not pomme frites or french fries.
Why say 'haute cuisine' when you mean 'smaller portions'.
No more saying we had a 'tete a tete'
When you mean you've been nagging
Bragging or just chin wagging,
And no more calling it a 'menage a trois'
When you mean three people shagging.

I think it is brilliant !

 

[Sirena]

'The Undertaking' by Louise Gluck

The darkness lifts, imagine, in your lifetime.
There you are - cased in clean bark you drift
through weaving rushes, fields flooded with cotton.
You are free. The river films with lilies,
shrubs appear, shoots thicken into palm. And now
all fear gives way: the light
looks after you, you feel the waves' goodwill
as arms widen over the water; Love

the key is turned. Extend yourself -
it is the Nile, the sun is shining,
everywhere you turn is luck.

 

[Pickman's model]

THE DERBY
-Henry Birtles-

Why do they come on that June afternoon
To the top of a hill, at the Capital’s edge
Why sit in traffic for half of the day
Why are they here; well they’ve gathered to pledge
An allegiance to one and for centuries they’ve come
To witness the run of the boy who’ll be king
Who’s name could be sung, for as long as men sing
Who’s proved that he holds all the aces you need
Assuming the mantle that greatness bestows
By placing himself at the head of his breed
To put to the sword the most worthy of foes
Why do the names of the victors stand tall
When a name as a name can mean nothing at all
Ask when you walk down your street or afar
Have you heard of Nijinsky, Mill Reef or Shergar
D’you know what I mean when I speak in hushed tones
D’you know what I mean when you can’t describe joy
D’you get what they get when one rises alone
Why the blood still runs fast at the mention of Troy
This is the Derby and this is the race
That the rest of the World, through its name find a place
For their own measurement, for their own litmus test
To find a Horse worthy of calling the best
And it all started here upon high Epsom Downs
Where the greatest still fight for the greatest of crowns
Where men stand as one, whether blue blood or red
Whether born of the street, or in purple are bred.
And they stand here to cheer and they stand here to call
And they stand to acclaim one who rose above all
This is the Derby and this is the race
This the Kingmaker; hold tight, take your place.

 

[eatmorecheese]

The Rebel (Bidrohi)
(Only the last few stanzas, translation from Bengali)
Kazi Nazrul Islam


I'm mad, I'm mad!
I have realized myself,
all the barriers have crumbled away!!

I'm Parashuram's merciless axe.
I'll rid the world of all the war mongers*
and bring peace.
I'm the plough on Balaram's shoulders.
I'll uproot this subjugated world
in the joy of recreating it.
Weary of battles, I, the Great Rebel,
shall rest in peace only when
the anguished cry of the oppressed
shall no longer reverberate in the sky and the air,
and the tyrant's bloody sword
will no longer rattle in battlefields.
Only then shall I, the Rebel,
rest in peace.

I'm the Rebel Bhrigu,
I'll stamp my footprints on the chest of god
sleeping away indifferently, whimsically,
while the creation is suffering.
I'm the Rebel Bhrigu,
I'll stamp my footprints�
I'll tear apart the chest of the whimsical god!

I'm the eternal Rebel,
I have risen beyond this world, alone,
with my head ever held high!

 

[secret squirrel]

THE DERBY
-Henry Birtles-

Why do they come on that June afternoon
To the top of a hill, at the Capital’s edge
Why sit in traffic for half of the day
Why are they here; well they’ve gathered to pledge
An allegiance to one and for centuries they’ve come
To witness the run of the boy who’ll be king
Who’s name could be sung, for as long as men sing
Who’s proved that he holds all the aces you need
Assuming the mantle that greatness bestows
By placing himself at the head of his breed
To put to the sword the most worthy of foes
Why do the names of the victors stand tall
When a name as a name can mean nothing at all
Ask when you walk down your street or afar
Have you heard of Nijinsky, Mill Reef or Shergar
D’you know what I mean when I speak in hushed tones
D’you know what I mean when you can’t describe joy
D’you get what they get when one rises alone
Why the blood still runs fast at the mention of Troy
This is the Derby and this is the race
That the rest of the World, through its name find a place
For their own measurement, for their own litmus test
To find a Horse worthy of calling the best
And it all started here upon high Epsom Downs
Where the greatest still fight for the greatest of crowns
Where men stand as one, whether blue blood or red
Whether born of the street, or in purple are bred.
And they stand here to cheer and they stand here to call
And they stand to acclaim one who rose above all
This is the Derby and this is the race
This the Kingmaker; hold tight, take your place.

I've stolen it

 

[Pickman's model]

I've stolen it

Good

 

[Greebo]

The Thought-Fox
I imagine this midnight moment's forest:
Something else is alive
Beside the clock's loneliness
And this blank page where my fingers move.

Through the window I see no star:
Something more near
Though deeper within darkness
Is entering the loneliness:

Cold, delicately as the dark snow
A fox's nose touches twig, leaf;
Two eyes serve a movement, that now
And again now, and now, and now

Sets neat prints into the snow
Between trees, and warily a lame
Shadow lags by stump and in hollow
Of a body that is bold to come

Across clearings, an eye,
A widening deepening greenness,
Brilliantly, concentratedly,
Coming about its own business

Till, with a sudden sharp hot stink of fox
It enters the dark hole of the head.
The window is starless still; the clock ticks,
The page is printed.

Ted Hughes

 

[seeformiles]

The cat went here and there And the moon spun round like a top,
And the nearest kin of the moon,
The creeping cat, looked up.
Black Minnaloushe stared at the moon,
For, wander and wail as he would,
The pure cold light in the sky
Troubled his animal blood.
Minnaloushe runs in the grass
Lifting his delicate feet.
Do you dance, Minnaloushe, do you dance?
When two close kindred meet,
What better than call a dance?
Maybe the moon may learn,
Tired of that courtly fashion, A new dance turn.
Minnaloushe creeps through the grass
From moonlit place to place,
The sacred moon overhead
Has taken a new phase.
Does Minnaloushe know that his pupils
Will pass from change to change,
And that from round to crescent,
From crescent to round they range?
Minnaloushe creeps through the grass
Alone, important and wise,
And lifts to the changing moon
His changing eyes.

WB Yeats

 

[Dillinger4]

Various Portents by Alice Oswald

Various stars. Various kings.
Various sunsets, signs, cursory insights.

Many minute attentions, many knowledgeable watchers,
Much cold, much overbearing darkness.

Various long midwinter Glooms.
Various Solitary and Terrible stars.
Many Frosty Nights, many previously Unseen Sky-flowers.
Many people setting out (some of them kings) all clutching at stars.

More than one North star, more than one South star.
Several billion elliptical galaxies, bubble nebulae, binary systems.
Various dust lanes, various routes through varying thickness of Dark,
Many tunnels into deep space, minds going back and forth.
Many visions, many digitally enhanced heavens,
All kinds of glistenings being gathered into telescopes:
Fireworks, gasworks, white-streaked works of Dusk,
Works of wonder and or water, snowflakes, stars of frost …

Various dazed astronomers dilating their eyes,
Various astronauts setting out into laughterless earthlessness,
Various 5,000-year-old moon maps,
Various blindmen feeling across the heavens in Braille.

Various gods making beautiful works in bronze,
Brooches, crowns, triangles, cups and chains,
Various crucifixes, all sorts of nightsky necklaces.
Many Wise Men remarking the irregular weather.

Many exile energies, many low-voiced followers,
Watchers of whisps of various glowing spindles,
Soothsayers, hunters in the High Country of the Zodiac,
Seafarers tossing, tied to a star…

Various people coming home (some of them kings). Various headlights.

Two or three children standing or sitting on the low wall.
Various winds, the Sea Wind, the sound-laden Winds of Evening
Blowing the stars towards them, bringing snow.