Afraid So

Jeanne Marie Beaumont,
Curious Conduct

A pair, for obvious reasons:

Snow

The room was suddenly rich and the great bay-window was
Spawning snow and pink roses against it
Soundlessly collateral and incompatible:
World is suddener than we fancy it.

World is crazier and more of it than we think,
Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion
A tangerine and spit the pips and feel
The drunkeness of things being various.

And the fire flames with a bubbling sound for world
I more spiteful and gay than one supposes -
On the tongue on the eyes on the ears in the palms of one's hands -
There is more than glass between the snow and the huge roses.

Louis MacNeice


I know this poem by heart - I learned it during long Tube journeys, when it was part of The Poems on the Underground series (free advertising space given over to poetry).

So I was delighted to find this one years later:

History

Where and when exactly did we first have sex?
Do you remember? Was it Fitzroy Avenue,
Or Cromwell Road, or Notting Hill?
Your place or mine? Marseilles or Aix?
Or as long ago as that Thursday evening
When you and I climbed through the bay window
On the ground floor of Aquinas Hall
And into the room where MacNeice wrote 'Snow',
Or the room where they say he wrote 'Snow'.

Paul Muldoon

Hair Poem--George Carlin

I'm aware some stare at my hair.
In fact, to be fair,
Some really despair of my hair.
But I don't care,
Cause they're not aware,
Nor are they debonair.
In fact, they're just square.

They see hair down to there,
Say, "Beware" and go off on a tear!
I say, "No fair!"
A head that's bare is really nowhere.
So be like a bear, be fair with your hair!
Show it you care.
Wear it to there.
Or to there.
Or to there, if you dare!

My wife bought some hair at a fair, to use as a spare.
Did I care?
Au contraire!
Spare hair is fair!
In fact, hair can be rare.
Fred Astaire got no hair,
Nor does a chair,
Nor a chocolate eclair,
And where is the hair on a pear?
Nowhere, mon frere!

So now that I've shared this affair of the hair,
I'm going to repair to my lair and use Nair, do you care?

(Beard Poem)

Here's my beard.
Ain't it weird?
Don't be sceered,
Just a beard

The Minstrel Boy to the War is gone --
In the ranks of Death you will find him.
His father's sword he has girded on,
And his wild harp slung behind him.
'Land Of Song,' says the warrior bard,
'Though all the world betrays thee,
One sword at least thy rights shall guard,
One faithful harp shall praise thee!

The Minstrel fell, but the foeman's chain
Could not bring that proud soul under,
The harp he loved never spoke again
For he tore its corse asunder,
And said, 'No chain shall sully thee,
Thou soul of love and bravery!
Thy songs were made for the pure and free;
They shall never sound in slavery!'

--Thomas Moore


Vale Steve Irwin -- 1962-2006

My Brother's House

Stood, like a fairytale, at the start
Of a wood. Vague fogs of bluebells
Absentmindedly invested it in summer.

Curdled dollops of snow
Flopped slowly from invisible
Outstretched branches of firtrees.

The wood was a real wood, and
You could get lost in it. The trees
Had no names or numbers.

Jays, Foxes and squirrels
Lived there. Also an obelisk in an odd
Corner, where nobody went.

The road to my brother's house
Had an air of leading nowhere. Visitors
Retreated, thinking of their back axles.

Blackberries and fifty-seven varieties
Of weeds had their eye on the garden.
Every year they shrivelled in flame,

Every day they returned unemphatic,
Not bothering to flaunt so
Easy a triumph. There was no garage

To uphold suburban standards, only
A shed where bicyles cowered among drips.
Indoors, all doors were always open

Or else jammed. Having a bath
Invited crowds, not just of spiders. Cats
Landed on chests with a thump and a yowl

In mid-dream. Overhead the patter of piny
Paws or dense whirring of wings.
There were more humans around, too,

Than you quite expected, living furtive
Separate lives in damp rooms. Meals, haphazard
And elaborate, happened when, abandoning hope,

You had surrended to bread
And butter. Massed choirs sang solidly
Through the masses of Haydn. Shoppers

Returned from forays with fifteen
Kinds of liversausage and no sugar.
When the family left, rats, rain and nettles

Took over instantly. I regret the passing
Of my brother's house. It was like living in Romer
Before the barbarians.

U A Fanthorpe


(best read aloud)

Aw, Dana, Chickie, I did an entire paper on Dulce Decorum Est. And a paper on Larkin's Churchgoing (about the witchcraft imagery in the poem)

Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening


Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

Robert Frost

ANNABELLE LEE


Author: Edgar Allan Poe


It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea;
But we loved with a love that was more than love -
I and my Annabel Lee;
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and me.
And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her highborn kinsman came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulcher
In this kingdom by the sea.
The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
Went envying her and me
Yes! that was the reason
(as all men know, In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we
Of many far wiser than we
And neither the angels in heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.
For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling, my darling, my life and my bride,
In the sepulcher there by the sea,
In her tomb by the sounding sea.

An Arundel Tomb

Side by side, their faces blurred,
The earl and countess lie in stone,
Their proper habits vaguely shown
As jointed armour, stiffened pleat,
And that faint hint of the absurd-
The little dogs under their feet.

Such plainness of the pre-baroque
Hardly involves the eye, until
It meets his left-hand gauntlet, still
Clasped empty in the other; and
One sees, with a sharp tender shock,
His hand withdrawn, holding her hand.

They would not think to lie so long.
Such faithfulness in effigy
Was just a detail friends would see:
A sculptor's sweet commissioned grace
Thrown off in helping to prolong
The Latin names around the base.

They would not guess how early in
Their supine stationary voyage
The air would turn to soundless damage,
Turn the old tenantry away;
How soon succeeding eyes begin
To look, not read. Rigidly they

Persisted, linked through lengths and breadths
Of time. Snow fell, undated. Light
Each summer thronged the glass. A bright
Litter of birdcalls strewed the same
Bone-riddled ground. And up the paths
The endless altered people came,

Washing at their identity.
Now, helpless in the hollow of
An unarmorial age, a trough
Of smoke in slow suspended skeins
Above their scrap of history,
Only an attitude remains:

Time has transfigured them into
Untruth. The stone fidelity
They hardly meant has come to be
Their final blazon, and to prove
Our almost-instinct almost true:
What will survive of us is love.

Philip Larkin



It's the rhythm of his phrasing that gets me every time (same with U A Fanthorpe). Sometimes I'll get one of his lines stuck in my head and I wish I was 17 again and could just write it on my arm, or my folder or my pencil case. Wonderful.

A Different Christmas Poem
 

The embers glowed softly, and in their dim light,
I gazed round the room and I cherished the sight.
My wife was asleep, her head on my chest,
My daughter beside me, angelic in rest.
Outside the snow fell, a blanket of white,
Transforming the yard to a winter delight.
The sparkling lights in the tree I believe,
Completed the magic that was Christmas Eve.
My eyelids were heavy, my breathing was deep,
Secure and surrounded by love I would sleep.
In perfect contentment, or so it would seem,
So I slumbered, perhaps I started to dream.

The sound wasn't loud, and it wasn't too near,
But I opened my eyes when it tickled my ear.
Perhaps just a cough, I didn't quite know, Then the
sure sound of footsteps outside in the snow.
My soul gave a tremble, I struggled to hear,
And I crept to the door just to see who was near.
Standing out in the cold and the dark of the night,
A lone figure stood, his face weary and tight.

A soldier, I puzzled, some twenty years old,
Perhaps a Marine, huddled here in the cold.
Alone in the dark, he looked up and smiled,
Standing watch over me, and my wife and my child.
"What are you doing?" I asked without fear,
"Come in this moment, it's freezing out here!
Put down your pack, brush the snow from your sleeve,
You should be at home on a cold Christmas Eve!"

For barely a moment I saw his eyes shift,
Away from the cold and the snow blown in drifts..
To the window that danced with a warm fire's light
Then he sighed and he said "Its really all right,
I'm out here by choice. I'm here every night." "It's my duty to stand at the front of the line,
That separates you from the darkest of times.
No one had to ask or beg or implore me,
I'm proud to stand here like my fathers before me.
My Gramps died at 'Pearl on a day in December,"
Then he sighed, "That's a Christmas 'Gram always remembers."
My dad stood his watch in the jungles of 'Nam',
And now it is my turn and so, here I am.
I've not seen my own son in more than a while,
But my wife sends me pictures, he's sure got her smile.

Then he bent and he carefully pulled from his bag,
The red, white, and blue... an American flag.
I can live through the cold and the being alone,
Away from my family, my house and my home.
I can stand at my post through the rain and the sleet,
I can sleep in a foxhole with little to eat.
I can carry the weight of killing another,
Or lay down my life with my sister and brother..
Who stand at the front against any and all,
To ensure for all time that this flag will not fall."

"So go back inside," he said, "harbor no fright,
Your family is waiting and I'll be all right."
"But isn't there something I can do, at the least,
"Give you money," I asked, "or prepare you a feast?
It seems all too little for all that you've done,
For being away from your wife and your son."
Then his eye welled a tear that held no regret,
"Just tell us you love us, and never forget.
To fight for our rights back at home while we're gone,
To stand your own watch, no matter how long.
For when we come home, either standing or dead,
To know you remember we fought and we bled.
Is payment enough, and with that we will trust,
That we mattered to you as you mattered to us."

I accept the sentiment may touch people, but I wouldn't rate this doggerel any higher than a Hallmark card

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder of course

静夜思（李白）

床前明月光

疑是地上霜

举头望明月

低头思故乡

The literal translation of the above is:

The static nocturnal revery (Li Bai)
In front of the bed the bright moonlight light
Doubts is the ground frost
Raises the head looks the bright moonlight
To lower the head thinks the hometown

I'd love to have a more poetic version

I tried, but they tricked me!
They are soft and smell good... everything seems to make sense when they whisper in your ear and you can feel their breath when they do it!
Theyz ebil I tellz ya'!