Archive for the Literature Category

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A Child’s Christmas in Wales

Posted in Literature with tags , on December 24, 2012 by telescoper

Well, I’m up early to get the train Up North, so I thought I’d just sign off for the holiday with a little gift. I have posted this before but, on the grounds that you can’t have too much of a good thing, here it is again. Plus, of course, this will be my last Christmas in Wales…

There are only two kinds of people in the world: those who have heard Dylan Thomas reading his wonderful short autobiographical story A Child’s Christmas in Wales; and those who haven’t. I’ve heard it hundreds of times, like a favourite piece of music. Technically it’s a prose work, but it’s prose that’s so close to poetry that it really defies categorisation. Either way, the language certainly has a musical quality, and the author’s voice brings it to life in a way nobody else has ever been able to. It’s also shot through with flashes of a dry offbeat humour that tickles my fancy any time of the year but at Christmas time I think it’s just magical.

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Debt

Posted in Poetry with tags , , on December 17, 2012 by telescoper

What do I owe to you
Who loved me deep and long?
You never gave my spirit wings
Or gave my heart a song.

But oh, to him I loved,
Who loved me not at all,
I owe the open gate
That led through heaven’s wall.

by Sara Teasdale (1884-1933)

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Another Refusal to Mourn

Posted in Poetry with tags , , , , on December 17, 2012 by telescoper

I posted this poem after the terrible events in Norway last year. Sadly the awful killings in Newton, Connecticut make it relevant again.

The full title is A Refusal to Mourn the Death by Fire of a Child in London  and it was written  by Dylan Thomas. Published just after the end of the Second World War, it was written some time earlier when Thomas heard news of a young girl who had burned to death when the house she was in was set on fire during an air raid. Here is the poet himself reading it.

The idea behind the poem is complex, and its message double-edged,  but Thomas finds a perfect balance between horror and sadness, and between indignation and heartbreak. Children shouldn’t have to die, and neither should anyone else whose life is cut short by another’s hand, but we have to accept that they can and do.  There’s no consolation to be found in mourning  and in any case it’s hypocritical to favour one death with elegies, when suffering is so widespread. The best we can do is allow the dead some dignity and their families and loved ones some time to grieve.

Never until the mankind making
Bird beast and flower
Fathering and all humbling darkness
Tells with silence the last light breaking
And the still hour
Is come of the sea tumbling in harness

And I must enter again the round
Zion of the water bead
And the synagogue of the ear of corn
Shall I let pray the shadow of a sound
Or sow my salt seed
In the least valley of sackcloth to mourn

The majesty and burning of the child’s death.
I shall not murder
The mankind of her going with a grave truth
Nor blaspheme down the stations of the breath
With any further
Elegy of innocence and youth.

Deep with the first dead lies London’s daughter,
Robed in the long friends,
The grains beyond age, the dark veins of her mother,
Secret by the unmourning water
Of the riding Thames.
After the first death, there is no other.

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The Winter Palace

Posted in Poetry with tags , , on December 5, 2012 by telescoper

Most people know more as they get older:
I give all that the cold shoulder.

I spent my second quarter-century
Losing what I had learnt at university.

And refusing to take in what had happened since.
Now I know none of the names in the public prints,

And am starting to give offence by forgetting faces
And swearing I’ve never been in certain places.

It will be worth it, if in the end I manage
To blank out whatever it is that is doing the damage.

Then there will be nothing I know.
My mind will fold into itself, like fields, like snow.

by Philip Larkin (1922-1985)

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Sonnet No. 97

Posted in Poetry with tags , , , on December 1, 2012 by telescoper


How like a winter hath my absence been
From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year!
What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen!
What old December’s bareness every where!
And yet this time remov’d was summer’s time;
The teeming autumn, big with rich increase,
Bearing the wanton burden of the prime,
Like widow’d wombs after their lords’ decease:
Yet this abundant issue seem’d to me
But hope of orphans and unfather’d fruit;
For summer and his pleasures wait on thee,
And, thou away, the very birds are mute:
Or, if they sing, ’tis with so dull a cheer,
That leaves look pale, dreading the winter’s near.

Sonnet No.97 , by William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

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The Rain and the Wind

Posted in Poetry with tags , , on November 25, 2012 by telescoper

The rain and the wind, the wind and the rain —
They are with us like a disease:
They worry the heart, they work the brain,
As they shoulder and clutch at the shrieking pane,
And savage the helpless trees.

What does it profit a man to know
These tattered and tumbling skies
A million stately stars will show,
And the ruining grace of the after-glow
And the rush of the wild sunrise?

Ever the rain — the rain and the wind!
Come, hunch with me over the fire,
Dream of the dreams that leered and grinned,
Ere the blood of the Year got chilled and thinned,
And the death came on desire!

 by William Ernest Henley (1849-1903).

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Giving Thanks

Posted in Music, Poetry with tags , , , on November 22, 2012 by telescoper

I almost forgot to post something to mark this very special day which is celebrated throughout the civilised world. Yes, of course, it is the Feast of St Cecilia. And not only that, it is Benjamin Britten‘s birthday. So why not kill two birds with one stone? And I don’t mean turkeys…

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No!

Posted in Poetry with tags , , on November 22, 2012 by telescoper

No sun–no moon!
No morn–no noon!
No dawn–no dusk–no proper time of day–
No sky–no earthly view–
No distance looking blue–
No road–no street–no “t’other side this way”–
No end to any Row–
No indications where the Crescents go–
No top to any steeple–
No recognitions of familiar people–
No courtesies for showing ’em–
No knowing ’em!
No traveling at all–no locomotion–
No inkling of the way–no notion–
“No go” by land or ocean–
No mail–no post–
No news from any foreign coast–
No Park, no Ring, no afternoon gentility–
No company–no nobility–
No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease,
No comfortable feel in any member–
No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees,
No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds–
November

by Thomas Hood (1799-1845)

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Leonids over us

Posted in Poetry, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , on November 17, 2012 by telescoper

The sky is streaked with them
burning hole in black space —
like fireworks, someone says
all friendly in the dark chill
of Newcomb Hollow in November,
friends known only by voices.

We lie on the cold sand and it
embraces us, this beach
where locals never go in summer
and boast of their absence. Now
we lie eyes open to the flowers
of white ice that blaze over us

and seem to imprint directly
on our brains. I feel the earth,
rolling beneath as we face out
into the endlessness we usually
ignore. Past the evanescent
meteors, infinity pulls hard.

by Marge Piercy (b. 1936)

P.S. In case you didn’t know, the Leonids is an often prolific meteor shower that has its radiant in the constellation of Leo and which peaks at about this time of year.

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A Psychological Tip

Posted in Biographical, Poetry with tags , , , , on November 16, 2012 by telescoper

So here I am, then, in Copenhagen. Yesterday evening, as far as I’m concerned, at least, my wavefunction collapsed along with the rest of me into a definite location. Ibsen’s Hotel, in fact. I had a pleasantly uneventful journey to Heathrow by train. The plane thence arrived in Copenhagen twenty minutes ahead of time, and then I had the chance to marvel at wonderful Copenhagen’s wonderfully efficient public transport in the form of the Metro that took me to about 100 metres from my hotel. All very relaxed and stress-free.

This morning I got up bright and early, determined to avoid the queues at breakfast, but was inevitably foiled by dozens of uber-efficient Germans who were already there at 7am when it opened. Fortunately I managed to find a quiet place in the corner to drink my coffee while they basked in their own smugness and barked orders at the waitresses.

Anyway, it’s still pretty dark outside so I thought I’d post something before walking to the Niels Bohr Institute for the day’s business. Since I’m in Denmark I thought I’d put up one of the wonderfully witty little poems written by Danish mathematician Piet Hein. He called each of these verses a “grook” (or actually, in Danish, the word is gruk) and he wrote thousands of them over his long life. Many, like this one, are utterly brilliant.

Whenever you’re called on to make up your mind,
and you’re hampered by not having any,
the best way to solve the dilemma, you’ll find,
is simply by spinning a penny.

No – not so that chance shall decide the affair
while you’re passively standing there moping;
but the moment the penny is up in the air,
you suddenly know what you’re hoping.

by Piet Hein (1905-1996).

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