by Michael D. Higgins (b. 1941), former President of the Republic of Ireland.
Here he is reading the poem from the President’s Office.
Archive for Poem
Stardust – Michael D. Higgins
Posted in Poetry with tags Michael D Higgins, Michael D. Higgins, Poem, Poetry, Stardust on November 20, 2025 by telescoperA Poem by Alice Oswald
Posted in Politics with tags Alice Oswald, Gaza, genocide, Israel, Palestine Action, Poem, Poetry, Sonnet, Spacecraft Voyager 1 on August 24, 2025 by telescoperI was shocked to find out yesterday that the poet (and former Professor of Poetry at Oxford University) Alice Oswald has been arrested under the UK’s draconian anti-terrorism laws at a peaceful protest for holding up a sign supporting Palestine Action, an organization opposed to the ongoing genocide being committed by Israel against the people of Gaza. Among the others arrested were an 89-year old woman and a blind man in a wheelchair. I expect these absurd and unjust actions will achieve the exact opposite of what the Government intended.
Anyway, I am an admirer of the poetry of Alice Oswald. I posted one of her poems here, and have four collections of her poems:
I thought I would post another now to express solidarity with Alice Oswald. This one is from the first of the collections shown above, in which it is simply titled Sonnet, though it is not a form of sonnet I have ever seen before!
Spacecraft Voyager 1 has boldly gone
into Deep Silence carrying a gold-plated disc inscribed with
whale-song
it has bleeped back a last infra-red fragment of language
and floated way way up over the jagged edge
of this almost endless bright and blowy enclosure of weather
to sink through a new texture as tenuous as the soft upward
pressure of an an elevator
and go on and on falling up steep flights of blackness with
increasing swiftness
beyond the Crystalline Cloud of the Dead beyond Plato beyond
Copernicus
O meticulous swivel cameras still registering events
among those homeless spaces gathering in that silence
that hasn't yet had time to speak in that increasing sphere
of tiny runaway stars notched in the year
now you can look closely at massless light
that is said to travel freely but is probably in full flight
by Alice Oswald
Forgetfulness – Billy Collins
Posted in Poetry with tags Forgetfulness, Poem, Poetry on August 10, 2025 by telescoperThe name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read, never even heard of,
as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.
Long ago you kissed the names of the nine muses goodbye
and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,
something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.
Whatever it is you are struggling to remember,
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue
or even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.
It has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall
well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.
No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.
by Billy Collins (b 1941)
He Asked About the Quality – C.P. Cavafy
Posted in LGBTQ+, Poetry with tags C.P. Cavafy, He Asked About the quality, Poem, Poetry on June 15, 2025 by telescoperHe left the office where he'd been given
a trivial, poorly paid job
(something like eight pounds a month, including bonuses)-
left at the end of the dreary work
that kept him bent all afternoon,
came out at seven and walked off slowly,
idling his way down the street. Good-looking,
and interesting: showing as he did that he'd reached
his full sensual capacity.
He'd turned twenty-nine the month before.
He idled his way down the main street
and the poor side-streets that led to his home.
Passing in front of a small shop that sold
cheap and flimsy merchandise for workers,
he saw a face inside, a figure
that compelled him to go in, and he pretended
he wanted to look at some coloured handkerchiefs.
He asked about the quality of the handkerchiefs
and how much they cost, his voice choking,
almost silenced by desire.
And the answers came back in the same mood,
distracted, the voice hushed,
offering hidden consent.
They kept on talking about the merchandise-
but the only purpose: that their hands might touch
over the handkerchiefs, that their faces, their lips,
might move close together as though by chance-
a moment's meeting of limb against limb.
Quickly, secretly, so the shop owner sitting at the back
wouldn't realize what was going on.
by C.P. Cavafy (1863-1933; from Collected Poems, translated by Edmund Heeley and Philip Sherrard)
Litotes – Paul Muldoon
Posted in Poetry with tags Litotes, Paul Muldoon, Poem, Poetry on May 18, 2025 by telescoperThough it wasn’t until 411 BC he took up the oar
in the Peloponnesian War
against “man-loosening” Lysander,
our hero was not unknown
to Thucydides, who’d evenhandedly intone
“What’s sauce for Aegeus is sauce for the gander.”
Despite his background
being less than sound,
he nonetheless managed to drive a phaeton
through the Spartan ranks
or, on more than one occasion, an oar-bank.
If his circumstances were quite often straitened
he couldn’t say no
to manning up and having a go
at the slightest hint of an old school oligarchy.
No scanty there, then?
Faced with the very same problem time and again
he would resort to being snide or snarky
and immediately made a dent
in it. It was no small accomplishment
that he somehow managed to claim kin with Nestor
and, since he was far
from the sharpest ray in the earthstar,
was quite likely an ancestor
of the not exactly inspiring Greek
who would eke
out an existence in the precincts of the Abbey
where he’d been married sword in hand, ye Gads,
turning out to be not half bad
or, as Thucydides would have it, “None too shabby.”
by Paul Muldoon (b. 1951).
I recently discovered the poetry of Paul Muldoon who, as once described in the New York Times, “… takes some honest-to-God reading. He’s a riddler, enigmatic, distrustful of appearances, generous in allusion, doubtless a dab hand at crossword puzzles.” This poem is from Joy in Service on Rue Tagore (2024), which is published by Faber & Faber.
May and the Poets – Leigh Hunt
Posted in Poetry with tags James Henry Leigh Hunt, Leigh Hunt, May and the Poets, Poem, Poetry on May 1, 2025 by telescoper
I almost forgot that today is Poetry Day Ireland which this year has a theme of “May Day” so here’s a romantic yet whimsical offering that seems tailor-made to mark the start of the month of May.
There is May in books forever;
May will part from Spenser never;
May's in Milton, May's in Prior,
May's in Chaucer, Thomson, Dyer;
May's in all the Italian books:—
She has old and modern nooks,
Where she sleeps with nymphs and elves,
In happy places they call shelves,
And will rise and dress your rooms
With a drapery thick with blooms.
Come, ye rains, then if ye will,
May's at home, and with me still;
But come rather, thou, good weather,
And find us in the fields together.
by James Henry Leigh Hunt (1784-1859)
Easter Monday (In Memoriam E.T.) – Eleanor Farjeon
Posted in Poetry with tags Battle of Arras, Edward Thomas, Eleanor Farjeon, Poem, Poet, Poetry, World War 1 on April 21, 2025 by telescoperIn the last letter that I had from France
You thanked me for the silver Easter egg
Which I had hidden in the box of apples
You liked to munch beyond all other fruit.
You found the egg the Monday before Easter,
And said, 'I will praise Easter Monday now -
It was such a lovely morning'. Then you spoke
Of the coming battle and said, 'This is the eve.
Good-bye. And may I have a letter soon.'
That Easter Monday was a day for praise,
It was such a lovely morning. In our garden
We sowed our earliest seeds, and in the orchard
The apple-bud was ripe. It was the eve.
There are three letters that you will not get.
by Eleanor Farjeon (1881-1965)
Eleanor Farjeon, who is probably best known for having written the words to the hymn Morning has Broken, wrote this poem shortly after she heard news of the death of her close friend the poet Edward Thomas (the E.T. in the title) who was killed in action at the Battle of Arras on Easter Monday, 9th April 1917.
Sonnet No. 19
Posted in Poetry with tags Poem, Poetry, Sonnet, Sonnet 19, William Shakespeare on April 11, 2025 by telescoperDevouring time, blunt thou the lion's paws
And make the earth devour her own sweet brood,
Pluck the keen teeth from the fierce tiger's jaws
And burn the long-liv'd phoenix in her blood,
Make glad and sorry seasons as thou fleet'st,
And do what e'er thou wilt, swift-footed time,
To the wide world and all her fading sweets:
But I forbid thee one most heinous crime,
O carve not with thy hours my love's fair brow,
Nor draw no lines there with thine antique pen,
Him in thy course untainted do allow
For beauty's pattern to succeeding men.
Yet do thy worst, old time, despite thy wrong,
My love shall in my verse ever live young.
by William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
(I don’t know why it’s been such a long time since I last posted one of Shakespeare’s sonnets.)
The Market-Place – Walter de la Mare
Posted in Poetry with tags Poem, Poetry, The Market-Place, Walter de la Mare on April 4, 2025 by telescoperMy mind is like a clamorous market-place.
All day in wind, rain, sun, its babel wells;
Voice answering to voice in tumult swells.
Chaffering and laughing, pushing for a place,
My thoughts haste on, gay, strange, poor, simple, base;
This one buys dust, and that a bauble sells:
But none to any scrutiny hints or tells
The haunting secrets hidden in each sad face.
The clamour quietens when the dark draws near;
Strange looms the earth in twilight of the West,
Lonely with one sweet star serene and clear,
Dwelling, when all this place is hushed to rest,
On vacant stall, gold, refuse, worst and best,
Abandoned utterly in haste and fear.
by Walter de la Mare (1873-1956)
A Poem for St David’s Day
Posted in Poetry with tags Dylan Thomas, Poem, Poetry, St David's Day, The hand that signed the paper on March 1, 2025 by telescoper
It’s St David’s Day so, notwithstanding the fact that I’ve just watched Leinster beat Cardiff 42-24 at Rugby,
Dydd Gŵyl Dewi Hapus!
On this day I usually post a poem by a Welsh poet. This, by Dylan Thomas, which was published in 1936 and seems to me to be rather topical, featured in the concert I went to about a month ago.
The hand that signed the paper felled a city;
Five sovereign fingers taxed the breath,
Doubled the globe of dead and halved a country;
These five kings did a king to death.
The mighty hand leads to a sloping shoulder,
The finger joints are cramped with chalk;
A goose's quill has put an end to murder
That put an end to talk.
The hand that signed the treaty bred a fever,
And famine grew, and locusts came;
Great is the hand that holds dominion over
Man by a scribbled name.
The five kings count the dead but do not soften
The crusted wound nor pat the brow;
A hand rules pity as a hand rules heaven;
Hands have no tears to flow.
In the Dark 