Asylum-Seeking Daleks!!!

I love this poem, and I hope you will too. Its irreverent and accessible attack on prejudice and bigotry in all its forms is like a breath of fresh air. Even better, click here to hear the poet reading it live. (And you can visit the poet's website here.) Now for the poem:

ASYLUM SEEKING DALEKS!
by Attila The Stockbroker

They claim their planet's dying:
that soon it's going to blow
And so they're coming here - they say
they've nowhere else to go....
With their strange computer voices
and their one eye on a pole
They're moving in next door and then
they're signing on the dole.....

Asylum seeking Daleks
are landing here at noon!
Why can't we simply send them back
or stick them on the moon?
It says here in the Daily Mail
they're coming here to stay -
The Loony Lefties let them in!
The middle class will pay......

They say that they're all pacifists:
that doesn't wash with me!
The last time I saw one I hid
Weeks behind the settee...
Good Lord - they're pink. With purple bumps!
There's photos of them here!
Not just extra-terrestial....
The bloody things are queer!

Yes! Homosexual Daleks
And they're sponging off the State!
With huge Arts Council grants
to teach delinquents how to skate!
It's all here in the paper -
I'd better tell the wife!
For soon they will EXTERMINATE
Our British way of life.....

This satire on crass ignorance
and tabloid-fostered fear
Is at an end. Now let me give
One message, loud and clear.
Golf course, shop floor or BNP:
Smash bigotry and hate!
Asylum seekers - welcome here.
You racists: emigrate!

Love is...

Here is a poem by Liverpudlian poet, the late Adrian Henri. When you read it, look closely at the wonderful (and original) use he makes of METAPHOR in the poem. Metaphor is something lots of students find difficult - unlike similes, which are easy. But you could do worse than look to this poem to teach you all you need to know about metaphors. And about love too... (Oh, and the picture is of a couple of manatees: can't animals love too?)

Love Is...

Love is feeling cold in the back of vans
Love is a fanclub with only two fans
Love is walking holding paintstained hands
Love is.

Love is fish and chips on winter nights
Love is blankets full of strange delights
Love is when you don't put out the light
Love is

Love is the presents in Christmas shops
Love is when you're feeling Top of the Pops
Love is what happens when the music stops
Love is

Love is white panties lying all forlorn
Love is pink nightdresses still slightly warm
Love is when you have to leave at dawn
Love is

Love is you and love is me
Love is prison and love is free
Love's what's there when you are away from me
Love is...

Where have you been, my blue-eyed son?

When I was at Oxford university, one of the most eminent professors of English there came to our college one day to lead a seminar on someone he regarded to be the best poet writing in the English language for at least 150 years. Imagine our surprise, therefore, when he started off by playing a song by 1960s (and onwards) folk hero, Bob Dylan. However, if you look at the lyrics below, I hope you will agree they show as much depth and skill as anything else you have read of English poetry. And there are many more where this comes from too...

'A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall' by Bob Dylan (1963)

Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, where have you been, my darling young one?
I've stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains,
I've walked and I've crawled on six crooked highways,
I've stepped in the middle of seven sad forests,
I've been out in front of a dozen dead oceans,
I've been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard,
And it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, and it's a hard,
And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.

Oh, what did you see, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, what did you see, my darling young one?
I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it
I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it,
I saw a black branch with blood that kept drippin',
I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleedin',
I saw a white ladder all covered with water,
I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken,
I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children,
And it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard,
And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.

And what did you hear, my blue-eyed son?
And what did you hear, my darling young one?
I heard the sound of a thunder, it roared out a warnin',
Heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world,
Heard one hundred drummers whose hands were a-blazin',
Heard ten thousand whisperin' and nobody listenin',
Heard one person starve, I heard many people laughin',
Heard the song of a poet who died in the gutter,
Heard the sound of a clown who cried in the alley,
And it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard,
And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.

Oh, who did you meet, my blue-eyed son?
Who did you meet, my darling young one?
I met a young child beside a dead pony,
I met a white man who walked a black dog,
I met a young woman whose body was burning,
I met a young girl, she gave me a rainbow,
I met one man who was wounded in love,
I met another man who was wounded with hatred,
And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard,
It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.

Oh, what'll you do now, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, what'll you do now, my darling young one?
I'm a-goin' back out 'fore the rain starts a-fallin',
I'll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest,
Where the people are many and their hands are all empty,
Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters,
Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison,
Where the executioner's face is always well hidden,
Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten,
Where black is the color, where none is the number,
And I'll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it,
And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it,
Then I'll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin',
But I'll know my song well before I start singin',
And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard,
It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.

I used to be a book burner...

Zembla, Zenda, Xanadu:
All our dream-worlds may come true.
Fairy lands are fearsome too.
As I wander far from view
Read, and bring me home to you.

This poem was written by Salman Rushdie as the dedication at the beginning of his novel, Haroun and the Sea of Stories. Highly recommended itself (see the previous blog entry here), the novel is particularly relevant now, in the light of all the furore over Rushdie's knighthood.

Notice the acrostic in the poem, which spells the name of Rushdie's son, to whom the novel (and the poem) were directed. In both, he is trying to explain to his only child the madness which erupted around him after the fatwa was announced, and the enduring power of stories to transcend political or religious ideologies.

Why not read more about the furore surrounding Rushdie's knighthood at The Guardian's blog (commentisfree):
Freedom to Offend and I used to be a book burner (both by Inayat Bunglawala, Assistant Secretary-General at the Muslim Council of Britain)
Tender is the Knighthood
Unhelpful Outrage
Sir Salman's Long Journey
He should have realised...

The Hole in the Sum of my Parts

'The Hole in the Sum of my Parts'
by Matt Harvey

Part of me is punctual - it turns up right on time
Part of me is functional - though slightly past its prime
Part of me is criminal - it's quite against the law
Part of me's subliminal - and kind of either/or
Part of me is lowly - it lows just like a cow
Part of me is holy - at least holier-than-thou
Part of me is actual - ly more solid than it seems
And part of me is factual
But most of me is dreams

Part of me is truculent: don't look that way at me
Part of me is succulent - suck it and you'll see
Part of me's detestable - or so people have said
And part of me's suggestible - or so people have said
Part of me's competitive - it only wants to win
And part of me's repetitive - or so people have said
Part of me's interminable - it goes on and on and on
And on and on and on and on and on and on (and on)
This part of me's prolific - it writes reams and reams and reams
And part of me's terrific
But most of me is dreams

Parts of me are distant - and yet can seem so near
Parts of me are whispers - which the other parts can't hear
Parts of me are broken - and tremble to the touch
And these parts can be spoken - but I don't speak them much
Part of me is pensive. - I think. But I don't know.
Part of me's defensive .......... so?
Part of me's celestial - it gleams and beams and gleams
And part of me is bestial (grrrrrr)
But most of me is dreams

Part of me is tiny - but not the part you think
Part of me is shiny - and a pleasing shade of pink
Part of me is laudable - it's for a worthy cause
And part of me's inaudible - (like imaginary gorse*) *mouthed silently
Part of me is hairy - to be honest not a lot !
Part of me's contrary - No it's not
Part of me's co-operative - it plays so well in teams
And part of me's inoperative
But most of me is dreams

Parts of me are latent - lurking dormant underneath
Parts of me are blatant - for some reason they're called Keith
Parts of me have stamina - because I do Chi Gung
And part of me's my anima - according to the psychology of Carl Gustav Jung
Part of me is piddling - yet full of cosmic yearning
And part of me is fiddling - while the rest of me is burning
Part of me is fluent - it flows as sure as streams
While part of me plays truant
But most of me - as I've tried to emphasise here - is dreams

To visit the poet's website, click here.

The Children in the Playground

Tonight I am going to see a poetry performance at the Purcell Rooms in London's South Bank Centre, and one of the poets performing is John Hegley. So I thought that I would post another of his poems as this week's Poem of the Week...

The Children in the Playground

In the playground
the children are playing a game of kiss chase
and one of the children
who seems to want to be chased after
calls out above the screams and laughter
don't chase me!
don't chase me!
and nobody does

I learn by going where I have to go...

'The Waking'
by Theodore Roethke

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me; so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.

from a Portrait of Theodore Roethke (by Mike Nease),
which hangs at Seattle's Blue Moon Tavern

• To see more poems by Theodore Roethke, click here.

• To find out more about the poet himself, click here.

• To read a difficult but fascinating essay about the poem, click here.

...the solving emptiness

'Ambulances' by Philip Larkin

Closed like confessionals, they thread
Loud noons of cities, giving back
None of the glances they absorb.
Light glossy grey, arms on a plaque,
They come to rest at any kerb:
All streets in time are visited.

Then children strewn on steps or road,
Or women coming from the shops
Past smells of different dinners, see
A wild white face that overtops
Red stretcher-blankets momently
As it is carried in and stowed,

And sense the solving emptiness
That lies just under all we do,
And for a second get it whole,
So permanent and blank and true.
The fastened doors recede. Poor soul,
They whisper at their own distress;

For borne away in deadened air
May go the sudden shut of loss
Round something nearly at an end,
And what cohered in it across
The years, the unique random blend
Of families and fashions, there

At last begin to loosen. Far
From the exchange of love to lie
Unreachable inside a room
The traffic parts to let go by
Brings closer what is left to come,
And dulls to distance all we are.

To read more poems by Philip Larkin, click here.
To find out more about the poet himself, click here.
To watch a Sky TV News piece about Larkin's 'lost tapes', click here.

When the black dreams came...

'Autobiography'
by Louise Macneice (1907-1963)

In my childhood trees were green
And there was plenty to be seen.
Come back early or never come.

My father made the walls resound,
He wore his collar the wrong way round.
Come back early or never come.

My mother wore a yellow dress;
Gentle, gently, gentleness.
Come back early or never come.

When I was five the black dreams came;
Nothing after was quite the same.
Come back early or never come.

The dark was talking to the dead;
The lamp was dark beside my bed.
Come back early or never come.

When I woke they did not care;
Nobody, nobody was there.
Come back early or never come.

When my silent terror cried,
Nobody, nobody replied.
Come back early or never come.

I got up; the chilly sun
Saw me walk away alone.
Come back early or never come.

* * * *

MacNeice's mother suffered gynaecological problems, a mental breakdown, which meant she left the family to go into a nursing-home in 1913, and, finally, death from tuberculosis a year later - when Macneice was only 6 years old. The loss of his mother at such an early age had a profound and lasting effect on him; his sister Elizabeth writes that “His last memory-picture of her walking up and down the garden path in tears seems to have haunted him for the rest of his life”. '

Autobiography', therefore, is exactly that...

To find out loads of interesting things about the poet and his life, click here.
To read more of his poems, click here.

You're Beautiful

You're Beautiful
by Simon Armitage

You're Beautiful

because you're classically trained
I’m ugly because I associate piano wire with strangulation

You’re beautiful because you stop to read cards in newsagent windows
About lost cats and missing dogs.
I’m ugly because of what I did to that jelly fish with a lolly-stick and a big stone

You’re beautiful because for you politeness is instinctive and not a marketing
campaign.
I’m ugly because desperation is impossible to hide

Ugly like he is
Beautiful like hers
Beautiful like venus,
Ugly like his
Beautiful like she is
Ugly like mars

You’re beautiful because you believe in coincidence and the power of thought
I’m ugly because I proved god to be a mathematical impossibility

You’re beautiful because you prefer homemade soup to the packet stuff
I’m ugly because once at a dinner party
I defended the aristocracy and I wasn’t even drunk

You’re beautiful because you can’t work the remote control
I’m ugly because of satellite television and 24 hr rolling news

Ugly like he is
Beautiful like hers
Beautiful like venus,
Ugly like his
Beautiful like she is
Ugly like mars

You’re beautiful because you cry at funerals as well as weddings
I’m ugly because I think of children as a species from a different world

You’re beautiful because you look great in any colour including red
I’m ugly because I think shopping is strictly for the acquisition of material goods

You’re beautiful because when you were born, undiscovered planets
Lined up to peep over your cradle and lay gifts of gravity and light
At your miniature feet

I’m ugly for saying ‘love at first sight’ is another form of mistaken identity,
And the most human of responses is to gloat

Ugly like he is
Beautiful like hers
Beautiful like venus,
Ugly like his
Beautiful like she is
Ugly like mars

You’re beautiful because you’ve never seen the inside of a car-wash
I’m ugly because I always ask for a receipt

You’re beautiful for sending a box of shoes to the third world
I’m ugly because I remember the phone numbers of ex-girlfriends
And the year Schubert was born

You’re beautiful because you sponsored a parrot in a zoo
I’m ugly because I when I sigh it’s like the slow collapse of a circus tent

Ugly like he is
Beautiful like hers
Beautiful like venus,
Ugly like his
Beautiful like she is
Ugly like mars

You’re beautiful because you can point at a man in uniform and laugh
I’m ugly because I was a police informer in a previous life

You’re beautiful because you drink three litres of water and eat three pieces
Of fruit a day.
I’m ugly for taking the line that a meal without meat is a beautiful woman
With one eye

You’re beautiful because you don’t see love as a competition and you know
how to lose
I’m beautiful because I kissed the FA cup and held it up to the crowd

You’re beautiful because of a single buttercup in the top button hole of your
cardigan
I’m ugly because I said the world's strongest woman was a muscle man in a
dress

You’re beautiful because you couldn’t live in a lighthouse.
I’m ugly for making hand-shadows in front of the giant bulb,
So when they
look up,
The captains of vessels in distress see the ears of a rabbit, or a eye of a fox,
Or the legs of a galloping horse.

• To hear the poet read this poem out loud, click here.

• Click here to visit the author's website.

Wide oceans full of tears...

I pictured a rainbow
You held it in your hand
I had flashes
But you saw the plan
I wandered out in the world for years
While you just stayed in your room
I saw the crescent
You saw the whole of the moon

You were there in the turnstiles
With the wind at your heels
You stretched for the stars
And you know how it feels
To reach too high, too far too soon
You saw the whole of the moon

I was grounded
While you filled the skies
I was dumbfounded by truth
You cut through lies
I saw the rain dirty valley
You saw "Brigadoon"
I saw the crescent
You saw the whole of the moon

I spoke about wings
You just flew
I wondered, I guessed and I tried
You just knew
I sighed
And you swooned
I saw the crescent
You saw the whole of the moon

The torch in your pocket
And the wind on your heels
You climbed on the ladder
And you know how it feels
To get too high, too far, too soon
You saw the whole of the moon

Unicorns and cannonballs
Palaces and piers
Trumpets, towers, and tenaments
Wide oceans full of tears
Flags, rags, ferryboats
Scimitars and scarves
Every precious dream and vision
Underneath the stars

Yes, you climbed on the ladder
With the wind in your sails
You came like a comet
Blazing your trail
Too high, too far, too soon
You saw the whole of the moon.

This poem provides the lyrics for the 1985 song, 'The Whole of the Moon' by a band called The Waterboys, and is written by Mike Scott. You can listen to the song here.

I have chosen it because of the way in which the whole poem is built around constant juxtaposition (combining opposites). The narrator finds endlessly creative ways to compare himself with the far superior person to whom he is speaking...

Why bother with punctuation and capital letters?!

anyone lived in a pretty how town
(with up so floating many bells down)
spring summer autumn winter
he sang his didn't he danced his did

Women and men(both little and small)
cared for anyone not at all
they sowed their isn't they reaped their same
sun moon stars rain

children guessed(but only a few
and down they forgot as up they grew
autumn winter spring summer)
that noone loved him more by more

when by now and tree by leaf
she laughed his joy she cried his grief
bird by snow and stir by still
anyone's any was all to her

someones married their everyones
laughed their cryings and did their dance
(sleep wake hope and then)they
said their nevers they slept their dream

stars rain sun moon
(and only the snow can begin to explain
how children are apt to forget to remember
with up so floating many bells down)

one day anyone died i guess
(and noone stooped to kiss his face)
busy folk buried them side by side
little by little and was by was

all by all and deep by deep
and more by more they dream their sleep
noone and anyone earth by april
wish by spirit and if by yes.

Women and men(both dong and ding)
summer autumn winter spring
reaped their sowing and went their came
sun moon stars rain

by e. e. cummings

To read more poems by the miraculous e. e. cummings, click here.

To read about the poet himself, click here.

And to read some famous quotations by cummings, click here.

Poem of the Week: 'O Me! O Life!'

Anyone who has seen the Robin Williams film, Dead Poets Society, will have heard his character, Mr Keating, use this poem to try to inspire his students to 'seize the day' (the Latin phrase for which is carpe diem) and make the most of every second they have.

Walt Whitman was a prolific, American poet in 19th Century America, many of whose poems celebrated humankind and the potential for happiness and fulfilment in life. Although so much of literature gives an opposite message, it is hard not to be uplifted by Whitman's words. Yes, life is difficult; yes, the world is full of fools; yes, there are 101 reasons to be miserable. BUT...

So have a read, and then go and make something amazing of your life too...

O ME! O life!... of the questions of these recurring;
Of the endless trains of the faithless—of cities fill’d with the foolish;
Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)
Of eyes that vainly crave the light—of the objects mean—of the struggle ever renew’d;
Of the poor results of all—of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me;
Of the empty and useless years of the rest—with the rest me intertwined;
The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?

Answer.

That you are here—that life exists, and identity;
That the powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a verse.

Recommended Reading AND Poem of the Week: Love That Dog

A different idea altogether this week. A few year ago, we bought for the English department at GM, a set of copies of a new novel for teenagers called LOVE THAT DOG. I was captivated by it instantly, apart from anything else because it was SO original.

So there are TWO big reasons to recommend this to you. Firstly, it is fantastic - a blend of both POETRY and FICTION (hence the double blog entry this week). And secondly, don't worry about buying a copy or borrowing one from your library: all you have to do is ask Ms Chiwara very nicely if you can simply borrow one from our stock room at school! :)

This is how the author, Sharon Creech, describes the novel herself:

Love That Dog is the story of Jack, his dog, his teacher, and words. The story develops through Jack's responses to his teacher, Miss Stretchberry, over the course of a school year. At first, his responses are short and cranky: "I don't want to" and "I tried. Can't do it. Brain's empty." But as his teacher feeds him inspiration, Jack finds that he has a lot to say and he finds ways to say it.

Jack is both stubborn and warm-hearted, and he can be both serious and funny. Although he hates poetry at first, he begins to find poems that inspire him. All year long, he is trying to find a way to talk about his beloved dog, Sky, and the poems his teacher offers him eventually give him a way to do that.

Jack becomes especially fond of a poem by Walter Dean Myers titled "Love That Boy," and it is this poem that finally gives Jack a way to tell the whole story of his dog, Sky. In gratitude, Jack invites Walter Dean Myers to visit his class.

And here is an excerpt from the novel (which I found on her website, which you can visit HERE):

Jack

Room 105 -- Miss Stretchberry

September 13

I don't want to
because boys
don't write poetry.

Girls do.

September 21

I tried.
Can't do it.
Brain's empty.

September 27

I don't understand
the poem about
the red wheelbarrow
and the white chickens
and why so much
depends upon
them.

If that is a poem
about the red wheelbarrow
and the white chickens
then any words
can be a poem.
You've just got to
make
short
lines.

October 4

Do you promise
not to read it
out loud?
Do you promise
not to put it
on the board?

Okay, here it is,
but I don't like it.

So much depends
upon
a blue car
splattered with mud
speeding down the road.

October 10

What do you mean
Why does so much depend
upon
a blue car?

You didn't say before
that I had to tell why.

The wheelbarrow guy
didn't tell why.

October 17

What was up with
the snowy woods poem
you read today?

Why doesn't the person just
keep going if he's got
so many miles to go
before he sleeps?

And why do I have to tell more
about the blue car
splattered with mud
speeding down the road?

I don't want to
write about that blue car
that had miles to go
before it slept,
so many miles to go
in such a hurry.

October 24

I am sorry to say
I did not really understand
the tiger tiger burning bright poem
but at least it sounded good
in my ears.

Here is the blue car
with tiger sounds:

Blue car, blue car, shining bright
in the darkness of the night:
who could see you speeding by
like a comet in the sky?

I could see you in the night,
blue car, blue car, shining bright.
I could see you speeding by
like a comet in the sky.

Some of the tiger sounds
are still in my ears
like drums
beat-beat-beating.

October 31

Yes
you can put
the two blue-car poems
on the board
but only if
you don't put
my name
on them.

November 6

They look nice
typed up like that
on blue paper
on a yellow board.

(But still don't tell anyone
who wrote them, okay?)

(And what does anonymous mean?
Is it good?)

November 9

I don't have any pets
so I can't write about one
and especially
I can't write
a POEM
about one.

November 15

Yes, I used to have a pet.
I don't want to write about it.

You're going to ask me
Why not?
Right?

November 22

Pretend I still have that pet?

Can't I make up a pet'
a different one?
Like a tiger?
Or a hamster?
A goldfish?
Turtle?
Snail?
Worm?
Flea?

November 29

I liked those
small poems
we read today.

When they're small
like that
you can read
a whole bunch
in a short time
and then in your head
are all the pictures
of all the small things
from all the small poems.

I liked how the kitten leaped
in the cat poem
and how you could see
the long head of the horse
in the horse poem
and especially I liked the dog
in the dog poem
because that's just how
my yellow dog
used to lie down,
with his tongue all limp
and his chin
between
his paws
and how he'd sometimes
chomp at a fly
and then sleep
in his loose skin,
just like that poet,
Miss Valerie Worth,
says,
in her small
dog poem.

December 4

Why do you want
to type up what I wrote
about reading
the small poems?

It's not a poem.
Is it?

I guess you can

Poem of the Week: 'Into my heart on air that kills'

Recited at the end of Nicholas Roeg's 1971 film of the book, Walkabout, this poem by A. E. Housman is a beautiful meditation on memory and the past. I won't spoil it by writing much myself - suffice it to say, you can read into it what you like (like most literature). But I read it as a mourning of lost childhood, and the innocence that dies with the inevitable process of "growing up"...

INTO my heart on air that kills
From yon far country blows:
What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?

That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.

Poem of the Week: 'Refugee Blues'

This is a photo of the new Holocaust Memorial in Berlin, opened in 2005.

Another poem by W.H. Auden ('Night Mail' and 'Stop all the clocks...'). Auden was fascinated and appalled by Hitler's persecution of the Jews in the 1930s - so much so, in fact, that he married Jewish author Thomas Mann's daughter, Erika, only to ensure her escape from Nazi Germany.

In 1939 - the year of the start of World War Two and also the first Jewish ghettoes in Poland - he wrote this poem, the reflection of a Jew addressed to another one about the situation of all Jews in Europe. They are homeless, they are not accepted by anyone, they are persecuted, they are less considered than animals: the archetypal refugees...

Refugee Blues
by W. H. Auden

Say this city has ten million souls,
Some are living in mansions, some are living in holes:
Yet there's no place for us, my dear, yet there's no place for us.

Once we had a country and we thought it fair,
Look in the atlas and you'll find it there:
We cannot go there now, my dear, we cannot go there now.

In the village churchyard there grows an old yew,
Every spring it blossoms anew:
Old passports can't do that, my dear, old passports can't do that.

The consul banged the table and said,
"If you've got no passport you're officially dead":
But we are still alive, my dear, but we are still alive.

Went to a committee; they offered me a chair;
Asked me politely to return next year:
But where shall we go to-day, my dear, but where shall we go to-day?

Came to a public meeting; the speaker got up and said;
"If we let them in, they will steal our daily bread":
He was talking of you and me, my dear, he was talking of you and me.

Thought I heard the thunder rumbling in the sky;
It was Hitler over Europe, saying, "They must die":
O we were in his mind, my dear, O we were in his mind.

Saw a poodle in a jacket fastened with a pin,
Saw a door opened and a cat let in:
But they weren't German Jews, my dear, but they weren't German Jews.

Went down the harbour and stood upon the quay,
Saw the fish swimming as if they were free:
Only ten feet away, my dear, only ten feet away.

Walked through a wood, saw the birds in the trees;
They had no politicians and sang at their ease:
They weren't the human race, my dear, they weren't the human race.

Dreamed I saw a building with a thousand floors,
A thousand windows and a thousand doors:
Not one of them was ours, my dear, not one of them was ours.

Stood on a great plain in the falling snow;
Ten thousand soldiers marched to and fro:
Looking for you and me, my dear, looking for you and me.

Poem of the Week: 'Digging'

It is ST PATRICK'S DAY today, so I thought it would be appropriate to post a poem by an IRISH poet. The poems of Seamus Heaney, Dublin-based poet and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, appear on many a GCSE syllabus. In this poem, 'Digging', he shows how, as a child, he looked up to his elders - in this case both father and grandfather.

Seeing his father (now old) “straining” to dig “flowerbeds”, the poet recalls him in his prime, digging “potato drills”. And even earlier, he remembers his grandfather, digging peat. He cannot match “men like them” with a spade, but he sees that the pen is (for him) mightier, and with it he will dig into his past and celebrate them.

To listen to some interviews with the poet, click HERE.

To read more about his life and work, click HERE.

And to read from a GCSE study guide on his poetry, click HERE.

Meanwhile, here is the poem:

Digging
by Seamus Heaney

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; as snug as a gun.

Under my window a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look down

Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where he was digging.

The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

By God, the old man could handle a spade,
Just like his old man.

My grandfather could cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner's bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, digging down and down
For the good turf. Digging.

The cold smell of potato mold, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I've no spade to follow men like them.

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests. I'll dig with it.

Poem of the Week: 'The Second Coming'

Written in 1919, a year after the end of the catastrophic First World War, 'The Second Coming' is W.B. Yeats' attempt to question the state of the world as he saw it. Amid the apocalyptic climate of post-war Europe, where, in the words of Larkin, there would be "never such innocence" ever again, Yeats could no longer find comfort in the idea of a good, healing 'second coming', but started to wonder, instead, if any such event might well be a far more sinister and violent affair: no heroic Christ, but a hellish monster instead...

TURNING and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi*
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

* Spiritus Mundi: The phrase "spiritus mundi" (literally "spirit of the world") is a reference to Yeats' belief that each human mind is linked to a single vast intelligence, and that this intelligence causes certain universal symbols to appear in individual minds.

Poem of the Week: 'Not Waving But Drowning'

'Not Waving But Drowning' by Stevie Smith tells the short, dark, humorous story of a man whose thrashing - whilst drowning in the sea - is mistaken for waving by people on the shore. It is also clear that this is a metaphor for any situation in which a cry for help is misinterpreted or ignored by friends and family: people only see what they WANT to see.

For a hypertext annotated version of the poem (if you can bear the website's background!), click here.
Listen to the poet reading the poem at the Edinburgh Festival in 1965 here.
Click here for a biography of Florence Margaret 'Stevie' Smith.
And for a slightly happier poem by Smith, click here.

Not Waving But Drowning
by Stevie Smith

Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he's dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.

INTERNATIONAL WEEK: 'The Bull Moses': a poetry challenge...

Ted Hughes, one of the most important poets this country has ever produced (see my previous blog entry on his poem 'The Jaguar'), was OBSESSED with Ancient Egypt and the mythology that surrounded it. As you know, Hughes was also fascinated by nature and animals, and the following poem combines these two obsessions. Whilst, on the surface, it is a poem about a BULL, if you read more deeply, you can see it is also exploring the darker underbelly of egyptian mythology.

This is a VERY difficult poem, and you will need to read it LOTS of times before it starts to make sense. What a PERFECT opportunity to use the COMMENTS facility in this blog to discuss the poem between you, and work out what YOU think it is all about...

'The Bull Moses' by Ted Hughes

A hoist up and I could lean over
The upper edge of the high half-door,
My left foot ledged on the hinge, and look in at the byre’s
Blaze of darkness: a sudden shut-eyed look
Backward into the head.

Blackness is depth
Beyond star. But the warm weight of his breathing,
The ammoniac reek of his litter, the hotly-tongued
Mash of his cud, steamed against me.
Then, slowly, as onto the mind’s eye–
The brow like masonry, the deep-keeled neck:
Something come up there onto the brink of the gulf,
Hadn’t heard of the world, too deep in itself to be called to,
Stood in sleep. He would swing his muzzle at a fly
But the square of sky where I hung, shouting, waving,
Was nothing to him; nothing of our light
Fond any reflection in him.

Each dusk the farmer led him
Down to the pond to drink and smell the air,
And he took no pace but the farmer
Led him to take it, as if he knew nothing
Of the ages and continents of his fathers,
Shut, while he wombed, to a dark shed
And steps between his door and the duckpond;
The weight of the sun and the moon and the world hammered
To a ring of brass through his nostrils.

He would raise
His streaming muzzle and look out over the meadows,
But the grasses whispered nothing awake, the fetch
Of the distance drew nothing to momentum
In the locked black of his powers. He came strolling gently back,
Paused neither toward the pig-pens on his right,
Nor toward the cow-byres on his left: something
Deliberate in his leisure, some beheld the future
Founding in his quiet.

I kept the door wide,
Closed it after him and pushed the bolt.