The End and the Beginning After every war someone has to clean up. Things won’t straighten themselves up, after all. Someone has to push the rubble to the side of the road, so the corpse-filled wagons can pass. Someone has to get mired in scum and ashes, sofa springs, splintered glass, and bloody … Read more
A bike ride in the country. A conversation interrupted by a near accident and the shock of a racist chance encounter. The ride resumes only to be interrupted again by a moment of menace. And then something quite unexpected happens.. I love the way the poet just drops us into the middle of what seems like … Read more
Blackbirds are notorious for being able to mimic the sounds they hear as they hop about the celestial chimney pots of suburbia. Ice cream van jingles, phone ring tones, car alarms and ambulance sirens – they can do the lot. John Drinkwater – born in Leytonstone, London – writes about the song of the blackbird … Read more
Sleeping is one of the things cats do best. Which is lucky because it limits the number of minutes and hours in the day that the cat plugs into the socket and goes on a wired rampage of electric energy. Sleeping one of their better qualities and most advanced skills. Cats, it seems, do not suffer … Read more
Moonlight What time the meanest brick and stone Take on a beauty not their own, And past the flaw of builded wood Shines the intention whole and good, And all the little homes of man Rise to a dimmer, nobler span; When colour’s absence gives escape To the deeper spirit of the shape,– Then earth’s … Read more
Abandoned Farmhouse He was a big man, says the size of his shoes on a pile of broken dishes by the house; a tall man too, says the length of the bed in an upstairs room; and a good, God-fearing man, says the Bible with a broken back on the floor below the window, dusty … Read more
A Polished Performance Citizens of the polished capital Sigh for the towns up country, And their innocent simplicity. People in the towns up country Applaud the unpolished innocence Of the distant villages. Dwellers in the distant villages Speak of a simple unspoilt girl, Living alone, deep in the bush. Deep in the bush we found … Read more
Love and taxes, grief and loss. This can be a tough time of year. Read Laura Kasischke’s wonderful poem and put your personal concerns aside. Understand there are atomic stockpiles to pay for so get your taxes done. April That was the year in which we had to pay the tax on love, which was grief, … Read more
A Facebook friend wanted some crowd-sourcing help for a piece she was editing. Her query asked readers to end the sentence “When you think of lard …?” My answer was: “When I think of lard I think of Wiltshire lardy cake. Delicious. I also think of my mother – 75 years a vegetarian – who … Read more
The Journey by Mary Oliver One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice– though the whole house began to tremble and you felt the old tug at your ankles. ‘Mend my life!’ each voice cried. But you didn’t stop. You knew … Read more
This poem is for anyone who has ever sat through a Shakespeare play and found it too long. Purgatory by Maxine Kumin And suppose the darlings get to Mantua, suppose they cheat the crypt, what next? Begin with him, unshaven. Though not, I grant you, a displeasing cockerel, there’s egg yolk on his chin. His … Read more
Subway Rush Hour by Langston Hughes Mingled breath and smell so close mingled black and white so near no room for fear. Hughes published Subway Rush Hour in 1951 part of “Montage of a Dream Deferred”. In “My Early Days in Harlem” 1963 he wrote of his arrival Harlem as a young man from the mid-West. … Read more
The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command. His heart sank as he thought of the enormous power arrayed against him, the ease with which any Party intellectual would overthrow him in debate, the subtle arguments which he would not be able to … Read more
Coming by Philip Larkin On longer evenings, Light, chill and yellow, Bathes the serene Foreheads of houses. A thrush sings, Laurel-surrounded In the deep bare garden, Its fresh-peeled voice Astonishing the brickwork. It will be spring soon, It will be spring soon— And I, whose childhood Is a forgotten boredom, Feel like a child Who … Read more
“Fool and scoundrel guide the State.” That’s true enough. In the early 1930’s when this was written speeding traffic on a Californian freeway was still something new and probably pretty scary to many. Just as the rise of fascism was to those who could see it. Before Disaster by Yvor Winters Evening traffic homeward burns … Read more