Friday Poem: Love among the Roses

While weaving a garland
One fine day
I found that midst
The roses lay
The god of Love
I picked him up
And dipped him in
The wine-filled cup
I took and drank him;
Now he clings
Inside me, tickling
With his wings

by Julianus, Prefect of Eygpt (6th Century)

From  ‘Great Short Poems’, Ed. Dorothy Pollack, Dover Books.

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Friday poem: How like a winter

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 everywhere!

And yet this time remov’d was summer’s time,

The teeming autumn, big with rich increase,

Bearing the wanton burthen 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.

by William Shakespeare

After the Dance

We wade though the bright grass
Tired, footsore, happy
Hearing a bird calling by the reeds
Notes curling amongst themselves,
Spinning through the warm air
Distantly, traffic busies itself,
Here, tranquility reigns,
After a full night dancing,
We walk.

Copyright © 2016  Kim Whysall-Hammond

Friday Poem: The Taxi

When I go away from you
The world beats dead
Like a slackened drum.
I call out for you against the jutted stars
And shout into the ridges of the wind.
Streets coming fast,
One after the other,
Wedge you away from me,
And the lamps of the city prick my eyes
So that I can no longer see your face.
Why should I leave you,
To wound myself upon the sharp edges of the night?

by Amy Lowell, 1874 – 1925  

This is the first of a Friday series of poems selected from my poetry shelf

 

Because I Liked You by A.E. Housman

Because I liked you better
Than suits a man to say,
It irked you, and I promised
To throw the thought away.

To put the world between us
We parted, stiff and dry;
‘Good-bye,’ said you, ‘forget me.’
‘I will, no fear’, said I.

If here, where clover whitens
The dead man’s knoll, you pass,
And no tall flower to meet you
Starts in the trefoiled grass,

Halt by the headstone naming
The heart no longer stirred,
And say the lad that loved you
Was one that kept his word.

by A.E. Housman

Flower

I held a flower in my hand
Delicate, whole, perfect
A small world within itself
And, as we searched for a gate.
A stile, by which to leave the field,
I crushed it.

Copyright © 2018 Kim Whysall-Hammond

Photographs by Ivor Gurney

Lying in dug-outs, joking idly, wearily;

   Watching the candle guttering in the draught;

Hearing the great shells go high over us, eerily

   Singing; how often have I turned over, and laughed

With pity and pride, photographs of all colours,

   All sizes, subjects: khaki brothers in France;

Or mother’s faces worn with countless dolours;

   Or girls whose eyes were challenging and must dance,

Though in a picture only, a common cheap

   Ill-taken card; and children—frozen, some

(Babies) waiting on Dicky-bird to peep

   Out of the handkerchief that is his home

(But he’s so shy!). And some with bright looks, calling

   Delight across the miles of land and sea,

That not the dread of barrage suddenly falling

   Could quite blot out—not mud nor lethargy.

Smiles and triumphant careless laughter. O

   The pain of them, wide Earth’s most sacred things!

Lying in dug-outs, hearing the great shells slow

   Sailing mile-high, the heart mounts higher and sings.

But once—O why did he keep that bitter token

   Of a dead Love?—that boy, who, suddenly moved,

Showed me, his eyes wet, his low talk broken,

   A girl who better had not been beloved.

by Ivor Gurney

       one of my favourite poets.

Being English

Show no emotion, hold everything back
Say ’I think we need a bit of support’ when you are under fatal attack
Go about your business as the world falls apart
Hiding the fear deep in your heart
Delight in the odd, the strange and the weird
Live beside the newcomer, even if they are feared
Chicken Tikka Marsala is our national dish,
An island nation that rarely eats fish,
Throw flowers under a princesses hearse
Life may be difficult but it could always be worse
Marry the outsider, swallow them whole
Quiet, loving and different is the English soul

Copyright © 2015 Kim Whysall-Hammond

First blogged in 2015 and it seems a bit appropriate this week. I admit that both people in the photo not actually English….but its a great photo!

Recluse

People drain, push through
boundaries, demand attention.
Childhood reclused with book after book
reading to the exclusion of most else,
an interior life but for the
vibrancy of a sunset, the thrill
of abstraction in flowing water
and then, at seventeen,
the bright blue art of your eyes.
The world and you, my love, stimulate
refresh, make me whole
give me myself once more.

 

Copyright © 2018 Kim Whysall-Hammond

Coal

He told me of how coal can be split
to reveal the hoof prints of long buried deer
if you get the angle and the grain right

Of how, in the deepest mines
Darwin was proved each day
by the strike of a miners hammer

And how opening the coal opened him
drove him to library and Miners Institute
to learn, wonder and argue

His gentle voice, with its natural grace
led me into his world
to the child opening trap doors in constant dark

To the young man, passionate for justice
filled up with the joy of learning
all forged in dark coal.

Copyright © 2018 Kim Whysall-Hammond

For Wilfred Whysall, my paternal Grandfather (1909 – 1979), on his birthday.