Poetry

[Pedrito]

Had a thread on the old site. I'm a total novice when it comes to poetry but if anything the school system at least gave me a love and appreciation for the form.


Thought this was something else..throw up any you might think are good.



"Postscript" by Seamus Heaney

And some time make the time to drive out west
Into County Clare, along the Flaggy Shore,
In September or October, when the wind
And the light are working off each other
So that the ocean on one side is wild
With foam and glitter, and inland among stones
The surface of a slate-grey lake is lit
By the earthed lightning of a flock of swans,
Their feathers roughed and ruffling, white on white,
Their fully grown headstrong-looking heads
Tucked or cresting or busy underwater.
Useless to think you'll park and capture it
More thoroughly. You are neither here nor there,
A hurry through which known and strange things pass
As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways
And catch the heart off guard and blow it open.

[Bigmac]

Quite like this by Baudelaire, I can thank Peste Noire for bringing it to my attention. There's a few translations, but I like this one:

Spleen

When the low, heavy sky weighs like a lid
On the groaning spirit, victim of long ennui,
And from the all-encircling horizon
Spreads over us a day gloomier than the night;

When the earth is changed into a humid dungeon,
In which Hope like a bat
Goes beating the walls with her timid wings
And knocking her head against the rotten ceiling;

When the rain stretching out its endless train
Imitates the bars of a vast prison
And a silent horde of loathsome spiders
Comes to spin their webs in the depths of our brains,

All at once the bells leap with rage
And hurl a frightful roar at heaven,
Even as wandering spirits with no country
Burst into a stubborn, whimpering cry.

— And without drums or music, long hearses
Pass by slowly in my soul; Hope, vanquished,
Weeps, and atrocious, despotic Anguish
On my bowed skull plants her black flag.

[Eoin McLove]

I've never read Baudelaire but that is fantastic.

[Ducky]

The whole lot of John O'Donohue's "Benedictus" is fucking amazing.

[Scáthach]

Morbid pre-teen that I was, I loved Emily Dickinson. "I felt a funeral in my brain..." What an opening line. I have the Norton Anthology of Poetry, and it's the gift that keeps giving, it's enormous.
Like Pedrito, poetry really stuck with me from school. Although studying Kavanagh's "Stony Grey Soil" felt like pulling teeth, I never want to set eyes on that poem again.

[Pedrito]

The poet that attracted me the most in school was Austin Clarke. It probably fits in with my love of the LOTR, Led Zeppelin and smoking the wacky backy back in the day. A beautiful ode to the pagan past..

The Blackbird Of Derrycairn by Austin Clarke

Stop, stop and listen for the bough top
Is whistling, and the sun is brighter
Than God's own shadow in the cup now!
Forget the hour-bell. Mournful matins
Will sound, Patric, as well at nightfall.

Faintly through mist of broken water
Fionn heard my melody in Norway.
He found the forest track, he brought back
This beak to gild the branch and tell, there,
Why men must welcome in the daylight.

He loved the breeze that warns the black grouse,
The shouts of gillies in the morning
When packs are counted and the swans cloud
Loch Erne, but more than all those voices
My throat rejoicing from the hawthorn.

In little cells behind a cashel,
Patric, no handbell gives a glad sound.
But knowledge is found among the branches.
Listen! That song that shakes my feathers
Will thong the leather of your satchels.

[Pedrito]

More romantic poet-warrior epicness here. Currently listening to and reading loads of Joseph Campbell and he constantly references the Ulster Cycle and The Fiannaíocht and all the wondeful mythology we have.

"The Hosting of the Sidhe" by W. B. Yeats
R.T. Smith

The host is riding from Knocknarea
And over the grave of Clooth-na-Bare;
Caoilte tossing his burning hair,
And Niamh calling Away, come away:
Empty your heart of its mortal dream.
The winds awaken, the leaves whirl round,
Our cheeks are pale, our hair is unbound,
Our breasts are heaving, our eyes are agleam,
Our arms are waving, our lips are apart;
And if any gaze on our rushing band,
We come between him and the deed of his hand,
We come between him and the hope of his heart.
The host is rushing 'twixt night and day,
And where is there hope or deed as fair?
Caoilte tossing his burning hair,
And Niamh calling Away, come away.

[Eoin McLove]

The poet that attracted me the most in school was Austin Clarke. It probably fits in with my love of the LOTR, Led Zeppelin and smoking the wacky backy back in the day. A beautiful ode to the pagan past..

The Blackbird Of Derrycairn by Austin Clarke

Stop, stop and listen for the bough top
Is whistling, and the sun is brighter
Than God's own shadow in the cup now!
Forget the hour-bell. Mournful matins
Will sound, Patric, as well at nightfall.

Faintly through mist of broken water
Fionn heard my melody in Norway.
He found the forest track, he brought back
This beak to gild the branch and tell, there,
Why men must welcome in the daylight.

He loved the breeze that warns the black grouse,
The shouts of gillies in the morning
When packs are counted and the swans cloud
Loch Erne, but more than all those voices
My throat rejoicing from the hawthorn.

In little cells behind a cashel,
Patric, no handbell gives a glad sound.
But knowledge is found among the branches.
Listen! That song that shakes my feathers
Will thong the leather of your satchels.

Haven't read that since I was in school 20+ years ago but I still remember it!