Deliverance

FinsburyParkCarrots

O deliver me from park corners and would-be prophets
painting night Bosch city limited hellscapes with the spit
of their throat wobble; deliver me from crowds who would
kowtow to apocalypse drivel long after the fires have burned;
deliver me from hoopla, for I think it isn't history anymore
to be urgently straddling Auden's flood.

No, no, deliver me into love, the kiss under the single sheet:
If we'd stayed on our island our parks would open to roam
singing poems to silence, the greatest ear poets ever could know.

FinsburyParkCarrots

Next year I will speak clearly, that is, speak
clearly to myself. Bare birch boughs clutch
at silver air. The winter robin's beak
forages for berries in a hutch
of gnarling branches. They will call this warm
then say that I am cold. No more. Here, clear:
I will not humour them nor come to harm.
My fire's inside. I'll keep there, come next year.

coleen

FinsburyParkCarrots wrote:

No, no, deliver me into love, the kiss under the single sheet:
If we'd stayed on our island our parks would open to roam
singing poems to silence, the greatest ear poets ever could know.

amen and hallelujah (in a leonard cohen kind of way)

these lines are the closest thing to a religious experience that i have ever known.

FinsburyParkCarrots

There will be long red solstice light above
a road of cars, and faces will be gold
peering through a bright Decembered
dusk lit bough, through to dayblue moon,
the kiss bestirring deep green firsts of spring.

casper leblanc

I like the word 'hoopla', not particullarly the meaning, but 'the word' in se.

Therefore:


hoopla

FinsburyParkCarrots

The similarity of cobblestones to spuds
was always in his mind. Especially these ones,
ringed, holed, wear blighted, dust jacketed
like the book of a staple life. Ah, student life.

New ideas cloistered in medieval buildings.
Radicality in tweed, breath in a blighted skin
of ornate dust. He shovelled the trench in the quad
cursing the piebald faced masonic foreman

who'd ordered him to keep the cobblestones intact
as he scratched out the side of the trench, past
the first clog of black mud to a shallow of brick,
red peering. Head down in the black funk of the bog

at home he'd dug blighted furrows, and found slugs
as big as spuds, and spuds as slack as slugs,
one September in Roscommon, under birdwhirl.
Now he dug trenches in an English college grounds

for them to lay cables, he not able to wheel his barrow
over the hallowed green sanctioned for fellows,
sightless immortals stooping with rictus grins
like landowners when the best of the harvest's theirs.

Digging the shallows, he scratched at a bone of ants:
a stench of lime! A foul deed done before, here
in the shadows of staircases and clocks at ten to three.
The bones perhaps were his, and he was his ghost

digging his own ambition, the farmer's son in England,
grown weary and of age among September spuds,
ringed, holed, wear blighted, dust jacketed
like the book of a living death, of a staple life.

Ali

The kiss under the single sheet
sounds
intense enough to keep me reading.
I feel like a voyer.But all raeders are:):)
Yea Finns..a triumph.

FinsburyParkCarrots

Well, it's from Auden, you know, that phrase. He said people were too busy with their island lives and kissing under single sheets to note the impending flood of history. Well, we had the flood, and holocaust upon holocaust. History keeps happening. I don't really mean we should have stay in an island mentality while a historical flood threatens to overwhelm us, but I say that once one gets used to apocalyptic deluge after deluge, if you can find a dry spot to share with your loved ones, do it.

Ms. Haiku

FinsburyParkCarrots wrote:

O deliver me from park corners and would-be prophets
painting night Bosch city limited hellscapes with the spit
of their throat wobble; deliver me from crowds who would
kowtow to apocalypse drivel long after the fires have burned;
deliver me from hoopla, for I think it isn't history anymore
to be urgently straddling Auden's flood.

No, no, deliver me into love, the kiss under the single sheet:
If we'd stayed on our island our parks would open to roam
singing poems to silence, the greatest ear poets ever could know.

blinding sunshine on the corner
one more block

Ms. Haiku

FinsburyParkCarrots wrote:

There will be long red solstice light above
a road of cars, and faces will be gold
peering through a bright Decembered
dusk lit bough, through to dayblue moon,
the kiss bestirring deep green firsts of spring.

longest night
my niece is so tall, now

grooveamatic

FinsburyParkCarrots wrote:

Bare birch boughs clutch
at silver air. The winter robin's beak
forages for berries in a hutch
of gnarling branches.

there you go, right there. that's quite an impressive cluster of language. I am wowed.

Ms. Haiku

FinsburyParkCarrots wrote:

Next year I will speak clearly, that is, speak
clearly to myself. Bare birch boughs clutch
at silver air. The winter robin's beak
forages for berries in a hutch
of gnarling branches. They will call this warm
then say that I am cold. No more. Here, clear:
I will not humour them nor come to harm.
My fire's inside. I'll keep there, come next year.

Streets lit by windows
by carlights, by candles
New Years Eve

ISN

these poems are among the best I've read of yours Fins.....

this one

The similarity of cobblestones to spuds
was always in his mind. Especially these ones,
ringed, holed, wear blighted, dust jacketed
like the book of a staple life. Ah, student life.

New ideas cloistered in medieval buildings.
Radicality in tweed, breath in a blighted skin
of ornate dust. He shovelled the trench in the quad
cursing the piebald faced masonic foreman

who'd ordered him to keep the cobblestones intact
as he scratched out the side of the trench, past
the first clog of black mud to a shallow of brick,
red peering. Head down in the black funk of the bog

at home he'd dug blighted furrows, and found slugs
as big as spuds, and spuds as slack as slugs,
one September in Roscommon, under birdwhirl.
Now he dug trenches in an English college grounds

for them to lay cables, he not able to wheel his barrow
over the hallowed green sanctioned for fellows,
sightless immortals stooping with rictus grins
like landowners when the best of the harvest's theirs.

Digging the shallows, he scratched at a bone of ants:
a stench of lime! A foul deed done before, here
in the shadows of staircases and clocks at ten to three.
The bones perhaps were his, and he was his ghost

digging his own ambition, the farmer's son in England,
grown weary and of age among September spuds,
ringed, holed, wear blighted, dust jacketed
like the book of a living death, of a staple life.

....reminds me of Jude the Obscure....except you're no Jude (although you may be Obscure).....

I agree with Groovy that the cluster of language in that poem with the consonants etc.....is very crunchy.....it's like eating icecream with nuts.....crunchy......

FinsburyParkCarrots

ISN wrote:

....reminds me of Jude the Obscure....quote]

Yes! I see what you mean. New minds in old cloisters and the workman in the college environment. But no Sue Bridehead in this poem. Now I'm reading the poem in a different way!

Thanks, ISN.