Deliverance

FinsburyParkCarrotsFinsburyParkCarrots Seattle, WA Posts: 12,223
edited December 2004 in Poetry, Prose, Music & Art
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.
Post edited by Unknown User on

Comments

  • FinsburyParkCarrotsFinsburyParkCarrots Seattle, WA Posts: 12,223
    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.
  • coleencoleen Posts: 938
    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. :)
  • FinsburyParkCarrotsFinsburyParkCarrots Seattle, WA Posts: 12,223
    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.
  • I like the word 'hoopla', not particullarly the meaning, but 'the word' in se.

    Therefore:


    hoopla


    :)
  • FinsburyParkCarrotsFinsburyParkCarrots Seattle, WA Posts: 12,223
    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.
  • AliAli Posts: 2,621
    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.
    A whisper and a thrill
    A whisper and a chill
    adv2005

    "Why do I bother?"
    The 11th Commandment.
    "Whatever"

    PETITION TO STOP THE BAN OF SMOKING IN BARS IN THE UNITED STATES....Anyone?
  • FinsburyParkCarrotsFinsburyParkCarrots Seattle, WA Posts: 12,223
    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. HaikuMs. Haiku Washington DC Posts: 7,275
    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
    There is no such thing as leftover pizza. There is now pizza and later pizza. - anonymous
    The risk I took was calculated, but man, am I bad at math - The Mincing Mockingbird
  • Ms. HaikuMs. Haiku Washington DC Posts: 7,275
    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
    There is no such thing as leftover pizza. There is now pizza and later pizza. - anonymous
    The risk I took was calculated, but man, am I bad at math - The Mincing Mockingbird
  • 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. HaikuMs. Haiku Washington DC Posts: 7,275
    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
    There is no such thing as leftover pizza. There is now pizza and later pizza. - anonymous
    The risk I took was calculated, but man, am I bad at math - The Mincing Mockingbird
  • ISNISN Posts: 1,700
    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......
    ....they're asking me to prove why I should be allowed to stay with my baby in Australia, because I'm mentally ill......and they think I should leave......
  • FinsburyParkCarrotsFinsburyParkCarrots Seattle, WA Posts: 12,223
    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.
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