The Shield of Achilles by WH Auden (Part 1)

She looked over his shoulder
For vines and olive trees,
Marble well-governed cities
And ships upon untamed seas,
But there on the shining metal
His hands had put instead
An artificial wilderness
And a sky like lead.

A plain without a feature, bare and brown,
No blade of grass, no sign of neighborhood,
Nothing to eat and nowhere to sit down,
Yet, congregated on its blankness, stood
An unintelligible multitude,
A million eyes, a million boots in line,
Without expression, waiting for a sign.

Out of the air a voice without a face
Proved by statistics that some cause was just
In tones as dry and level as the place:
No one was cheered and nothing was discussed;
Column by column in a cloud of dust
They marched away enduring a belief
Whose logic brought them, somewhere else, to grief.

Solitude - by today's guest poet

Alone I stand beside the chilling lakes,
Dressed in my Oxfam clothes,
With my old ash stick to support my aches,
Like a barbed wire fence held up with stakes,

Alone I stand all out of puff,
Thankful for pills and all that stuff.
For to be out here at eighty or more,
Beats all those years in the army and war.

Alone I stand in my woollen hat,
The mountain range hides the sun.
Without my glasses, I`m blind as a bat,
I`ve disturbed a rabbit, he`s on the run.

Alone I stand my back to the wind,
Thinking of times long gone,
Alas, I cannot stay too long,
Time`s getting on.

Written by David A Wooster. October 1984

Mike says

" I have you to thank for ever for changing my course
and road in life "

Nuff said.

Tim (Peru) says

" Butlers Bridge is bloody brilliant "

Nuff said.

The Railway Children

When we climbed the slopes of the cutting
We were eye level with the white cups
Of the telegraph poles and the sizzling wires

Like lovely freehand they curved for miles
East and miles west beyond us, sagging
Under their burden of swallows

We were small and thought we knew nothing
Worth knowing. We thought words travelled the wires
In the shiny pouches of raindrops.

Each one seeded full with the light
Of the sky, the gleam of the lines, and ourselves
So infinitesimally scaled

We could stream through the eye of a needle

(c) Seamus Heaney

Support your local

Poetry in Pubs now features in 4 locations

The Wendover Arms, High Wycombe

The Fox, Ibstone

The Stag, Flackwell Heath

The Golden Cross, Saunderton

Poetryinpubs ‘ raise your glass to the rime ’

READ the poetry next time you are there

or COME along to a LIVE Reading.

If you want your local featured in PoetryinPubs

or organise a LIVE reading

Call 07901 980 918