A Little Piece of Poetry in your Frame

First of all some people said I should READ THEM OUT ALOUD,
so I did. Some people said i should PUBLISH A BOOK , so I will.

How come I never get these ideas?
Anyway, next few gigs coming up in September and October
The Poetry Cafe is 35 poets, 5 mins each, and the best survive?

You better be there!

Anyway here is an opportunity to take home a PRINT of your favourite poem, complete with the original 1950 B&W photo to hang up er...in your bog?
(SEE PDF above right)

and u can say " I know this bloke" (bit difficult if you are in the bog on your own..)
email me at mervyn_cooke@hotmail.com with:

1. The Poem you want
2. The B&W photo you want (e.g. 1. We were kings, 2. And I awake, 3. And we were boys)
3. Size A4 or A5
4. Your address and billing details

(Cost GBP7.50 + P&P)

Ted Hughes - Last Load

Baled hay out in a field
Five miles from home. Barometer falling.
A muffler of still cloud padding the stillness
The day after day of blue scorch up to yesterday
The heavens of dazzling iron, that seemed unalterable
Hard now to remember.

Now, tractor bounding along lanes, among echoes
The trailer bouncing, all its iron shouting
Under sag heavy leaves
That seem ready to drip with stillness
Cheek in the air alert for the first speck.

You feel sure the rain's already started
But for the tractor's din you'd hear it hushing
In all the leaves. But still not one drop
On your face or arm. You cant believe it.
The hoicking bales, as if at a contest. Leaping
On and off the tractor as at a rodeo.

Hurling the bales higher. The loader on top
Dodging like a monkey. The fifth layer full
Then a tettering sixth. Then for a seventh
A row down the middle. And if a bale topples
You feel you've lost those seconds forever
Then roping it all tight, like a hard loaf.

Then fast as you dare, watching the sky
And watching the load, and feeling the air darken
With wet electricity
The load foaming through leaves, and wallowing
Like a tug-boat meeting the open sea
The tractor's front wheels rearing up, as you race
And pawing the air. Then all hands
Pitching the bales off, under a roof
Anyhow, then back for the last load.

And now as you dash through the green light
You see between dark trees
On all the little emerald hills
The desperate loading, under the blue cloud

Your sweat tracks through your dust, your shirt flaps chill
And bales multiply out of each other
And down the shorn field ahead
The faster you fling them up, the more there are of them
Till suddendly the field's grey empty. It's finished

And a tobacco reek breaks in your nostrils
As the rain begins
Softly and vertically silver, the whole sky softly
Falling into the stubble all round you

The trees shake out their masses, joyful
Drinking the downpour
The hills pearled, the whole distance drinking
And the earth-smell warm and thick as smoke

And you go, and over the whole land
Like singing heard across evening water
The tall loads are swaying towards their barns
Down the deep lanes

© Ted Hughes 1975

The Outside Toilet

Autumn’s last children lay in the corner
Bereft of branch and blown off life
To lie here dry and dead
In this shed behind the midden by the byre

No path no light but hope for a shite
The hurricane lamp drunkingly dancing the night
Stumbling past slumbering henhouses all in a row
Its straw snug citizens pecking warm-wormed dreams

The wind carved bush, finger to the sea
“ That way young man “
The cold clutch of the mil-dewed, white-washed walls
Clamouring, clamouring, “Come in Come in”

Stout latch wind-shut,
cold throne sat,
sharp paper safe
Safe amid the wild wild world

© 2009 Mervyn Cooke

Festivals 2 July and 9 -10 July

Wycombe Community Day the Rye - 12 - 6 pm 2 July - hear O Derry Boy Live

Penn Festival -  12 - 9 pm  9 - 10 July - Acoustic stage hosted by O Derry Boy

Support your local community- support local festivals  - support others.


 

You gotta do what you gotta do

..it should be the sacred and sworn duty of everyone, once at least during lifetime, to do something..to do something everyday were it ever so minute, to reflect that another human being at a distance of 10,000 years from today enjoy one hours more life , in the sense of fulness in consequence of anything I had done in my little span, would be to me a peace of soul


The Story of My Heart - Richard Jeffries.

The Tollund Man

The Tollund Man by Seamus Heaney

I

Some day I will go to Aarhus

To see his peat-brown head,

The mild pods of his eye-lids,

His pointed skin cap.

In the flat country near by

Where they dug him out,

His last gruel of winter seeds

Caked in his stomach,

Naked except for

The cap, noose and girdle,

I will stand a long time.

Bridegroom to the goddess,

She tightened her torc on him

And opened her fen,

Those dark juices working

Him to a saint's kept body,

Trove of the turfcutters'

Honeycombed workings.

Now his stained face

Reposes at Aarhus.

II

I could risk blasphemy,

Consecrate the cauldron bog

Our holy ground and pray

Him to make germinate

The scattered, ambushed

Flesh of labourers,

Stockinged corpses

Laid out in the farmyards,

Tell-tale skin and teeth

Flecking the sleepers

Of four young brothers, trailed

For miles along the lines.

III

Something of his sad freedom

As he rode the tumbril

Should come to me, driving,

Saying the names

Tollund, Grauballe, Nebelgard,

Watching the pointing hands

Of country people,

Not knowing their tongue.

Out here in Jutland

In the old man-killing parishes

I will feel lost,

Unhappy and at home.

MossBawn Sunlight - another Heaney Classic

There was a sunlit absence.
The helmeted pump in the yard
heated its iron,
water honeyed

in the slung bucket
and the sun stood
like a griddle cooling
against the wall

of each long afternoon.
So, her hands scuffled
over the bakeboard,
the reddening stove

sent its plaque of heat
against her where she stood
in a floury apron
by the window.

Now she dusts the board
with a goose's wing,
now sits, broad-lapped,
with whitened nails

and measling shins:
here is a space
again, the scone rising
to the tick of two clocks.

And here is love
like a tinsmith's scoop
sunk past its gleam
in the meal-bin.

© Seamus Heaney 1975