Ersatz TLS discussion

Last week I ventured with Gerard Manley Hopkins Spring and Fall. This week is rather different but it has been haunting me all week, so much so that I have returned to it several times. I give you Snakeby DH Lawrence. The man and the snake are confronting each other in a kind of macho competition, or are they? Is it only the man who feels like this, does the snake simply want a drink? Shades of small boys being cruel to tiny creatures, initiation rites, prove ones manhood, I don’t know.
Here’s the poem. Which poem would you have chosen? Has one haunted you this week?

Snake
BY D. H. LAWRENCE
A snake came to my water-trough
On a hot, hot day, and I in pyjamas for the heat,
To drink there.
 
In the deep, strange-scented shade of the great dark carob tree
I came down the steps with my pitcher
And must wait, must stand and wait, for there he was at the trough
            before me.
 
He reached down from a fissure in the earth-wall in the gloom
And trailed his yellow-brown slackness soft-bellied down, over
            the edge of the stone trough
And rested his throat upon the stone bottom,
And where the water had dripped from the tap, in a small clearness,
He sipped with his straight mouth,
Softly drank through his straight gums, into his slack long body,
Silently.
 
Someone was before me at my water-trough,
And I, like a second-comer, waiting.
 
He lifted his head from his drinking, as cattle do,
And looked at me vaguely, as drinking cattle do,
And flickered his two-forked tongue from his lips, and mused
             a moment,
And stooped and drank a little more,
Being earth-brown, earth-golden from the burning bowels
            of the earth
On the day of Sicilian July, with Etna smoking.
 
The voice of my education said to me
He must be killed,
For in Sicily the black, black snakes are innocent, the gold
            are venomous.
 
And voices in me said, If you were a man
You would take a stick and break him now, and finish him off.
 
But must I confess how I liked him,
How glad I was he had come like a guest in quiet, to drink
            at my water-trough
And depart peaceful, pacified, and thankless,
Into the burning bowels of this earth?
 
Was it cowardice, that I dared not kill him?
Was it perversity, that I longed to talk to him?
Was it humility, to feel so honoured?
I felt so honoured.
 
And yet those voices:
If you were not afraid, you would kill him!
 
And truly I was afraid, I was most afraid,
But even so, honoured still more
That he should seek my hospitality
From out the dark door of the secret earth.
 
He drank enough
And lifted his head, dreamily, as one who has drunken,
And flickered his tongue like a forked night on the air, so black,
Seeming to lick his lips,
And looked around like a god, unseeing, into the air,
And slowly turned his head,
And slowly, very slowly, as if thrice adream,
Proceeded to draw his slow length curving round
And climb again the broken bank of my wall-face.
 
And as he put his head into that dreadful hole,
And as he slowly drew up, snake-easing his shoulders,
            and entered farther,
A sort of horror, a sort of protest against his withdrawing into
            that horrid black hole,
Deliberately going into the blackness, and slowly drawing
            himself after,
Overcame me now his back was turned.
 
I looked round, I put down my pitcher,
I picked up a clumsy log
And threw it at the water-trough with a clatter.
 
I think it did not hit him,
But suddenly that part of him that was left behind convulsed
            in an undignified haste,
Writhed like lightning, and was gone
Into the black hole, the earth-lipped fissure in the wall-front,
At which, in the intense still noon, I stared with fascination.
 
And immediately I regretted it.
I thought how paltry, how vulgar, what a mean act!
I despised myself and the voices of my accursed human education.
 
And I thought of the albatross,
And I wished he would come back, my snake.
 
For he seemed to me again like a king,
Like a king in exile, uncrowned in the underworld,
Now due to be crowned again.
 
And so, I missed my chance with one of the lords
Of life.
And I have something to expiate:
A pettiness.
 
                                                                                                    
 
 

CCCubbon (1) wrote: "Last week I ventured with Gerard Manley Hopkins Spring and Fall. This week is rather different but it has been haunting me all week, so much so that I have returned to it several times. I give you ..."

Now there's a coincidence! I remember my Grade 6 teacher, the beautiful Miss Stannard, reading this to us.

CCCubbon wrote: "Which poem would you have chosen? Has one haunted you this week?"

Hello CCC, I like this thread.

This week, various lines, especially "Time was away and somewhere else" from Louis MacNeice's poem "Meeting Point" have been running through my head. (Complete poem here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem...)

Inspired by "Poem of the Week" over at the Guardian, I have also been thinking of the poem "Transparent" by Marion Poschmann quite often.
You can find the poem here: https://www.poetryinternational.org/p...

I also found this ...er... booklover's poem recently. Hope it's o.k. to post it here:

Before Sherratt & Hughes Became Waterstone's

Romantic entanglements often occur
In a pub or a railway station,
But being a writer I tend to prefer
A suitably bookish location.

[...]

Most people prefer a luxurious setting -
A Mediterranean cruise,
But to my mind, the place most conducive to petting
Is the ground floor of Sherratt & Hughes.

All it takes is one glimpse of a gold-lettered spine
On those lovingly organised shelves
And a human encounter seems almost divine -
Not just sex, but a merging of selves.

I have never been someone who strictly adheres
To what's proper - I do as I choose.
(I go down very well with the male cashiers
On the ground floor of Sherratt & Hughes.)

Sophie Hannah, in "The Hero and the Girl Next Door" (for complete text, see: https://writingatawhim.blogspot.com/2...)
Copyright Sophie Hannah, 1995, 2012

Shelflife_wasBooklooker wrote: "I also found this ...er... booklover's poem recently. Hope it's o.k. to post it here:

Before Sherratt & Hughes Became Waterstone's"

😄

In Good Hands


Wherever night falls
The earth is always
There to catch it.

Roger McGough

Copyright Roger McGough 2005
from The State of Poetry by Roger McGough
Penguin Books

Hi all,

I'm very happy to see this new topic added. Just a word of caution:

I need to do more research on this subject, so this is just a heads-up at the moment: posting a poem in its entirety could be a copyright violation. I'm checking in with GR moderator help for more details; in the meantime, I'd suggest you add copyright information to your post when available. I'd hate to see this thread or individual posts shut down or deleted, so let's just be aware, ok?

Ah, Shelflife, I was hoping that you would find your way here. I thought that poetry became rather lost in the general 'what are you reading..'
That Transparent poem has had me going back to it several times already, it feels very lost and sad - melancholy. I have a file where I keep ones that I want to read again and again and that ones going in there. Yes it made me think again of the Islamic garden from PotW with the four pathways
The poem about the poetry section made me laugh. Love the rhyming and 'I have never been someone who strictly adheres
To what's proper ....

Lljones wrote: "Hi all,

I'm very happy to see this new topic added... posting a poem in its entirety could be a copyright violation..."

Ah, good point! We are of course on a public forum, so have to be careful.

I am not a poetry reader as such. But there are some poets I fell in love with at first sight.

Mascha Kaleko is one of them. The daughter of Galician Jews who just scraped by she was one of the few, if not the only, female poet(s) in Weimar Berlin who achieved a degree of fame. She emigrated to New York and later to Jerusalem. She didn't feel at home in either place. All the poems she ever wrote she wrote in German.

Why do I feel I have to bang the drum for her? Because I think she is so undervalued. Her early works are funny, playful, joyous, her late ones are suffused with grieve. All of them are so intensely personal. And there is always, even in her darkest times, a spark of self-depreciation, a glimmer of hope.

Epitaph auf die Verfasserin

Hier liegt M. K., umrauscht von einer Linde
Ihr 'letzter Wunsch': dass jeglicher was finde.
- der Wandrer: Schatten, und der Erdwurm: Futter.
Ihr Lebenslauf: Kind, Weib, Geliebte, Mutter.
Poet dazu. In Mussestunden: Denker.
An Leib gesund. An Seele sichtlich kränker.
Als sie verschied, verhältnismässig jung,
Glaubte sie fest an Seelenwanderung
- Das erste Dasein ist die Skizze nur.
Nun kommt die Reinschrift und die Korrektur. -
Sie hatte wenig, aber treue Feinde.
Das gleiche, wörtlich, gilt für ihre Freunde.
- Das letzte Wort behaltend, bis ans Ende,
Schrieb sie die Grabschrift selber. Das spricht Bände.

Epitaph written by the author:

Here rests M. K., under a rustling linden tree
Her 'last wish': that all might find something here.
- the wanderer: shadow, and the earthworm: food.
Her life: child, wife, lover, mother.
Poet as well. In idle hours: thinker.
Her body was sound. Much more so than her soul.
When she passed away, relatively young,
She did believe in transmigration.
The first existence not more than a sketch.
that would be amended, made whole in the next.
Her foes were few, but they were constant.
Exactly the same you could say about her friends.
- Having the last word to the end
She wrote her epitaph herself. That says it all.


(My own, no doubt clumsy, translation)

@CCC, Pale Fires, Gpfr: So glad you enjoyed the poem, too! After someone was nipple-averse (...) on TL&S, you never know. I, too, hope reen will find and enjoy it, PaleFires.

@Gpfr: This is a poem with beautiful and deceptively simple imagery. Thanks!

@CCC:I know what you mean about the rereading. Glad "Transparent" is one of these poems for you, too. I encountered it a while ago and then remembered it when nonesuch (nosuchzone) taught us about Nush. And then I remembered it again when it came to the garden of Eden. I hope I will be able to write a bit more on it over at PotW later, too.

@LJones: Thanks for finding out for us, Lisa, and for pointing this out. I have taken out some stanzas, added the copyright and a link to the blog where the poem has been published in full (not by the author herself). Will be waiting for your update and make more changes if necesssary.

@Georg: I am so glad you give a shout out for Mascha Kaléko. She deserves it. And that is not a bad translation!

Here, as we are approaching the shortest day, is the beginning of John Donne's

A Nocturnall Upon S.Lucies Day

'Tis the yeares midnight, and it is the dayes,
Lucies, who scarce seaven houres herself unmaskes,
The Sunne is spent, and now his flasks
Send forth light squibs, no constant rayes;
The worlds whole sap is sunke
...

Interesting article in The Guardian about a manuscript containing 131 of John Donne's poems, as well as poems by some other authors, which has been acquired by the British Library. It will be available online from tomorrow.

“It’s a manuscript of considerable literary importance, a new substantial work of Donne’s poetry that has not yet been studied... Virtually no poetry in Donne’s hand survives. That’s why these manuscript copies are so important. It offers evidence as to how Donne’s poetry was written, copied and circulated, as well as helping to further shape our understanding of his audiences and patrons.”

https://www.theguardian.com/books/202...

Re: Copyright

I've heard back from the moderator's group:

You have no responsibility as a group moderator to police IP [intellectual property]. That’s for paid GR personnel to police. Everything on this site is theirs to monitor. If a copyright owner objects, she can avail herself of the process described in Section 7 of the Terms to request a comment be deleted because she asserts that it’s posting infringes her copyrighted work. But again this is a platform concern and not the concern of an individual user or moderator.

So. I'd just ask that we include copyright info when available, as a courtesy to currently-publishing poets and authors.

Lljones wrote: "Re: Copyright

I've heard back from the moderator's group:

You have no responsibility as a group moderator to police IP [intellectual property]. That’s for paid GR personnel to police. Everything..."

And also to note that brief excerpts are allowable in general. Writers rarely object to a little publicity!

Georg wrote: "I am not a poetry reader as such. But there are some poets I fell in love with at first sight.

Mascha Kaleko is one of them. The daughter of Galician Jews who just scraped by she was one of the fe..."

Sorry, forgot to add: The only translation of Mascha Kaleko's poems I found (bilingual):

https://www.amazon.de/Mascha-Poems-Ka...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mascha_...

Shelflife_wasBooklooker wrote: I am so glad you give a shout out for Mascha Kaléko. She deserves it. And that is not a bad translation!

Thanks, booklooker

Somehow I had no doubt regarding you and Mascha... :-)

If I ever feel priviledged for being German it is when it comes to poetry.
I can read English poetry, yet nobody who doesn't speak German can read Kaleko, Morgenstern, Ringelnatz... And so many more, pre-20th century...
A completely idiotic pov, I know: nobody can miss something they are not aware of, after all. Still....

Shelflife_wasBooklooker wrote: "CCCubbon wrote: "Which poem would you have chosen? Has one haunted you this week?"

Hello CCC, I like this thread.

This week, various lines, especially "Time was away and somewhere else" from [au..."


Hello booklover, my favourite of MacNeice's poems is The Sunlight on the Garden, which I think you'd like too if you're not already familiar with it.

As for Sophie Hannah's poem, god be with the days when one might have contemplated sex in the poetry section. You'll find me now in the "Don't fucking touch me, I've having a hot flush" section... ha. Hope all well. I've been very busy, so not keeping up to date with recent Ersatz developments but keeping you all in my orbital thoughts!

Reen wrote: "Shelflife_wasBooklooker wrote: "CCCubbon wrote: "Which poem would you have chosen? Has one haunted you this week?"

Hello CCC, I like this thread.

This week, various lines, especially "Time was a..."

Reen, good to see you - someone was missing you on the "What are you Reading" thread.

Hello, giveusaclue... thanks. I've been sidetracked and having nothing much to bring to the party these past few weeks. Missed; I must check it out. I hope I haven't missed the introduction of 74 new protocols and rules of engagement in my absence, ha!

Reen wrote: "Hello, giveusaclue... thanks. I've been sidetracked and having nothing much to bring to the party these past few weeks. Missed; I must check it out. I hope I haven't missed the introduction of 74 n..."


Don't worry, no new rules. 🤣

I had my latest injection and have little sight for the moment, faint foggy blur which will, I hope gradually clear. Sat and typed this large on my tablet this morning, Hope fog clears soon.. as we drove back from the hospital the fog was coming down over the fields like an eiderdown and I thought about the old word, counterpane....

The fog licks the house
And spreads its counterpane
Damp grey over the fields
I weep for the lost images
And my eyes hurt filled
Heavy as the fog that hides
I weep for the lost images
For my eyes that cannot see.

I have been feeling very sad at the loss of some friends and turned to my anthology to find some solace, finding again this old one by Robert Herrick (1591-1674). We will all be familiar with the beginning but I had forgotten that it is in fact addressed to a virgin. Myself I feel that it has relevance for us all, not putting things off for too long.
As this is Thursday maybe someone can find us a Friday poem, please.

To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time

BY ROBERT HERRICK

Gather ye rose-buds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying;
And this same flower that smiles today
Tomorrow will be dying.

The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,
The higher he’s a-getting,
The sooner will his race be run,
And nearer he’s to setting.

That age is best which is the first,
When youth and blood are warmer;
But being spent, the worse, and worst
Times still succeed the former.

Then be not coy, but use your time,
And while ye may, go marry;
For having lost but once your prime,
You may forever tarry.

Source: The Norton Anthology of Poetry Third Edition (1983)

CCCubbon wrote: "I have been feeling very sad at the loss of some friends and turned to my anthology to find some solace"

Really sorry to hear about your loss CCC. I hope that poetry keeps bringing you some respite (and that your eyes improve too following the injection)...

Thank you glad. It is always hard losing friends.
Foggy eyes clearing now, couldn’t see MrC’s face, very strange.

A Friday poem:
An Appointment by W.B. Yeats

Being out of heart with government
I took a broken root to fling
Where the proud wayward squirrel went,
Taking delight that he could spring;
And he, with that low whinnying sound
That is like laughter, sprang again
And so to the other tree at a bound.
Nor the tame will, nor timid brain,
Nor heavy knitting of the brow
Bred that fierce tooth and cleanly limb
And threw him up to laugh on the bough;
No government appointed him.

Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats Macmillan, 1967

I've been spending quite a lot of time watching the red squirrels in the nearby cemetery - and there are plenty of reasons for dissatisfaction with our governments...

How very apt, Gpfr. Sad no red squirrels around here. Have you noticed how many people dye their hair red squirrel colour?

Here’s one of my favourite Yeats, love the rhythm of it

THE WHITE BIRDS

by: W.B. Yeats

WOULD that we were, my beloved, white birds on the foam of the sea!
We tire of the flame of the meteor, before it can fade and flee;
And the flame of the blue star of twilight, hung low on the rim of the sky,
Has awakened in our hearts, my beloved, a sadness that may not die.

A weariness comes from those dreamers, dew-dabbled, the lily and rose;
Ah, dream not of them, my beloved, the flame of the meteor that goes,
Or the flame of the blue star that lingers hung low in the fall of the dew:
For I would we were changed to white birds on the wandering foam: I and you!

I am haunted by numberless islands, and many a Danaan shore,
Where Time would surely forget us, and Sorrow come near us no more;
Soon far from the rose and the lily, and fret of the flames would we be,
Were we only white birds, my beloved, buoyed out on the foam of the sea!


'The White Birds' is reprinted from An Anthology of Modern Verse. Ed. A. Methuen. London: Methuen & Co., 1921.

CCCubbon wrote: "Here’s one of my favourite Yeats, love the rhythm of it

THE WHITE BIRDS
..."

Yes, that's lovely.

@Gpfr: Thank you so much for pointing us to Donne and St Lucy's Day! A palpable hit (for me).

@Georg:"nobody can miss something they are not aware of, after all."
That's true, Georg. We are privileged in getting the odd glimpse of all sorts of other languages and literatures here!

@reen:Hello booklover, my favourite of MacNeice's poems is "The Sunlight on the Garden", which I think you'd like too if you're not already familiar with it.
I love it, reen, thank you so much. I had not read it for a long, long, time.
@CCC: Would that not be an appropriate Sunday poem?

@CCC: I, too, am very sorry you lost someone. I hope you will keep finding solace in poetry and your keen and inquiring mind (which I think a very good trait). I hope your eyes will keep clearing.

Sunlight in the Garden
by Louis MacNeice
The sunlight on the garden
Hardens and grows cold,
We cannot cage the minute
Within its nets of gold;
When all is told
We cannot beg for pardon.

Our freedom as freelances
Advances towards its end;
The earth compels, upon it
Sonnets and birds descend;
And soon, my friend,
We shall have no time for dances.

The sky was good for flying
Defying the church bells
And every evil iron
Siren and what it tells:
The earth compels,
We are dying, Egypt, dying.

And not expecting pardon,
Hardened in heart anew,
But glad to have sat under
Thunder and rain with you,
And grateful too
For sunlight on the garden.


Faber and Faber Collected Poems

I wasn’t familiar with this poem but it is rather lovely reminding me of stolen moments sitting in the garden so thought I would post it here. My mind is buzzing with a half remembered quote and I will come back later.... and I will put a photo of my garden in photos for you.

I wrote the following a couple of years ago and the poem about the sunlight on the garden reminded me of Wordsworth’s Spots of Time, those magical moments that stay in our memories.
Spots of time
****************
‘I came across a reference to ‘spots of time’ by Wordsworth which intrigued me and hunted out the quote. They come from The Prelude and are worth quoting in full;

There are in our existence spots of time,
That with distinct pre-eminence resin
A renovating virtue, whence, depressed
By false opinion and contentious thought,
Or aught of heavier or more deadly weight,
In trivial occupations, and the round
Of ordinary intercourse, our minds
Are nourished and invisibly repaired;
A virtue, by which pleasure is enhanced,
That penetrates, enables us to mount,
When high, more high, and lifts us up when fallen.

I like this thought of spots of time to cheer one up when life is tough.’
‘I can think of a spot of time that I remember. I was walking with my dog, one spring morning. It was one of those sparkly days with the world looking as if it had been washed; it was early, no one about as I wandered down the slope into the grassy mead by the lake. Then I became aware that the sky was filled with swooping birds all arounds me, diving around my head, soaring into the sky again as if their breasts were joyously filled. And my heart became joyous too.’
‘What were the birds?’
‘They were swifts, newly arrived, catching insects. Wonderful.’
‘I am not sure about this concept. When one is very down or in the midst of a crisis do we start thinking of happy moments?’
‘I suppose it depends upon the crisis.’
‘Could it make one even sadder remembering?’
‘I am not sure but if one was just feeling melancholy then it would be uplifting to remember some happy spots of time, we would be nourished and invisibly repaired and lifted up when we are fallen as the poem suggests.’’
’I’ve another spot for you all. I was lucky to visit Victoria Falls once, many years ago. This was on the Zambian side and there was hardly any tourism then so we had the place to ourselves. As you walked out close by the falls the sprays, the smoke that thunders, was shooting up and cascading down all over us. The most magical effect was that it was like walking through a shower of rainbows as the light was scattered as it came through the water, like dancing in a myriad of wet colours more entrancing than any glitterball in any dance hall, dancing in rainbows. Yes, the shower of rainbows was a magical spot of time.’

CCCubbon wrote: "Sunlight in the Garden..."

Thank you for the poem - and for your lovely garden. I've posted photos of my small, shared city garden, too.

CCCubbon wrote: "Sunlight in the Garden
by Louis MacNeice
The sunlight on the garden
Hardens and grows cold,
We cannot cage the minute
Within its nets of gold;
When all is told
We cannot beg for pardon.

Our freedo..."

It's a gorgeous poem. I actually recorded it several years ago; you should try it ... recitation really reveals its marvellous cadence.

This Sunday poem came upon me suddenly as I was commenting on potw on The Guardian... I'll just leave it here for any kimono lovers and as a counterpoint to MacNeice!

A Sunday poem (it took me by surprise)

My Stranger

Blushes a pale pink
“Dusky” my mother would call it
She’s wearing a kimono
Well, a garment kimonoesque,
Adorned with plumage
Of the kind birds I know abhor;
Not her. She’s a fan of “age-s”
Plumage, cleavage, rampage…
All possibility fired up in silk
She’d kill you ' quick as look at you
But no more loyal accomplice
Would you find between Tokyo
And the Australian Alps
I don’t know her name
But I call her Ada
If only to let her append "[a]ge"
Visitors gasp at her bold stare
Or maybe her plumage …
Don’t go there.

Nice one, reen

A dusky pink kimono
Complete with jazzy plumage
Might enhance my persono
Speak silently of courage
With coloured coverage.

This seasonal one from Thomas Hardy about an old superstition that Oxen knelt in their stalls on Christmas Eve.
The Oxen
Christmas Eve and twelve of the clock
"Now they are all on their knees"
An elder said as we sat in a flock
By the embers in hearthside ease.
We pictured the meek mild creatures
where they dwelt in their strawy pen.
Nor did it occur to one of us there
To doubt they were kneeling then.
So fair a fancy few would weave
In these years!
Yet, I feel,
If someone said on Christmas Eve,
"Come, see the oxen kneel in the lonely barton
by yonder coomb our childhood used to know"
I should go with him in the gloom,
Hoping it might be so.

Reen wrote: "CCCubbon wrote: "Sunlight in the Garden
by Louis MacNeice
The sunlight on the garden
Hardens and grows cold,
We cannot cage the minute
Within its nets of gold;
When all is told
We cannot beg for pa..."
I love that one, I have a vague recollection of hearing Richard Burton recite it on the radio once .
It sent the shivers down my spine.

This is a beautiful thread. I love the notion of spots of time, will call them that from now on. Many thanks, CCC.

Also love the garden photos the two of you posted. There can't be enough green just now! (Tomorrow we will try and find a christmas tree before most shops close for the yet unknown lockdown duration.)

Greenfairy:
"It sent the shivers down my spine." I can imagine!

reen: As I wrote over at PotW, this is a beautiful homage (to mention yet another word with -age).

Tam: I did not know the poem you quizzed us about in the photo thread, but I found out in the meantime. That's interesting! (Posting this here because comments on photos tend to disappear.)

Greenfairy wrote: "Reen wrote: "CCCubbon wrote: "Sunlight in the Garden
by Louis MacNeice
The sunlight on the garden
Hardens and grows cold,
We cannot cage the minute
Within its nets of gold;
When all is told
We cann..."

I like this double take by Tom O'Bedlam, recorded three years apart. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TI4mn...

Shelflife_wasBooklooker wrote: "This is a beautiful thread. I love the notion of spots of time, will call them that from now on. Many thanks, CCC.

Also love the garden photos the two of you posted. There can't be enough green ju..."

ah thanks Booklover (sic) (I cannot think of you as Shelflife); a mélange of some comments I had read presented themselves in a kimono. It was my first time at my personal laptop in almost a week so I was catching up. Hope all well within the obvious confines...

CCCubbon wrote: "Nice one, reen

A dusky pink kimono
Complete with jazzy plumage
Might enhance my persono
Speak silently of courage
With coloured coverage."

Take courage
Where you find it
Let good corsetry bind it
and colour yourself jaunty

(I know you're not feeling jaunty, this is just a feeble attempt to make you smile. Your garden is beautiful.)

And for the season that's in it... Paddy Kavanagh's Advent (featuring the whin, one of own favourite motifs!)

https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/advent/

Booklooker In The Prelude Wordsworth is recalling a couple of incidents in his childhood as his ‘spots of time’ but I like to think of them more in the way that I wrote above, moments of intense delight or special happiness that brings cheer when remembered.

Reen
Thanks. I did try to find a dusky pink kimono picture for you but none quite fitted in my mind.
Meant to ask you ‘ do you think it would be worth asking nsz to join us in the Place for a poem?’ I know he doesn’t like the print on goodreads but wondered if he could be tempted here.

A wintry poem:

Emmonsails Heath in Winter by John Clare

I love to see the old heaths withered brake
Mingle its crimpled leaves with furze and ling
While the old heron from the lonely lake
Starts slow and flaps his melancholy wing
And oddling crow in idle motions swing
On the half rotten ash trees topmost twig
Beside whose trunk the gipsey makes his bed
Up flies the bouncing woodcock from the brig
Where a black quagmire quakes beneath the tread
The fieldfare chatters in the whistling thorn
And for the awe round fields and closen rove
And coy bumbarrels twenty in a drove
Flit down the hedgerows in the frozen plain
And hang on little twigs and start again

bumbarrels long-tailed tits

CCCubbon wrote: "Reen
Thanks. I did try to find a dusky pink kimono picture for you but none quite fitted in my mind.
Meant to ask you ‘ do you think it would be worth asking nsz to join us in the Place for a poe..."

I was going to reply there'd be no harm in asking but I see you got there already. Dusky pink would not flatter me in any event CCC, ha. I'd go more for a deep red or emerald green, cut generously across the bust!

What a wonderful poem. Gpfr
I had to check which birds bum barrels were - what a grand name - and found the following - all for long tailed tits
Bumbarrel, Hedge Mumruffin, Poke Pudding, Huggen-Muffin, Juffit, Fuffit, Jack-in-a-Bottle, Bottle Tom, Bum Towel, Prinpriddle, Feather Poke, Long-tailed Mag, Long-tailed Farmer, Can Bottle, Hedge Jug, Bottle Bird, Barrel Tom, Patiney, Patteny Paley, Ragamuffin, Bellringer, Nimble Tailor, French Pie, Bottle-tit, Billy-featherpoke, Long-tailed Chittering, Puddneypoke, Bottle Builder, Dog Tail, Long Pod, Bush Oven, Oven Bird and Millithrum (Miller’s Thumb) – all names for a common English bird of hedgerow and heath – the long-tailed tit.
And ‘ oddling crow.....

CCCubbon wrote: "
I had to check which birds bum barrels were - what a grand name - and found the following - all for long tailed tits
Bumbarrel, Hedge Mumruffin, Poke Pudding, Huggen-Muffin,..."

Heavens! What a magnificent collection of names

reen
Me, neither with dusky pink and I am the wrong shape for a kimono. Reminds me that the first record that I ever bought was One FineDay from Madame Butterfly. An old time 78 rpm of course.
Yes I was reading the post and just thought I would try.
Between us all we can make this place a poetry pleasureground!

Gpfr Don’t think I would try to say Fuffitafter a few drinks!

Gpfr wrote: "A wintry poem:


Emmonsails Heath in Winter
by John Clare

I love to see the old heaths withered brake
Mingle its crimpled leaves with furze and ling
While the old heron from the lonely lake
Sta..."

Lovely! Other poets wrote about nature of course, but none quite like Clare who simply described it as it was - thank you.:)