Magdelanye’s Reviews > the oxford book of 20th century English verse > Status Update

It is easy enough to love flowers

begins poem by Molly Holden p570

For here the lover and killer are mingled
who had one body and one heart.
And death who had the soldier singled
has done the lover mortal hurt.

from Vergissimeinicht
by Keith Douglas
p512

Sober, he thinks of her, so he gets drunk.
Drunk, he weeps for her. Drunker,he sleeps,
Waking in the small hours to absence

from the poem Man and Woman
By Robert Conquest.

Self under self, a pile of selves I stand
Threaded on time...p444

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age ...
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
p266

And we are the commotion born of love
And slanted rays of that illustrious star
p458
from the poem Solar Creation
by Charles Madge

But oh the days are soft
Soft enough to forget
The lesson never learnt
The bullet on the wet
Streets. p400

The heart of standing is you cannot fly.p387

from the poem Aubade by
William Empson

...ecstasy, whose momentary brilliance
Must compensate eternaties of sleep.
Knowing these things, are we not lovers, then.....p337

Why have scores of lovely,gifted girls
Married impossible men?
p299 from A Slice of Wedding Cake by Robert Graves