These are the shortened daysand the endless nights. Carol Ann Duffy, from Mean Time (1993) Gloomy December.The doldrum days of the dead of winter.These are the shortest daysand the endless nights.So wish for the moonand long for the light. Chill winds. Relentless rain.Dark to go to work in, darkness home again.But, given just one fine […]
The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.
As I lay asleep in Italy
There came a voice from over the Sea
And with great power it forth led me
To walk in the visions of Poesy.
Before the fields have finished,
Before the Christmas tree,
Wonder upon wonder
Will arrive to me!
I’ve made my own Museum of / Happiness, which isn’t built of brick / or stone or wood…
I never felt so much
/ Since I have felt at all
/ The tingling smell and touch
/ Of dogrose and sweet briar,
/ Nettles against the…
The scaffolding has gone. The sky is there! hard cold high clear and blue.
/ Clanking poles and thudding planks were the…
Broad in the beam? More broad in sympathy.
/ Stiff in the joints? More flexible in mind.
/ Deaf on the right? New voices…
They have come
/ to scald our blood, to call us out
/ from our bright houses to the twisted shadows under trees.
/ Let us…
(The Dark Side)
/
/ My mind goes back to Fumin Wood, and how we stuck it out,
/ Eight days of hunger, thirst and…
Push the boat out, compañeros,
push the boat out, whatever the sea.
Who says we cannot guide ourselves
through the boiling reefs, black as they are,
the enemy of us all makes sure of it!
Then I wrote often to the sea,
/ to its sunk rope and its salt bed,
/ to the large weed mass lipping the…
