Flying Free

 

 

Came across this poem today and loved it. Birds are the great symbols of freedom and this poem captures an inspirational sense of that here.
 

The Fulmar - Katrina Porteous

I watch the fulmar hurl its breast

To the wind's unseen geometry;

Spread wings on nothing, reckless of gravity,

And ride that risk

And rest

On sheer uncertainty,

Choosing no choice. 

I must learn to be like him, 

To follow the reach and search of air - 

Swoop, sink, stand, balance, soar on the invisible spiral stair - 

And not resist

But trust, 

And be carried there. 

The Early Bird

 

 

 

The Early Bird - Ted Kooser

 

Still dark, and raining hard

on a cold May morning

and yet the early bird

is out there chirping,

chirping its sweet-sour

wooden-pulley notes,

pleased, it would seem,

to be given work,

hauling the heavy bucket of dawn

up from the darkness,

note over note,

and letting us drink.

 

May Blossoming

May - Mary Oliver 
 

May, and among the miles of leafing,
blossoms storm out of the darkness—
windflowers and moccasin flowers. The bees
dive into them and I too, to gather
their spiritual honey. Mute and meek, yet theirs
is the deepest certainty that this existence too—
this sense of well-being, the flourishing
of the physical body—rides
near the hub of the miracle that everything
is a part of, is as good
as a poem or a prayer, can also make
luminous any dark place on earth.

Sun

Love Poem - Valerie Sinason

My love

the sun

s

 e

   t

     s

in your eyes

and

       s

     e

   s

 i

r

golden

in your body. 

 

Ordinary Life

 

I found this delightful poem on the lovely Calm Things blog. Check it out!



In Your Ordinary Life - Steve Garnaas-Holmes

In your ordinary life,
with its handbag of pain
and your few little coins of success,
an entire star burns with pure glory,
a field of wildflowers exults.
This is not good luck, or physics gone wild.
It’s God.

What can you do, you who are made of delight,
but fall defenselessly in love with everybody,
and give yourself away
until you are pure song?
What can you do but
shuck off your burlap clothing,
catch fire
and dance?

May

May - Seamus Heaney 

When I looked down from the bridge
Trout were flipping the sky
Into smithereens, the stones
Of the wall warmed me.

Wading green stems, lugs of leaf
That untangle and bruise
(Their tiny gushers of juice)
My toecaps sparkle now

Over the soft fontanel
Of Ireland. I should wear
Hide shoes, the hair next my skin,
For walking this ground:

Wasn’t there a spa-well,
Its coping grassy, pendent?
And then the spring issuing
Right across the tarmac.

I’m out to find that village,
Its low sills fragrant
With ladysmock and celandine,
Marshlights in the summer dark.

Dust

 

-Frank O'Hara

Yes. 

The Maypole

Ahh. 


The Maypole - Linda Pastan
        after Wallace Stevens

One must have a mind of spring
to regard the cherry tree burdened
with blossom;

and have been warm for days
to behold the boughs of the redbud
prickly with color in the glint

of the April sun; and not to think
of any cruelty in the difficult birthing
of so many leaves, to feel only pure

elation at the sound of the undulant breeze
which is the sound of every garden
with a breeze blowing among its flowers,

the sound the listener hears, watching the buds
which were not quite here a week ago
pushing up from oblivion now.

Imagery

Imagery - Archibald MacLeish 

The tremulously mirrored clouds lie deep,
Enchanted towers bosomed in the stream,
And blossomed coronals of white-thorn gleam
Within the water where the willows sleep—
Still-imaged willow-leaves whose shadows steep
The far-reflected sky in dark of dream;
And glimpsed therein the sun-winged swallows seem
As fleeting memories to those who weep.

So mirrored in thy heart are all desires,
Eternal longings, Youth’s inheritance,
All hopes that token immortality,
All griefs whereto immortal grief aspires.
Aweary of the world’s reality,
I dream above the imaged pool, Romance.

Hello May

 

 

Hello lovely May. 

 

 

May - Linda Pastan

May apple, daffodil,

hyacinth, lily,

and by the front

porch steps

every billowing

shade of purple

and lavender lilac,

my mother’s favorite flower,

sweet breath drifting through

the open windows:

perfume of memory—conduit

of spring.

Spinster

As always with a Sylvia Plath poem, the writing is powerful and unsettling in its white-knuckled grasp of hard truths.

 
Spinster - Sylvia Plath

Now this particular girl
During a ceremonious April walk
With her latest suitor
Found herself, of a sudden, intolerably struck
By the birds irregular babel
And the leaves’ litter.

By this tumult afflicted, she
Observed her lover’s gestures unbalance the air,
Her gait stray uneven
Through a rank wilderness of fern and flower.
She judged petals in disarray,
The whole season, sloven.

How she longed for winter then! –
Scrupulously austere in its order
Of white and black
Ice and rock, each sentiment in border,
And heart’s frosty discipline
Exact as a snowflake.

But here – a burgeoning
Unruly enough to pitch her five queenly wits
Into vulgar motley –
A treason not to be borne. Let idiots
Reel giddy in bedlam spring:
She withdrew neatly.

And round her house she set
Such a barricade of barb and check
Against mutinous weather
As no mere insurgent man could hope to break
With curse, fist, threat
Or love, either.

On Vermilion

Confusion - Kenneth Rexroth

I pass your home in a slow vermilion dawn,
The blinds are drawn, and the windows are open.
The soft breeze from the lake
Is like your breath upon my cheek.
All day long I walk in the intermittent rainfall.
I pick a vermilion tulip in the deserted park,
Bright raindrops cling to its petals.
At five o'clock it is a lonely color in the city.
I pass your home in a rainy evening,
I can see you faintly, moving between lighted walls.
Late at night I sit before a white sheet of paper,
Until a fallen vermilion petal quivers before me.

Making Poetry

Today is National Poetry Day Ireland. A day to celebrate poetry! (Share your favourite poem with the hashtag #PoetryDayIRL)



Making Poetry - Anne Stevenson 

'You have to inhabit poetry
if you want to make it.'
And what's to inhabit?
To be in the habit of, to wear
words, sitting in the plainest light,
in the silk of morning, in the shoe of night;
a feeling bare and frondish in surprising air;
                        familiar...rare.

And what's to make?
To be and to become words' passing weather;
to serve a girl on terrible terms,
embark on voyages over voices,
evade the ego-hill, the misery-well,
the siren hiss of publish, success, publish, success,
success, success, success.

And why inhabit, make, inherit poetry?
Oh, it's the shared comedy of the worst
blessed: the sound leading the hand;
a wordlife running from mind to mind
through the washed rooms of the simple senses;
one of those haunted, undefendable, unpoetic
crosses we have to find.

The Fight of the Year

 

Well, it really feels like some fight is going on at the moment! And Spring better be the winner!!


The Fight of the Year - Roger Mc Gough

And there goes the bell for the third month  and
Winter comes out of his corner looking groggy
Spring leads with a left to the head
followed by a sharp right to the body
daffodils
primroses
crocuses
snowdrops
lilacs
violets
pussy willow

Winter can’t take much more punishment  and
Spring shows no signs of tiring
tadpoles
squirrels
baalambs
badgers
bunny rabbits
mad march hares
horse and hounds

Spring is merciless
Winter won’t go the whole twelve rounds
bobtail clouds
scallywag winds
the sun
the pavement artist
in every town
a left to the chin  and
Winter’s down!

1 tomatoes
2 radish
3 cucumber
4 onions
5 beetroot
6 celery
7 and any
8 amount
9 of lettuce
10 for dinner
Winter’s out for the count
Spring is the winner!

Tulips

Tulips - Anne Stevenson 

For my birthday you've brought me tulips.
I want them to fan from a low vase.
This green and white one with a cracked glaze
almost the shape of a bulb looks right.

*

Tulips were bursting from that same pot
on the same day in New York...maybe 1958.
Twenty-five tulips instead of twenty-five candles,
and we dined by tulip light.

*

There is always another war, but
thee tall disciplined redcoats
have lost the battle.
Cut down, shipped alive into exile,
for nearly a week they bleed upright.

*

Two artists: this one, who catches
the incendiary character of tulips
with daring panache.
Now this one, who uses his brush
like hawks' eyesight.

*

When Nerys in her wheelchair painted tulips
they were strawberry-coloured, like her hair.
She gave them a life far longer
than the one life gave her.
When 'nature imitates art', nature
sometimes loses the fight.

*

Old tulips, getting ready to die,
swan on their wondering necks away
from their source in mother water,
obsessed with an airy faith in light.

*

These sad women in mauve - making up for
painted wrinkles with pinker hair -
drunkenly spill themselves over the bar.
Lips, lips, without love or appetite.

*

But look. At the core of each flower,
a black star,
a hope-pod, a love-seed
the seminal colour of night.

(Remembering Nerys Johnson, painter)

Shakespeare in Love

Still keeping with the Shakespeare theme today... a gorgeous love poem from Carol Ann Duffy.

Anne Hathaway - Carol Ann Duffy 

‘Item I gyve unto my wife my second best bed …’
(from Shakespeare’s will)

The bed we loved in was a spinning world
of forests, castles, torchlight, clifftops, seas
where we would dive for pearls. My lover’s words
were shooting stars which fell to earth as kisses
on these lips; my body now a softer rhyme
to his, now echo, assonance; his touch
a verb dancing in the centre of a noun.
Some nights, I dreamed he’d written me, the bed
a page beneath his writer’s hands. Romance
and drama played by touch, by scent, by taste.
In the other bed, the best, our guests dozed on,
dribbling their prose. My living laughing love –
I hold him in the casket of my widow’s head
as he held me upon that next best bed.

Sonnet

Today is William Shakespeare's birthday and also the 400th anniversary of his death in 1616, which occurred on his 52nd birthday.

There are many Shakespearean works I love but the sonnets will always remain close to my heart. 154 articulate pieces of love and yearning, all written for someone Shakespeare loved so much he wanted to immortalise in verse. Apart from the genius of his plays, there is something very human and beautiful about Shakespeare's sonnets.

The first two lines of this one have been rhyming around in my head the past few days.


Sonnet I - William Shakespeare

From fairest creatures we desire increase,
That thereby beauty's rose might never die,
But as the riper should by time decease,
His tender heir might bear his memory:
But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes,
Feed'st thy light's flame with self-substantial fuel,
Making a famine where abundance lies,
Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel.
Thou that art now the world's fresh ornament
And only herald to the gaudy spring,
Within thine own bud buriest thy content
And, tender churl, makest waste in niggarding.
    Pity the world, or else this glutton be,
    To eat the world's due, by the grave and thee.

Song of a Second April

Song Of A Second April -  Edna St. Vincent Millay

April this year, not otherwise
Than April of a year ago,
Is full of whispers, full of sighs,
Of dazzling mud and dingy snow;
Hepaticas that pleased you so
Are here again, and butterflies.

There rings a hammering all day,
And shingles lie about the doors;
In orchards near and far away
The grey wood-pecker taps and bores;
The men are merry at their chores,
And children earnest at their play.

The larger streams run still and deep,
Noisy and swift the small brooks run
Among the mullein stalks the sheep
Go up the hillside in the sun,
Pensively,—only you are gone,
You that alone I cared to keep.

The Lives of the Heart

 

The Lives of the Heart - Jane Hirshfield

Are ligneous, muscular, chemical.  
Wear birch-colored feathers,  
green tunnels of horse-tail reed.  
Wear calcified spirals, Fibonaccian spheres.  
Are edible;are glassy;are clay;blue schist.
Can be burned as tallow, as coal,  
can be skinned for garnets, for shoes.
Cast shadows or light;
shuffle;snort;cry out in passion.
Are salt, are bitter,
tear sweet grass with their teeth.  
Step silently into blue needle-fall at dawn.  
Thrash in the net until hit. 
Rise up as cities, as serpentined magma, as maples,  
hiss lava-red into the sea.  
Leave the strange kiss of their bodies
in Burgess Shale. Can be found, can be lost,  
can be carried, broken, sung.
Lie dormant until they are opened by ice,  
by drought. Go blind in the service of lace.
Are starving, are sated, indifferent, curious, mad.  
Are stamped out in plastic, in tin.

Are stubborn, are careful, are slipshod,
are strung on the blue backs of flies
on the black backs of cows.
Wander the vacant whale-roads, the white thickets
heavy with slaughter.
Wander the fragrant carpets of alpine flowers.,
Not one is not held in the arms of the rest, to blossom.
 Not one is not given to ecstasy's lions.
Not one does not grieve.
Each of them opens and closes, closes and opens
the heavy gate --violent, serene, consenting, suffering it all.

The Night Has a Thousand Eyes

The Night Has a Thousand Eyes - Francis William Bourdillon 

The night has a thousand eyes,
And the day but one;
Yet the light of the bright world dies
With the dying sun.

The mind has a thousand eyes,
And the heart but one:
Yet the light of a whole life dies
When love is done.

Dear Spring

Yes, hurry up Spring! 


Dear Spring - Charles Simic

Will you please hurry with your preparations?
We are freezing up north as you procrastinate
Like a rich lady with too many gorgeous outfits
To choose from, spending hours in front of
A mirror, trying them on and unable to decide,      
        
While we trudge to the mailbox through wind
And snow, extract our unwilling fingers
From a glove to check if there’s a letter                       
From you, or just a bitty postcard, saying:
I’m leaving Carolina today, hurrying your way
With my new wardrobe of flowers and birds.               
                                                                                              
The tease! I bet she starts and forgets one of her
Hand-painted silk fans and has to go back,
While we stamp our feet and wipe our noses here,
Worrying the wood for the stove is running out,
The snow on the roof will bring the house down.      

---

Blossom

Blossom - Mary Oliver

In April
the ponds open
like black blossoms,
the moon
swims in every one;
there’s fire
everywhere: frogs shouting
their desire,
their satisfaction. What
we know: that time
chops at us all like an iron
hoe, that death
is a state of paralysis. What
we long for: joy
before death, nights
in the swale - everything else
can wait but not
this thrust
from the root
of the body. What
we know: we are more
than blood - we are more
than our hunger and yet
we belong
to the moon and when the ponds
open, when the burning
begins the most
thoughtful among us dreams
of hurrying down
into the black petals
into the fire,
into the night where time lies shattered
into the body of another.

April Rise

April Rise - Laurie Lee

If ever I saw blessing in the air
I see it now in this still early day
Where lemon-green the vaporous morning drips
Wet sunlight on the powder of my eye.

Blown bubble-film of blue, the sky wraps round
Weeds of warm light whose every root and rod
Splutters with soapy green, and all the world
Sweats with the bead of summer in its bud.

If ever I heard blessing it is there
Where birds in trees that shoals and shadows are
Splash with their hidden wings and drops of sound
Break on my ears their crests of throbbing air.

Pure in the haze the emerald sun dilates,
The lips of sparrows milk the mossy stones,
While white as water by the lake a girl
Swims her green hand among the gathered swans.

Now, as the almond burns its smoking wick,
Dropping small flames to light the candled grass;
Now, as my low blood scales its second chance,
If ever world were blessed, now it is.

Once More It Is April

Before A Departure in Spring 

Once more it is April with the first light sifting
      through the young leaves heavy with dew making the colors
remember who they are the new pink of the cinnamon tree
      the gilded lichens of the bamboo the shadowed bronze
of the kamani and the blue day opening
      as the sunlight descends through it all like the return
of a spirit touching without touch and unable
      to believe it is here and here again and awake
reaching out in silence into the cool breath
      of the garden just risen from darkness and days of rain
it is only a moment the birds fly through it calling
      to each other and are gone with their few notes and the flash
of their flight that had vanished before we ever knew it
      we watch without touching any of it and we
can tell ourselves only that this is April this is the morning
      this never happened before and we both remember it

April Beauty

 

Love this poem!


April - Linda Pastan

A whole new freshman class
of leaves has arrived

on the dark twisted branches
we call our woods, turning

green now—color of
anticipation. In my 76th year,

I know what time and weather
will do to every leaf.

But the camellia swells
to ivory at the window,

and the bleeding heart bleeds
only beauty.

It's April! It's Spring!

 'it's april(yes,april;my darling)it's spring!'

I've posted this poem maybe several times before but what the heck. No other poet can describe the exhilaration of spring and April quite like ee cummings. This poem is  a shot of zing to springify your day. Yes you'll be dancing, dancing inside after reading it! :)

 

when faces called flowers float out of the ground - ee cummings

when faces called flowers float out of the ground
and breathing is wishing and wishing is having-
but keeping is downward and doubting and never
-it's april(yes,april;my darling)it's spring!
yes the pretty birds frolic as spry as can fly
yes the little fish gambol as glad as can be
(yes the mountains are dancing together)


when every leaf opens without any sound
and wishing is having and having is giving-
but keeping is doting and nothing and nonsense
-alive;we're alive,dear:it's(kiss me now)spring!
now the pretty birds hover so she and so he
now the little fish quiver so you and so i
now the mountains are dancing, the mountains)


when more than was lost has been found has been found
and having is giving and giving is living-
but keeping is darkness and winter and cringing
-it's spring(all our night becomes day)o,it's spring!
all the pretty birds dive to the heart of the sky
all the little fish climb through the mind of the sea
all the mountains are dancing;are dancing)

Over the Land is April

'Hear you the songs of spring?'

Hello April! My favourite month.  Yellow and cheery and bright.

(I'll be posting poems on April all week here - the most popular month to be penned in verse. Join me in the celebration of this most loveliest month!) 



Over the Land is April - Robert Louis Stevenson

Over the land is April,
Over my heart a rose;
Over the high, brown mountain
The sound of singing goes.
Say, love, do you hear me,
Hear my sonnets ring?
Over the high, brown mountain,
Love, do you hear me sing?

By highway, love, and byway
The snows succeed the rose.
Over the high, brown mountain
The wind of winter blows.
Say, love, do you hear me,
Hear my sonnets ring?
Over the high, brown mountain
I sound the song of spring,
I throw the flowers of spring.
Do you hear the song of spring?
Hear you the songs of spring?

Cuimhne/Remembrance

 '...some new script made from the old.'

Today ends my week long posting about the poetry of the Easter Rising. The Rising ended on the Saturday, six days after it began.  After the GPO was almost completely destroyed by British artillery and the rebel garrison within had to retreat to neighbouring Moore Street, Pearse agreed to surrender unconditionally to prevent further civilian casualties. A few weeks after, sixteen rebel leaders, including the seven signatories and Sir Roger Casement (who helped organise the arms from Germany) were executed and thousands imprisoned.. 

These 'sixteen dead men' that Yeats speaks of here were to turn the fate of Irish history. The executions changed public opinion drastically. Suddenly, the country was ablaze with respect for these men who had sacrificed their lives heroically and a new zeal of revolutionary nationalism was born. Things would never be the same again, 'the boiling pot', as Yeats called it, was stirring. 

The second poem here is by contemporary Iish poet Theo Dorgan, commissioned especially for the Centenary commemorations. It can be found inscribed beneath the Children of Lir statue (pictured) in the Garden of Remembrance in Dublin, a space that honours all those who died in Ireland's independence struggle. (The Children of Lir is an old Irish legend about children who were turned into swans by their stepmother.) The poem speaks for itself quietly but profoundly.

#1916EasterRisingPoets

Sixteen Dead Men - WB Yeats

O but we talked at large before
The sixteen men were shot,
But who can talk of give and take,
What should be and what not
While those dead men are loitering there
To stir the boiling pot?

You say that we should still the land
Till Germany’s overcome;
But who is there to argue that
Now Pearse is deaf and dumb?
And is their logic to outweigh
MacDonagh’s bony thumb?

How could you dream they’d listen
That have an ear alone
For those new comrades they have found,
Lord Edward and Wolfe Tone,
Or meddle with our give and take
That converse bone to bone?

Remembrance -Theo Dorgan

To escape the pull of memory

as difficult as for a swan

with wings of bronze

to lift over silent water

and gain the sky.

Somehow the thing is done,

gravity cancelled by force

of art, by will,

and the swan soars.

These braids of air

spiralling from each wingtip,

how else to read them but

as lines drawn up from clay,

some new script made from the old.

Comrades

 

Eva Gore Booth, poet and activist, was the sister of Constance Markievicz, one of the main instigators involved in the Rising. Markievicz was aformidable figure, leader of the Fianna (a youth army) who worked closely with Connolly's Irish Citizen Army. She was sentenced to death, but had the sentence changed to imprisonment due to the fact that she was a woman. Eva, her sister took the more pacifist route, but this poem by her expresses an unwavering affinity with her fellow rebels, including her sister. Its tone of defiance is a marked feature as well as its precise language. 

#1916EasterRisingPoets

Eva left, Constance right

Comrades - Eva Gore Booth

 

The peaceful night that round me flows,
Breaks through your iron prison doors,
Free through the world your spirit goes,
Forbidden hands are clasping yours.
The wind is our confederate,
The night has left her doors ajar,
We meet beyond earth’s barred gate,
Where all the world’s wild Rebels are.

Mother

 

Of all the leaders of the Easter Rising, Patrick Pearse is perhaps the most fascinating.  Poet, teacher, educator, headmaster, Irish language enthusiast, lawyer, orator, cultural nationalist, he was an idealistic and intelligent man as well as a fervent and passionate revolutionary. Pearse was the figurehead of the Rising, the one who read the Proclamation outside the GPO and also the main man behind the writing of it. 

PH Pearse or Padraig MacPiaras or simply 'Pat' to his family and friends, was a complex character and also a contradictory one, held equally in admiration and criticism by biographers since. While his speeches from 1914 on are filled with an inflammatory rhetoric of violence and a lust for 'blood sacrifice', the same man was to be found faltering at the sight of bloodshed in the GPO and ultimately surrendered to prevent any further civilian casualties. 

After he was executed, General Blackadder, President of the court martial is acknowledged to have said of Pearse: "I have had to condemn to death one of the finest characters I have ever come across. There must be something very wrong in the state of things that makes a man like Patrick Pearse a rebel."

Pearse wrote this poem, one of his most famous, for his mother Margaret, urging her not to grieve for her losses, knowing that he and his brother Willie (who only played a small part in the rebellion) would inevitably be killed for their part in the Rising.  Also included below is the poem he wrote in his cell in Kilmainham, the night before his execution.

#1916EasterRisingPoets

Mother - Patrick Pearse

I do not grudge them: Lord, I do not grudge
My two strong sons that I have seen go out
To break their strength and die, they and a few,
In bloody protest for a glorious thing,
They shall be spoken of among their people,
The generations shall remember them,
And call them blessed;
But I will speak their names to my own heart
In the long nights;
The little names that were familiar once
Round my dead hearth.
Lord, thou art hard on mothers:
We suffer in their coming and their going;
And tho' I grudge them not, I weary, weary
Of the long sorrow - And yet I have my joy:
My sons were faithful, and they fought.

The Wayfarer - Patrick Pearse

 

The beauty of the world hath made me sad,
This beauty that will pass;
Sometimes my heart hath shaken with great joy
To see a leaping squirrel in a tree,
Or a red lady-bird upon a stalk,
Or little rabbits in a field at evening,
Lit by a slanting sun,
Or some green hill where shadows drifted by
Some quiet hill where mountainy man hath sown
And soon would reap; near to the gate of Heaven;
Or children with bare feet upon the sands
Of some ebbed sea, or playing on the streets
Of little towns in Connacht,
Things young and happy.
And then my heart hath told me:
These will pass,
Will pass and change, will die and be no more,
Things bright and green, things young and happy;
And I have gone upon my way
Sorrowful.

Wishes For a Son

 

Thomas McDonagh was not only an accomplished poet but a playwright also, as well as teacher and lecturer of English Literature at UCD. An unlikely revolutionary and Rising leader to say the least. He was an amicable person by all accounts, perhaps the most personable of all the Rising leaders,  as well as an effective rebellion planner and leader. His poems are lyrical pieces that focus mainly on his family and generally relating to life and love. This poem however, also hints at the reasons why he was partaking in the Rising - for the good of the children of Ireland, the generations to come.

Perhaps it is McDonagh's epitaph that speaks the truest of him. The British soldiers who carried out the executions said that although all the leaders died well, McDonagh died 'like a prince.' 

#1916EasterRisingPoets

'Wishes For My Son, Born On St Cecilia's Day, 1912' - Thomas McDonagh
 

Now, my son, is life for you,
And I wish you joy of it,-
Joy of power in all you do,
Deeper passion, better wit
Than I had who had enough,
Quicker life and length thereof,
More of every gift but love.

Love I have beyond all men,
Love that now you share with me-
What have I to wish you then
But that you be good and free,
And that God to you may give
Grace in stronger days to live?

For I wish you more than I
Ever knew of glorious deed,
Though no rapture passed me by
That an eager heart could heed,
Though I followed heights and sought
Things the sequel never brought.

Wild and perilous holy things
Flaming with a martyr's blood,
And the joy that laughs and sings
Where a foe must be withstood,
Joy of headlong happy chance
Leading on the battle dance.

But I found no enemy,
No man in a world of wrong,
That Christ's word of charity
Did not render clean and strong-
Who was I to judge my kind,
Blindest groper of the blind?

God to you may give the sight
And the clear, undoubting strength
Wars to knit for single right,
Freedom's war to knit at length,
And to win through wrath and strife,
To the sequel of my life.

But for you, so small and young,
Born on Saint Cecilia's Day,
I in more harmonious song
Now for nearer joys should pray-
Simpler joys: the natural growth
Of your childhood and your youth,
Courage, innocence, and truth:

These for you, so small and young,
In your hand and heart and tongue.

Blood Upon the Rose

Joseph Mary Plunkett was the youngest of the signatories of the Rising at 28 years old and also by far, the most eccentric. He was known for his extravagant nature, often to be seen waltzing about Dublin in a cape in flamboyant flair. All his life Plunkett suffered from poor health but it was never a deterrent. He was a very well-travelled and well-read young man as well as a poet. He was the military strategist for the Rising and attended the GPO with his throat bandaged from his most recent operation. He was married to his fiancee Grace Gifford in Kilmainham jail, the night before his execution.

Plunkett wrote many poems, but this perhaps is his most famous, written in the mystical tradition and expressing the intensity of his own Christian faith. In retrospect, it almost speaks of an uncanny prophetic doom of blood sacrifice, of which his part in the Rising would condemn him. 

#1916EasterRisingPoets

 

I See His Blood Upon the Rose - Joseph Mary Plunkett

I see his blood upon the rose And in the stars the glory of his eyes, His body gleams amid eternal snows, His tears fall from the skies.

I see his face in every flower; The thunder and the singing of the birds Are but his voice—and carven by his power Rocks are his written words.

All pathways by his feet are worn, His strong heart stirs the ever-beating sea, His crown of thorns is twined with every thorn, His cross is every tree.

Easter 1916

 'A terrible beauty is born...'

Easter Monday, a hundred years ago, Ireland took the first step in pursuing an Irish Republic with the Easter Rising of 1916. This armed insurrection was ultimately a failure, but from its ashes rose triumph in the resulting War of Independence and Treaty. 

There are many startling feats about the Easter Rising, but perhaps the most noteworthy is that it was a rebellion led by poets and writers. 

All week, I will be posting some of their poems here to mark the centenary occasion as well as poems relating to the Rising. Up first is Yeats now famous response to the Rising and that immortal line: 'All changed, changed utterly, a terrible beauty is born' (-the dream of independence is established, but so too militant nationalism) that captured not only the pathos of the event, but the transformative feeling in the aftermath of the Rising so brilliantly. 

Easter 1916 - WB Yeats

I have met them at close of day   

Coming with vivid faces

From counter or desk among grey   

Eighteenth-century houses.

I have passed with a nod of the head   

Or polite meaningless words,   

Or have lingered awhile and said   

Polite meaningless words,

And thought before I had done   

Of a mocking tale or a gibe   

To please a companion

Around the fire at the club,   

Being certain that they and I   

But lived where motley is worn:   

All changed, changed utterly:   

A terrible beauty is born.

That woman's days were spent   

In ignorant good-will,

Her nights in argument

Until her voice grew shrill.

What voice more sweet than hers   

When, young and beautiful,   

She rode to harriers?

This man had kept a school   

And rode our wingèd horse;   

This other his helper and friend   

Was coming into his force;

He might have won fame in the end,   

So sensitive his nature seemed,   

So daring and sweet his thought.

This other man I had dreamed

A drunken, vainglorious lout.

He had done most bitter wrong

To some who are near my heart,   

Yet I number him in the song;

He, too, has resigned his part

In the casual comedy;

He, too, has been changed in his turn,   

Transformed utterly:

A terrible beauty is born.

Hearts with one purpose alone   

Through summer and winter seem   

Enchanted to a stone

To trouble the living stream.

The horse that comes from the road,   

The rider, the birds that range   

From cloud to tumbling cloud,   

Minute by minute they change;   

A shadow of cloud on the stream   

Changes minute by minute;   

A horse-hoof slides on the brim,   

And a horse plashes within it;   

The long-legged moor-hens dive,   

And hens to moor-cocks call;   

Minute by minute they live:   

The stone's in the midst of all.

Too long a sacrifice

Can make a stone of the heart.   

O when may it suffice?

That is Heaven's part, our part   

To murmur name upon name,   

As a mother names her child   

When sleep at last has come   

On limbs that had run wild.   

What is it but nightfall?

No, no, not night but death;   

Was it needless death after all?

For England may keep faith   

For all that is done and said.   

We know their dream; enough

To know they dreamed and are dead;   

And what if excess of love   

Bewildered them till they died?   

I write it out in a verse—

MacDonagh and MacBride   

And Connolly and Pearse

Now and in time to be,

Wherever green is worn,

Are changed, changed utterly:   

A terrible beauty is born.

*Listen to Liam Neeson reading the poem here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLt_OuzW9n0

An Easter Carol

 'this is the time of loves...'

 

I love the joyous tone in this poem. Like many Easter poems, religious joy is fused to jubilant effect with the joy of spring.

 

An Easter Carol - Christina Rosetti

 

Spring bursts to-day,

For Christ is risen and all the earth’s at play.

 

Flash forth, thou Sun,

The rain is over and gone, its work is done.

 

Winter is past,

Sweet Spring is come at last, is come at last.

 

Bud, Fig and Vine,

Bud, Olive, fat with fruit and oil and wine.

 

Break forth this morn

In roses, thou but yesterday a Thorn.

 

Uplift thy head,

O pure white Lily through the Winter dead.

 

Beside your dams

Leap and rejoice, you merry-making Lambs.

 

All Herds and Flocks

Rejoice, all Beasts of thickets and of rocks.

 

Sing, Creatures, sing,

Angels and Men and Birds and everything.

 

All notes of Doves

Fill all our world: this is the time of loves.

 

Happy Easter/Earth

I just love this time of year, the exhilaration of spring beginning, don't you? This poem captures it simply and singingly.



Easter - Joyce Kilmer

The air is like a butterfly
With frail blue wings.
The happy earth looks at the sky
And sings.

Good Friday

Lyrical and profound, as ever from Heaney. (And I just love the inclusion of the moon here -  how unusual, but fitting, as we see.)


Westering - Seamus Heaney

I sit under Rand McNally’s
'Official Map of the Moon’—
The colour of frogskin,
Its enlarged pores held

Open and one called
‘Pitiscus’ at eye level—
Recalling the last night                                                                                                                               In Donegal, my shadow

Neat upon the whitewash
From her bony shine,
The cobbles of the yard
Lit pale as eggs.

Summer had been a free fall
Ending there,
The empty amphitheatre
Of the west. Good Friday

We had started out
Past shopblinds drawn on the afternoon,
Cars stilled outside still churches,
Bikes tilting to a wall;

We drove by,
A dwindling interruption,
As clappers smacked
On a bare altar

And congregations bent
To the studded crucifix.
What nails dropped out that hour?
Roads unreeled, unreeled

Falling light as casts
Laid down
On shining waters.
Under the moon’s stigmata

Six thousand miles away,
I imagine untroubled dust,
A loosening gravity,
Christ weighing by his hands.

Silver Rain

In Time of Silver Rain - Langston Hughes

In time of silver rain
The earth puts forth new life again,
Green grasses grow
And flowers lift their heads,
And over all the plain
The wonder spreads

Of Life,
Of Life,
Of life!

In time of silver rain
The butterflies lift silken wings
To catch a rainbow cry,
And trees put forth new leaves to sing
In joy beneath the sky
As down the roadway
Passing boys and girls
Go singing, too,

In time of silver rain When spring
And life
Are new.

Spring Grass

"Shoots of the big green whisper of the year..."

Yep, it's going to be Spring poems all week here to celebrate its arrival at last.


Spring Grass - Carl Sandburg

Spring grass, there is a dance to be danced for you.
Come up, spring grass, if only for young feet.
Come up, spring grass, young feet ask you.

Smell of the young spring grass,
You're a mascot riding on the wind horses.
You came to my nose and spiffed me. This is your lucky year.

Young spring grass just after the winter,
Shoots of the big green whisper of the year,
Come up, if only for young feet.
Come up, young feet ask you.

Nothing is So Beautiful as Spring

 

 

'Nothing is so beautiful as Spring' - I agree! Now with the Vernal Equinox, it is officially here, yay!

 

Spring - Gerard Manley Hopkins

 

Nothing is so beautiful as Spring –         

   When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;         

   Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush         

Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring         

The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;

   The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush         

   The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush         

With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.         

What is all this juice and all this joy?         

   A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning

In Eden garden. – Have, get, before it cloy,         

   Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,         

Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,         

   Most, O maid’s child, thy choice and worthy the winning.