Bernard O'Donoghue

Ter Conatus

Sister and brother, nearly sixty years
They'd farmed together, never touching once.
Of late she had been coping with a pain
In her back, realization dawning slowly
That it grew differently from the warm ache
That resulted periodically
From heaving churns on to the milking-stand.

She wondered about the doctor. When,
Finally, she went, it was too late,
Even for chemotherapy. All the same,
She wouldn't have got round to telling him,
Except that one night, watching television,
It got so bad she gasped, and struggled up,
Holding her waist, "D'you want a hand?", he asked,

Taking a step towards her. "I can manage",
She answered, feeling for the stairs.
Three times, like that, he tried to reach her.
But, being so little practised in such gestures,
Three times the hand fell back, and took its place,
Unmoving at his side. After the burial,
He let things take their course. The neighbours watched

In pity the rolled-up bales, standing
Silent in the fields, with the aftergrass
Growing into them, and wondered what he could
Be thinking of: which was that evening when,
Almost breaking with a lifetime of
Taking real things for shadows,
He might have embraced her with a brother's arms.

(1997)

from A Century of Poems: from the pages of the TLS, 1902-2002
Edited by Mick Imlah and Alan Jenkins (2002) (p. 149)

Tony Harrison

Collect

Though my mother was already two years dead
Dad kept her slippers warming by the gas,
put hot water bottles her side of the bed,
and still went to renew her transport pass.

You couldn't just drop in. You had to phone.
He'd put you off an hour to give him time
to clear away her things and look alone
as though his still raw love were such a crime.

He couldn't risk my blight of disbelief
though sure that very soon he'd hear her key
scrape in the rusted lock and end his grief
he knew she'd just popped out to get the tea.

I believe life ends with death, and that is all.
You haven't both gone shopping; just the same,
in my new black leather phone book there's your name
and the disconnected number I still call.

(1980)

from A Century of Poems: from the pages of the TLS, 1902-2002
Edited by Mick Imlah and Alan Jenkins (2002) (p. 99)

Opening lines to Auto-da-Fé by Elias Canetti

PART ONE

A HEAD WITHOUT A WORLD

CHAPTER I

THE MORNING WALK

'What are you doing here, my little man?'

'Nothing.'

'Then why are you standing here?'

'Just because.'

'Can you read?'

'Oh, yes.'

'How old are you?'

'Nine and a bit.'

'Which would you prefer, a piece of chocolate or a book?'

'A book.'

'Indeed? Splendid! So that's your reason for standing here?'

'Yes.'

'Why didn't you say so before?'

'Father scolds me.'

'Oh. And who is your father?'

'Franz Metzger.'

'Would you like to travel to a foreign country?'

'Yes. To India. They have tigers there.'

'And where else?'

'To China. They've got a huge wall there.'

'You'd like to scramble over it, wouldn't you?'

'It's much too thick and too high. Nobody can get over it. That's why they built it.'

'What a lot you know! You must have read a great deal already?'

'Yes. I read all the time. Father takes my books away. I'd like to go to a Chinese school. They have forty thousand letters in their alphabet. You couldn't get them all into one book.'

'That's only what you think.'

'I've worked it out.'

'All the same it isn't true. Never mind the books in the window. They're of no value. I've got something much better here. Wait. I'll show you. Do you know what kind of writing that is?'

'Chinese! Chinese!'

'Well, you're a clever little fellow. Had you seen a Chinese book before?'

'No, I guessed it.'

'These two characters stand for Meng Tse, the philosopher Mencius. He was a great man in China. He lived 2250 years ago and his works are still being read. Will you remember that?'

'Yes. I must go to school now.'

'Aha, so you look into the bookshop windows on your way to school? What is your name?'

'Franz Metzger, like my father.'

'And where do you live?'

'Twenty-four Ehrlich Strasse.'

'I live there too. I don't remember you.'

'You always look the other way when anyone passes you on the stairs. I've known you for ages. You're Professor Kien, but you haven't a school. Mother says you aren't a real Professor. But I think you are — you've got a library. Our Marie says, you wouldn't believe your eyes. She's our maid. When I'm grown up I'm going to have a library. With all the books there are, in every language. A Chinese one too, like yours. Now I must run.'

'Who wrote this book? Can you remember?'

'Meng Tse, the philosopher Mencius. Exactly 2250 years ago.'

'Excellent. You shall come and see my library one day. Tell my housekeeper I've given you permission. I can show you pictures from India and China.'

'Oh good! I'll come! Of course I'll come! This afternoon?'

'No, no, little man. I must work this afternoon. In a week at the earliest.'

[Translated from the German under the personal supervision of the author by C. V. Wedgwood]

Don Paterson

"The Alexandrian Library"

iv Small Hour

Your life has a smack of the prequel about it —
a bit underfunded, with you just a trifle
miscast in the role of the younger yourself.
Despite your impressive portfolio of shortcomings
you are not a bad lad, you have come to accept,
on balance, more blessing than blight; though if pressed
you could give the addresses of ten or twelve folk
inclined to feel otherwise, deeply.
Some call you an angel. Some call you a cunt.
They are both on the money: you model yourself
on those various itinerant Johnnies, proclaiming
the Matraiya, the Christ, in the meantime attaining
a kind of provisional, rough-hewn beatitude
before He shows up and comes down on your shagging
and drinking and lapses in personal hygiene.

from Landing Light (p.53)

"The Rat"

A young man wrote a poem about a rat.
It was the best poem ever written about a rat.
To read it was to ask the rat to perch
on the arm of your chair until you turned the page.
So we wrote to him, but heard nothing; we called,
and called again; then finally we sailed
to the island where he kept the only shop
and rapped his door until he opened up.

We took away his poems. Our hands shook
with excitement. We read them on lightboxes,
under great lamps. They were not much good.
So then we offered what advice we could
on his tropes and turns, his metrical comportment,
on the wedding of the word to the event,
and suggested that he might read this or that.
We said Now: write us more poems like The Rat.

All we got was cheek from him. Then silence.
We gave up on him. Him with his green arrogance
and ingratitude and his one lucky strike.
But today I read The Rat again. Its reek
announced it; then I saw its pisshole stare;
line by line it strained into the air.
Then it hissed. For all the craft and clever-clever
you did not write me, fool. Nor will you ever.

from Landing Light (p.34)

"The Light"

When I reached his bed he was already blind.
Thirteen years had gone, and yet my mind
was as dark as on my ordination day.
Now I was shameless. I begged him for the light.
'Is it not taught all is illusory?
And still you did not guess the truth of it?
There is no light, fool. Now have you awoken?'
And he laughed, and then he left us. I was broken.

I went back to my room to pack my things,
my begging-bowl, my robe and cup; the prayer-mat
I would leave. It lay there, frayed and framed
in a square of late sun. And out of pure habit —
no, less, out of nothing, for I was nothing —
I watched myself sit down for one last time.

from Landing Light (p.73)

Versed by Rae Armantrout reviewed

Versed by Rae Armantrout

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


NB: "I don't get it! The Mono-Culture is the hegemony of the vulgar. The cry of "I don't understand it!" almost inevitably qualifies as an authoritative dismissal of any work at hand. Cultural authority has gone into complete reverse: once the most articulate, educated, thoughtful person in the room was the one to listen to; now the biggest vulgarian rules." -- Mark Edmundson, "Notes on the Mono-Culture" (p. 36), (The Massachusetts Review, Vol. L, Nos. 1 & 2, Spring/Summer 2009)

View all my reviews >>

W. S. Merwin to Be Named Poet Laureate

At 18 he sought out the advice of Ezra Pound, who told him to write 75 lines every day. Pound also suggested taking up poetry translation to learn what could be done with language — advice that Mr. Merwin followed.

By PATRICIA COHEN
Published: June 30, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/01/books/01poet.html?_r=1&ref=books

"La fausse monnaie"

«On n'est jamais excusable d'être méchant, mais il y a quelque mérite à savoir qu'on l'est; et le plus irréparable des vices est de faire le mal par bêtise.»

— Charles Baudelaire

"To be mean is never excusable, but there is something in knowing that one is; the most irreparable of vices is to do evil out of stupidity."

— Peggy Kamuf (translator)

Author statement – Charles Tomlinson

"I write a poem out of a sense of encounter and necessity. This is no excuse for the ego to run riot. It means a certain chastening of the 'I' as one looks out at the otherness which often confronts us. By being true to this experience, one hopes to build the ground for a poetry that is sustainable across the years."

http://www.contemporarywriters.com/

From a Rejected Comment

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