Tag: poetry

Love, by Ruby Robinson

Eventually, the nerve impulse is carried
to the apex of the heart
causing ventricles to contract,
and blood to rush
to and from this muscle the size
of your fist, an engine of flesh,

the marksman’s target for a bullet.
You said, listen to your heart
placed a stethoscope
to my jumping skin, paused.

Cleopatra compared
it to the stroke of death,
this harbouring in the heart
of an uncertain beat.

I had a Dongee, by Spike Milligan

I had a Dongee
Who would not speak
He wouldn’t hop
He wouldn’t creep
He wouldn’t walk
He wouldn’t leap
He wouldn’t wake
He wouldn’t sleep
He wouldn’t shout
He wouldn’t squeak
He wouldn’t look
He wouldn’t peep
He wouldn’t wag
      his Dongee tail.
I think this Dongee’s
      going to fail.

Four weddings

I recently rewatched Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994). It’s still a great film, ageing better than, for instance, the more recent Love Actually (2003). (Keira Knightley has commented on the creepiness of the infamous cue card scene of the latter.)

I had forgotten Matthew’s deeply moving speech at his partner Gareth’s funeral, and how the priest introduced Matthew as “Gareth’s closest friend”.

In the (original?) script, the priest introduces him simply as “Matthew” – no “partner” but also no “closest friend” euphemism.

The camera directions note: “Cut aways during the poem should include Gareth’s parents – it would be nice to feel they understand Matthew.”

Matthew mentions in his speech that “Gareth used to prefer funerals to weddings. He said it was easier to get enthusiastic about a ceremony one had an outside chance of eventually being involved in.”

There’s a lot going on. Four straight weddings and a gay funeral.

Same-sex marriage has been legal in Britain since 2014 – 20 years after Four Weddings! – and in Northern Ireland only since January 2020. I wonder in twenty years how we will look back at the discrimination against trans and nonbinary people that’s interwowen with society.

Matthew’s speech concludes with a poem, Funeral Blues: “As for me, you may ask how I will remember him, what I thought of him. Unfortunately, there I run out of words. Perhaps you will forgive me if I turn for my own feelings to the words of another splendid bugger, W. H. Auden. This is actually what I want to say.”

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message ‘He is Dead’.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

Gongoozler, by Joshua Judson

Grandma walks down the middle of the road at 3AM.
The tarmac cold under her bare feet, a breeze
coming in off the canal flaring her nightie.

Mist rolling in off the lock.
The trees hold their leaves up
to the yellow glow of the streetlights.

A neighbour fetching a glass of water sees Grandma
from his kitchen window. Puts on slippers.
Walks into the road with an outstretched hand.

What social construction is

Nail polish is for XX chromosomes
And maybe goths
So miserable sometimes
They need to be entertained—
That’s what social construction is

A dreary concrete block built
From furious apathy
And guilt
As real as gravity,
It will crush your bones

Faster than a fall from a height
If you dare to think, hmmm
Maybe I’d just like to wear pink
On my nails to adorn
My slender fingers

Everything changes, by Bertolt Brecht

Everything changes. You can make
A fresh start with your final breath.
But what has happened has happened. And the water
You once poured into the wine cannot be
Drained off again.

What has happened has happened. The water
You once poured into the wine cannot be
Drained off again, but
Everything changes. You can make
A fresh start with your final breath.

Translated by John Willett

When You Are Old, by William Butler Yeats

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

In Memoriam A.H.H. [Prelude], by Alfred Tennyson

Strong Son of God, immortal Love,
         Whom we, that have not seen thy face,
         By faith, and faith alone, embrace,
Believing where we cannot prove;
 
Thine are these orbs of light and shade;
         Thou madest Life in man and brute;
         Thou madest Death; and lo, thy foot
Is on the skull which thou hast made.
 
Thou wilt not leave us in the dust:
         Thou madest man, he knows not why,
         He thinks he was not made to die;
And thou hast made him: thou art just.
 
Thou seemest human and divine,
         The highest, holiest manhood, thou.
         Our wills are ours, we know not how,
Our wills are ours, to make them thine.
 
Our little systems have their day;
         They have their day and cease to be:
         They are but broken lights of thee,
And thou, O Lord, art more than they.
 
We have but faith: we cannot know;
         For knowledge is of things we see;
         And yet we trust it comes from thee,
A beam in darkness: let it grow.
 
Let knowledge grow from more to more,
         But more of reverence in us dwell;
         That mind and soul, according well,
May make one music as before,
 
But vaster. We are fools and slight;
         We mock thee when we do not fear:
         But help thy foolish ones to bear;
Help thy vain worlds to bear thy light.
 
Forgive what seem’d my sin in me,
         What seem’d my worth since I began;
         For merit lives from man to man,
And not from man, O Lord, to thee.
 
Forgive my grief for one removed,
         Thy creature, whom I found so fair.
         I trust he lives in thee, and there
I find him worthier to be loved.
 
Forgive these wild and wandering cries,
         Confusions of a wasted youth;
         Forgive them where they fail in truth,
And in thy wisdom make me wise.

Assertiveness role play, by Lorraine Mariner

I am your work colleague, neighbour and friend.
I have a dog. I’m always going away for the weekend
and expect you to look after my dog which means
you can’t go anywhere. You’ve had enough.
I say Hi Michael. How are you? You say Fine.
I say I’m off to Rome. You say That’s nice.
I say I’ll drop Rover round on Friday. You say No
and use your broken record; Lorraine, I’m sorry,
I’m not going to look after your dog any more
I want to be free at the weekend. I’m supposed to
keep asking and you’re supposed to keep saying
I’m not going to look after your dog again
but instead you touch my leg and say Ok
bring round your dog. How can I refuse you?
The trainer is not impressed. She doesn’t think
you’re taking this course seriously. Other pairs
are still in role so we have time to kill and I ask you
if you like dogs and you tell me you don’t because Of
a stupid Afghan Hound you had as a child, while
the part of me deep inside that knows what it wants
says Forget my dog. He’s a figment of the trainer’s
imagination – you are not. I noticed when we had
to share one thing we like to do, with the group
at the start of the course, yours was going to an
Italian class. Well. I’m learning the language too
only I didn’t like to say m case you thought I was
making it up but… vieni a Roma con me.
This will be my broken record; Come with me to Rome.
I’ve never been and the ice cream I’m planning to eat
on the Spanish Steps is too big for one. To show
that we mean business the trainer says we need a limit,
something that we will do if our needs don’t seem
to be getting met. Not an empty threat. What you say
you have to see through. Michael, come with me to Italy
or my dog will bite you. Or I will. My bottom line.