waylaid

This blog has moved to here.

If anyone knows how to move the entire blog at once, do let me know. I'm doing it piecemeal.

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Percy Shelley

Who'll know then, when they walk by the grave
where your bones will be brittle things – this bone here
that swoops away from your throat, and this,
which perfectly fits the scoop of my palm, and these
which I count with my lips, and your skull,
which blooms on the pillow now, and your fingers,
beautiful in their little rings – that love, which wanders history,
singled you out in your time?

                                                Love loved you best; lit you
with a flame, like talent, under your skin; let you
move through your days and nights, blessed in your flesh,
blood, hair, as though they were lovely garments
you wore to pleasure the air.  Who'll guess, if they read
your stone, or press their thumbs to the scars
of your dates, that were I alive, I would lie on the grass
above your bones till I mirrored your pose, your infinite grace?

Carol Ann Duffy 

When Francis preached love to the birds
They listened, fluttered, throttled up
Into the blue like a flock of words

Released for fun from his holy lips.
Then wheeled back, whirred about his head,
Pirouetted on brothers’ capes.

Danced on the wing, for sheer joy played
And sang, like images took flight.
Which was the best poem Francis made,

His argument true, his tone light.

Seamus Heaney

I've deleted this poem, because of this: http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,2223779,00.html

Night falls fast.
Today is in the past.

Blown from the dark hill hither to my door
Three flakes, then four
Arrive, then many more.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

O woman, lovely woman. Nature made thee
To temper man. We had been brutes without you;
Angels are painted fair, to look like you;
There’s in you all that we believe of heaven,
Amazing brightness, purity and truth,
Eternal joy, and everlasting love.

Thomas Otway

The man who wasn't there

Yesterday upon the stair
I met a man who wasn't there.
He wasn't there again today.
I wish that man would go away.


The lady with technique

As I was letting down my hair
I met a guy who didn't care,
He didn't care again today -
I love 'em when they get that way!


Hughes Mearns

In Wells Cathedral there's this ancient clock,
three parts time machine, one part zodiac.
Every fifteen minutes, knights on horseback
circle and joust, and for six hundred years

the same poor sucker riding counterways
has copped it full in the face with a lance.
To one side, some weird looking guy in a frock
back-heels a bell. Thus the quarter is struck.

It's empty in here, mostly. There's no God
to speak of – some bishops have said as much –
and five quid buys a person a new watch.
But even at night with the great doors locked

chimes sing out, and the sap who was knocked
comes cornering home wearing a new head.


Simon Armitage

To live at all is miracle enough.
The doom of nations is another thing.
Here in my hammering blood-pulse is my proof.

Let every painter paint and poet sing
And all the sons of music ply their trade;
Machines are weaker than a beetle’s wing.

Swung out of sunlight into cosmic shade,
Come what come may the imagination’s heart
Is constellation high and can’t be weighed.

Nor greed nor fear can tear our faith apart
When every heart-beat hammers out the proof
That life itself is miracle enough.

Mervyn Peake