CAD

Sort of continuing with the theme of poems about sports, here’s a great one.

CAD
By Colette Bryce


Great North

Although we may have bolted from that sad cliff
of our imminent decline, we are not Paula Radcliffe.

And though we may have startled
at the starting pistol,

with its jolt
of explosive (fired by Sting), Usain Bolt

we are not,
by a long shot.

And even though we purchased the slim new book he
called What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, we are not Haruki

Murakami,
most definitely
not. Wired to our iPods,
we are your average, middle-aged bipeds:

half-trained, stiff-hinged, pegging up the course,
as likely overtaken by a pantomime horse

as a Lady Gaga . . . In the name of God!
In the name of a small but worthy charity, we plod

on, to the finish and vitality,
fleeing those intimations of mortality.

Comments : As another ‘average, middle-aged biped’, I just loved this poem and couldn’t help grinning as I read it. ‘stiff-hinged, pegging up the course, as likely overtaken by a pantomime horse as a Lady Gaga’ – what a hilarious image. I think the irregular metre and random rhyming just adds to the wry humour in this poem.
- Zen

Vitai Lampada

By Sir Henry Newbolt
There's a breathless hush in the close to-night
Ten to make and the match to win
A bumping pitch and a blinding light,
An hour to play, and the last man in.

And it's not for the sake of a ribboned coat.
Or the selfish hope of a season's fame,
But his captain's hand on his shoulder smote
"Play up! Play up! And play the game!"

The sand of the desert is sodden red-
Red with the wreck of the square that broke
The gatling's jammed and the colonel dead,
And the regiment blind with dust and smoke.

The river of death has brimmed its banks,
And England's far and Honour a name,
But the voice of a schoolboy rallies the ranks-
"Play up! Play up! And play the game!"

This is the word that year by year,
While in her place the school is set,
Every one of her sons must hear,
And none that hears it dare forget.
This they all with joyful mind

And bear through life Eke a torch in flame,
falling fling to the host behind-
"Play up! Play up! And play the game!"

Comments : As my friend A who forwarded this to me said, “great poem on cricket and the Empire”. Enough said. - Zen

Note : The title ‘Vitai Lampada’ is taken from a quotation by Lucretius and means 'the torch of life'.
This poem established the poet’s reputation. It symbolised Newbolt’s view that war should be fought in the same spirit as school sports. More information on the poet and the poem here and here.

In Mrs Tilscher's Class

By Carol Ann Duffy

You could travel up the Blue Nile
with your finger, tracing the route
while Mrs Tilscher chanted the scenery.
"Tana. Ethiopia. Khartoum. Aswan.”
That for an hour,
then a skittle of milk
and the chalky Pyramids rubbed into dust.
A window opened with a long pole.
The laugh of a bell swung by a running child.

This was better than home. Enthralling books.
The classroom glowed like a sweetshop.
Sugar paper. Coloured shapes. Brady and Hindley
faded, like the faint, uneasy smudge of a mistake.
Mrs Tilscher loved you. Some mornings, you found
she'd left a gold star by your name.
The scent of a pencil slowly, carefully, shaved.
A xylophone's nonsense heard from another form.

Over the Easter term the inky tadpoles changed
from commas into exclamation marks. Three frogs
hopped in the playground, freed by a dunce
followed by a line of kids, jumping and croaking
away from the lunch queue. A rough boy
told you how you were born. You kicked him, but stared
at your parents, appalled, when you got back home.

That feverish July, the air tasted of electricity.
A tangible alarm made you always untidy, hot,
fractious under the heavy, sexy sky. You asked her
how you were born and Mrs Tilscher smiled
then turned away. Reports were handed out.
You ran through the gates, impatient to be grown
the sky split open into a thunderstorm.

Comments : 21st March was World Poetry Day and a friend asked for poems on facebook, this was what one of her friends shared. I really liked the way the poem evokes images of school and the scatty wavering meter. - Zen
p.s. Links to some other lovely poems by Carol Ann Duffy given below :
Valentine - http://wonderingminstrels.blogspot.in/2001/08/valentine-carol-ann-duffy.html
Prayer - http://wonderingminstrels.blogspot.in/2002/01/prayer-carol-ann-duffy.html

One Perfect Rose

by Dorothy Parker

A single flow'r he sent me, since we met.
All tenderly his messenger he chose;
Deep-hearted, pure, with scented dew still wet -
One perfect rose.

I knew the language of the floweret;
'My fragile leaves,' it said, 'his heart enclose.'
Love long has taken for his amulet
One perfect rose.

Why is it no one ever sent me yet
One perfect limousine, do you suppose?
Ah no, it's always just my luck to get
One perfect rose.

Comments : A typical Dorothy Parker poem, though not as incisive as some of her other ones; thanks for sending me the poem, S.
If you want to read one of her best, click on this link to read 'Resume'. You'll find links to a lot of her other work after the comments on that page.
Enjoy !
- Zen

Elements of Composition

By A.K. Ramanujan

Composed as I am, like others,
of elements on certain well-known lists,
father's seed and mother's egg

gathering earth, air, fire, mostly
water, into a mulberry mass,
moulding calcium,

carbon, even gold, magnesium and such,
into a chattering self tangled
in love and work,

scary dreams, capable of eyes that can see,
only by moving constantly,
the constancy of things

like Stonehenge or cherry trees;

add uncle's eleven fingers
making shadow-plays of rajas
and cats, hissing,

becoming fingers again, the look
of panic on sister's face
an hour before

her wedding, a dated newspaper map,
of a place one has never seen, maybe
no longer there

after the riots, downtown Nairobi,
that a friend carried in his passport
as others would

a woman's picture in their wallets;

add the lepers of Madurai,
male, female, married,
with children,

lion faces, crabs for claws,
clotted on their shadows
under the stone-eyed

goddesses of dance, mere pillars,
moving as nothing on earth
can move --

I pass through them
as they pass through me
taking and leaving

affections, seeds, skeletons,

millennia of fossil records
of insects that do not last
a day,

body-prints of mayflies,
a legend half-heard
in a train

of the half-man searching
for an ever-fleeing
other half

through Muharram tigers,
hyacinths in crocodile waters,
and the sweet

twisted lives of epileptic saints,

and even as I add
I lose, decompose,
into my elements

into other names and forms,
past, and passing, tenses
without time,

caterpillar on a leaf, eating,
being eaten.

Comments : Thanks for the poem, S.
I loved the images, and so many of them ; ‘moulding calcium, carbon, even gold, magnesium and such, into a chattering self tangled in love and work’ – loved the transition from the simple to the complex, the contrast in ‘millennia of fossil records of insects that do not lasta day,’ etc, go ahead, read it a few times and choose your favourite images. - Zen

Snippets from Saki

'You are not on the Road to Hell,'
You tell me with fanatic glee:
Vain boaster, what shall that avail
If Hell is on the road to thee?

A Poet praised the Evening Star,
Another praised the Parrot's hue:
A Merchant praised his merchandise,
And he, at least, praised what he knew."

Comments : A friend forwarded the first delightful delicious snippet to me (Thanks S), when I googled for it, I found the second too, had to share both. - Zen

The Cloud

Percy Bysshe Shelley

I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers,
From the seas and the streams;
I bear light shade for the leaves when laid
In their noonday dreams.
From my wings are shaken the dews that waken
The sweet buds every one,
When rocked to rest on their mother's breast,
As she dances about the sun.
I wield the flail of the lashing hail,
And whiten the green plains under,
And then again I dissolve it in rain,
And laugh as I pass in thunder.

I sift the snow on the mountains below,
And their great pines groan aghast;
And all the night 'tis my pillow white,
While I sleep in the arms of the blast.
Sublime on the towers of my skiey bowers,
Lightning, my pilot, sits;
In a cavern under is fettered the thunder,
It struggles and howls at fits;

Over earth and ocean, with gentle motion,
This pilot is guiding me,
Lured by the love of the genii that move
In the depths of the purple sea;
Over the rills, and the crags, and the hills,
Over the lakes and the plains,
Wherever he dream, under mountain or stream,
The Spirit he loves remains;
And I all the while bask in Heaven's blue smile,
Whilst he is dissolving in rains.

The sanguine Sunrise, with his meteor eyes,
And his burning plumes outspread,
Leaps on the back of my sailing rack,
When the morning star shines dead;
As on the jag of a mountain crag,
Which an earthquake rocks and swings,
An eagle alit one moment may sit
In the light of its golden wings.
And when Sunset may breathe, from the lit sea beneath,
Its ardors of rest and of love,

And the crimson pall of eve may fall
From the depth of Heaven above,
With wings folded I rest, on mine aery nest,
As still as a brooding dove.
That orbed maiden with white fire laden,
Whom mortals call the Moon,
Glides glimmering o'er my fleece-like floor,
By the midnight breezes strewn;
And wherever the beat of her unseen feet,
Which only the angels hear,
May have broken the woof of my tent's thin roof,
The stars peep behind her and peer;
And I laugh to see them whirl and flee,
Like a swarm of golden bees,
When I widen the rent in my wind-built tent,
Till the calm rivers, lakes, and seas,
Like strips of the sky fallen through me on high,
Are each paved with the moon and these.

I bind the Sun's throne with a burning zone,
And the Moon's with a girdle of pearl;
The volcanoes are dim, and the stars reel and swim
When the whirlwinds my banner unfurl.
From cape to cape, with a bridge-like shape,
Over a torrent sea,
Sunbeam-proof, I hang like a roof,--
The mountains its columns be.
The triumphal arch through which I march
With hurricane, fire, and snow,
When the Powers of the air are chained to my chair,
Is the million-colored bow;
The sphere-fire above its soft colors wove,
While the moist Earth was laughing below.

I am the daughter of Earth and Water,
And the nursling of the Sky;
I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores;
I change, but I cannot die.
For after the rain when with never a stain
The pavilion of Heaven is bare,
And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams
Build up the blue dome of air,
I silently laugh at my own cenotaph,
And out of the caverns of rain,
Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb,
I arise and unbuild it again.

Comments : Read the last paragraph in the newspaper recently, the lovely imagery made me search out the entire poem. Quite apt for the weather too, don't you think ? - Zen