poetry for troubled times
Poetry Breakfast ~ at home
As we are unable to meet together for our Poetry Breakfasts, I invite you to join us for a virtual session instead. So, with the help of Tim, Ali and Hilary, I will share ideas for poems, on the theme of each Poetry Breakfast already on our (now redundant) calendar, on a weekly basis.
Today’s theme for the week is ‘Poetry for Troubled Times’ and to be honest, the difficulty was knowing when to stop! Do please share poems that you are finding helpful …
Although I’m not including it, ‘I thank you God for most this amazing day’ feels very present for me just now as spring magnificently erupts all around us – take cheer, and be of good heart.
Sending you all much love!
Anna x
PS The next theme will be ‘New Beginnings’
Thanks to everyone who told me I had to listen to this!
“This is the time to be slow,
Lie low to the wall
Until the bitter weather passes.
Try, as best you can, not to let
The wire brush of doubt
Scrape from your heart
All sense of yourself
And your hesitant light.
If you remain generous,
Time will come good;
And you will find your feet
Again on fresh pastures of promise,
Where the air will be kind
And blushed with beginning.”
by John O’Donohue
from Benedictus: Book of Blessings
My Love,
tonight Fionnuala is your nurse.
You’ll hear her voice sing-song around the ward
lifting a wing at the shore of your darkness.
I heard that, in another life, she too journeyed
through a storm, a kind of curse, with the ocean
rising darkly around her, fierce with cold,
and no resting place, only the frozen
rocks that tore her feet, the light on her shoulders.
And no cure there but to wait it out.
If, while I’m gone, your fever comes down —
if the small, salt-laden shapes of her song
appear to you as a first glimmer of earth-light,
follow the sweet, hopeful voice of that landing.
She will keep you safe beneath her wing.”
From A Quarter of an Hour by Leanne O’Sullivan, published. by Bloodaxe Books
Leaving Early by Leanne O’Sullivan
Count that Day Lost by George Eliot
If you sit down at set of sun
And count the acts that you have done,
And, counting, find
One self-denying deed, one word
That eased the heart of him who heard,
One glance most kind
That fell like sunshine where it went —
Then you may count that day well spent.
But if, through all the livelong day,
You’ve cheered no heart, by yea or nay —
If, through it all
You’ve nothing done that you can trace
That brought the sunshine to one face–
No act most small
That helped some soul and nothing cost —
Then count that day as worse than lost.
I worried by Mary Oliver
I worried a lot. Will the garden grow, will the rivers
flow in the right direction, will the earth turn
as it was taught, and if not how shall
I correct it?
Was I right, was I wrong, will I be forgiven,
can I do better?
Will I ever be able to sing, even the sparrows
can do it and I am, well,
hopeless.
Is my eyesight fading or am I just imagining it,
am I going to get rheumatism,
lockjaw, dementia?
Finally I saw that worrying had come to nothing.
And gave it up. And took my old body
and went out into the morning,
and sang.
from Swan: Poems and Prose Poems, Beacon Press
Thank you Hilary for choosing these two wonderful poems!
Toaster by by Olga Dermott-Bond
Each Sunday morning
the bread would often get stuck
or launch itself high
across the kitchen
where dad would catch it, juggling
each flapping bird with
blackened wings. His dance
made us laugh. Tea, marmalade,
homemade jam, honey –
again and again
we would wait for its metalled
cough, to watch salmon
leaping through currents
of sun. I ate six slices
one weekend, enthralled
with how happiness
was the colour of butter,
best eaten hot. Toast.
I believed I could
save each tiny crumb of you,
thinking aged just four
that every Sunday
would stay like this, love landing
soft, the right way up.
from Hilary’s copy of Ten Poems about Breakfast, published by Candlestick Press
This larger dome of blue and white is just what we have, here, today.
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Ah, so many possible interpretations! (The mark of a well-chosen theme, surely). Poems to cheer you up – there are thousands. Optimistic poems to show the light at the end of the tunnel – that’s why Fergal Keane’s choice (see above) was so apt, as he said himself. Or poems to record the troubled times in themselves – that’s what the War Poets were doing. Or almost everything Housman applied his skills to… (no, I know that’s not really fair!).
I’ve settled for Yeats’s “Easter 1916“: too long to put up here, but easy to find online or in anthologies, it’s the one with the repeated refrain “A terrible beauty is born”.
And… Linda has just gone instantly for Shelley’s Ozymandias – yet another take on the theme, clearly, the slightly world-weary “everything turns to dust in the end” version.
What a wonderful idea. I’d like to suggest Brendan Kennelly’s ‘Begin’ for New Beginnings. Poem text can be copied from https://www.bloodaxebooks.com/ecs/product/the-essential-brendan-kennelly-999 (click on View Extract}
Audio available here:
https://soundcloud.com/bloodaxe-books/kennelly-32-begin
Video (‘Begin’ starts at 6.10):
https://vimeo.com/2002088
Thank you so much Neil, and thank you for all your posts sharing such wonderful poetry – we need it, deeply. I’ll post all of this next week! Love, Anna
Mark and I are so enjoying your selection of poems. A balm for the soul and deep feelings of thankfulness for living where we do, having the friends and family we cherish and having the time to sit and listen to poetry in the stillness of a sunny Spring afternoon in the garden.
Bless you, Anna, and Tim and Ali and all the poets who penned their thoughts and dreams and memories.
Thank you Ruth, I’m so glad you and Mark are enjoying the poems, I’m loving putting them together and seeing what people choose to add as well. Lots of love, Anna x
All Right? by Simon Armitage
It was all winter
no clouds, no leaves
the sky was all sky
It was all frost
and all the best stars were mirror ball bright.
Then I noticed this guy on the bridge
this one solitary guy
with a 10 yard, 20 yard, 50 yard stare in his eye
Looking onto the tracks
looking straight down the line
I’ve never been one for meddling
I don’t like to pry
but I wandered across
and heard myself saying
“All right?”
A train went past
…. so whatever he said in reply
got atomised
Then he spun on his heels
and veered off into the night
and I slept all the better
for not just passing him by.
Come spring
Come shine
the station buttered with warm light
I saw him again
on the edge of platform 9 9 9
But he nodded and smiled
and silently mouthed,
“All right”.
then jumped on a train and rode away into his life.
I also like Lockdown by Simon Armitage, in which he addresses the issues of our current crisis. Both these poems can be found on simonarmitage.com
Thank you Pam, I remember hearing Simon read this poem at Concord College a few years back, he may have read it at Wenlock, too. Great poem – and yes, I think Lockdown is very special.
Have long wanted to come to a Poetry Breakfast but live a fair stretch away up in north Shropshire, so really delighted to get the chance now. Thank you very much for this beautiful selection. Poems are pretty much the firmest stones I’m finding to step across the river in these days and there are some great ones here to add to my cache. I especially liked Leaving Early and Toaster.
It’s lovely to have you here Heather! Welcome! Anna x