Poem for St Brigid

I'm not sure this is still a Thing; but I realised today that it was St Brigid's day. And I said a prayer for the Brigids/Bridgets I know, and celebrated that it's Candlemas Eve and we may be able to see our way out of the dark from here.  This was helped by a final Christmas celebration, eating and exchanging presents with a friend.

I was given a complete Robert Frost for Christmas 2013; this poem seems to sum up the fragility so many of us feel at this time of year

Peril of hope, by Robert Frost.

It is right in there
Betwixt and between
The orchard bare
And the orchard green,

When the boughs are right
In a flowery burst
Of pink and white,
That we fear the worst.

For there's not a clime
But at any cost
Will take that time
For a night of frost.

Poetry for St Brigid

St Brigid's Day, and while I'm not sure posting a poem is still an internet Thing, I had a Collected Robert Frost for Christmas, and this one remains a favourite.

Desert Places

Snow falling and night falling fast, oh, fast
In a field I looked into going past,
And the ground almost covered smooth in snow,
But a few weeds and stubble showing last.

The woods around it have it--it is theirs.
All animals are smothered in their lairs.
I am too absent-spirited to count;
The loneliness includes me unawares.

And lonely as it is that loneliness
Will be more lonely ere it will be less--
A blanker whiteness of benighted snow
With no expression, nothing to express.

They cannot scare me with their empty spaces
Between stars--on stars where no human race is.
I have it in me so much nearer home
To scare myself with my own desert places.

And if that one's a bit sad, Frost can be lighter...

[Forgive, O Lord...]

Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee
And I'll forgive Thy great big one on me.

Postscript

Seamus Heaney,  13 April 1939 - 30 August 2013

Saddened and surprised to hear of Seamus Heaney's death today.  I still have the much-annotated A-level Selected poems 1965-1975*, and have continued to read and collect his poems and essays over the nearly 30 years since.  Stepping stones is still sitting on the "unread" pile on the piano.

I have too many favourites; but I love the last lines of this, as someone who spends too little time living in the moment.

Postscript

And some time make the time to drive out west
Into County Clare, along the Flaggy Shore,
In September or October, when the wind
And the light are working off each other
So that the ocean on one side is wild
With foam and glitter, and inland among stones
The surface of a slate-grey lake is lit
By the earthed lightening of flock of swans,
Their feathers roughed and ruffling, white on white,
Their fully-grown headstrong-looking heads
Tucked or cresting or busy underwater.
Useless to think you'll park or capture it
More thoroughly. You are neither here nor there,
A hurry through which known and strange things pass
As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways
And catch the heart off guard and blow it open 

From The spirit level, 1996.

*One of the first things I knew about Heaney was that he was prepared to engage with his readers; my English teacher had been to several talks he'd given, and when we had a somewhat lively dispute in one lesson on what was meant in a particular poem, Mr Doyle wrote to Heaney asking which version was right, thinking that he might answer.  A month or two later, there was a reply; neither version was what Heaney had been thinking while writing the poem, but both were really interesting interpretations; and he added that we sounded like a fun group to teach.  Lessons learned: a) authors are actual people who sometimes write back; and b) this writing and reading thing is a two-way street. Now, in the age of interactivity, both are somewhat taken for granted; then, it felt like a total revelation.

Poetry for St Brigid 2010

It's the fifth annual cyberposting of poetry to celebrate St Brigid/Bridget's day. Officially this is tomorrow; but depending on where you look, the day is either the 1st or 2nd February...

I took a break last year, after a somewhat mixed reaction to my choice in 2008. This is another one about babies, but a cheerier one, and has been rattling around in my head as three of my friends have had babies since Christmas. This is for Thomas, Katharine and Emma.

Born Yesterday
for Sally Amis

Tightly-folded bud,
I have wished you something
None of the others would:
Not the usual stuff
About being beautiful,
Or running off a spring
Of innocence and love -
They will all wish you that,
And should it prove possible,
Well, you're a lucky girl.

But if it shouldn't, then
May you be ordinary;
Have, like other women,
An average of talents:
Not ugly, not good-looking,
Nothing uncustomary
To pull you off your balance,
That, unworkable itself,
Stops all the rest from working.
In fact, may you be dull -
If that is what a skilled,
Vigilant, flexible,
Unemphasised, enthralled
Catching of happiness is called.

Philip Larkin

And thanks to caughtknitting, who sent me a St Bridget's Day card!

Ninety years

Here dead we lie because we did not choose

To live and shame the land from which we sprung.

Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose;

But young men think it is, and we were young.

A. E. Housman

The Cenotaph in Whitehall this morning, being prepared for the visit of three of the last four veterans of the Great War. I'd have loved to have gone, but was in a meeting at the time.

To make sure everyone could see the event, which they were calling Last Voices of a Generation, [BBC iPlayer link], a huge plasma screen had been put up at the bottom of Whitehall; it looked incredibly odd sitting there, especially from the back...

Poetry for St. Brigid

Part of the annual Silent Poetry Reading

This poem's been rattling around in my head for a few months now, maybe because my family's been blessed with two beautiful children this year... Warning : it's not exactly cheerful...

Limbo

Fishermen at Ballyshannon

Netted an infant last night

Along with the salmon.

An illegitimate spawning,

A small one thrown back

To the waters. But I'm sure

As she stood in the shallows

Ducking him tenderly

Till the frozen knobs of her wrists

Were dead as the gravel,

He was a minnow with hooks

Tearing her open.

She waded in under

The sign of her cross.

He was hauled in with the fish.

Now limbo will be

A cold glitter of souls

Through some far briny zone.

Even Christ's palms, unhealed,

Smart and cannot fish there.

Seamus Heaney, from Wintering Out (1972)