HERE AND HUMAN

Vernon Scannell on BBC Desert Island Discs in 1987

In the warm room, cushioned by comfort,

Idle at fireside, shawled in lamplight,

I know the cold winter night, but only

As a far intimation, like a memory

Of a dead distress whose ghost has grown genial.

The disc, glossy black as a conjuror’s hat,

Revolves. Music is unwound: woodwind,

Strings, a tenor voice singing in a tongue

I do not comprehend or have need to -

‘The instrument of egoism mastered by art’ -

For what I listen to is unequivocal:

A distillation of romantic love,

Passion outsoaring speech. I understand

And, understanding, I rejoice in my condition;

This sweet accident of being here and human.

Later, as I lie in the dark, the echoes

Recede, the blind cat of sleep purrs close

But does not curl. Beyond the window

The hill is hunched under his grey cape

Like a watchman. I cannot hear his breathing.

Silence is a starless sky on the ceiling

Till shock slashes, stillness is gashed

By a dazzle of noise chilling the air

Like lightning. It is an animal screech,

Raucous, clawing; surely the language of terror.

But I misread it, deceived. It is the sound

Of passionate love, a vixen’s mating call.

It lingers hurtful, a stink in the ear,

But soon it begins to fade. I breathe deep,

Feeling the startled fur settle and smoth. Then I sleep.

Vernon Scannell

1922-2007

From the Poetry Anthology Being Human,

third in the poetry series edited by Neil Astley,

as reviewed in The Guardian on May 14th, 2011

WORDS

Out of us all

That make rhymes, 

Will you choose

Sometimes -

As the winds use 

A crack in a wall

Or a drain,

Their joy or their pain

To whistle through -

Choose me.

You English words?

I know you;

You are light as dreams,

Tough as oak,

Precious as gold,

As poppies and corn,

Or an old cloak;

Sweet as our birds

To the ear;

As the burnet rose

In the heat of Midsummer;

Strange as the races

Of dead and unborn;

Strange and sweet

Equally,

And familiar,

To the eye,

As the dearest faces

That a man knows,

And as lost homes are;

Than oldest yew, -

As our hills are, old, -

Worn new 

Again and again;

Young as our streams 

After rain;

And as dear

As the earth which you prove

That we love.

Make me content 

With some sweetness

From Wales

Whose nightingales

Have no wings, -

From Wiltshire and Kent,

And Herefordshire, 

And the villages there, -

From the names, and the things

No less.

Let me sometimes dance

With you,

Or climb

Or stand perchance

In ecstasy,

Fixed and free

In a rhyme,

As poets do.

Edward Thomas

1878-1917

poets.org

OCEANS

Juan Ramon Jimenez

I have a feeling that my boat

has struck, down there in the depths,

against a great thing.

And nothing

happened! Nothing . . . Silence . . . Waves . . .

- Nothing happens? Or has everything happened,

and are we standing now, quietly, in the new life?

Juan Ramon Jimenez 

1881-1958

Oceans -  translated from the Spanish by Robert Bly

The  Ecco Anthology of International Poetry

Juan Ramón Jiménez Mantecón was a Spanish poet, a prolific writer who received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1956. One of Jiménez's most important contributions to modern poetry was his advocacy of the French concept of "pure poetry.”

THIS IS BAD

Gottfried Benn

Someone hands you an English thriller,

highly recommended.

You don’t read English.

You’ve worked up a thirst

for something you can’t afford.

You have deep insights,

brand new and they sound

like an academic glossing Hoelderlin.

You hear the waves at night

ramping against the shore

and you think: that’s what waves do.

Worse: you’re asked out

when at home you get better coffee,

silence, and you don’t expect to be amused.

Awful: not to die in summer

under a bright sky

when the rich dirt

falls easily from the shovel.

Gottfried Benn

German  expressionist poet, essayist and novelist

1886-1956

“This Is Bad’ translated from the German by Harvey Shapiro

From the ECCO Anthology of International Poetry.