Things I Remember From School

THE VILLAGE BLACKSMITH

Under a spreading chestnut tree
The village smithy stands;
The smith, a mighty man is he,
With large and sinewy hands;
And the muscles of his brawny arms
Are strong as iron bands.

….strange how stuff from school days sticks, resurfaces, acquires new meaning as you grow old(er)……
I find myself humming Schubert’s ‘The Trout’ taught us by Mr. Ronald Center, our inspiring music teacher. As well as ‘ Who is Sylvia?, and  Schumann’s ‘ To France and to freedom two grenadiers/from bondage in Russia were tramping/And bowed with shame and foreboding they came/Where lay Russian soldiers camping...’

And I can still recite  Longfellow’s Blacksmith poem which I still don’t like much but which our very uninspiring English teacher made us learn by heart (as well as  Shylock’s

” Signor Antonio, many a time and oft

In the Rialto you have rated me

About my moneys and my usances.

Still have I borne it with a patient shrug,

For sufferance is the badge of all our tribe.

You call me misbeliever, cutthroat dog,

And spet upon my Jewish gaberdine—

And all for use of that which is mine own. “

which I like more and more – but never got round to finding out what exactly was Shylock’s ‘gaberdine’.

And  she also made us learn Gray’s ‘  The ploughman homeward plods his weary way‘ which I admire now but  found impossibly dull then

and ‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?’

and so on.

I can clearly remember the context in which I learned all these scraps – the teacher (Miss B, was that a wig she was wearing? Mr C with his long black hair which was okay because he was a musician), the classroom (cupboard on the right side, windows on the left) , the pupils ( Jimmy H who laughed at everything, Grace L who was so tall and so beautiful, Ralph M who couldn’t pronounce the letter ‘r’ and whose father owned the local fish and chip shop), the feelings (anxiety, embarrassment, amusement, interest, boredom):
Jimmy now farms his father’s farm;  Grace went to Southampton; Ralph was killed in a car crash; the teachers…….I didn’t go to any reunions; I lost touch.

But over the years I have kept in touch with the poems and songs  -  the village blacksmith with his strong and sinewy hands, badly-done-by Signor Antonio, the two patriotic Grenadiers, the beautiful Sylvia, the constant ploughman  -  they have all stayed with me,  and in addition I have become aware of  and appreciate the hidden ideas and the skills which created and infused these poems and songs we learnt so reluctantly so long ago…….

And oft, when on my couch I lie/ In vacant or in pensive mood/ They flash upon that inward eye/ Which is the bliss of solitude.

They comfort me.

i love dylan

Altarwise by Owl-Light

Altarwise by owl-light in the half-way house
The gentleman lay graveward with his furies;
Abaddon in the hangnail cracked from Adam,
And, from his fork, a dog among the fairies,
The atlas-eater with a jaw for news,
Bit out the mandrake with to-morrows scream.
Then, penny-eyed, that gentlemen of wounds,
Old cock from nowheres and the heaven’s egg,
With bones unbuttoned to the half-way winds,
Hatched from the windy salvage on one leg,
Scraped at my cradle in a walking word
That night of time under the Christward shelter:
I am the long world’s gentleman, he said,
And share my bed with Capricorn and Cancer

- Dylan Thomas

One critic has dismissed this poem as being ‘wilfully obscure’.
It sounds good though.
Especially that opening line.
And ‘ the atlas-eater with a jaw for news’
I like that.
And the dying fall of that last line……
And the alliteration..
And

Anyhow it’s not only meaning of the words that attracts  you to a song,
or a poem,
it’s the melody, the rhythms, the sounds;
the meaning of the words is often subsumed in their sounds.
Listen to a few readings of Thomas’s stuff -
Richard Burton (he’s terrific),
Dylan himself, Anthony Hopkins, Peter Bellamy,
(not so  good, too thespian, too sonorous)
and you come to realise that what you are listening for/to
is not the intellectual meaning
but the sensual music.

A bit like Bob Dylan,
forging strange meanings from metaphors
that gave their component parts new life,
an appeal to the ear as much as to the intellect.

Dylan! What a genius you were!

Broad thoughts from a home

Oh to be in Hydra

(a small island near Piraeus taken over in the Summer by artists and writers)

now that winter’s  here

(the ‘Howff – a graveyard in Dundee, the home of Jute, Jam,  and George Galloway)

while snowflakes fall on  grey tombstones

(an island boy – able was I ere I saw Elba – with his finger in his ear)

in Scotland now

( a small country made famous by George Galloway, Sean Connery, William Macgonagall and Alexander Salmon)

Sea-gazers

 Do you know that MacCaig poem about the hen

staring at nothing with one eye and  then

picking it up? Is that the same nothing that

this  Lanzarote lady’s  gazing at?

 

 

MEANINGS

“Altarwise by Owl-light in the half-way house
The gentleman lay graveward with his furies…”  -  Dylan Thomas

The obscurity of this sonnet paradoxically carries a certain advantage. The absence of a readily intelligible surface of meaning relieves us of the usual obligation of analysing the real or supposed intellectual content of a work. We are left with words isolated from a general message and consequently more likely to be found interesting in their own right.

just been to see ‘django unchained’
(would rather have read ‘prometheus unbound’)
especially didn’t like the bit
where tarantino (a la hitchcock) appears on the screen
in his own film
as a cowhand
(pudgy and pasty)
just to say
you just can’t get enough of me, can you?

Difficult to know what these stones mean which is probably part of their attraction.

This happened when I started my training on  provosts at RAF Ternhill. After a session of aerobatics with my instructor I did another session straight away, solo this time …loop…barrel roll…stall turn….loop – but this time something went wrong. Perhaps because of such a constant succession of g force experiences, I blacked out in the  loop –  greyed out really because I was vaguely aware of what was happening – I was aware that the plane was falling out of the vertical, sliding to one side – one part of my mind was very actively aware of what was happening and was jumping up and down screaming You’re going into a spin! Wake up! You’re going into a spin! while the other part of my mind – just as aware of what was happening – was reacting in quite the opposite way, telling me quietly like one of these hypnotic tapes not to worry, don’t open your eyes because if you do what you’re going to see is going to be so very unpleasant so just relax, relax, things will work out, just you wait and see
and when I did open my eyes I was looking down at a farm 1,000 feet below going round and round and round….

SONNET 73

                                                        

That time of year thou mayst in me behold

                                     

when yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
 upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
 bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.

In me thou see’st the twilight of such day
as after sunset fadeth in the west;
which by and by black night doth take away,
Death’s second self, that seals up all in rest.

In me thou see’st the glowing of such fire,
that on the ashes of his youth doth lie,

as the deathbed whereon it must expire,

consumed with that which it was nourished by.

This thou perceiv’st, which makes thy love more strong,

To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

Lilolelady

Little old lady , passing by 

catching everyone’s eye

you have such a charming manner, 

sweet and shy

little old bonnet set in place 

and a smile on your face

you’re a perfect picture 

in your lavender and lace

Reds

Whenas in reds my Julia goes

 

 

 

 

 

Ah then, methinks how brightly glows

 

 

 

 

 

 

the luceyfaction of her clothes -

  That brave vibration, each way free - 

Ah, how that glittering taketh me!

 

African Nights

It was one of those Rousseau  nights 
( Henri Rousseau, the painter,
‘The Sleeping Gypsy’ guy)

still warm,
you could smell and hear and feel  the day’s heat
no wind,
full moon,
and silence

then suddenly calls,
sounds, cries,  noises:
a moon leopard coughing;
nightmare bats screaming  shrill warnings;
a humpback hyena’s crazy cackling;
and nearby
something creaking,
Kroac, Kroac, Kroac,
frog,
frog or toad

then suddenly
nothing again,
dark, deep,  creepy silence
and the whole world waiting,
stopped in its tracks,
poised in mid-stride,
 listening

listening and watching and waiting
for the banished sun
to rise and resume
and reassure

            

Hello there

you’re never alone

with a phone