by Allie Esiri
She was wearing coral taffeta trousers
Someone had brought her from Isfahan,
And the little gold coat with pomegranate blossoms,
And the coral-hafted feather fan,
But she ran down a Kentish lane in the moonlight,
And skipped in the pool of moon as she ran.
She cared not a rap for all the big planets,
For Betelgeuse or Aldebaran,
And all the big planets cared nothing for her,
That small impertinent charlatan,
But she climbed on a Kentish stile in the moonlight,
And laughed at the sky through the sticks of her fan.
26 May • One Fine Day in the Middle of the Night • Anon.
This poem is a nonsense rhyme; even the title makes no sense. You’re right not to believe a word of it. The poet is playing a game: how many impossible things can fit into a short rhyming poem?
One fine day in the middle of the night,
Two dead boys got up to fight,
Back to back they faced each other,
Drew their swords and shot each other,
One was blind and the other couldn’t see
So they chose a dummy for a referee.
A blind man went to see fair play,
A dumb man went to shout ‘hooray!’
A paralysed donkey passing by,
Kicked the blind man in the eye,
Knocked him through a nine inch wall,
Into a dry ditch and drowned them all,
A deaf policeman heard the noise,
And came to arrest the two dead boys.
If you don’t believe this story’s true,
Ask the blind man he saw it too!
27 May • God’s Grandeur • Gerard Manley Hopkins
Whitsun, or Whit Sunday, falls on the seventh Sunday after Easter. It commemorates the Holy Spirit’s descent upon the disciples of Jesus. In the north of England, there are parades known as ‘Whit Walks’ on and around Whitsun. Hopkins’s extraordinary lines describe the ‘Holy Ghost’ as it hangs above the world, and they form a tight and knotty poem that should be read aloud for full effect.
The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs –
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
27 May • M.O.R.E.R.A.P.S. • Joseph Coelho
When we discuss poetry, we often use many complex words, such as ‘onomatopoeia’, ‘metaphor’ and ‘alliteration’. This poem by the children’s poet Joseph Coelho is particularly useful for helping you to remember all the different definitions.
The M.O.R.E.R.A.P.S are a trick
to help with your writing.
They add a kick to language,
Make writing more exciting.
M is for Metaphor —
saying one thing is another.
‘The sun is an oven.’
‘The Earth is everyone’s mother.’
O is for Onomatopoeia —
words that are also sounds.
‘Whoosh went the wind.’
‘Howl went the hound.’
R is for Rhyme —
words that sound the same.
You can put a cat in a hat.
Or simply try rhyming your name.
E is for Emotion —
happy, worried and sad.
Great writing shares a feeling
from the good to the bad.
R is for Repetition —
But don’t repeat any old word!
Find a phrase with a musical rhythm
that sounds like a song from a bird.
A is for Alliteration —
words sharing the same starting letter,
used in the tongue-twister
that made Betty’s bitter batter better.
P is for Personification —
human features ascribed to a thing.
I looked to the sky and saw
the sun’s bright shining grin.
S is for Simile —
using ‘as’ and ‘like’ to compare.
For instance, ‘When Mother gets angry
she snarls like a rampaging bear.’
The M.O.R.E.R.A.P.S are a wonderful way
to add a punch to your writing.
Master them like a juggler.
make your words ripe for the biting.
28 May • I Am! • John Clare
This poem, one of Clare’s most popular, was written during his second period in a mental asylum. It is full of anguish and self-pity, perhaps even self-loathing. However, the poem’s opening words – ‘I am’ – are defiant, and no matter what has happened in the past, and no matter what Clare wishes for the future, one thing remains certain in his troubled mind: he still exists.
I am: yet what I am none cares or knows,
My friends forsake me like a memory lost;
I am the self-consumer of my woes,
They rise and vanish in oblivious host,
Like shades in love and death’s oblivion lost;
And yet I am, and live with shadows tost
Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life nor joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life’s esteems;
And e’en the dearest – that I loved the best –
Are strange – nay, rather stranger than the rest.
I long for scenes where man has never trod,
A place where woman never smiled or wept;
There to abide with my Creator, God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept:
Untroubling and untroubled where I lie,
The grass below – above the vaulted sky.
28 May • Yes • Adrian Mitchell
In this poem different things speak to illustrate what they can mean to us. While some of the things ‘spoken’ in this poem are funny, like the kangaroo saying ‘trampoline’, others have deeper meanings, such as the bus saying ‘us’ while the car says ‘me’.
A smile says: Yes.
A heart says: Blood.
When the rain says: Drink.
The earth says: Mud.
The kangaroo says: Trampoline.
Giraffes say: Tree.
A bus says: Us.
While a car says: Me.
Lemon trees say: Lemons.
A jug says: Lemonade.
The villain says: You’re wonderful.
The hero: I’m afraid.
The forest says: Hide and Seek.
The grass says: Green and Grow.
The railway says: Maybe.
The prison says: No.
The millionaire says: Take.
The beggar says: Give.
The soldier cries: Mother!
The baby sings: Live.
The river says: Come with me.
The moon says: Bless.
The stars say: Enjoy the light.
The sun says: Yes.
29 May • from Everest Climbed • Ian Serraillier
On this day in 1953, the New Zealander Edmund Hillary and the Nepalese Tenzing Norgay became the first confirmed climbers to have reached the summit of Mount Everest, the tallest mountain in the world. Everest sits on the borde
r of Nepal and China, and its summit is 8,848 metres above sea-level – for comparison, the highest point in England, Scafell Pike is 978 metres. The first full ascent of Everest remains one of the most remarkable moments in human exploration, comparable with reaching the North Pole or walking on the moon. And yet Hillary’s notes from the summit are quite plain: ‘We made seats for ourselves in the snow, and sitting there in reasonable comfort we ate with relish a bar of mint cake.’
And now with a sickening shock
They saw before them a towering wall
Of smooth and holdless rock.
O ghastly fear – with the goal so near
To find the way was blocked!
On one side darkly the mountain dropped,
On the other two plunging miles of peak
Shot from the dizzy skyline down
In a silver streak.
‘No hope of turning the bluff to the west,’
Said Hillary. ‘What’s that I see to the east?
A worm-wide crack between cornice and rock –
Will it hold? I can try it at least.’
He called to Tenzing, ‘Draw in the slack!’
Then levered himself right into the crack
And, kicking his spikes in the frozen crust,
Wriggled up with his back.
With arms and feet and shoulders he fought,
Inch by sweating inch, then caught
At the crest and grabbed for the light of day.
There was time, as he struggled for breath, to pray
For all the might that a man could wish –
Then he heaved at the rope till over the lip
Brave Tenzing, hauled from the deep, fell flop
Like a monstrous gaping fish.
Was the summit theirs? – they puffed and panted –
No, for the ridge still upward pointed.
On they plodded, Martian-weird
With pouting mask and icicle beard
That cracked and tinkled, broke and rattled,
As on with pound hearts they battled,
On to the summit –
Till at last the ridge began to drop.
Two swings, two whacks of Hillary’s axe,
And they stoop at the top.
This tale of heroes is ended, the trumpets all
Have sounded. Soon, in the glass of history, we shall see
Their triumph – no boyish adventure, no trick of vanity fulfilled,
But a march in man’s long progress to the stars.
And their glory shines in being, not in doing –
In courage, humanity, and valour uncomplaining.
It is the tale of Man himself, who made
The sea his highroad and the lonely sky his wing-way,
Who defied the world’s highest stronghold and won
Her crown of snow.
29 May • There was a Young Lady whose Chin • Edward Lear
This limerick by Edward Lear creates the comical picture of the Young Lady of the title playing the harp using only her exceedingly pointy chin.
There was a Young Lady whose chin
Resembled the point of a pin;
So she had it made sharp,
And purchased a harp,
And played several tunes with her chin.
30 May • Life Doesn’t Frighten Me • Maya Angelou
Because she lived such a full life herself, Angelou sets an authoritative example when she writes that life is nothing to fear. But it is a young child in this poem who is so defiant and unfrightened.
Shadows on the wall
Noises down the hall
Life doesn’t frighten me at all
Bad dogs barking loud
Big ghosts in a cloud
Life doesn’t frighten me at all.
Mean old Mother Goose
Lions on the loose
They don’t frighten me at all
Dragons breathing flame
On my counterpane
That doesn’t frighten me at all.
I go boo
Make them shoo
I make fun
Way they run
I won’t cry
So they fly
I just smile
They go wild
Life doesn’t frighten me at all.
Tough guys fight
All alone at night
Life doesn’t frighten me at all
Panthers in the park
Strangers in the dark
No, they don’t frighten me at all.
That new classroom where
Boys all pull my hair
(Kissy little girls
With their hair in curls)
They don’t frighten me at all.
Don’t show me frogs and snakes
And listen for my scream,
If I’m afraid at all
It’s only in my dreams.
I’ve got a magic charm
That I keep up my sleeve,
I can walk the ocean floor
And never have to breathe.
Life doesn’t frighten me at all
Not at all
Not at all.
Life doesn’t frighten me at all.
30 May • Joan of Arc • Florence Earle Coates
On 30 May 1431 the French military leader Joan of Arc, a famous figure in the Hundred Years War between France and England, was burnt at the stake. It is thought that she was only 19 years old at the time. This poem by Florence Earle Coates was written in 1916, and praises Joan’s extraordinary life.
Her spirit is to France a living spring
From which to draw deep draughts of life. To-day,—
As when a peasant girl she led the way
Victorious to Rheims and crowned the King,—
High and heroic thoughts about her cling,
And sacrificial faiths as pure as they,
Moving the land she loved, with gentle sway,
To be, for love of her, a better thing!
Was she unhappy? No: her radiant youth
Burned, like a meteor, on to swift eclipse;
But where it passed, there lingers still a light.
She waited, wistful, for the word of truth
That breathed in blessing from immortal lips
When earthly comfort failed, and all around was night.
31 May • The Man He Killed • Thomas Hardy
The second Boer War, which started in 1899, ended on this day in 1902. It was a bloody war, fought in what is now South Africa between the British and the Boer armies. Around the world, opposition to the war was strong, and there were many British citizens who objected to it. Hardy’s poem, published during the war, reflects on the absurdity and mindlessness of armed conflict.
‘Had he and I but met
By some old ancient inn,
We should have sat us down to wet
Right many a nipperkin!
‘But ranged as infantry,
And staring face to face,
I shot at him as he at me,
And killed him in his place.
‘I shot him dead because –
Because he was my foe,
Just so: my foe of course he was:
That’s clear enough; although
‘He thought he’d ’list, perhaps,
Off-hand like – just as I –
Was out of work – had sold his traps –
No other reason why.
‘Yes; quaint and curious war is!
You shoot a fellow down
You’d treat if met where any bar is,
Or help to half-a-crown.’
31 May • This is Just to Say • William Carlos Williams
We end the book with this wonderfully playful poem by the twentieth-century American Imagist poet William Carlos Williams. Although the poem has the single image of the missing plums in the icebox, it raises countless questions about who the icebox thief is, and what their relationship is with the poor fruit owner. The poem’s last lines le
ave us with a fittingly refreshing feeling for the summer days just ahead.
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
Index of First Lines
A handsome young fellow called Frears
A little lane – the brook runs close beside
A smile says: Yes
A splodge of purple on your neck
A stranger called this morning
A worm ate words
Ah, God! to see the branches stir
Ah, you should see Cynddylan on a tractor
And now with a sickening shock
April is the cruellest month
At day’s end I remember
Aunt Julia spoke Gaelic
Be like the bird
Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises
Beguiled by blue moon
Bobby Riggs, tennis champ
But these things also are Spring’s
By the rude bridge that arched the flood
Come play with me
Courage is the price that Life exacts for granting peace
Crystals of sugar
Dear March – Come in –
Dear Uncle Jim, this garden ground
Dear Yuri, I remember you
Deep asleep, deep asleep
Do I love you
Do not stand at my grave and weep
Do you remember an Inn, Miranda?
Dusk
Every morning when I wake
Fair daffodils, we weep to see
From time to time
From you have I been absent in the spring
Frost-locked all the winter
‘Fury said to a mouse’
Go and catch a falling star
Go placidly amid the noise and haste
God bless our good and gracious King
Got a date with spring
‘Had he and I but met’