by Anthony
Amazed, while a small worm lisped to me
The song of my marrow-bones.
Blue poured into summer blue,
A hawk broke from his cloudless tower,
The roof of the silo blazed, and I knew
That part of my life was over.
Already the iron door of the north
Clangs open: birds, leaves, snows
Order their populations forth,
And a cruel wind blows.
(1953)
The novels of Nicholson Baker (b. 1957) include The Mezzanine (1988), Vox (1992), The Fermata (1994), and two books narrated by a poet, The Anthologist (2009) and Traveling Sprinkler (2013). Among his nonfiction works are U and I (1991), Double Fold (2001) and Human Smoke (2008).
The Horses
EDWIN MUIR (1887–1959)
ALEXEI SAYLE
First of all, there is a vivid but subtle evocation of some human-made apocalypse; the images of the warship piled with dead and the plane crashing into the sea are haunting and, though used since in lesser works, remain fresh, original and profoundly disturbing. Then there is the suggestion of redemption via a new and respectful relationship with animals and the planet; a new beginning away from the mechanistic ways that brought us to disaster.
All the lines move me, but it’s the final two that really get me: ‘But that free servitude still can pierce our hearts. / Our life is changed; their coming our beginning.’
The Horses
Barely a twelvemonth after
The seven days war that put the world to sleep,
Late in the evening the strange horses came.
By then we had made our covenant with silence,
But in the first few days it was so still
We listened to our breathing and were afraid.
On the second day
The radios failed; we turned the knobs; no answer.
On the third day a warship passed us, heading north,
Dead bodies piled on the deck. On the sixth day
A plane plunged over us into the sea. Thereafter
Nothing. The radios dumb;
And still they stand in corners of our kitchens,
And stand, perhaps, turned on, in a million rooms
All over the world. But now if they should speak,
If on a sudden they should speak again,
If on the stroke of noon a voice should speak,
We would not listen, we would not let it bring
That old bad world that swallowed its children quick
At one great gulp. We would not have it again.
Sometimes we think of the nations lying asleep,
Curled blindly in impenetrable sorrow,
And then the thought confounds us with its strangeness.
The tractors lie about our fields; at evening
They look like dank sea-monsters couched and waiting.
We leave them where they are and let them rust:
‘They’ll molder away and be like other loam.’
We make our oxen drag our rusty plows,
Long laid aside. We have gone back
Far past our fathers’ land.
And then, that evening
Late in the summer the strange horses came.
We heard a distant tapping on the road,
A deepening drumming; it stopped, went on again
And at the corner changed to hollow thunder.
We saw the heads
Like a wild wave charging and were afraid.
We had sold our horses in our fathers’ time
To buy new tractors. Now they were strange to us
As fabulous steeds set on an ancient shield
Or illustrations in a book of knights.
We did not dare go near them. Yet they waited,
Stubborn and shy, as if they had been sent
By an old command to find our whereabouts
And that long-lost archaic companionship.
In the first moment we had never a thought
That they were creatures to be owned and used.
Among them were some half-a-dozen colts
Dropped in some wilderness of the broken world,
Yet new as if they had come from their own Eden.
Since then they have pulled our plows and borne our loads
But that free servitude still can pierce our hearts.
Our life is changed; their coming our beginning.
(1956)
The writer, actor and comedian Alexei Sayle (b. 1952) has appeared in TV series such as The Young Ones and The Comic Strip Presents . . . and films such as Gorky Park (1983), Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) and The Thief Lord (2006).
Friday’s Child
W. H. AUDEN (1907–1973)
ROWAN WILLIAMS
The story of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–45) is moving enough in its own right – the tale of someone who abandoned the chance of safety in order to work for the overthrow of Hitler and paid with his life. But Auden broadens out to see that life as a test case for faith. The poem puts side by side all the intellectual uncertainties around faith, all the reasons for shrugging your shoulders about it and moving on, and then concludes – with a devastating shift of gear – simply by pointing to the figure of the crucified Jesus, silent but changing everything, a God whose apparent ‘absence’ leaves us free. Like Bonhoeffer’s sacrifice and death, this is what actually keeps faith alive, not any ideas or proofs.
Friday’s Child
In memory of Dietrich Bonhoeffer,
martyred at Flossenbürg,
9 April 1945
He told us we were free to choose
But, children as we were, we thought –
‘Paternal Love will only use
Force in the last resort
On those too bumptious to repent.’
Accustomed to religious dread,
It never crossed our minds He meant
Exactly what He said.
Perhaps He frowns, perhaps He grieves,
But it seems idle to discuss
If anger or compassion leaves
The bigger bangs to us.
What reverence is rightly paid
To a Divinity so odd
He lets the Adam whom He made
Perform the Acts of God?
It might be jolly if we felt
Awe at this Universal Man
(When kings were local, people knelt);
Some try to, but who can?
The self-observed observing Mind
We meet when we observe at all
Is not alarming or unkind
But utterly banal.
Though instruments at Its command
Make wish and counterwish come true,
It clearly cannot understand
What It can clearly do.
Since the analogies are rot
Our senses based belief upon,
We have no means of learning what
Is really going on,
And must put up with having learned
All proofs or disproofs that we tender
Of His existence are returned
Unopened to the sender.
Now, did He really break the seal
And rise again? We dare not say;
But conscious unbelievers feel
Quite sure of Judgement Day.
Meanwhile, a silence on the cross,
As dead as we shall ever be,
Speaks of some total gain or loss,
And you and I are free
To guess from the insulted face
Just what Appearances He saves
By suffering in a public place
A death reserved for slaves.
(1958)
A published poet himself, as well as the author of numerous volumes of theology, Rowan Williams (b. 1950) was the 104th Archbishop of Canterbury before he stepped down at the end of 2012. He was made a life peer in 2013 and is now Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge.
Long Distance I and II
TONY HARRISON (1937–)
DANIEL RADCLIFFE
Tony Harrison is, in my opinion, the most important English poet of the latter half of the twentieth century. His poems are often brutal and confrontational, but in ‘Long Distance I and II’ he is simply a son mourning the loss of his parents. If the last line doesn’t bring you up short, you have a heart the size of a snow pea!
Long Distance I
Your bed’s got two wrong sides. You life’s all grouse.
I let your phone-call take its dismal course:
Ah can’t stand it no more, this empty house!
Carrots choke us wi’out your mam’s white sauce!
Them sweets you brought me, you can have ’em back.
Ah’m diabetic now. Got all the facts.
(The diabetes comes hard on the track
of two coronaries and cataracts.)
Ah’ve allus liked things sweet! But now ah push
food down mi throat! Ah’d sooner do wi’out.
And t’only reason now for beer ’s to flush
(so t’dietician said) mi kidneys out.
When I come round, they’ll be laid out, the sweets,
Lifesavers, my father’s New World treats,
still in the big brown bag, and only bought
rushing through JFK as a last thought.
Long Distance II
Though my mother was already two years dead
Dad kept her slippers warming by the gas,
put hot water bottles her side of the bed
and still went to renew her transport pass.
You couldn’t just drop in. You had to phone.
He’d put you off an hour to give him time
to clear away her things and look alone
as though his still raw love were such a crime.
He couldn’t risk my blight of disbelief
though sure that very soon he’d hear her key
scrape in the rusted lock and end his grief.
He knew she’d just popped out to get the tea.
I believe life ends with death, and that is all.
You haven’t both gone shopping; just the same,
in my new black leather phone book there’s your name
and the disconnected number I still call.
(1960s)
Since playing the title role in all eight Harry Potter films, Daniel Radcliffe (b. 1989) has starred in The Woman in Black (2012); Kill Your Darlings (2013), in which he played the poet Allen Ginsberg; Alexandre Aja’s Horns, based on Joe Hill’s bestselling book; and the romantic comedy The F Word. His theatre credits in London and New York include Equus (2007–8), How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (2011) and The Cripple of Inishmaan (2013). His television work includes David Copperfield (1999), Extras (2006), My Boy Jack (2007), and A Young Doctor’s Notebook (2012). He will next star in the role of Igor in Frankenstein.
The Widower in the Country
LES MURRAY (1938– )
NICK CAVE
This very sad poem of loss revolves mournfully around the unmentioned death of the farmer’s wife, as we follow him through his dire and ineffectual day’s work. He is that tough old Australian country man, so familiar to me, just getting on with the business of life – and this is sad enough in itself – but it is the violence of the last two lines, that screaming unconsciousness, that really brings on the waterworks.
The Widower in the Country
I’ll get up soon, and leave my bed unmade.
I’ll go outside and split off kindling wood,
From the yellow-box log that lies beside the gate,
And the sun will be high, for I get up late now.
I’ll drive my axe in the log and come back in
With my armful of wood, and pause to look across
The Christmas paddocks aching in the heat,
The windless trees, the nettles in the yard . . .
And then I’ll go in, boil water and make tea.
This afternoon, I’ll stand out on the hill
And watch my house away below, and how
The roof reflects the sun and makes my eyes
Water and close on bright webbed visions smeared
On the dark of my thoughts to dance and fade away,
Then the sun will move on, and I will simply watch,
Or work, or sleep. And evening will draw in.
Coming on dark, I’ll go home, light the lamp
And eat my corned-beef supper, sitting there
At the head of the table. Then I’ll go to bed.
Last night I thought I dreamt – but when I woke
The screaming was only a possum ski-ing down
The iron roof on little moonlit claws.
(1963)
Nick Cave (b. 1957) is an Australian musician, composer and writer. He is perhaps best known for being the front man of the band Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, established in 1983. Cave’s other groups include the Birthday Party and Grinderman. He is also the author of novels including The Death of Bunny Munro (2009) and the screenwriter of films such as The Proposition (2005) and Lawless (2012).
A Blessing
JAMES ARLINGTON WRIGHT (1927–80)
RICHARD FORD
Accounting for this poem’s large effects (its exaction of a tear) reminds me of Johnson’s directive about light: it’s easy to know what light is, but hard (yet sometimes thrilling) to tell what it is. In Wright’s lovely poem (I heard him read it forty years ago, in Ann Arbor), the thrill seems to come from two sources: the splurge at the end, of course; the freshet of sensation-put-to-words, an appreciative perception that one modest thing can actually cause a much grander one (art’s little secret). The other source is the textured evocation of the modest thing itself: the homely narrative of the ponies, the restrained, delicate but strangely alerting imagery attendant (‘shyly as wet swans’, ‘the skin over a girl’s wrist’). Add loneliness versus happiness – the big-ticket issues – to the mix. And suddenly something’s brewing. We sense it: a commotion of colliding effects – restrained but impending, and seeking an outcome. In imagining that thrilling outcome – ’I would break / Into blossom’ – the poem doesn’t so much reconcile its commotion as much as treat it as being no longer quite bearable, and so leaps on and through – breathtakingly, if you’re me – into pure light.
A Blessing
Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,
Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.
And the eyes of those two Indian ponies
Darken with kindness.
They have come gladly out of the willows
To welcome my friend and me.
We step over the barbed wire into the pasture
Where they have been grazing all day, alone.
They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness
That we have come.
They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.
There is no loneliness like theirs.
At home once more,
They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.
I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,
For she has walked over to me
And nuzzled my left hand.
She is black and white,
Her mane falls wild on her forehead,
And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear
That is delicate as the skin over a girl’s wrist.
Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.
(1963)
The novels of Richard Ford (b. 1944) include The Sportswriter (1986), Independence Day (Pulitzer Prize, 1995), The Lay of the Land (2006) and Canada (2012). He has also published five volumes of short stories and a screenplay, Bright Angel (1990). He is Professor of Writing at the Columbia University School of the Arts in New York.
Injustice
PABLO NERU
DA (1904–1973)
CARLOS REYES-MANZO
Pablo Neruda raises the veil covering the invisible people in history, the people who are ‘disappeared’ through poverty and hunger and the ‘disappeared’ in secret prisons by governments around the world. This poem speaks to me because it encapsulates how people suffer today, and reminds me of the people I meet when I document the inequalities enforced by an unjust economic system.
And then I stopped being a child
because I understood that
they did not allow my people to live
and they denied them burial.
The last line moves me because I can see what happened in Chile in the past still happens today globally. It is painful to come face to face with people suffering social exclusion. Nothing can justify an unfair economic system that does not allow people to live in peace and justice.
Pablo Neruda’s ‘Injustice’ is a critique addressed to a society that sees poverty and social discrimination from a charity viewpoint, and reminds us that we are judged by our sense of social justice. The poem is a salute to poor people who live with dignity regardless of whether they have a home to live in or a burial place.
Injustice
Whoever discovers who I am will discover who you are.
And the why, and the where.
Suddenly I touched all injustice.
Hunger was not just hunger,
but the measure of humanity.
The cold, the wind, were also measures.
The proud man suffered a hundred hungers and fell.
Pedro was buried after a hundred winters.
The poor house survived only one storm.
And I learned that the centimeter and gram,
the spoon and tongue measured greed,
and that the besieged man falls suddenly
in a hole, and then knows nothing more.