by Neil Astley
Sleep a little and wake strong,
The same but different and take my blessing –
A cradle-song.
LOUIS MACNEICE (1907-63)
A Celtic Blessing
Deep peace of the running wave to you,
Deep peace of the flowing air to you,
Deep peace of the quiet earth to you,
Deep peace of the shining stars to you,
Deep peace of the Son of Peace to you.
May the road rise to meet you;
May the wind be always at your back;
May the sun shine warm upon your face;
May the rains fall softly upon your fields.
Until we meet again,
May God hold you in the hollow of His hand.
[ANONYMOUS]
No Need
I see an empty place at the table.
Whose? Who else’s? Who am I kidding?
The boats waiting. No need for oars
or a wind. I’ve left the key
in the same place. You know where.
Remember me and all we did together.
Now, hold me tight. That’s it. Kiss me
hard on the lips. There. Now
let me go, my dearest. Let me go.
We shall not meet again in this life,
so kiss me goodbye now. Here, kiss me again.
Once more. There. That’s enough.
Now, my dearest, let me go.
It’s time to be on the way.
RAYMOND CARVER (1939-88)
This Is What I Wanted to Sign Off With
You know what I’m
like when I’m sick: I’d sooner
curse than cry. And people don’t often
know what they’re saying in the end.
Or I could die in my sleep.
So I’ll say it now. Here it is.
Don’t pay any attention
if I don’t get it right
when it’s for real. Blame that
on terror and pain
or the stuff they’re shooting
into my veins. This is what I wanted to
sign off with. Bend
closer, listen, I love you.
ALDEN NOWLAN (1933-83)
Late Fragment
And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.
RAYMOND CARVER (1939-88)
Dead Woman
If suddenly you do not exist,
if suddenly you no longer live,
I shall live on.
I do not dare,
I do not dare to write it,
if you die.
I shall live on.
For where a man has no voice,
there shall be my voice.
Where blacks are flogged and beaten,
I cannot be dead.
When my brothers go to prison
I shall go with them.
When victory,
not my victory,
but the great victory
comes,
even if I am dumb I must speak;
I shall see it coming even if I am blind.
No, forgive me.
If you no longer live,
if you, beloved, my love,
if you
have died,
all the leaves will fall on my breast,
it will rain on my soul night and day,
the snow will burn my heart,
I shall walk with frost and fire and death and snow,
my feet will want to walk to where you are sleeping,
but
I shall stay alive,
because above all things you wanted me
indomitable,
and, my love, because you know that I am not only a man
but all mankind.
PABLO NERUDA (1904-73)
translated from the Spanish by Brian Cole
Every Town a Home Town
Every town our home town,
every man a kinsman.
Good and evil do not come
from others.
Pain and relief of pain
come of themselves.
Dying is nothing new.
We do not rejoice
that life is sweet
nor in anger
call it bitter.
Our lives, however dear,
follow their own course,
rafts drifting
in the rapids of a great river
sounding and dashing over the rocks
after a downpour
from skies slashed by lightnings –
we know this
from the vision
of men who see.
So
we are not amazed by the great,
nor do we scorn the little.
KANIYAN PUNKUNRAN (period 100 BCE to 250 CE)
translated from the Tamil by A.K. Ramanujan
Begin
Begin again to the summoning birds
to the sight of light at the window,
begin to the roar of morning traffic
all along Pembroke Road.
Every beginning is a promise
born in light and dying in dark
determination and exaltation of springtime
flowering the way to work.
Begin to the pageant of queuing girls
the arrogant loneliness of swans in the canal
bridges linking the past and future
old friends passing though with us still.
Begin to the loneliness that cannot end
since it perhaps is what makes us begin,
begin to wonder at unknown faces
at crying birds in the sudden rain
at branches stark in the willing sunlight
at seagulls foraging for bread
at couples sharing a sunny secret
alone together while making good.
Though we live in a world that dreams of ending
that always seems about to give in
something that will not acknowledge conclusion
insists that we forever begin.
BRENDAN KENNELLY (b. 1936)
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The poems in this anthology are reprinted from the following books, all by permission of the publishers listed unless stated otherwise. Thanks are due to all the copyright holders cited below for their kind permission:
Virginia Hamilton Adair: Ants on the Melon (Knopf, 1999), by permission of Random House, Inc; Abu al-Ala al-Ma‘arri: Birds Through a Ceiling of Alabaster: Three Abbasid Poets, trs. Abdullah al-Udhari & George Wightman (Penguin Books, 1975), © Abdullah al-Udhari & George Wightman 1975, by permission of Abdullah al-Udhari; W.H. Auden: Collected Poems, ed. Edward Mendelson (Faber & Faber, 1991).
Basho: The Penguin Book of Zen Poetry, ed. & trs. Lucien Stryk & Takahashi Ikemoto (Penguin Books, 1977); Wendell Berry: The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry (Counterpoint, Washington, DC, 1998); Bhartrhari: An Old Tree Living by the River: Poems of Bhartrhari, trs. John Cort (Writers Workshop, Calcutta, 1983), by permission of John Cort.
Raymond Carver: All of Us: Collected Poems (Harvill Press, 1996), by permission of International Creative Management, Inc., copyright © 1996 Tess Gallagher; Charles Causley: Collected Poems 1951-2000 (Picador, 2000), by permission of David Higham Associates Ltd; Billy Collins: Taking Off Emily Dickinson’s Clothes: Selected Poems (Picador, 2000), by permission of Macmillan Publishers Ltd; David Constantine: The Pelt of Wasps (Bloodaxe Books, 1998).
Devara Dasimayya: Speaking of Siva, ed. & trs. A.K. Ramanujan (Penguin Books, India & USA, 1973); Emily Dickinson: The Poems of Emily Dickinson, ed. Ralph W. Franklin (Harvard University Press, 1998); Stephen Dobyns: Common Carnage (Penguin Books, USA, 1996; Bloodaxe Books, 1997), by permission of David Higham Associates Ltd and Viking Penguin.
D.J. Enright: Collec
ted Poems 1987 (Oxford University Press, 1987), by permission of Carcanet Press Ltd.
Janet Frame: The Pocket Mirror (The Women’s Press, 1992), by permission of Curtis Brown Ltd.
Pamela Gillilan: All-Steel Traveller: New & Selected Poems (Bloodaxe Books, 1994); Joyce Grenfell: poem from Joyce: By Herself and Her Friends (Futura, 1980) by permission of Sheil Land Associates Ltd © The Joyce Grenfell Memorial Trust 1980; Edgar A. Guest: The Collected Verse of Edgar A. Guest (NTC/Contemporary Publishing Group, Lincolnwood, Illinois, 1984); Thom Gunn: Collected Poems (Faber & Faber, 1993).
Gail Holst-Warhaft: ‘In the End Is the Body’, reprinted from The Gospels in Own Image (Harcourt Brace, 1995), ed. David Curzon, by permission of the author; Langston Hughes: The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes (Knopf, NY, 1994), by permission of David Higham Associates and Random House Inc.
David Ignatow: New and Selected Poems (Wesleyan University Press, 1993); Issa: The Penguin Book of Zen Poetry, ed. & trs. by Lucien Stryk & Takahashi Ikemoto (Penguin Books, 1977).
Patrick Kavanagh: Selected Poems, ed. Antoinette Quinn (Penguin, 1996), reprinted here by permission of the Trustees of the Estate of the late Katherine B. Kavanagh, and through the Jonathan Williams Literary Agency; Brendan Kennelly: ‘I See You Dancing Father’ from A Time for Voices: Selected Poems 1960-1990 (Bloodaxe Books, 1990); ‘Begin’ from Begin (Bloodaxe Books, 1999); ‘The Good’ from Breathing Spaces: Early Poems (Bloodaxe Books, 1992); Jane Kenyon: Otherwise: New & Selected Poems (Graywolf Press, St Paul, Minnesota, 1996); Rudyard Kipling: The Collected Works of Rudyard Kipling, by permission of A.P. Watt Ltd.
Philip Larkin: Collected Poems, ed. Anthony Thwaite (Faber & Faber, 1990); D.H. Lawrence: Complete Poems (Penguin Books, 1977), by permission of Pollinger Ltd and the Estate of Frieda Lawrence Ravagli.
Norman MacCaig: Collected Poems (Chatto & Windus, 1990), by permission of the Random House Group Ltd; Louis MacNeice: Collected Poems, ed. E.R. Dodds (Faber, 1979), by permission of David Higham Associates Ltd; Meera: Songs of Meera: In the Dark of the Heart, trs. Shama Futehally (HarperCollins, USA, 1994), © 1994 Shama Futehally; Czeslaw Milosz: New Collected Poems 1931-2001 (Ecco Press, USA; Penguin Books, 2001); Adrian Mitchell: Blue Coffee: Poems 1985-1996 (Bloodaxe Books, 1996), by permission of Peters, Fraser & Dunlop, with an educational health warning: Adrian Mitchell asks that none of his poems be used in connection with any examination whatsoever; Edwin Muir: Collected Poems (Faber & Faber, 1984).
Pablo Neruda: ‘Dead Woman’ from The Captain’s Verses, translated by Brian Cole (Anvil Press Poetry, 1994); ‘Sonnet LXXXIX’ from 100 Love Sonnets, translated by Stephen Tapscott (University of Texas Press, 1986); Alden Nowlan: Selected Poems, ed. Patrick Lane & Lorna Crozier (House of Anansi Press, Toronto, 1996).
Hugh O’Donnell: ‘Light’ by permission of the author; Mary Oliver: ‘When Death Comes’ from New and Selected Poems (Beacon Press, 1992); ‘In Blackwater Woods’ from American Primitive (Little Brown, 1983), reprinted in New and Selected Poems (Beacon Press, 1992), both by permission of the publishers and the author.
Linda Pastan: The Five Stages of Grief (W.W. Norton, 1978), reprinted in Carnival Evening: New and Selected Poems 1968-1998 (W.W. Norton & Company, 1998); Ruth Pitter: Collected Poems (Enitharmon Press, 1990); Patricia Pogson: Holding (Flambard Press, 2002); Kaniyan Punkunran: Poems of Love and War: from the Eight Anthologies and the Ten Long Poems in Classical Tamil, ed. & trs. A.K. Ramanujan (Oxford University Press India; Columbia University Press, USA, 1985).
Anne Ridler: Collected Poems (Carcanet Press, 1997); Rumi: ‘Unmarked Boxes’, trs. Coleman Barks & John Mayne, The Essential Rumi (HarperCollins, USA, 1995; Penguin Books, 1999), © Coleman Barks, also by permission of the Reid Boates Literary Agency; ‘Why cling’, trs. Daniel Liebert, Fragments, Ecstasies (Source Books, 1981; Omega Publications, 2000), by permission of Daniel Liebert and Omega Publications; ‘Everything you see’, trs. Andrew Harvey, The Mystic Vision: Daily Encounters with the Divine, ed. Andrew Harvey & Anne Baring (Godsfield Press, Alresford, Hants, 1995).
Shiki: The Penguin Book of Zen Poetry, ed. & trs. by Lucien Stryk & Takahashi Ikemoto (Penguin Books, 1977); Ken Smith: Shed: Poems 1980-2001 (Bloodaxe Books, 2002), Stevie Smith: Collected Poems, ed. James Mac-Gibbon (Penguin, 1985), by permission of the James MacGibbon Estate and New Directions Publishing Corporation; Anne Stevenson: Collected Poems 1955-1995 (Bloodaxe Books, 2000).
Dylan Thomas: Collected Poems (J.M. Dent, 1988), by permission of David Higham Associates and New Directions Publishing Corporation; R.S. Thomas: ‘A Marriage’ from Mass for Hard Times (Bloodaxe Books, 1992); ‘Comparisons’ from Residues (Bloodaxe Books, 2002).
Mona Van Duyn: To See, To Take (Atheneum, NY, 1970), reprinted in If It Be Not I: Collected Poems 1959-1982 (Knopf, 1993) and in Selected Poems (Knopf, 2002), by permission of Random House Inc.
Alice Walker: Her Blue Body Everything We Know: Earthling Poems 1960-1990 Complete (Women’s Press, 1991), reprinted by permission of David Higham Associates Ltd; C.K. Williams: ‘Le Petit Salvié’, parts 3-7, 9-11, from New Selected Poems (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, USA; Bloodaxe Books, 1995); ‘Oh’ and ‘Wept’ (‘Elegy for an Artist’, section 2) from The Singing (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, USA; Bloodaxe Books, 2003); William Carlos Williams: Collected Poems I: 1909-1939 (Carcanet Press, 1987, 2000) by permission of Carcanet Press Ltd and New Directions Publishing Corporation; Jeanne Willis: Toffee Pockets (Bodley Head, 1992), by permission of the Random House Group Ltd; David Wright: Collected Poems (Carcanet Press, 1988).
Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders of the poems published in this book. The editor and publisher apologise if any material has been included without permission or without the appropriate acknowledgement, and would be glad to be told of anyone who has not been consulted.
American spellings are retained in poems by American writers.
QUOTATIONS
The short quotations of poetry and prose at the head of each section are from the following sources:
Francis Bacon (1561-1626): Of Death. Bassui (Zen Buddhist): words of comfort to a dying person. Samuel Butler (1835-1902): Notebooks. John Fletcher (1579-1625): poem: ‘Fletcher’s Lament for His Friend’. William Hazlitt (1778-1830): On the Fear of Death. Carl Gustav Jung (1878-1961): quoted in The Mystic Vision, ed. Andrew Harvey & Anne Baring (Godsfield Press, 1995). Lao-tse (c. 570 BC): from The Wisdom of Lao-tse, ed & trs Lin Yutang (Michael Joseph, London & Random House, Inc., New York). Maurice Maeterlinck (1862-1949): Death, trs. Alexander Teixeira de Mattos (Methuen). Blaise Pascal (1623-62): Pensées. Theodore Roethke (1908-63): poem: ‘She’, from Collected Poems (Faber, 1968). Jahan Ramazani (b. 1960): Poetry of Mourning: The Modern Elegy from Hardy to Heaney (University of Chicago Press, 1994). Mevlâna Jalâluddin Rumi (1207-73): Various sources. Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822): poem: ‘Adonais’ (on the death of John Keats). Sir Philip Sidney (1554-86): poem: ‘Against the fear of death’. Dylan Thomas (1914-53): poem: ‘And Death Shall Have No Dominion’. Walt Whitman (1819-92): poem: ‘When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d’.
SPECIAL THANKS
I would like to thank Imogen Stubbs for suggesting this book; and for their many helpful suggestions of poems for inclusion: Lord Carey of Clifton, David Constantine, Imtiaz Dharker, Simon & Gwennie Fraser, Brendan Kennelly and David Scott; and for their anthologies and critical studies: Elspeth Barker, Rachel R. Baum, June Benn, Judi Benson & Agneta Falk, Carol Ann Duffy, Jahan Ramazani, Peter Washington and Agnes Whitaker.
INDEX OF WRITERS
Abu al-Ala al-Ma‘arri, 43
Virginia Hamilton Adair, 58
Anonymous, 20, 32, 38, 87
W.H. Auden, 10
Francis Bacon, 9
Matsuo Basho, 36
Bassui, 69
Wendell Berry, 80
Bhartrhari, 40
Emily Brontë, 21
Buddha, 59
Robert Burns, 26
Samuel Butler, 59
Raymond Carver
, 36, 88, 89
Charles Causley, 67
Billy Collins, 66
David Constantine, 31
Devara Dasimayya, 43
Emily Dickinson, 70
Stephen Dobyns, 28
John Donne, 84
D.J. Enright, 20
John Fletcher, 9
Janet Frame, 16
Mary E. Fry, 37
Pamela Gillilan, 50
Louise Glück, 69
Joyce Grenfell, 33
Edgar A. Guest, 26
Thom Gunn, 60
Mary Lee Hall, 39
Thomas Hardy, 77
William Hazlitt, 9
W.E. Henley, 46
George Herbert, 17
Robert Herrick, 17
Vladimír Holan, 66
Gail Holst-Warhaft, 41
Langston Hughes, 33
David Ignatow, 78
Kobayashi Issa, 42
Ben Jonson, 19
Carl Gustav Jung, 45
Patrick Kavanagh, 65
Brendan Kennelly, 27, 64, 91
Jane Kenyon, 60, 82, 86
Rudyard Kipling, 15
Dalai Lama (14th), 37
Philip Larkin, 45, 52
Lao-tse, 37
D.H. Lawrence, 40
James Russell Lowell, 22
Norman MacCaig, 12
Louis MacNeice, 87
Maurice Maeterlinck, 69
Meera, 68
Czeslaw Milosz, 49
Adrian Mitchell, 24
Edwin Muir, 18
Pablo Neruda, 42, 89
Alden Nowlan, 88
Hugh O’Donnell, 19
Mary Oliver, 70, 83
Blaise Pascal, 9
Linda Pastan, 14
Ruth Pitter, 44