My Top Five... Poems
Chatting to young Mr Mientjes the other day reminded me to add some more to my Top Five… series, so here is the next entry on the list – poems.
The top five
Dulce Et Decorum Est – Wilfred Owen
While I may have preferred to cite an obscure piece by an unknown writer as my favourite, to retain the intellectual highground, you can’t escape the emotional impact and heartfelt plea in this classic:
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge, Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs And towards our distant rest began to trudge. Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind; Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.
GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!-- An ecstasy of fumbling, Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time; But someone still was yelling out and stumbling And floundering like a man in fire or lime.-- Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight, He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace Behind the wagon that we flung him in, And watch the white eyes writhing in his face, His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin; If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,-- My friend, you would not tell with such high zest To children ardent for some desperate glory, The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori.
The Latin phrase that closes the poem means “It is sweet and right to die for your country.”
How To Be A Great Writer – Charles Bukowski
Luckily Bukowski never worked for the CAB...
you’ve got to fuck a great many women beautiful women and write a few decent love poems.
and don’t worry about age and/or freshly-arrived talents.
just drink more beer more and more beer
and attend the racetrack at least once a week
and win if possible
learning to win is hard – any slob can be a good loser.
and don’t forget your Brahms and your Bach and your beer.
don’t overexercise.
sleep until noon.
avoid paying credit cards or paying for anything on time.
remember that there isn’t a piece of ass In this world over $50 (in 1977).
and if you have the ability to love love yourself first but always be aware of the possibility of total defeat whether the reason for that defeat seems right or wrong —
an early taste of death is not necessarily a bad thing.
stay out of churches and bars and museums, and like the spider be patient — time is everybody’s cross, plus exile defeat treachery all that dross.
stay with the beer.
beer is continuous blood.
a continuous lover.
get a large typewriter and as the footsteps go up and down outside your window
hit that thing hit it hard
make it a heavyweight fight
make it the bull when he first charges in
and remember the old dogs who fought so well: Hemingway, Celine, Dostoevsky, Hamsun.
If you think they didn’t go crazy in tiny rooms just like you’re doing now
without women without food without hope
then you’re not ready.
drink more beer. there’s time. and if there’s not that’s all right too.
Ozymandias – Percy Bysshe Shelley
I met a traveler from an antique land Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read, Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed, And on the pedestal these words appear: "My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings: Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair!" Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.
Sentiments some modern politicians would do well to heed.
The Peace Of Wild Things – Wendell Berry
When despair grows in me and I wake in the middle of the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
Haiku – John Cooper Clarke
And finally, possibly the greatest example of that short form of Japanese poetry, the haiku:
To convey one's mood With seventeen syllables Is very diffi
Ithangyew.
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