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Edexcel GCSE
Poetry Anthology GCSE English and GCSE English Literature
The Edexcel GCSE Poetry Anthology should be used to prepare students for assessment in:English 2EH01 - Unit 3 English Literature 2ET01 - Unit 2
Published by Pearson Education Limited, a company incorporated in England and Wales, having its registered office at Edinburgh Gate, Harlow, Essex, CM20 2JE. Registered company number: 872828
Edexcel is a registered trade mark of Edexcel Limited
© Pearson Education Limited 2009
First published 2009
12 11 10 0910 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
British Library Cataloguing in Publication DataA catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 84690 641 1
Copyright noticeAll rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means (including photocopyingor storing it in any medium by electronic means and whether or not transiently or incidentally to some other use of thispublication) without the written permission of the copyright owner, except in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright,Designs and Patents Act 1988 or under the terms of a licence issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6–10Kirby Street, London, EC1N 8TS (www.cla.co.uk). Applications for the copyright owner’s written permission should be addressedto the publisher.
Picture research by Alison PriorIllustrated by Bob DoucetPrinted and bound by Ashford Colour Press Ltd., Gosport
See page 72 for acknowledgements.
Collection A: Relationships 1
Collection B: Clashes and collisions 19
Collection C: Somewhere, anywhere 37
Collection D: Taking a stand 55
Contents
Valentine 2Carol Ann Duffy
Rubbish at Adultery 3Sophie Hannah
Sonnet 116 4William Shakespeare
Our Love Now 5Martyn Lowery
Even Tho 6Grace Nichols
Kissing 7Fleur Adcock
One Flesh 8Elizabeth Jennings
Song for Last Year’s Wife 9Brian Patten
My Last Duchess 10Robert Browning
Pity me not because the light of day 12Edna St. Vincent Millay
The Habit of Light 13Gillian Clarke
Nettles 14Vernon Scannell
At the border, 1979 15Choman Hardi
Lines to my Grandfathers 16Tony Harrison
04/01/07 18Ian McMillan
Relationships
1
Collection A
Relationships
2
Valentine
Not a red rose or a satin heart.
I give you an onion.
It is a moon wrapped in brown paper.
It promises light
5 like the careful undressing of love.
Here.
It will blind you with tears
like a lover.
It will make your refl ection
10 a wobbling photo of grief.
I am trying to be truthful.
Not a cute card or a kissogram.
I give you an onion.
Its fi erce kiss will stay on your lips,
15 possessive and faithful
as we are,
for as long as we are.
Take it.
Its platinum loops shrink to a wedding-ring,
20 if you like.
Lethal.
Its scent will cling to your fi ngers,
cling to your knife.
Carol Ann Duffy
Collection A
Relationships
3
Rubbish at Adultery
Must I give up another night
To hear you whinge and whine
About how terribly grim you feel
And what a dreadful swine
5 You are? You say you’ll never leave
Your wife and children. Fine;
When have I ever asked you to?
I’d settle for a kiss.
Couldn’t you, for an hour or so,
10 Just leave them out of this?
A rare ten minutes off from guilty
Diatribes – what bliss.
Yes, I’m aware you’re sensitive:
A tortured, wounded soul.
15 I’m after passion, thrills and fun.
You say fun takes its toll,
So what are we doing here? I fear
We’ve lost our common goal.
You’re rubbish at adultery.
20 I think you ought to quit.
Trouble is, though, fi delity?
You’re just as crap at it.
Choose one and do it properly,
You stupid, stupid git.
Sophie Hannah
Relationships
Sonnet 116
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments: love is not love
Which alters when it alteration fi nds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
5 O, no! it is an ever-fi xèd mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
10 Within his bending sickle’s compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom:
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
William Shakespeare
4
Collection A
Relationships
5
I said,
observe how the wound heals in time,
how the skin slowly knits
and once more becomes whole
5 The cut will mend, and such
is our relationship.
I said,
observe the scab of the scald,
15 the red burnt fl esh is ugly,
but it can be hidden.
In time it will disappear,
Such is our love, such is our love.
25 I said,
remember how when you cut your hair,
you feel different, and somehow incomplete.
But the hair grows – before long
it is always the same.
30 Our beauty together is such.
I said,
listen to how the raging storm
damages the trees outside.
40 The storm is frightening
but it will soon be gone.
People will forget it ever existed.
The breach in us can be mended.
She said,
Although the wound heals
and appears cured, it is not the same.
10 There is always a scar,
a permanent reminder.
Such is our love now.
She said,
20 Although the burn will no longer sting
and we’ll almost forget that it’s there
the skin remains bleached
and a numbness prevails.
Such is our love now.
She said,
After you’ve cut your hair,
it grows again slowly. During that time
changes must occur,
35 the style will be different.
Such is our love now.
She said,
45 Although the storm is temporary
and soon passes,
it leaves damage in its wake
which can never be repaired.
The tree is forever dead.
50 Such is our love.
Martyn Lowery
Our Love Now
The line reference numbers have been added for ease of reference to the poem. They do not dictate the appropriate stanza order.
Relationships
6
Even Tho
Man I love
but won’t let you devour
even tho
I’m all watermelon
5 and starapple and plum
when you touch me
even tho
I’m all seamoss
and jellyfi sh
10 and tongue
Come
leh we go to de carnival
You be banana
I be avocado
15 Come
leh we hug up
and brace-up
and sweet one another up
But then
20 leh we break free
yes, leh we break free
And keep to de motion
of we own person/ality
Grace Nichols
Collection A
Relationships
7
Kissing
The young are walking on the riverbank,
arms around each other’s waists and shoulders,
pretending to be looking at the waterlilies
and what might be a nest of some kind, over
5 there, which two who are clamped together
mouth to mouth have forgotten about.
The others, making courteous detours
around them, talk, stop talking, kiss.
They can see no one older than themselves.
10 It’s their river. They’ve got all day.
Seeing’s not everything. At this very
moment the middle-aged are kissing
in the back of taxis, on the way
to airports and stations. Their mouths and tongues
15 are soft and powerful and as moist as ever.
Their hands are not inside each other’s clothes
(because of the driver) but locked so tightly
together that it hurts: it may leave marks
on their not of course youthful skin, which they won’t
20 notice. They too may have futures.
Fleur Adcock
Relationships
One Flesh
Lying apart now, each in a separate bed,
He with a book, keeping the light on late,
She like a girl dreaming of childhood,
All men elsewhere – it is as if they wait
5 Some new event: the book he holds unread,
Her eyes fi xed on the shadows overhead.
Tossed up like fl otsam from a former passion,
How cool they lie. They hardly ever touch,
Or if they do it is like a confession
10 Of having little feeling – or too much.
Chastity faces them, a destination
For which their whole lives were a preparation.
Strangely apart, yet strangely close together,
Silence between them like a thread to hold
15 And not wind in. And time itself ’s a feather
Touching them gently. Do they know they’re old,
These two who are my father and my mother
Whose fi re from which I came, has now grown cold?
Elizabeth Jennings
8
Collection A
Relationships
9
Song for Last Year’s Wife
Alice, this is my fi rst winter
of waking without you, of knowing
that you, dressed in familiar clothes
are elsewhere, perhaps not even
5 conscious of our anniversary. Have
you noticed? The earth’s still as hard,
the same empty gardens exist; it is
as if nothing special had changed,
I wake with another mouth feeding
10 from me, yet still feel as if
Love had not the right
to walk out of me. A year now. So
what? you say. I send out my spies.
to discover what you are doing. They smile,
15 return, tell me your body’s as fi rm,
you are as alive, as warm and inviting
as when they knew you fi rst ... Perhaps it is
the winter, its isolation from other seasons,
that sends me your ghost to witness
20 when I wake. Somebody came here today, asked
how you were keeping, what
you were doing. I imagine you,
waking in another city, touched
by this same hour. So ordinary
25 a thing as loss comes now and touches me.
Brian Patten
Relationships
10
My Last Duchess
Ferrara
That’s my last duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive. I call
That piece a wonder, now: Frà Pandolf’s hands
Worked busily a day, and there she stands.
5 Will’t please you sit and look at her? I said
‘Frà Pandolf’ by design, for never read
Strangers like you that pictured countenance,
The depth and passion of its earnest glance,
But to myself they turned (since none puts by
10 The curtain I have drawn for you, but I)
And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,
How such a glance came there; so, not the fi rst
Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, ’twas not
Her husband’s presence only, called that spot
15 Of joy into the Duchess’ cheek: perhaps
Frà Pandolf chanced to say ‘Her mantle laps
Over my lady’s wrist too much,’ or ‘Paint
Must never hope to reproduce the faint
Half-fl ush that dies along her throat’: such stuff
20 Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough
For calling up that spot of joy. She had
A heart–how shall I say?–too soon made glad,
Too easily impressed; she liked whate’er
She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.
25 Sir, ‘twas all one! My favor at her breast,
The dropping of the daylight in the West,
The bough of cherries some offi cious fool
Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule
She rode with round the terrace–all and each
Collection A
Relationships
11
30 Would draw from her alike the approving speech,
Or blush, at least. She thanked men–good! but thanked
Somehow–I know not how–as if she ranked
My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name
With anybody’s gift. Who’d stoop to blame
35 This sort of trifl ing? Even had you skill
In speech–which I have not–to make your will
Quite clear to such a one, and say, ‘Just this
Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss,
Or there exceed the mark’–and if she let
40 Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set
Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse
–E’en then would be some stooping; and I choose
Never to stoop. Oh sir, she smiled, no doubt
Whene’er I passed her; but who passed without
45 Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;
Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands
As if alive. Will’t please you rise? We’ll meet
The company below, then. I repeat,
The Count your master’s known munifi cence
50 Is ample warrant that no just pretense
Of mine for dowry will be disallowed;
Though his fair daughter’s self, as I avowed
At starting, is my object. Nay, we’ll go
Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though,
55 Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,
Which Clause of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!
Robert Browning
Relationships
12
Pity me not because the light of day
Pity me not because the light of day
At close of day no longer walks the sky;
Pity me not for beauties passed away
From fi eld and thicket as the year goes by;
5 Pity me not the waning of the moon,
Nor that the ebbing tide goes out to sea,
Nor that a man’s desire is hushed so soon,
And you no longer look with love on me.
This have I known always: Love is no more
10 Than the wide blossom which the wind assails,
Than the great tide that treads the shifting shore,
Strewing fresh wreckage gathered in the gales:
Pity me that the heart is slow to learn
What the swift mind beholds at every turn.
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Relationships
13
Collection A
The Habit of Light
In the early evening, she liked to switch on the lamps
in corners, on low tables, to show off her brass,
her polished furniture, her silver and glass.
At dawn she’d draw all the curtains back for a glimpse
5 of the cloud-lit sea. Her oak fl oors fl ickered
in an opulence of beeswax and light.
In the kitchen, saucepans danced their lids, the kettle purred
on the Aga, supper on its breath and the buttery melt
of a pie, and beyond the swimming glass of old windows,
10 in the deep perspective of the garden, a blackbird singing,
she’d come through the bean rows in tottering shoes,
her pinny full of strawberries, a lettuce, bringing
the palest potatoes in a colander, her red hair bright
with her habit of colour, her habit of light.
Gillian Clarke
Relationships
Relationships
Nettles
My son aged three fell in the nettle bed.
‘Bed’ seemed a curious name for those green spears,
That regiment of spite behind the shed:
It was no place for rest. With sobs and tears
5 The boy came seeking comfort and I saw
White blisters beaded on his tender skin.
We soothed him till his pain was not so raw.
At last he offered us a watery grin,
And then I took my billhook, honed the blade
10 And went outside and slashed in fury with it
Till not a nettle in that fi erce parade
Stood upright any more. And then I lit
A funeral pyre to burn the fallen dead,
But in two weeks the busy sun and rain
15 Had called up tall recruits behind the shed:
My son would often feel sharp wounds again.
Vernon Scannell
14
Relationships
15
Collection A
At the border, 1979
‘It is your last check-in point in this country!’
We grabbed a drink –
soon everything would taste different.
The land under our feet continued
5 divided by a thick iron chain.
My sister put her leg across it.
‘Look over here,’ she said to us,
‘my right leg is in this country
and my left leg is in the other.’
10 The border guards told her off.
My mother informed me: We are going home.
She said that the roads are much cleaner
the landscape is more beautiful
and people are much kinder.
15 Dozens of families waited in the rain.
‘I can inhale home,’ somebody said.
Now our mothers were crying. I was fi ve years old
standing by the check-in point
comparing both sides of the border.
20 The autumn soil continued on the other side
with the same colour, the same texture.
It rained on both sides of the chain.
We waited while our papers were checked,
our faces thoroughly inspected.
25 Then the chain was removed to let us through.
A man bent down and kissed his muddy homeland.
The same chain of mountains encompasses all of us.
Choman Hardi
Relationships
Relationships
16
Lines to my Grandfathers
I
Ploughed parallel as print the stony earth.
The straight stone walls defy the steep grey slopes.
The place’s rightness for my mother’s birth
exceeds the pilgrim grandson’s wildest hopes –
5 Wilkinson farmed Thrang Crag, Martindale.
Horner was the Haworth signalman.
Harrison kept a pub with home-brewed ale:
fell farmer, railwayman, and publican,
and he, while granma slaved to tend the vat
10 graced the rival bars ‘to make comparisons’,
Queen’s Arms, the Duke of this, the Duke of that,
while his was known as just ‘ The Harrisons’ ’.
He carried cane and guineas, no coin baser!
He dressed the gentleman beyond his place
15 and paid in gold for beer and whisky chaser
but took his knuckleduster, ‘just in case’.
Relationships
17
Collection A
II
The one who lived with us was grampa Horner
who, I remember, when a sewer rat
got driven into our dark cellar corner
20 booted it to pulp and squashed it fl at.
He cobbled all our boots. I’ve got his last.
We use it as a doorstop on warm days.
My present is propped open by their past
and looks out over straight and narrow ways:
25 the way one ploughed his land, one squashed a rat,
kept railtracks clear, or, dressed up to the nines,
with waxed moustache, gold chain, his cane, his hat,
drunk as a lord could foot it on straight lines.
Fell farmer, railwayman and publican,
30 I strive to keep my lines direct and straight,
and try to make connections where I can –
the knuckleduster’s now my paperweight!
Tony Harrison
Relationships
Relationships
18
04/01/07
The telephone shatters the night’s dark glass.
I’m suddenly awake in the new year air
And in the moment it takes a life to pass
From waking to sleeping I feel you there.
5 My brother’s voice that sounds like mine
Gives me the news I already knew.
Outside a milk fl oat clinks and shines
And a lit plane drones in the night’s dark blue,
And I feel the tears slap my torn face;
10 The light clicks on. I rub my eyes.
I’m trapped inside that empty space
You fl oat in when your mother dies.
Feeling that the story ends just here,
The stream dried up, the smashed glass clear.
Ian McMillan
Half-caste 20John Agard
Parade’s End 21Daljit Nagra
Belfast Confetti 22Ciaran Carson
Our Sharpeville 23Ingrid de Kok
Exposure 24Wilfred Owen
Catrin 26Gillian Clarke
Your Dad Did What? 27Sophie Hannah
The Class Game 28Mary Casey
Cousin Kate 29Christina Rossetti
HitcherHitcher 3030Simon Armitage
The Drum 31John Scott
O What is that Sound 32W.H. Auden
Conscientious Objector 34Edna St. Vincent Millay
August 6, 1945 35Alison Fell
Invasion 36Choman Hardi
Collection B
19
20
Excuse me
standing on one leg
I’m half-caste
Explain yuself
5 wha yu mean
when you say half-caste
yu mean when picasso
mix red an green
is a half-caste canvas/
10 explain yuself
wha yu mean
when yu say half-caste
yu mean when light an shadow
mix in de sky
15 is a half-caste weather/
well in dat case
england weather
nearly always half-caste
in fact some o dem cloud
20 half-caste till dem overcast
so spiteful dem dont want de sun pass
ah rass/
explain yuself
wha yu mean
25 when you say half-caste
yu mean tchaikovsky
sit down at dah piano
an mix a black key
wid a white key
30 is a half-caste symphony/
Explain yuself
wha yu mean
Ah listening to yu wid de keen
half of mih ear
35 Ah lookin at yu wid de keen
half of mih eye
and when I’m introduced to yu
I’m sure you’ll understand
why I offer yu half-a-hand
40 an when I sleep at night
I close half-a-eye
consequently when I dream
I dream half-a-dream
an when moon begin to glow
45 I half-caste human being
cast half-a-shadow
but yu must come back tomorrow
wid de whole of yu eye
an de whole of yu ear
50 an de whole of yu mind
an I will tell yu
de other half
of my story
John Agard
Half-caste
Collection B
21
Parade’s End
Daljit Nagra
This poem is not available in this online version.
Belfast Confetti
Suddenly as the riot squad moved in, it was raining
exclamation marks,
Nuts, bolts, nails, car-keys. A fount of broken type. And the
explosion.
Itself - an asterisk on the map. This hyphenated line, a burst
of rapid fi re…
I was trying to complete a sentence in my head but it kept
stuttering,
5 All the alleyways and side streets blocked with stops and
colons.
I know this labyrinth so well - Balaclava, Raglan, Inkerman,
Odessa Street -
Why can’t I escape? Every move is punctuated. Crimea
Street. Dead end again.
A Saracen, Kremlin-2 mesh. Makrolon face-shields. Walkie-
talkies. What is
My name? Where am I coming from? Where am I going? A
fusillade of question-marks.
Ciaran Carson Ciaran Carson
22
Collection B
23
Our Sharpeville
I was playing hopscotch on the slate when miners roared past in lorries, their arms raised, signals at a crossing, their chanting foreign and familiar,5 like the call and answer of road gangs across the veld, building hot arteries from the heart of the Transvaal mine.
I ran to the gate to watch them pass. And it seemed like a great caravan10 moving across the desert to an oasis I remembered from my Sunday School book: olive trees, a deep jade pool, men resting in clusters after a long journey, the danger of the mission still around them15 and night falling, its silver stars just like the ones you got for remembering your Bible texts.
Then my grandmother called from behind the front door, her voice a stiff broom over the steps: ‘Come inside; they do things to little girls.’
20 For it was noon, and there was no jade pool. Instead, a pool of blood that already had a living name and grew like a shadow as the day lengthened. The dead, buried in voices that reached even my gate, the chanting men on the ambushed trucks,25 these were not heroes in my town, but maulers of children, doing things that had to remain nameless. And our Sharpeville was this fearful thing that might tempt us across the wellswept streets.
30 If I had turned I would have seen brocade curtains drawn tightly across sheer net ones, known there were eyes behind both, heard the dogs pacing in the locked yard next door. But, walking backwards, all I felt was shame,35 at being a girl, at having been found at the gate, at having heard my grandmother lie and at my fear her lie might be true. Walking backwards, called back,
I returned to the closed rooms, home.
Ingrid de Kok
24
Exposure
Our brains ache, in the merciless iced east winds that knive us…
Wearied we keep awake because the night is silent…
Low, drooping fl ares confuse our memories of the salient…
Worried by silence, sentries whisper, curious, nervous,
5 But nothing happens.
Watching, we hear the mad gusts tugging on the wire,
Like twitching agonies of men among its brambles.
Northward, incessantly, the fl ickering gunnery rumbles,
Far off, like a dull rumour of some other war.
10 What are we doing here?
The poignant misery of dawn begins to grow…
We only know war lasts, rain soaks, and clouds sag stormy.
Dawn massing in the east her melancholy army
Attacks once more in ranks on shivering ranks of grey,
15 But nothing happens.
Sudden successive fl ights of bullets streak the silence.
Less deadly than the air that shudders black with snow,
With sidelong fl owing fl akes that fl ock, pause, and renew,
We watch them wandering up and down the wind’s nonchalance,
20 But nothing happens.
Pale fl akes with fi ngering stealth come feeling for our faces –
We cringe in holes, back on forgotten dreams, and stare, snow-
dazed,
Deep into grassier ditches. So we drowse, sun-dozed,
Littered with blossoms trickling where the blackbird fusses.
25 Is it that we are dying?
Collection B
Slowly our ghosts drag home: glimpsing the sunk fi res, glozed
With crusted dark-red jewels; crickets jingle there;
For hours the innocent mice rejoice: The house is theirs;
Shutters and doors, all closed: on us the doors are closed, –
30 We turn back to our dying.
Since we believe not otherwise can kind fi res burn;
Nor ever suns smile true on child, or fi eld, or fruit.
For God’s invincible spring our love is made afraid;
Therefore, not loath, we lie out here; therefore were born,
35 For love of God seems dying.
Tonight, His frost will fasten on this mud and us,
Shrivelling many hands, puckering foreheads crisp.
The burying party, picks and shovels in the shaking grasp,
Pause over half-known faces. All their eyes are ice,
40 But nothing happens.
Wilfred Owen
35 For love of God seems dying.
Tonight, His frost will fasten on this mud and us,
Shrivelling many hands, puckering foreheads crisp.
The burying party, picks and shovels in the shaking grasp,
Pause over half-known faces. All their eyes are ice,
40 But nothing happens.
Wilfred Owen
25
26
Catrin
I can remember you, child,
As I stood in a hot, white
Room at the window watching
The people and cars taking
5 Turn at the traffi c lights.
I can remember you, our fi rst
Fierce confrontation, the tight
Red rope of love which we both
Fought over. It was a square
10 Environmental blank, disinfected
Of paintings or toys. I wrote
All over the walls with my
Words, coloured the clean squares
With the wild, tender circles
15 Of our struggle to become
Separate. We want, we shouted,
To be two, to be ourselves.
Neither won nor lost the struggle
In the glass tank clouded with feelings
20 Which changed us both. Still I am fi ghting
You off, as you stand there
With your straight, strong, long
Brown hair and your rosy,
Defi ant glare, bringing up
25 From the heart’s pool that old rope,
Tightening about my life,
Trailing love and confl ict,
As you ask may you skate
In the dark, for one more hour.
Gillian Clarke
Collection B
27
Your Dad Did What?
Where they have been, if they have been away,
or what they’ve done at home, if they have not –
you make them write about the holiday.
One writes My Dad did. What? Your Dad did what?
5 That’s not a sentence. Never mind the bell.
We stay behind until the work is done.
You count their words (you who can count and spell);
all the assignments are complete bar one
and though this boy seems bright, that one is his.
10 He says he’s fi nished, doesn’t want to add
anything, hands it in just as it is.
No change. My Dad did. What? What did his Dad?
You fi nd the ‘E’ you gave him as you sort
through reams of what this girl did, what that lad did,
15 and read the line again, just one ‘e’ short:
This holiday was horrible. My Dad did.
Sophie Hannah
28
The Class Game
How can you tell what class I’m from?
I can talk posh like some
With an ‘Olly in me mouth
Down me nose, wear an ‘at not a scarf
5 With me second-hand clothes.
So why do you always wince when you hear
Me say ‘Tara’ to me ‘Ma’ instead of ‘Bye Mummy
dear’?
How can you tell what class I’m from?
‘Cos we live in a corpy, not like some
10 In a pretty little semi, out Wirral way
And commute into Liverpool by train each day?
Or did I drop my unemployment card
Sitting on your patio (We have a yard)?
How can you tell what class I’m from?
15 Have I a label on me head, and another on me bum?
Or is it because my hands are stained with toil?
Instead of soft lily-white with perfume and oil?
Don’t I crook me little fi nger when I drink me tea
Say toilet instead of bog when I want to pee?
20 Why do you care what class I’m from?
Does it stick in your gullet like a sour plum?
Well, mate! A cleaner is me mother
A docker is me brother
Bread pudding is wet nelly
25 And me stomach is me belly
And I’m proud of the class that I come from.
Mary Casey
Collection B
29
I was a cottage-maiden
Hardened by sun and air,
Contented with my cottage-mates,
Not mindful I was fair.
5 Why did a great lord fi nd me out
And praise my fl axen hair?
Why did a great lord fi nd me out
To fi ll my heart with care?
He lured me to his palace-home –
10 Woe’s me for joy thereof –
To lead a shameless shameful life,
His plaything and his love.
He wore me like a golden knot,
He changed me like a glove:
15 So now I moan an unclean thing
Who might have been a dove.
O Lady Kate, my Cousin Kate,
You grow more fair than I:
He saw you at your father’s gate,
20 Chose you and cast me by.
He watched your steps along the lane,
Your sport among the rye:
He lifted you from mean estate
To sit with him on high.
25 Because you were so good and pure
He bound you with his ring:
The neighbours call you good and pure,
Call me an outcast thing.
Even so I sit and howl in dust
30 You sit in gold and sing:
Now which of us has tenderer heart?
You had the stronger wing.
O Cousin Kate, my love was true,
Your love was writ in sand:
35 If he had fooled not me but you,
If you stood where I stand,
He had not won me with his love
Nor bought me with his land:
I would have spit into his face
40 And not have taken his hand.
Yet I’ve a gift you have not got
And seem not like to get:
For all your clothes and wedding-ring
I’ve little doubt you fret.
45 My fair-haired son, my shame, my pride,
Cling closer, closer yet:
Your sire would give broad lands for one
To wear his coronet.
Christina Rossetti
Cousin Kate
30
Hitcher
Simon Armitage
This poem is not available in this online version.
Collection B
31
The Drum
I hate that drum’s discordant sound,
Parading round, and round, and round:
To thoughtless youth it pleasure yields,
And lures from cities and from fi elds,
5 To sell their liberty for charms
Of tawdry lace, and glittering arms;
And when Ambition’s voice commands,
To march, and fi ght, and fall, in foreign lands.
I hate that drum’s discordant sound,
10 Parading round, and round, and round:
To me it talks of ravaged plains,
And burning towns, and ruined swains,
And mangled limbs, and dying groans,
And widows’ tears, and orphans’ moans;
15 And all that Misery’s hand bestows,
To fi ll the catalogue of human woes.
John Scott
32
O What is that Sound
W. H. Auden
This poem is not available in this online version.
Collection B
This poem is not available in this online version.
33
34
Conscientious Objector
I shall die, but that is all that I shall do for Death.
I hear him leading his horse out of the stall; I hear
the clatter on the barn-fl oor.
He is in haste; he has business in Cuba, business in the
Balkans, many calls to make this morning.
But I will not hold the bridle while he cinches the girth.
5 And he may mount by himself; I will not give him a leg up.
Though he fl ick my shoulders with his whip, I will not
tell him which way the fox ran.
With his hoof on my breast, I will not tell him where the
black boy hides in the swamp.
I shall die, but that is all that I shall do for Death; I am
not on his pay-roll.
I will not tell him the whereabouts of my friends nor of
my enemies either.
10 Though he promises me much, I will not map him the
route to any man’s door.
Edna St. Vincent Millay
August 6, 1945
In the Enola Gay
fi ve minutes before impact
he whistles a dry tune
Later he will say
5 that the whole blooming sky
went up like an apricot ice.
Later he will laugh and tremble
at such a surrender, for the eye
of his belly saw Marilyn’s skirts
10 fl y over her head for ever
On the river bank,
bees drizzle over
hot white rhododendrons
Later she will walk
15 the dust, a scarlet girl
with her whole stripped skin
at her heel, stuck like an old
shoe sole or mermaid’s tail
Later she will lie down
20 in the fl ecked black ash
where the people are become
as lizards or salamanders
and, blinded, she will complain:
Mother you are late, so late
25 Later in dreams he will look
down shrieking and see
ladybirds
ladybirds
Alison Fell
35
Collection B
36
Invasion
Soon they will come. First we will hear
the sound of their boots approaching at dawn
then they’ll appear through the mist.
In their death-bringing uniforms
5 they will march towards our homes
their guns and tanks pointing forward.
They will be confronted by young men
with rusty guns and boiling blood.
These are our young men
10 who took their short-lived freedom for granted.
We will lose this war, and blood
will cover our roads, mix with our
drinking water, it will creep into our dreams.
Keep your head down and stay in doors –
15 we’ve lost this war before it has begun.
Choman Hardi
Collection CCollection C
37
City Jungle 38Pie Corbett
City Blues 39Mike Hayhoe
Postcard from a Travel Snob 40Sophie Hannah
Sea Timeless Song 41Grace Nichols
My mother’s kitchen 42Choman Hardi
Cape Town morning 43Ingrid de Kok
Our Town with the Whole of India! 44Daljit Nagra
In Romney Marsh 46John Davidson
A Major Road for Romney Marsh 47U.A. Fanthorpe
Composed upon Westminster Bridge, 48September 3, 1802Composed upon Westminster Bridge,September 3, 1802Composed upon Westminster Bridge,
William Wordsworth
London 49William Blake
London Snow 50Robert Bridges
Assynt Mountains 51Mandy Haggith
Orkney / This Life 52Andrew Greig
The Stone Hare 54Gillian Clarke
38
City Jungle
Rain splinters town.
Lizard cars cruise by;
Their radiators grin.
Thin headlights stare –
5 shop doorways keep their mouths shut.
At the roadside
Hunched houses cough.
Newspapers shuffl e by,
hands in their pockets.
10 The gutter gargles.
A motorbike snarls;
Dustbins fl inch.
Streetlights bare
Their yellow teeth.
15 The motorway’s
cat-black tongue
lashes across
the glistening back
of the tarmac night.
Pie Corbett
Collection C
39
City Blues
Sunday dawn in a November city
the bully wades in
sets glass afl ame
shadows on anything
5 not big enough to take it.
The wind trees
makes them tittletattle
harsh small talk
their leaves into a lurch
10 somewhere.
A sheet of paper
by a coke can
takes ridiculously to the air
into the sunlight
15 is a
tumbles
knows its place
as the less fortunate should.
In the
20 this steeple
comes to the point
which is more than can be said
for the big-time
and their
25 by that
lousy sun.
Mike Hayhoe
lightsun
slamsputs
darkhard
stripsunzips
putsdrives
followedchased
fl oatsfl aps
swanbird
shadowshade
minisculesmall
corporationscompanies
skyscraperssky-spoilers
napalmedlit up
40
Postcard from a Travel Snob
I do not wish that anyone were here.
This place is not a holiday resort
with karaoke nights and pints of beer
for drunken tourist types – perish the thought.
5 This is a peaceful place, untouched by man –
not like your seaside-town-consumer-hell.
I’m sleeping in a local farmer’s van –
it’s great. There’s not a guest house or hotel
within a hundred miles. Nobody speaks
10 English (apart from me, and rest assured,
I’m not your sun-and-sangria-two-weeks-
small-minded-package-philistine-abroad).
When you’re as multi-cultural as me,
your friends become wine connoisseurs, not drunks.
15 I’m not a British tourist in the sea;
I am an anthropologist in trunks.
Sophie Hannah
Sea Timeless Song
Hurricane come
and hurricane go
but sea ... sea timeless
sea timeless
5 sea timeless
sea timeless
sea timeless
Hibiscus bloom
then dry-wither so
10 but sea ... sea timeless
sea timeless
sea timeless
sea timeless
sea timeless
15 Tourist come
and tourist go
but sea ... sea timeless
sea timeless
sea timeless
20 sea timeless
sea timeless
Grace Nichols
41
Collection C
42
My mother’s kitchen
I will inherit my mother’s kitchen.
Her glasses, some tall and lean, others short and fat,
her plates, an ugly collection from various sets,
cups bought in a rush on different occasions,
5 rusty pots she can’t bear throwing away.
‘Don’t buy anything just yet,’ she says,
‘soon all of this will be yours.’
My mother is planning another escape,
for the fi rst time home is her destination,
10 the rebuilt house which she will furnish.
At 69 she is excited about
starting from scratch.
It is her ninth time.
She never talks about her lost furniture
15 when she kept leaving her homes behind.
She never feels regret for things,
only for her vine in the front garden
which spread over the trellis on the porch.
She used to sing for the grapes to ripen
20 sew cotton bags to protect them from the bees.
I know I will never inherit my mother’s trees.
Choman Hardi
Collection C
Cape Town morning
Winter has passed. The wind is back.
Window panes rattle old rust,
summer rising.
Street children sleep, shaven mummies in sacks,
5 eyelids weighted by dreams of coins,
beneath them treasure of small knives.
Flower sellers add fresh blossoms
to yesterday’s blooms, sour buckets
fi lled and spilling.
10 And trucks digest the city’s sediment
men gloved and silent
in the municipal jaws.
Ingrid de Kok
43
44
Our Town with the Whole of India!
Daljit Nagra
This poem is not available in this online version.
Collection C
This poem is not available in this online version.
45
As I came up from Dymchurch Wall,
I saw above the Downs’ low crest
The crimson brands of sunset fall,
20 Flicker and fade from out the West.
Night sank: like fl akes of silver fi re
The stars in one great shower came down;
Shrill blew the wind; and shrill the wire
Rang out from Hythe to Romney town.
25 The darkly shining salt sea drops
Streamed as the waves clashed on the shore;
The beach, with all its organ stops
Pealing again, prolonged the roar.
John Davidson
In Romney Marsh
As I went down to Dymchurch Wall,
I heard the South sing o’er the land
I saw the yellow sunlight fall
On knolls where Norman churches stand.
5 And ringing shrilly, taut and lithe,
Within the wind a core of sound,
The wire from Romney town to Hythe
Along its airy journey wound.
A veil of purple vapour fl owed
10 And trailed its fringe along the Straits;
The upper air like sapphire glowed:
And roses fi lled Heaven’s central gates.
Masts in the offi ng wagged their tops;
The swinging waves pealed on the shore;
15 The saffron beach, all diamond drops
And beads of surge, prolonged the roar.
46
Collection C
47
A Major Road for Romney Marsh
It is a kingdom, a continent.
Nowhere is like it.
(Ripe for development)
It is salt, solitude, strangeness.
5 It is ditches, and windcurled sheep.
It is sky over sky after sky
(It wants hard shoulders, Happy Eaters,
Heavy breathing of HGVs)
It is obstinate hermit trees.
10 It is small, truculent churches
Huddling under the gale force.
(It wants WCs, Kwiksaves,
Artics, Ind Ests, Jnctns)
It is the Military Canal
15 Minding its peaceable business,
Between the Levels and the Marsh.
(It wants investing in roads,
Sgns syng T’DEN, F’STONE, C’BURY)
It is itself, and different.
20 (Nt fr lng. Nt fr lng.)
U.A. Fanthorpe
Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802
Earth has not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty;
This City now doth, like a garment, wear
5 The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open unto the fi elds, and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did sun more beautifully steep
10 In his fi rst splendour, valley, rock, or hill;
Ne’er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!
William Wordsworth
Earth has not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty;
This City now doth, like a garment, wear
5 The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open unto the fi elds, and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did sun more beautifully steep
10 In his fi rst splendour, valley, rock, or hill;
Ne’er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!
William Wordsworth
48
Collection C
49
London
I wander thro’ each charter’d street
Near where the charter’d Thames does fl ow,
And mark in every face I meet
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.
5 In every cry of every Man,
In every Infant’s cry of fear,
In every voice, in every ban,
The mind-forg’d manacles I hear:
How the Chimney-sweeper’s cry
10 Every black’ning Church appalls,
And the hapless Soldier’s sigh
Runs in blood down Palace walls;
But most thro’ midnight streets I hear
How the youthful Harlot’s curse
15 Blasts the new-born Infant’s tear,
And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse.
William Blake
50
London Snow
When men were all asleep the snow came fl ying,
In large white fl akes falling on the city brown,
Stealthily and perpetually settling and loosely lying,
Hushing the latest traffi c of the drowsy town;
5 Deadening, muffl ing, stifl ing its murmurs failing;
Lazily and incessantly fl oating down and down:
Silently sifting and veiling road, roof and railing;
Hiding difference, making unevenness even,
Into angles and crevices softly drifting and sailing.
10 All night it fell, and when full inches seven
It lay in the depth of its uncompacted lightness,
The clouds blew off from a high and frosty heaven;
And all woke earlier for the unaccustomed brightness
Of the winter dawning, the strange unheavenly glare:
15 The eye marvelled - marvelled at the dazzling whiteness;
The ear hearkened to the stillness of the solemn air;
No sound of wheel rumbling nor of foot falling,
And the busy morning cries came thin and spare.
Then boys I heard, as they went to school, calling,
20 They gathered up the crystal manna to freeze
Their tongues with tasting, their hands with snowballing;
Or rioted in a drift, plunging up to the knees;
Or peering up from under the white-mossed wonder!
‘O look at the trees!’ they cried, ‘O look at the trees!’
25 With lessened load a few carts creak and blunder,
Following along the white deserted way,
A country company long dispersed asunder:
When now already the sun, in pale display
Standing by Paul’s high dome, spread forth below
30 His sparkling beams, and awoke the stir of the day.
For now doors open, and war is waged with the snow;
And trains of sombre men, past tale of number,
Tread long brown paths, as toward their toil they go:
But even for them awhile no cares encumber
35 Their minds diverted; the daily word is unspoken,
The daily thoughts of labour and sorrow slumber
At the sight of the beauty that greets them, for the charm they have broken.
Robert Bridges
Collection C
Assynt Mountains
the row of crones
rugs on knees
watch the coalfi re dawn
Canisp, nearest the blaze, grins
5 the sun rises
between blackened stumps
in ancient Lewisian gums
Mandy Haggith
51
52
Orkney / This Life
It is big sky and its changes,
the sea all round and the waters within.
It is the way sea and sky
work off each other constantly,
5 like people meeting in Alfred Street,
each face coming away with a hint
of the other’s face pressed in it.
It is the way a week-long gale
ends and folk emerge to hear
10 a single bird cry way high up.
It is the way you lean to me
and the way I lean to you, as if
we are each other’s prevailing;
how we connect along our shores,
15 the way we are tidal islands
joined for hours then inaccessible,
I’ll go for that, and smile when I
pick sand off myself in the shower.
The way I am an inland loch to you
20 when a clatter of white whoops and rises...
Collection C
It is the way Scotland looks to the South,
the way we enter friends’ houses
to leave what we came with, or fl ick
the kettle’s switch and wait.
25 This is where I want to live,
close to where the heart gives out,
ruined, perfected, an empty arch against the sky
where birds fl y through instead of prayers
while in Hoy Sound the fern’s engines thrum
30 this life this life this life.
Andrew Greig
53
54
The Stone Hare
Think of it waiting three hundred million years,
not a hare hiding in the last stand of wheat,
but a premonition of stone, a moonlit reef
where corals reach for the light through clear
5 waters of warm Palaeozoic seas.
In its limbs lies the story of the earth,
the living ocean, then the slow birth
of limestone from the long trajectories
of starfi sh, feather stars, crinoids and crushed shells
10 that fi ll with calcite, harden, wait for the quarryman,
the timed explosion and the sculptor’s hand.
Then the hare, its eye a planet, springs from the chisel
to stand in the grass, moonlight’s muscle and bone,
the stems of sea lilies slowly turned to stone.
Gillian Clarke
Collection D
On the Life of Man 56Sir Walter Raleigh
I Shall Paint My Nails Red 56Carole Satyamurti
The Penelopes of my homeland 57Choman Hardi
A Consumer’s Report 58Peter Porter
Pessimism for Beginners 60Sophie Hannah
Solitude 61Ella Wheeler Wilcox
No Problem 62Benjamin Zephaniah
Those bastards in their mansions 63Simon Armitage
Living Space 64Imtiaz Dharker
The archbishop chairs the fi rst session 65Ingrid de Kok
The world is a beautiful place 66Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Zero Hour 68Matthew Sweeney
One World Down the Drain 69Simon Rae
Do not go gentle into that good night 70Dylan Thomas
Remember 71Christina Rossetti
55
56
I Shall Paint My Nails Red
Because a bit of colour is a public service.
Because I am proud of my hands.
Because it will remind me I’m a woman.
Because I will look like a survivor.
5 Because I can admire them in traffi c jams.
Because my daughter will say ugh.
Because my lover will be surprised.
Because it is quicker than dyeing my hair.
Because it is a ten-minute moratorium.
10 Because it is reversible.
Carole Satyamurti
On the Life of Man
What is our life? a play of passion,
Our mirth the music of division,
Our mother’s wombs the tiring houses be,
Where we are dressed for this short Comedy,
5 Heaven the Judicious sharp spectator is,
That sits and marks still who doth act amiss,
Our graves that hide us from the searching Sun,
Are like drawn curtains when the play is done,
Thus march we playing to our latest rest,
10 Only we die in earnest, that’s no Jest.
Sir Walter Raleigh
Collection D
57
The Penelopes of my homeland (for the 50,000 widows of Anfal)
Years and years of silent labour
the Penelopes of my homeland
wove their own and their children’s shrouds
without a sign of Odysseus returning.
5 Years and years of widowhood they lived
without realising, without ever thinking
that their dream was dead the day it was dreamt,
that their colourful future was all in the past,
that they had lived their destinies
10 and there was nothing else to live through.
Years and years of avoiding despair, not giving up,
holding on to hopes raised by palm-readers,
holding on to the wishful dreams of the nights
and to the just God
15 who does not allow such nightmares to continue.
Years and years of raising more Penelopes and Odysseuses
the waiting mothers of my homeland grew old and older
without ever knowing that they were waiting,
without ever knowing that they should stop waiting.
20 Years and years of youth that was there and went unnoticed
of passionate love that wasn’t made
of no knocking on the door after midnight
returning from a very long journey.
The Penelopes of my homeland died slowly
25 carrying their dreams to their graves,
leaving more Penelopes to take their place.
Choman Hardi
58
The name of the product I tested is Life,
I have completed the form you sent me
and understand that my answers are confi dential.
I had it as a gift,
5 I didn’t feel much while using it,
in fact I think I’d have liked to be more excited.
It seemed gentle on the hands
but left an embarrassing deposit behind.
It was not economical
10 and I have used much more than I thought
(I suppose I have about half left
but it’s diffi cult to tell) –
although the instructions are fairly large
there are so many of them
15 I don’t know which to follow, especially
as they seem to contradict each other.
I’m not sure such a thing
should be put in the way of children –
It’s diffi cult to think of a purpose
20 for it. One of my friends says
it’s just to keep its maker in a job.
Also the price is much too high.
Things are piling up so fast,
after all, the world got by
25 for a thousand million years
without this, do we need it now?
(Incidentally, please ask your man
to stop calling me ‘the respondent’,
I don’t like the sound of it.)
A Consumer’s Report
Collection D
30 There seems to be a lot of different labels,
sizes and colours should be uniform,
the shape is awkward, it’s waterproof
but not heat resistant, it doesn’t keep
yet it’s very diffi cult to get rid of:
35 whenever they make it cheaper they seem
to put less in – if you say you don’t
want it, then it’s delivered anyway.
I’d agree it’s a popular product,
it’s got into the language; people
40 even say they’re on the side of it.
Personally I think it’s overdone,
a small thing people are ready
to behave badly about. I think
we should take it for granted. If its
45 experts are called philosophers or market
researchers or historians, we shouldn’t
care. We are the consumers and the last
law makers. So fi nally, I’d buy it.
But the question of a ‘best buy’
50 I’d like to leave until I get
the competitive product you said you’d send.
Peter Porter
59
60
Pessimism for Beginners
When you’re waiting for someone to e-mail,
When you’re waiting for someone to call –
Young or old, gay or straight, male or female –
Don’t assume that they’re busy, that’s all.
5 Don’t conclude that their letter went missing
Or they must be away for a while;
Think instead that they’re cursing and hissing –
They’ve decided you’re venal and vile,
That your eyes should be pecked by an eagle.
10 Oh, to bash in your head with a stone!
But since this is unfairly illegal
They’ve no choice but to leave you alone.
Be they friend, parent, sibling or lover
Or your most stalwart colleague at work,
15 Don’t pursue them. You’ll only discover
That your once-irresistible quirk
Is no longer appealing. Far from it.
Everything that you are and you do
Makes them spatter their basin with vomit.
20 They loathe Hitler and herpes and you.
Once you take this on board, life gets better.
You give no one your hopes to destroy.
The most cursory phone call or letter
Makes you pickle your heart in pure joy.
25 It’s so different from what you expected!
They do not want to gouge out your eyes!
You feel neither abused nor rejected –
What a stunning and perfect surprise.
This approach I’m endorsing will net you
30 A small portion of boundless delight.
Keep believing the world’s out to get you.
Now and then you might not be proved right.
Sophie Hannah
Collection D
61
Solitude
Laugh, and the world laughs with you;
Weep, and you weep alone;
For the sad old earth must borrow its mirth,
But has trouble enough of its own.
5 Sing, and the hills will answer;
Sigh, it is lost in the air;
The echoes bound to a joyful sound,
But shrink from voicing care.
Rejoice, and men will seek you;
10 Grieve, and they turn and go;
They want full measure of all your pleasure,
But they do not need your woe.
Be glad, and your friends are many;
Be sad, and you lose them all, —
15 There are none to decline your nectared wine,
But alone you must drink life’s gall.
Feast, and your halls are crowded;
Fast, and the world goes by.
Succeed and give, and it helps you live,
20 But no man can help you die.
There is room in the halls of pleasure
For a long and lordly train,
But one by one we must all fi le on
Through the narrow aisles of pain.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
62
No Problem
I am not de problem
But I bear de brunt
Of silly playground taunts
An racist stunts,
5 I am not de problem
I am born academic
But dey got me on de run
Now I am branded athletic
I am not de problem
10 If yu give I a chance
I can teach yu of Timbuktu
I can do more dan dance,
I am not de problem
I greet yu wid a smile
15 Yu put me in a pigeon hole
But I am versatile
These conditions may affect me
As I get older,
An I am positively sure
20 I have no chips on me shoulders,
Black is not de problem
Mother country get it right
An juss fe de record,
Sum of me best friends are white.
Benjamin Zephaniah
Collection D
63
Those bastards in their mansions
Simon Armitage
This poem is not available in this online version.
64
Living Space
There are just not enough
straight lines. That
is the problem.
Nothing is fl at
5 or parallel. Beams
balance crookedly on supports
thrust off the vertical.
Nails clutch at open seams.
The whole structure leans dangerously
10 towards the miraculous.
Into this rough frame,
someone has squeezed
a living space
and even dared to place
15 these eggs in a wire basket,
fragile curves of white
hung out over the dark edge
of a slanted universe,
gathering the light
20 into themselves,
as if they were
the bright, thin walls of faith.
Imtiaz Dharker
Collection D
65
The archbishop chairs the fi rst session
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
April 1996. East London, South Africa
On the fi rst day
after a few hours of testimony
the Archbishop wept.
He put his grey head
5 on the long table
of papers and protocols
and he wept.
The national
and international cameramen
10 fi lmed his weeping,
his misted glasses,
his sobbing shoulders,
the call for a recess.
It doesn’t matter what you thought
15 of the Archbishop before or after,
of the settlement, the commission,
or what the anthropologists fl ying in
from less studied crimes and sorrows
said about the discourse,
20 or how many doctorates,
books, and installations followed,
or even if you think this poem
simplifi es, lionizes
romanticizes, mystifi es.
25 There was a long table, starched purple vestment
and after a few hours of testimony,
the Archbishop, chair of the commission,
lay down his head, and wept.
That’s how it began.
Ingrid de Kok
66
The world is a beautiful place
The world is a beautiful place to be born intoif you don’t mind happiness not always being so very much fun if you don’t mind a touch of hell now and then just when everything is fi ne because even in heaven they don’t sing all the time
The world is a beautiful place to be born intoif you don’t mind some people dying all the time or maybe only starving some of the time which isn’t half so bad if it isn’t you
Oh the world is a beautiful place to be born into if you don’t much mind a few dead minds in the higher places or a bomb or two now and then in your upturned faces or such other improprieties as our Name Brand society is prey to with its men of distinction and its men of extinction and its priests and other patrolmen and its various segregations and congressional investigations and other constipations that our fool fl esh is heir to
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
Collection D
67
40
45
50
55
60
Yes the world is the best place of all for a lot of such things as making the fun scene and making the love sceneand making the sad scene and singing low songs and having inspirations and walking around looking at everything and smelling fl owers and goosing statues and even thinking and kissing people and making babies and wearing pants and waving hats and dancing and going swimming in rivers on picnics in the middle of the summer and just generally ‘living it up’ Yes but then right in the middle of it comes the smiling
mortician
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
67
68
Zero Hour
Tomorrow all the trains will stop
and we will be stranded. Cars
have already been immobilised
by the petrol wars, and sit
5 abandoned, along the roadsides.
The airports, for two days now,
are closed-off zones where dogs
congregate loudly on the runways.
To be in possession of a bicycle
10 is to risk your life. My neighbour,
a doctor, has somehow acquired a horse
and rides to his practice, a rifl e
clearly visible beneath the reins,
I sit in front of the television
15 for each successive news bulletin
then reach for the whisky bottle.
How long before the shelves are empty
in the supermarkets? The fi rst riots
are raging as I write, and who
20 out there could have predicted
this sudden countdown to zero hour,
all the paraphernalia of our comfort
stamped obsolete, our memories
fi ghting to keep us sane and upright?
Matthew Sweeney
69
One World Down the Drain
One World Week focused on global warming, with a UN report promising
the direst consequences from the greenhouse effect. However, in the clash
between long-term and short-term interests, the future looks likely to be
the loser.
[26 May 1990]
It’s goodbye half of Egypt,
The Maldives take a dive,
And not much more of Bangladesh
Looks likely to survive.
5 Europe too will alter,
Book fl ights to Venice now.
It won’t be there in fi fty years –
Great City. Pity. Ciao.
But we don’t care,
10 We won’t be there,
Our acid greenhouse party
Will carry on
Until we’re gone,
So bad luck Kiribati
15 – And all the other atolls
That sink beneath the seas,
The millions who will suffer from
Drought, famine and disease.
The weather map is changing
20 But what are we to do?
Let’s have another conference on
The ills of CO2.
Oh global warming
‘s habit-forming,
25 But do not rock the boat;
We’re doing our best,
Although we’re pressed
(The future has no vote).
Simon Rae
One World Down the Drain
Collection D
70
Do not go gentle into that good night
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
5 Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
10 Wild men who caught and sang the sun in fl ight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
15 Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fi erce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Dylan Thomas
Collection D
71
Remember
Remember me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go, yet turning stay.
5 Remember me when no more day by day
You tell me of our future that you planned:
Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while
10 And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.
Christina Rossetti
72
AcknowledgementsWe are grateful to the following for permission to reproduce copyright material:Poetry on page 2 from Mean Time, Anvil Press Poetry (Duffy, C. A. 1993), ‘Valentine’ is taken from Mean Time by Carol Ann Duffy published by Anvil Press Poetry in 1993; Poetry on page 3 and page 60 from Pessimism for Beginners, Carcanet (Hannah, S. 2007), Carcanet Press Limited; Poetry on page 6 from Lazy Thoughts of a Lazy Woman (Nichols, G. 1989), Copyright (c) Grace Nichols 1989 reproduced with permission of Curtis Brown Group Ltd; Poetry on page 7 from Poems 1960-2000, Bloodaxe Books (Adcock, F. 2000); Poetry on page 8 from New Collected Poems, Carcanet (Jennings, E.), David Higham Associates; Poetry on page 9 from The Mersey Sound, Penguin Classics (Patten, B. 2007) p. 91, Copyright (c) Brian Patten. Reproduced by permission of the author c/o Rogers, Coleridge & White Ltd., 20 Powis Mews, London W11 1JN; Poetry on page 12 from Selected Poems, 1st Edition, HarperCollins (Edna St. Vincent Millay 1991), Copyright (c) 1923, 1951, by Edna St. Vincent Millay and Norma Millay Ellis. Reprinted by permission of Elizabeth Barnett, Literary Executor, The Millay Society; Poetry on page 13 from Five Fields, Carcanet (Clarke, G. 1998), Carcanet Press Limited; Poetry on page 14 ‘Nettles’ written by Vernon Scannell from The Very Best of Vernon Scannell, Macmillan Children’s Books (Scannell, V. 2001), Copyright © 2001 Macmillan Publishers Ltd., London, UK; Poetry on page 15, page 36, page 42 and page 57 from Life for Us, Bloodaxe Books (Hardi, C. 2004); Poetry on page 16 from Selected Poems and Collected Poems, Penguin (Harrison, T. 1987/2007), by kind permission of the author, Tony Harrison; Poetry on page 18 from Taking Myself Home, John Murray (McMillan, I. 2008), Copyright Ian McMillan; Poetry on page 20 from Half-Caste and Other Poems, Hodder Children’s Books (Agard, J. 2005), Half-Caste copyright © 1996 by John Agard reproduced by kind permission of John Agard c/o Caroline Sheldon Literary Agency Limited; Poetry on page 21 and page 44 from Look We Have Coming to Dover!, Faber and Faber Ltd. (Nagra, D. 2007); Poetry on page 22, ‘Belfast Confetti’ by Ciaran Carson, with permission from Wake Forest University Press and by kind permission of the author and The Gallery Press, Loughcrew, Oldcastle, County Meath, Ireland, from Collected Poems (2008); Poetry on page 23 from No Sweetness Here, Feminist Press (de Kok, I. 1995) Ingrid de Kok; Poetry on page 26 from Collected Poems, Carcanet (Clarke, G. 2007), Carcanet Press Limited; Poetry on page 27 from Leaving and Leaving You, Carcanet (Hannah, S. 1999), Carcanet Press Limited; Poetry on page 30 and page 63 from Book of Matches, Faber and Faber Ltd. (Armitage, S. 1993); Poetry on page 32 ‘O What is that Sound’, copyright 1937 and renewed 1965 by W. H. Auden, from Collected Poems by W. H. Auden. Used by permission of Random House, Inc. and Faber and Faber Ltd., Copyright © 1934 by W. H. Auden. Reprinted by permission of Curtis Brown, Ltd; Poetry on page 34, ‘Conscientious Objector’ by Edna St. Vincent Millay, Copyright (c) 1934, 1962, by Edna St. Vincent Millay. Reprinted by permission of Elizabeth Barnett, Literary Executor, The Millay Society; Poetry on page 35, ‘August 6, 1945’ by Alison Fell, (c) Alison Fell 1987. First published in Kisses for Mayakovsky (Virago). Republished in Dreams Like Heretics (Serpents Tail). Permission granted by Peake Associates, www.tonypeake.com; Poetry on page 40 from Hotels Like Houses, Carcanet (Hannah, S. 1996) p. 47, Carcanet Press Limited; Poetry on page 41 from The Fat Black Women’s Poetry, Virago (Nichols, G. 1984), Copyright (c) Grace Nichols 1984 reproduced with permission of Curtis Brown Ltd; Poetry on page 43 from Seasonal Fires, Seven Stories Press (de Kok, I. 2006) Ingrid de Kok; Poetry on page 47, ‘A Major Road for Romney Marsh’ by U. A. Fanthorpe from Collected Poems 1978-2003, Peterloo Poets, Dr. R. V. Bailey; Poetry on page 51 from Letting Light In, Essence Press (Haggith, M. 2005), Mandy Haggith; Poetry on page 52 from This Life, This Life: Selected Poems 1970-2006, Bloodaxe Books (Grieg, A. 2006); Poetry on page 54 from Making the Beds for the Dead, Carcanet (Clarke, G. 2004), Carcanet Press Limited; Poetry on page 56 from Stitching in the Dark: New and Selected Poems, Bloodaxe Books (Satyamurti, C. 2005); Poetry on page 58, ‘A Consumer’s Report’ by Peter Porter, reproduced by kind permission of the author; Poetry on page 62 from Propa Propaganda, Bloodaxe Books (Zephaniah, B. 1996), with permission from Bloodaxe Books and Benjamin Zephaniah; Poetry on page 64 from Postcards from god, Bloodaxe Books (Dharker, I. 1997); Poetry on page 65 from Terrestrial Things, Kwela Books, Snailpress (de Kok, I.), Ingrid de Kok; Poetry on page 66 from Pictures of the Gone World, 2nd Edition, City Lights Books (Ferlinghetti, L. 1986), (c) 1955 by Lawrence Ferlinghetti; Poetry on page 68 from Sanctuary, Jonathan Cape (Sweeney, M. 2004), ‘Zero Hour’ from Sanctuary by Matthew Sweeney, published by Jonathan Cape. Reprinted by permission of The Random House Group Ltd; Poetry on page 69 from Earth Shattering Eco Poems, Bloodaxe (Astley, N. ed. 2004), ‘One world down the drain’ by Simon Rae, with the author’s permission; Poetry on page 70 ‘Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night’ by Dylan Thomas, from The Poems of Dylan Thomas, copyright © 1952 by Dylan Thomas. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp. and The Poems, J. M. Dent (Thomas, D.), David Higham Associates.
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