A Visit, TLS 14 Jan 2014

A Visit

I went to see him. He was old then
And laughed at what he forgot and found
As if out of thin air, his mind elsewhere.
The ground floor flat not anywhere
He'd call home but where he lived happily enough.
It had never been the plan. And yet to me
The books, the tall window and the view,
The few paintings, landscapes by his wife,
And by his daughter, his eagerness for me
To listen with him for more than an hour
To Shostakovich's '24 Preludes & Fugues'
Seemed an idyll of an enviable kind, a script
I'd write for myself for when things fall apart
Piecemeal like that late autumn afternoon.
He'd showed me what he'd kept, letters from
Great poets he'd known, old photographs
Of himself and X, and Y, some manuscripts
That had come his way, his own books
And those by others in his long-gone world.
The rest he said was archived somewhere,
Which seemed to cut him short, until suddenly:
'Dying is for the living,' he exclaimed, keenly,
Something he liked to say, 'There's no future
In posterity.' I'd heard the same before, and
'Never look to be wise. Speak your mind.
Wisdom is for fools.' And then he rose
That we should neither outstay his welcome.
A bloom of wine hung in my lungs long after
I got home and his talk of Cold War days
Ran on like a newsreel in my head until
That flicker and flap as the spool reaches its end
And I sat on a moment in the dark, moved
By a sudden understanding of my life.

ANDREW McNEILLIE

The Mill by Andrew Motion, TLS

The Mill

Over the road
and twice the size of the house we lived in;
five stories at least; white clapboard;
wide as a barn.

The cat reconnoitred.
I followed the cat
clambering this side or that
of the mounting-block steps,
then ducking the sack
that drooped like a sleepy eye
almost to block the door but not
and in.

Darkness. Light.
Shadows that jigged
with bran-dust and wheat-dust
and softened the pulleys, the beams,
the ladder fading away
to discover this attic or that
where the miller must be
ignoring me
on my porridgy floor.

And hushed.
But roaring in fact –
the dry continual biblical thunder
of mill-wheels grinding together.
Surely
the heaviest weight in the world;
furious too
with a fury of infinite patience.

Where was I now? I'd forgotten.
No, no, I remembered.
Looking for something I was
like the cat
looking
here between rows
and rows of comfortable sacks
like soldiers asleep.

Looking for this
perhaps –
this handful of grain in a gush
overflowing my hands
at a rickety funnel
like money but free
and priceless
if only I caught it.

Maybe not this.
Maybe just wanting
the doorway again
resisting the weight at my back
breathing and grinding,
the weight and the dark,
and staring not inside but out
the way I came in.
Was that really my home there
over the road?
That acacia tree by the gate
with its scribble of yellow?
Those snapdragons snapping?
My mother afloat
in a window pane
like a bubble frozen in water?

Surely, again,
but surely, surely not mine.
Besides
I had turned into dust.
White hands; white clothes; white hair.
And next thing would drift away
through white air.

ANDREW MOTION

Byron's She Walks in Beauty - Text from The Poets' Corner

She walks in beauty, like the night
  Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
  Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellowed to that tender light
  Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,
  Had half impaired the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
  Or softly lightens o'er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
  How pure, how dear their dwelling place.

And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,
  So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
  But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
  A heart whose love is innocent!"
from 'The Poets' Corner' by John Lithgow.

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Sent from my iPad

Byron's I would I were a Careless Child - Text from The Poets' Corner

"I would I were a careless child
I would I were a careless child,
Still dwelling in my highland cave,
Or roaming through the dusky wild,
Or bounding o'er the dark blue wave;
The cumbrous pomp of Saxon pride
Accords not with the freeborn soul,
Which loves the mountain's craggy side,
And seeks the rocks where billows roll.

Fortune! Take back these cultured lands,
Take back this name of splendid sound!
I hate the touch of servile hands,
I hate the slaves that cringe around.
Place me among the rocks I love,
Which sound to Ocean's wildest roar;
I ask but this—again to rove
Through scenes my youth hath known before.

Few are my years, and yet I feel
The world was ne'er designed for me:
Ah! Why do dark'ning shades conceal
The hour when man must cease to be?
Once I beheld a splendid dream,
A visionary scene of bliss:
Truth!—wherefore did thy hated beam
Awake me to a world like this?

I loved—but those I loved are gone;
Had friends—my early friends are fled:
How cheerless feels the heart alone
When all its former hopes are dead!
Though gay companions o'er the bowl
Dispel awhile the sense of ill;
Though pleasure stirs the maddening soul,
The heart—the heart—is lonely still.

How dull! to hear the voice of those
Whom rank or chance, whom wealth or power,
Have made, though neither friends nor foes,

Associates of the festive hour.

Give me again a faithful few,

In years and feelings still the same,

And I will fly the midnight crew,

Where boist'rous joy is but a name.

And woman, lovely woman! thou,

My hope, my comforter, and my all!

How cold must be my bosom now,

When e'en thy smiles begin to pall!

Without a sigh I would resign

This busy scene of splendid woe,

To make that calm contentment mine,

Which virtue knows, or seems to know.

Fain would I fly the haunts of men—

I seek to shun, not hate mankind;

My breast requires the sullen glen,

Whose gloom may suit a darken'd mind.

Oh! that to me the wings were given

Which bear the turtle to her nest!

Then would I cleave the vault of heaven,

To flee away and be at rest.

from 'The Poets' Corner' by John Lithgow.

Sent via Marvin.

Sent from my iPad