Poetic Lines

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Comment by David Gould on February 24, 2010 at 12:21am

The Old Showman

He sits astride a rough wood stage
his muscled old legs a swinging
and summoning up his many years
thinks ahead to the show to come
and quietly mutters
what the heck
“Its Just One More Show.”

Tonight he will sing his songs again
the same he’s sung for decades
his voice will explore the octaves
that he learnt as just a lad
while he thinks
what the heck
“This is just one more show.”

And when he opens wide his mouth
he sings words he thought forgotten
it is not words that dance and sing
but memories of seventy summers by
but still he thinks
what the heck
“It’s just one more show.”

Each summer this little wooden stage
he has carried, unpacked and set up
in many places, towns and hamlets
while winter work brings little rest
and all it’s for
by heck
“Is just one more show.”

And finally weakened he lays down
knowing his time is near done
there will be no more aching arms
and no more songs to sing
but somewhere he wishes
by heck
“Just for one more show.”David Gould © 22nd February 2010

Comment by David Gould on February 24, 2010 at 12:20am

Last year my 20 year old son was taken to the World War One Battlefields as part of his military training...this is based upon his thoughts when he returned.

Our Sons at the Battlefields

How these fields peacefully lie
where so many came to die
and the markers, row on row
row on row of human sorrow
for them there was no tomorrow
and many yet lie where they fell
trapped forever in conflict’s hell.

I wish someone held my hand
and helped me try to understand
why so many young men died
and how their lives were swept aside
sweeping all this land as a tide
as they fell on unseeing ground
layer on layer, an obscene mould.


Now my friend we stand and weep
recalling the death they didn’t seek
these young men were like our sons
full of hope and manly passions
but with a haughty sweep of pen
the orders sent them to that end
that none could ever comprehend
looking at peaceful field and fen.

David Gould © 23rd February 2010

Comment by David Gould on January 11, 2010 at 12:33am

Soft white velvet footsteps
pushing powdered snow
leaving perfect imprints
exact reverse boot-treads
on frozen nighttimes’ sheet.
Creaking footfalls precise
guarding against a slip
in this icy silver loom
lit only by a full moon
where one would lie
still in this white desert
till found preserved
in the light of day

Comment by David Taylor on December 5, 2009 at 9:03am

As a long-standing genealogist and interested in antiquarian pursuits, I have always been moved by the following lines:

“Study their monuments, their gravestones, their epitaphs, on the spots where they lie;
study, if possible, the scenes of the events, their aspect, their architecture, their geography;
the tradition which has survived the history; the legend which has survived the tradition; the mountain, the stream, the shapeless stone, which has survived even history and tradition and legend.”
– Dean Stanley

Comment by Fred and Grace Hurd on December 1, 2009 at 11:29pm

The Sufficient Place

See, all the silver roads wind in, lead in
To this still place like evening. See, they come
Like messengers bearing gifts to this little house,
And this great hill worn down to a patient mound,
And these tall trees whose motionless branches bear
An aeon’s summer foliage, leaves so thick
They seem to have robbed a world of shade, and kept
No room for all these birds that line the boughs
With heavier riches, leaf and bird and leaf.
Within the doorway stand
Two figures, Man and Woman, simple and clear
As a child’s first images. Their manners are
Such as known before the earliest fashion
Taught the Heavens guile. The room inside is like
A thought that needed thus much space to write on,
Thus much, no more. Here all’s sufficient. None
That comes complains, and all the world comes here,
Comes, and goes out again, and comes again.
This is the Pattern, these the Archetypes,
Sufficient, strong, and peaceful. All outside
From end to end of the world is tumult. Yet
These roads do not turn in here but writhe on
Round the wild earth for ever. If a man
Should chance to find this place three times in time
His eyes are changed and make a summer silence
Amid the tumult, seeing the roads wind in
To their still home, the home and the leaves and the birds.

- Edwin Muir - from "Journeys and Places", 1937 in
“Edwin Muir Collected Poems”, Oxford University Press, 1965

Comment by David Gould on November 7, 2009 at 12:17am

I have recently been to Gower in South Wales where I was inspired to write while starring out to sea...

A Gower Break

The coracle sea sucks the folded rock
along the much faulted Gower coast.
Where thrice the fresh water springs
that feeds Saint Telgarth’s fairy well,
flows from an ancient limestone core
to fall in coppered iron stained rings.

Oh what tales this coast could tell…
Bluestones, many bladed long ships,
Galleons, coal smoke Coasters gone:
now the cockle boats and jet skis.
And so the sea holds its secrets yet
and never will recant its chosen song.

Above us rises the clear and keen air
that once knew how ancient timbers
made coal to drive the land to wealth,
hacked out from below in copper mines,
all has now been returned to nature
round the three lumps of Worm’s Head.

David Gould © 13th October 2009

Comment by Fred and Grace Hurd on November 6, 2009 at 4:49pm

In the Highlands
Robert Louis Stevenson

In the Highlands, in the country places,
Where the old plain men have rosy faces,
And the young fair maidens
Quiet eyes;
Where essential silence cheers and blesses,
And forever in the hill recesses
Her more lovely music
Broods and dies;

Oh, to mount again where I have haunted;
Where the old red hills are bird-enchanted,
And the low green meadows
Bright with sward;
And when evening dies, the million-tinted,
And the night has come, and planets glinted,
Lo, the valley hollow
Lamp-bestarred!

Oh, to dream, oh, to wake and wander
There, and with delight to take and render,
Through the trace of silence,
Quiet breath;
Lo! For there, among the flowers and grasses,
Only the mightier movement sounds and passes;
Only winds and rivers,
Life and death.

Comment by David Gould on November 4, 2009 at 11:15pm

Edwin Muir is my favourite poet...I love the Horses

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.

Edwin Muir

Comment by Mary MacKay on October 26, 2009 at 7:41am

"Scotland's Winter"
- Edwin Muir
Now the ice lays its smooth claws on the sill,
The sun looks from the hill
Helmed in his winter casket,
And sweeps his arctic sword across the sky.
The water at the mill
Sounds more hoarse and dull.
The miller's daughter walking by
With frozen fingers soldered to her basket
Seems to be knocking
Upon a hundred leagues of floor
With her light heels, and mocking
Percy and Douglas dead,
And Bruce on his burial bed,
Where he lies white as may
With wars and leprosy,
And all the kings before
This land was kingless,
And all the singers before
This land was songless,
This land that with its dead and living waits the Judgement Day.
But they, the powerless dead,
Listening can hear no more
Than a hard tapping on the floor
A little overhead
Of common heels that do not know
Whence they come or where they go
And are content
With their poor frozen life and shallow banishment.

Comment by Kirsten Easdale on October 1, 2009 at 12:29am

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