Love and taxes, grief and loss. This can be a tough time of year. Read Laura Kasischke’s wonderful poem and put your personal concerns aside. Understand there are atomic stockpiles to pay for so get your taxes done. April That was the year in which we had to pay the tax on love, which was grief, of course. Of course, it…
‘We’re going to see the rabbit’ We are going to see the rabbit. We are going to see the rabbit. Which rabbit, people say? Which rabbit, ask the children? Which rabbit? The only rabbit, The only rabbit in England, Sitting behind a barbed-wire fence Under the floodlights, neon lights, Sodium lights, Nibbling grass On the only patch of grass In…
We pay through the nose for subjecting of foes. Abroad we’re defeated, at home, we ‘re cheated. The ides of April are upon us and that means taxes. Just read this astoundingly relevant piece of tax outrage. It provides some consolation that “twas ever thus. A Ballad on the Taxes by Edward Ward 1. Good people: What? Will you of…
In Memoriam (Easter, 1915) The flowers left thick at nightfall in the wood This Eastertide call into mind the men, Now far from home, who, with their sweethearts, should Have gathered them and will do never again. by Edward Thomas Three British soldiers waiting in a trench. One stands leaning against the wall of the trench, another sits…
Epitaph on a Tyrant Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after, And the poetry he invented was easy to understand; He knew human folly like the back of his hand, And was greatly interested in armies and fleets; When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter, And when he cried the little children died in the streets. by…
What Kinds of Times are These by Adrienne Rich There’s a place between two stands of trees where the grass grows uphill and the old revolutionary road breaks off into shadows near a meeting-house abandoned by the persecuted who disappeared into those shadows. I’ve walked there picking mushrooms at the edge of dread, but don’t be fooled this isn’t a…
A Facebook friend wanted some crowd-sourcing help for a piece she was editing. Her query asked readers to end the sentence “When you think of lard …?” My answer was: “When I think of lard I think of Wiltshire lardy cake. Delicious. I also think of my mother – 75 years a vegetarian – who made the exception for lard…
The Journey by Mary Oliver One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice– though the whole house began to tremble and you felt the old tug at your ankles. ‘Mend my life!’ each voice cried. But you didn’t stop. You knew what you had to do,…
Subway Rush Hour by Langston Hughes Mingled breath and smell so close mingled black and white so near no room for fear. Hughes published Subway Rush Hour in 1951 part of “Montage of a Dream Deferred”. In “My Early Days in Harlem” 1963 he wrote of his arrival Harlem as a young man from the mid-West. On a bright September…
The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command. His heart sank as he thought of the enormous power arrayed against him, the ease with which any Party intellectual would overthrow him in debate, the subtle arguments which he would not be able to understand, much less answer. And…
Coming by Philip Larkin On longer evenings, Light, chill and yellow, Bathes the serene Foreheads of houses. A thrush sings, Laurel-surrounded In the deep bare garden, Its fresh-peeled voice Astonishing the brickwork. It will be spring soon, It will be spring soon— And I, whose childhood Is a forgotten boredom, Feel like a child Who comes on a scene Of…
Here’s another wonderful old chestnut: Sea Fever by John Masefield I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky, And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by; And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking, And a grey mist on the sea’s…
“Fool and scoundrel guide the State.” That’s true enough. In the early 1930’s when this was written speeding traffic on a Californian freeway was still something new and probably pretty scary to many. Just as the rise of fascism was to those who could see it. Before Disaster by Yvor Winters Evening traffic homeward burns Swift and even on the…
Stalin’s Heirs by Yevgeny Yevtushenko Mute was the marble. Mutely glimmered the glass. Mute stood the sentries, bronzed by the breeze. Thin wisps of smoke curled over the coffin. And breath seeped through the chinks as they bore him out the mausoleum doors. Slowly the coffin floated, grazing the fixed bayonets. He also was mute- his embalmed fists, just pretending…
If you went to school in the UK anytime in the last sixty years then you will probably be familiar with this much anthologized poem. Timothy Winters by Charles Causley Timothy Winters comes to school With eyes as wide as a football pool, Ears like bombs and teeth like splinters: A blitz of a boy is Timothy Winters. His belly…