Poetry Friday - 2

It was the birthday this week of Edward Thomas, a quitessentially English poet. This is one of the many poems he wrote in the short period of poetic creativity that came upon him before he was killed in the First World War:


Lights Out

I have come to the borders of sleep,
The unfathomable deep
Forest where all must lose
Their way, however straight,
Or winding, soon or late;
They cannot choose.

Many a road and track
That, since the dawn's first crack,
Up to the forest brink,
Deceived the travellers,
Suddenly now blurs,
And in they sink.

Here love ends,
Despair, ambition ends,
All pleasure and all trouble,
Although most sweet or bitter,
Here ends in sleep that is sweeter
Than tasks most noble.

There is not any book
Or face of dearest look
That I would not turn from now
To go into the unknown
I must enter and leave alone
I know not how.

The tall forest towers;
Its cloudy foliage lowers
Ahead, shelf above shelf;
Its silence I hear and obey
That I may lose my way
And myself.


Thomas' was the first poetry by a FWW poet that I ever read, many many years ago: I was 16 and a friend recited from memory his poem But These Things Also Are Spring's, which impressed itself upon my brain that I sought out a copy of Thomas' poems later that same morning.

Today is the anniversary of the first publication in 1923 of Robert Frost's well-loved poem:

Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

Note that both men, who were very great friends for a few years before Thomas' death, wrote of woods and sleep.

The Poetry Friday round-up this week is over at The Simple and The Ordinary.

Poetry Friday 55

The annual Glastonbury Music Festival and Wimbledon are both approaching, sure guarantees of rain arriving on these shores, and this morning I woke to a leak in my attic roof, so I'm feeling rather rain obsessed at the moment !


Rain

Rain, midnight rain, nothing but the wild rain
On this bleak hut, and solitude, and me
Remembering again that I shall die
And neither hear the rain nor give it thanks
For washing me cleaner than I have been
Since I was born into this solitude.
Blessed are the dead that the rain rains upon:
But here I pray that none whom once I loved
Is dying tonight or lying still awake
Solitary, listening to the rain,
Either in pain or thus in sympathy
Helpless among the living and the dead,
Like a cold water among broken reeds,
Myriads of broken reeds all still and stiff,
Like me who have no love which this wild rain
Has not dissolved except the love of death,
If love it be for what is perfect and
Cannot, the tempest tells me,
disappoint.

Edward Thomas' poem "Rain" was written on January 7, 1916 - for those familiar with poetry of the WW1 period, the images of rain and mud are probably the strongest ones.


The other thing I'm obsessed about, of course, is "Doctor Who" - the season finale is only 8 days away. Last week's episode (which I will review on my Spoiler Zone Blog at some point in the next two days) was called "Utopia", although there was no sign of Utopia in the episode, but it got me thinking about Utopia and Dystopia, and of course, then I went looking for some poetry, and found this:

Utopia

Island where all becomes clear.

Solid ground beneath your feet.

The only roads are those that offer access.

Bushes bend beneath the weight of proofs.

The Tree of Valid Supposition grows here
with branches disentangled since time immemorial.

The Tree of Understanding, dazzlingly straight and simple,
sprouts by the spring called Now I Get It.

The thicker the woods, the vaster the vista:
the Valley of Obviously.

You can read the rest of Wislawa Szymborska's poem here. I confess to being completely unfamiliar with Szymborska's work until Elaine of Wild Rose Reader and Blue Rose Girls posted "The Joy of Writing" for an April Poetry Friday offering. You can find a biography of this Polish poet here; Szymborska won the "Nobel Prize in Literature" in 1996 and you can read her Nobel Prize lecture here.


This week's poetry round-up is hosted by cloudscome of A Wrung Sponge.