– But greet, an’ in your tears ye’ll droun
The haill clanjamfrie!
HUGH MACDIARMID
Back Bedroom
The dirty licht that through the winnock seeps
Into this unkempt room has glozed strange sichts;
Heaven like a Peepin’ Tam ’twixt chimley-pots
Keeks i’ the drab fore-nichts.
The folk that hed it last – the selfsame bed –
Were a great hulkin’ cairter an’ his bride.
She deed i’ child-birth – on this verra spot
Whaur we’ll lie side by side.
An’ everything’s deid-grey except oor een.
Wi’ wee waugh jokes we strip an’ intae bed …
An’ suddenly oor een sing oot like stars
An’ a’ oor misery’s shed.
What tho’ the auld dour licht is undeceived?
What tho’ a callous morn oure shairly comes?
For a wee while we ken but een like stars,
An’ oor herts gaen’ like drums.
Mony’s the dreich back bedroom whaur the same
Sad little miracle tak’s place ilk’ nicht,
An’ orra shapes o’ sickly-hued mankind
Cheenge into forms o’ licht.
HUGH MACDIARMID
Mary’s Song
I wad ha’e gi’en him my lips tae kiss,
Had I been his, had I been his;
Barley breid and elder wine,
Had I been his as he is mine.
The wanderin’ bee it seeks the rose;
Tae the lochan’s bosom the burnie goes;
The grey bird cries at evenin’s fa’,
‘My luve, my fair one, come awa’,
My beloved sall ha’e this he’rt tae break,
Reid, reid wine and the barley cake,
A he’rt tae break, and a mou’ tae kiss,
Tho’ he be nae mine, as I am his.
MARION ANGUS
The Blue Jacket
When there comes a flower to the stingless nettle,
To the hazel bushes, bees,
I think I can see my little sister
Rocking herself by the hazel trees.
Rocking her arms for very pleasure
That every leaf so sweet can smell,
And that she has on her the warm blue jacket
Of mine, she liked so well.
Oh to win near you, little sister!
To hear your soft lips say –
‘I’ll never tak’ up wi’ lads or lovers,
But a baby I maun hae.
‘A baby in a cradle rocking,
Like a nut, in a hazel shell,
And a new blue jacket, like this o’ Annie’s,
It sets me aye sae well.’
MARION ANGUS
Alas! Poor Queen
She was skilled in music and the dance
And the old arts of love
At the court of the poisoned rose
And the perfumed glove,
And gave her beautiful hand
To the pale Dauphin
A triple crown to win –
And she loved little dogs
And parrots
And red-legged partridges
And the golden fishes of the Duc de Guise
And a pigeon with a blue ruff
She had from Monsieur d’Elbœuf.
Master John Knox was no friend to her;
She spoke him soft and kind,
Her honeyed words were Satan’s lure
The unwary soul to bind
‘Good sir, doth a lissome shape
And a comely face
Offend your God His Grace
Whose Wisdom maketh these
Golden fishes of the Duc de Guise?’
She rode through Liddesdale with a song;
‘Ye streams sae wondrous strang,
Oh, mak’ me a wrack as I come back
But spare me as I gang,’
While a hill-bird cried and cried
Like a spirit lost
By the grey storm-wind tost.
Consider the way she had to go.
Think of the hungry snare,
The net she herself had woven,
Aware or unaware,
Of the dancing feet grown still,
The blinded eyes –
Queens should be cold and wise,
And she loved little things,
Parrots
And red-legged partridges
And the golden fishes of the Duc de Guise
And the pigeon with the blue ruff
She had from Monsieur d’Elbœuf.
MARION ANGUS
The Bells of Rhymney
O what can you give me?
Say the sad bells of Rhymney.
Is there hope for the future?
Cry the brown bells of Merthyr.
Who made the mineowner?
Say the black bells of Rhondda.
And who robbed the miner?
Cry the grim bells of Blaina.
They will plunder willy-nilly,
Say the bells of Caerphilly.
They have fangs, they have teeth
Shout the loud bells of Neath.
To the south, things are sullen,
Say the pink bells of Brecon.
Even God is uneasy,
Say the moist bells of Swansea.
Put the vandals in court
Cry the bells of Newport.
All would be well if – if – if –
Say the green bells of Cardiff.
Why so worried, sisters, why
Sing the silver bells of Wye.
IDRIS DAVIES
The Angry Summer
Mrs Evans fach, you want butter again.
How will you pay for it now, little woman
With your husband out on strike, and full
Of the fiery language? Ay, I know him,
His head is full of fire and brimstone
And a lot of palaver about communism,
And me, little Dan the grocer
Depending so much on private enterprise.
What, depending on the miners and their
Money too? O yes, in a way, Mrs Evans,
Yes, in a way I do, mind you.
Come tomorrow, little woman, and I’ll tell you then
What I have decided overnight,
Go home now and tell that rash red husband of yours
That your grocer cannot afford to go on strike
Or what would happen to the butter from Carmarthen?
Good day for now, Mrs Evans fach.
IDRIS DAVIES
Cascando
I
why not merely the despaired of
occasion of
wordshed
is it not better abort than be barren
the hours after you are gone are so leaden
they will always start dragging too soon
the grapples clawing blindly the bed of want
bringing up the bones the old loves
sockets filled once with eyes like yours
all always is it better too soon than never
the black want splashing their faces
saying again nine days never floated the loved
nor nine months
nor nine lives
II
saying again
if you do not teach me I shall not learn
saying again there is a last
even of last times
last times of begging
last times of loving
of knowing not knowing pretending
a last even of last times of saying
if you do not love me I shall not be loved
if I do not love you I shall not love
the churn of stale words in the heart again
love love love thud of the old plunger
pestling the unalterable
whey of words
terrified again
; of not loving
of loving and not you
of being loved and not by you
of knowing not knowing pretending
pretending
I and all the others that will love you
if they love you
III
unless they love you
SAMUEL BECKETT
Piano
Softly, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me;
Taking me back down the vista of years, till I see
A child sitting under the piano, in the boom of the tingling strings
And pressing the small, poised feet of a mother who smiles as she sings.
In spite of myself, the insidious mastery of song
Betrays me back, till the heart of me weeps to belong
To the old Sunday evenings at home, with winter outside
And hymns in the cosy parlour, the tinkling piano our guide.
So now it is vain for the singer to burst into clamour
With the great black piano appassionato. The glamour
Of childish days is upon me, my manhood is cast
Down in the flood of remembrance, I weep like a child for the past.
D. H. LAWRENCE
Innocent England
Oh what a pity, Oh! don’t you agree
that figs aren’t found in the land of the free!
Fig-trees don’t grow in my native land;
there’s never a fig-leaf near at hand
when you want one; so I did without;
and that is what the row’s about.
Virginal, pure policemen came
and hid their faces for very shame,
while they carried the shameless things away
to gaol, to be hid from the light of day.
And Mr Mead, that old, old lily
said: ‘Gross! coarse! hideous!’ – and I, like a silly
thought he meant the faces of the police-court officials,
and how right he was, and I signed my initials
to confirm what he said: but alas, he meant
my pictures, and on the proceedings went.
The upshot was, my pictures must burn
that English artists might finally learn
when they painted a nude, to put a cache sexe on,
a cache sexe, a cache sexe, or else begone!
A fig-leaf; or, if you cannot find it
a wreath of mist, with nothing behind it.
A wreath of mist is the usual thing
in the north, to hide where the turtles sing.
Though they never sing, they never sing,
don’t you dare to suggest such a thing
or Mr Mead will be after you.
– But what a pity I never knew
A wreath of English mist would do
as a cache sexe! I’d have put a whole fog.
But once and forever barks the old dog,
so my pictures are in prison, instead of in the Zoo.
D. H. LAWRENCE
Week-night Service
The five old bells
Are hurrying and eagerly calling.
Imploring, protesting
They know, but clamorously falling
Into gabbling incoherence, never resting,
Like spattering showers from a bursten sky-rocket dropping
In splashes of sound, endlessly, never stopping.
The silver moon
That somebody has spun so high
To settle the question, yes or no, has caught
In the net of the night’s balloon,
And sits with a smooth bland smile up there in the sky
Smiling at naught,
Unless the winking star that keeps her company
Makes little jests at the bells’ insanity,
As if he knew aught!
The patient Night
Sits indifferent, hugged in her rags,
She neither knows nor cares
Why the old church sobs and brags;
The light distresses her eyes, and tears
Her old blue cloak, as she crouches and covers her face,
Smiling, perhaps, if we knew it, at the bells’ loud clattering disgrace.
The wise old trees
Drop their leaves with a faint, sharp hiss of contempt,
While a car at the end of the street goes by with a laugh;
As by degrees
The poor bells cease, and the Night is exempt,
And the stars can chaff
The ironic moon at their ease, while the dim old church
Is peopled with shadows and sounds and ghosts that lurch
In its cenotaph.
D. H. LAWRENCE
The Fox
A hundred yards from the peak, while the bells
Of the churches on the slopes called to prayer
And the unspent sun of marvellous July
Called to the mountain, – it was then,
On unfelt feet and and with silent stride,
He paced his rare wonders before us.
We did not move, we did not breathe,
A moment paralysed; like a trinity in stone
We stood, while in untroubled midstep
He paused in surprise, and above
His single hesitant step the two steady flames
Of his eyes held us.
Then, without haste or fear,
He slipped his russet coat over the ridge;
It happened, it ended, like a shooting star.
ROBERT WILLIAMS PARRY
translated by Barry Tobin
Childhood
I used to think that grown-up people chose
To have stiff backs and wrinkles round their nose,
And veins like small fat snakes on either hand,
On purpose to be grand.
Till through the banisters I watched one day
My great-aunt Etty’s friend who was going away,
And how her onyx beads had come unstrung.
I saw her grope to find them as they rolled;
And then I knew that she was helplessly old,
As I was helplessly young.
FRANCES CORNFORD
To a Fat Lady Seen from a Train
O why do you walk through the fields in gloves,
Missing so much and so much?
O fat white woman whom nobody loves,
Why do you walk through the fields in gloves,
When the grass is soft as the breast of doves
And shivering-sweet to the touch?
O why do you walk through the fields in gloves,
Missing so much and so much?
FRANCES CORNFORD
The Ponnage Pool
… Sing
Some simple silly sang
O’ willows or o’ mimulus
A river’s banks alang
– HUGH MACDIARMID
I mind o’ the Ponnage Pule,
The reid brae risin’,
Morphie Lade.
An’ the saumon that louped the dam,
A tree i’ Martin’s Den
Wi’ names carved on it;
But I ken na wha I am.
Ane o’ the names was mine,
An’ still I own it.
Naething it kens
O’ a’ that mak’s up me.
Less I ken o’ mysel’
Than the saumon wherefore
It rins up Esk frae the sea.
I am the deep o’ the pule,
The fish, the fisher,
The river in spate,
The brune of the far peat-moss,
The shingle bricht wi’ the flooer
O’ the yallow mim’lus,
The martin fleein’ across.
I mind o’ the Ponnage Pule
On a shinin’ mornin’,
The saumon fishers
Nettin’ the bonny brutes –
I’ the slithery dark o’ the boddom
O’ Charon’s Coble
Ae day I’ll faddom my doobts.
HELEN B. CRUICKSHANK
The Interrogation
We could have crossed the road but hesitated,
And then came the patrol;
The leader conscientious and intent,
The men surly, indifferent.
While we stood by and waited
The interrogation began. He says the whole
Must come out now, who, what we are,
Where we have come from, with what purpose, whose
Country or camp we plot for or betray.
Question on question.
We have stood and answered through the standing day
And watched across the road beyond the hedge
The careless lovers in pairs go by,
Hand linked in hand, wandering another star,
So near we could shout to them. We cannot choose
Answer or action here,
Though still the careless lovers saunter by
And the thoughtless field is near.
We are on the very edge,
Endurance almost done,
And still the interrogation is going on.
EDWIN MUIR
The Late Wasp
You that through all the dying summer
Came every morning to our breakfast table,
The Map and the Clock Page 27
