The Nation's Favourite

by Griff Rhys Jones

  But this was silence,

  This was something else, this was

  Hearing and speaking though he was a house drawn

  Into silence, this was

  Something religious in his silence,

  Something shining in his quiet,

  This was different this was altogether something else:

  Though he never spoke, this

  Was something to do with death.

  And then slowly the eye stopped looking

  Inward. The silence rose and became still.

  The look turned to the outer place and stopped,

  With the birds still shrilling around him.

  And as if he could speak

  He turned over on his side with his one year

  Red as a wound

  He turned over as if he could be sorry for this

  And out of his eyes two great tears rolled, like stones, and he died.

  SIEGFRIED SASSOON 1886–1967

  * * *

  BASE DETAILS

  If I were fierce, and bald, and short of breath,

  I’d live with scarlet Majors at the Base,

  And speed glum heroes up the line to death.

  You’d see me with my puffy petulant face,

  Guzzling and gulping in the best hotel,

  Reading the Roll of Honour. ‘Poor young chap,’

  I’d say – ‘I used to know his father well;

  Yes, we’ve lost heavily in this last scrap.’

  And when the war is done and youth stone dead,

  I’d toddle safely home and die – in bed.

  WILFRED OWEN 1893–1918

  * * *

  THE SEND-OFF

  Down the close, darkening lanes they sang their way

  To the siding-shed,

  And lined the train with faces grimly gay.

  Their breasts were stuck all white with wreath and spray

  As men’s are, dead.

  Dull porters watched them, and a casual tramp

  Stood staring hard,

  Sorry to miss them from the upland camp.

  Then, unmoved, signals nodded, and a lamp

  Winked to the guard.

  So secretly, like wrongs hushed-up, they went.

  They were not ours:

  We never heard to which front these were sent.

  Nor there if they yet mock what women meant

  Who gave them flowers.

  Shall they return to beatings of great bells

  In wild train-loads?

  A few, a few, too few for drums and yells,

  May creep back, silent, to still village wells

  Up half-known roads.

  W.H. AUDEN 1907–73

  * * *

  from TWELVE SONGS

  IX

  Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,

  Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,

  Silence the pianos and with muffled drum

  Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

  Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead

  Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,

  Put crêpe bows round the white necks of the public doves,

  Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

  He was my North, my South, my East and West,

  My working week and my Sunday rest,

  My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;

  I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

  The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;

  Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;

  Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.

  For nothing now can ever come to any good.

  ‘For there is good news yet to hear and fine things to be seen’

  from ‘The Rolling English Road’

  R.S. THOMAS 1913–2000

  * * *

  THE BRIGHT FIELD

  I have seen the sun break through

  to illuminate a small field

  for a while, and gone my way

  and forgotten it. But that was the pearl

  of great price, the one field that had

  the treasure in it. I realize now

  that I must give all that I have

  to possess it. Life is not hurrying

  on to a receding future, nor hankering after

  an imagined past. It is the turning

  aside like Moses to the miracle

  of the lit bush, to a brightness

  that seemed as transitory as your youth

  once, but is the eternity that awaits you.

  SHEENAGH PUGH 1950–

  * * *

  SOMETIMES

  Sometimes things don’t go, after all,

  from bad to worse. Some years, muscadel

  faces down frost; green thrives; the crops don’t fail,

  sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well.

  A people sometimes will step back from war;

  elect an honest man; decide they care

  enough, that they can’t leave some stranger poor.

  Some men become what they were born for.

  Sometimes our best efforts do not go

  amiss; sometimes we do as we meant to.

  The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow

  that seemed hard frozen: may it happen for you.

  SIR JOHN BETJEMAN 1906–84

  * * *

  CHRISTMAS

  The bells of waiting Advent ring,

  The Tortoise stove is lit again

  And lamp-oil light across the night

  Has caught the streaks of winter rain

  In many a stained-glass window sheen

  From Crimson Lake to Hooker’s Green.

  The holly in the windy hedge

  And round the Manor House the yew

  Will soon be stripped to deck the ledge,

  The altar, font and arch and pew,

  So that the villagers can say

  ‘The church looks nice’ on Christmas Day.

  Provincial public houses blaze

  And Corporation tramcars clang,

  On lighted tenements I gaze

  Where paper decorations hang,

  And bunting in the red Town Hall

  Says ‘Merry Christmas to you all.’

  And London shops on Christmas Eve

  Are strung with silver bells and flowers

  As hurrying clerks the City leave

  To pigeon-haunted classic towers,

  And marbled clouds go scudding by

  The many-steepled London sky.

  And girls in slacks remember Dad,

  And oafish louts remember Mum,

  And sleepless children’s hearts are glad,

  And Christmas-morning bells say ‘Come!’

  Even to shining ones who dwell

  Safe in the Dorchester Hotel.

  And is it true? And is it true,

  This most tremendous tale of all,

  Seen in a stained-glass window’s hue,

  A Baby in an ox’s stall?

  The Maker of the stars and sea

  Become a Child on earth for me?

  And is it true? For if it is,

  No loving fingers tying strings

  Around those tissued fripperies,

  The sweet and silly Christmas things,

  Bath salts and inexpensive scent

  And hideous tie so kindly meant,

  No love that in a family dwells,

  No carolling in frosty air,

  Nor all the steeple-shaking bells

  Can with this single Truth compare –

  That God was Man in Palestine

  And lives to-day in Bread and Wine.

  PHILIP LARKIN 1922–85

  * * *

  CHURCH GOING

  Once I am sure there’s nothing going on

  I step inside, letting the door thud shut.

  Another church: matting, seats, and stone,

  And little books; sprawlings of fl
owers, cut

  For Sunday, brownish now; some brass and stuff

  Up at the holy end; the small neat organ;

  And a tense, musty, unignorable silence,

  Brewed God knows how long. Hatless, I take off

  My cycle-clips in awkward reverence,

  Move forward, run my hand around the font.

  From where I stand, the roof looks almost new –

  Cleaned, or restored? Someone would know: I don’t.

  Mounting the lectern, I peruse a few

  Hectoring large-scale verses, and pronounce

  ‘Here endeth’ much more loudly than I’d meant.

  The echoes snigger briefly. Back at the door

  I sign the book, donate an Irish sixpence,

  Reflect the place was not worth stopping for.

  Yet stop I did: in fact I often do,

  And always end much at a loss like this,

  Wondering what to look for; wondering, too,

  When churches fall completely out of use

  What we shall turn them into, if we shall keep

  A few cathedrals chronically on show,

  Their parchment, plate and pyx in locked cases,

  And let the rest rent-free to rain and sheep.

  Shall we avoid them as unlucky places?

  Or, after dark, will dubious women come

  To make their children touch a particular stone;

  Pick simples for a cancer; or on some

  Advised night see walking a dead one?

  Power of some sort or other will go on

  In games, in riddles, seemingly at random;

  But superstition, like belief, must die,

  And what remains when disbelief has gone?

  Grass, weedy pavement, brambles, buttress, sky,

  A shape less recognisable each week,

  A purpose more obscure. I wonder who

  Will be the last, the very last, to seek

  This place for what it was; one of the crew

  That tap and jot and know what rood-lofts were?

  Some ruin-bibber, randy for antique,

  Or Christmas-addict, counting on a whiff

  Of gown-and-bands and organ-pipes and myrrh?

  Or will he be my representative,

  Bored, uninformed, knowing the ghostly silt

  Dispersed, yet tending to this cross of ground

  Through suburb scrub because it held unspilt

  So long and equably what since is found

  Only in separation – marriage, and birth,

  And death, and thoughts of these – for whom was built

  This special shell? For, though I’ve no idea

  What this accoutred frowsty barn is worth,

  It pleases me to stand in silence here;

  A serious house on serious earth it is,

  In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,

  Are recognised, and robed as destinies.

  And that much never can be obsolete,

  Since someone will forever be surprising

  A hunger in himself to be more serious,

  And gravitating with it to this ground,

  Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,

  If only that so many dead lie round.

  CAROL ANN DUFFY 1955–

  * * *

  PRAYER

  Some days, although we cannot pray, a prayer

  utters itself. So, a woman will lift

  her head from the sieve of her hands and stare

  at the minims sung by a tree, a sudden gift.

  Some nights, although we are faithless, the truth

  enters our hearts, that small familiar pain;

  then a man will stand stock-still, hearing his youth

  in the distant Latin chanting of a train.

  Pray for us now. Grade I piano scales

  console the lodger looking out across

  a Midlands town. Then dusk, and someone calls

  a child’s name as though they named their loss.

  Darkness outside. Inside, the radio’s prayer –

  Rockall. Malin. Dogger. Finisterre.

  W.B. YEATS 1865–1939

  * * *

  SAILING TO BYZANTIUM

  I

  That is no country for old men. The young

  In one another’s arms, birds in the trees

  – Those dying generations – at their song,

  The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,

  Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long

  Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.

  Caught in that sensual music all neglect

  Monuments of unageing intellect.

  II

  An aged man is but a paltry thing,

  A tattered coat upon a stick, unless

  Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing

  For every tatter in its mortal dress,

  Nor is there singing school but studying

  Monuments of its own magnificence;

  And therefore I have sailed the seas and come

  To the holy city of Byzantium.

  III

  O sages standing in God’s holy fire

  As in the gold mosaic of a wall,

  Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,

  And be the singing-masters of my soul.

  Consume my heart away; sick with desire

  And fastened to a dying animal

  It knows not what it is; and gather me

  Into the artifice of eternity.

  IV

  Once out of nature I shall never take

  My bodily form from any natural thing,

  But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make

  Of hammered gold and gold enamelling

  To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;

  Or set upon a golden bough to sing

  To lords and ladies of Byzantium

  Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

  TED HUGHES 1930–98

  * * *

  THE THOUGHT-FOX

  I imagine this midnight moment’s forest:

  Something else is alive

  Beside the clock’s loneliness

  And this blank page where my fingers move.

  Through the window I see no star:

  Something more near

  Though deeper within darkness

  Is entering the loneliness:

  Cold, delicately as the dark snow

  A fox’s nose touches twig, leaf;

  Two eyes serve a movement, that now

  And again now, and now, and now

  Sets neat prints into the snow

  Between trees, and warily a lame

  Shadow lags by stump and in hollow

  Of a body that is bold to come

  Across clearings, an eye,

  A widening deepening greenness,

  Brilliantly, concentratedly,

  Coming about its own business

  Till with a sudden sharp hot stink of fox

  It enters the dark hole of the head.

  The window is starless still; the clock ticks,

  The page is printed.

  BENJAMIN ZEPHANIAH 1958–

  * * *

  DIS POETRY

  Dis poetry is like a riddim dat drops

  De tongue fires a riddim dat shoots like shots

  Dis poetry is designed fe rantin

  Dance hall style, Big mouth chanting,

  Dis poetry nar put yu to sleep

  Preaching follow me

  Like yu is blind sheep,

  Dis poetry is not Party Political

  Not designed fe dose who are critical.

  Dis poetry is wid me when I gu to me bed

  It gets into me Dreadlocks

  It lingers around me head

  Dis poetry goes wid me as I pedal me bike

  I’ve tried Shakespeare, Respect due dere

  But dis is de stuff I like

  Dis poetry is not afraid of going ina book

  Sti
ll dis poetry need ears fe hear an eyes fe hav a look

  Dis poetry is Verbal Riddim, no big words involved

  An if I hav a problem de riddim gets it solved,

  I’ve tried to be more Romantic, it does nu good for me

  So I tek a Reggae Riddim an build me poetry,

  I could try be more personal

  But you’ve heard it all before,

  Pages of written words no needed

  Brain has many words in store,

  Yu could call dis poetry Dub Ranting

  De tongue plays a beat

  De body starts skanking,

  Dis poetry is quick an childish

  Dis poetry is fe de wise an foolish

  Anybody can do it fe free,

  Dis poetry is fe yu an me,

  Don’t stretch yu imagination

  Dis poetry is fe de good of de Nation,

  Chant,

  In de morning

  I chant

  In de night

  I chant

  In de darkness

  An under de spotlight,

  I pass thru University

  I pass thru Sociology

  An den I got a Dread degree

  In Dreadfull Ghettology.

  Dis poetry stays wid me when I run or walk

  An when I am talking to meself in poetry I talk,

  Dis poetry is wid me,

  Below me an above,

  Dis poetry’s from inside me

  It goes to yu

  WID LUV.

  SEAMUS HEANEY 1939–

  * * *

  DIGGING

  Between my finger and my thumb

  The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.

  Under my window, a clean rasping sound

  When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:

  My father, digging. I look down

  Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds

  Bends low, comes up twenty years away

  Stooping in rhythm through potato drills

  Where he was digging.

  The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft

  Against the inside knee was levered firmly.

  He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep

  To scatter new potatoes that we picked