In memory of my dad

I am posting this because last Sunday would have been Dad's 63rd birthday. He died three years ago (on Sept 1st) I loved him very very much and miss him horribly always, especially on the birthday we shared.

This poem may look difficult at first but just read it out loud; it flows so naturally. I love the feeling of this poem.

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my father moved through dooms of love

my father moved through dooms of love
through sames of am through haves of give,
singing each morning out of each night
my father moved through depths of height

this motionless forgetful where
turned at his glance to shining here;
that if(so timid air is firm)

under his eyes would stir and squirm

newly as from unburied which
floats the first who,his april touch
drove sleeping selves to swarm their fates
woke dreamers to their ghostly roots

and should some why completely weep
my father's fingers brought her sleep:
vainly no smallest voice might cry
for he could feel the mountains grow.

Lifting the valleys of the sea
my father moved through griefs of joy;
praising a forehead called the moon
singing desire into begin

joy was his song and joy so pure
a heart of star by him could steer
and pure so now and now so yes
the wrists of twilight would rejoice

keen as midsummer's keen beyond
conceiving mind of sun will stand,
so strictly(over utmost him
so hugely) stood my father's dream

his flesh was flesh his blood was blood:
no hungry man but wished him food;
no cripple wouldn't creep one mile
uphill to only see him smile.

Scorning the Pomp of must and shall
my father moved through dooms of feel;
his anger was as right as rain
his pity was as green as grain

septembering arms of year extend
yes humbly wealth to foe and friend
than he to foolish and to wise
offered immeasurable is

proudly and(by octobering flame
beckoned)as earth will downward climb,
so naked for immortal work
his shoulders marched against the dark

his sorrow was as true as bread:
no liar looked him in the head;
if every friend became his foe
he'd laugh and build a world with snow.

My father moved through theys of we,
singing each new leaf out of each tree
(and every child was sure that spring
danced when she heard my father sing)

then let men kill which cannot share,
let blood and flesh be mud and mire,
scheming imagine,passion willed,
freedom a drug that's bought and sold

giving to steal and cruel kind,
a heart to fear,to doubt a mind,
to differ a disease of same,
conform the pinnacle of am

though dull were all we taste as bright,
bitter all utterly things sweet,
maggoty minus and dumb death
all we inherit,all bequeath

and nothing quite so least as truth
--i say though hate were why men breathe--
because my Father lived his soul
love is the whole and more than all

e.e.cummings

Today's Poem- Church Going- Philip Larkin

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 flowers, 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 recognizable 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


Philip Larkin

Review of the Elmet Festival...

Went yesterday to Mytholmroyd (that's the actual name of a village in Upper Calder valley!) AND the village where one of my all time heroes (and favourite poet) Ted Hughes was born and raised for the first 6/7 years of his life.

We went for lunch at Hebden Bridge (which is a surprisingly artsy little town) and then on to Mythomroyd for a talk by the brilliant Simon Armitage (described, probably rather emabarrassingly for him, as the Poet Laureate in waiting) Simon grew up in a village not far from Ted's birthplace and became enamoured with Poetry through reading Ted Hughes. He spent the first half of the talk describing how important the Upper Calder Valley was throughout Ted's life; despite the fact that Ted left the area as a boy. Rather than read poems by Ted, he played poems read by Ted himself on a CD player; having first described where in the valley they were set and why. You really need to hear Ted Hughes read his own poetry to get the true rhythm and sense and feeling and darkness of his work. * ideally you need to hear every poet read their own work!

The second half of the talk was Simon reading his own poems but reading those which showed the link between him and Ted.

Simon was extremely funny, his poems evocative and his thoughts inspiring. He decsribed the following poem much as he descibes it at Poetry Archive, I include a link to it here...
http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoet.do?poetId=87#

This one reminded me of Stevie Smith's "Not Waving Drowning" It is funny to start but ultimately very moving. Like when you start laughing and then hear the tragedy and it takes a moment for the emotional gears to shift and that awful sort of gap as all the air sucks out and leaves a vacuum, for just a long second before the wave of deep sadness breaks over you. It more often happens the other way around where you deal with the tragedy first and then find some relief when inexplicably it all turns to laughter. Sometimes I have experienced the first scenario immediately after the second- so it comes full circle.
Anyway- I loved this poem.

After the talk we had the great priviledge to be taken on a tour by Mr David Crossley; a gentlemen who knew Ted as a boy and has enjoyed an on going friendship with the Hughes family, even after Ted's death 9 years ago.

Unfortunately the tour was considerably shortened by the need for some of the kids to get back for a detention! (ugh!) This old gent took us to Ted's birth place and then to the canal where they fished for loach and Ted's life long love of fishing began. Mr Crossly read Ted's poems - the ones that related directly to their shared memories of growing up in this gushing ancient bleak living valley, surrounded by "dark satanic mills" and glowering moors.

He showed photographs of the views from where we stood, just as those views looked in 1930s. His enthusiasm, born out of nostalgia and empathy for Ted's words was palpable. He was a living oral history, standing on a greasy green moss spot on the old quarry slabbed walk way under a bridge over a dark muddy canal reading "The Canal's Drowning Black" and pointing at a newish old folks' sheltered housing block when he read the line "Mount Zion's Cowled, Satantic majesty behind me..." This having shown us a black and white blurred photo of Mount Zion - a huge methodist chapel stained black with industrial smog (circa 1938)

Having been into Ted's home and seen where this chapel stood you understand how this austere place of puritanical worship blocked out all light from the Hughes home and was an immence ominous black wall.

I feel kind of saddened and delighted by meeting Mr Crossley. A simple and honest man who again and again pointed out that he "whar nor scholerrr!" He was living the poetry purely and honestly and emotionally and not pretentiously - he was inspirational. I was saddened because the old chap must be mid seventies and whilst fit as fiddle - will not be around forever to share this absolutely vibrant and living history for all. Of course if "he whar a scholerrr" he'd have written a thesis and made countless documentaries etc.. as it happens he is just an enthusiastic old chap, who not olnly knew and loved Ted as a boy and grew to respect and understamd his work on a very personal level in age, but also has an immense understanding of social history in a part and time of England now long long gone. I wish we could capture old Donald Crossley's stories forever on film or recorded sound.

Oral history me lovelies... go out and tape you granddad and nana now---today! Keep a journal and blog even. Take pictures, write poems and then take pictures again because all too soon we'll be history too.

By Ted Hughes...

The Canal's Drowning Black

Bred wild leopards - among the pale depth fungus.
Loach. Torpid, ginger-bearded, secret
Prehistory of the canal's masonry,
With little cupid mouths.

Five inches huge!
On the slime-brink,over bridge reflections,
I teetered. Then a ringing, skull-jolt stamp
And their beards flowered sudden anemones

All down the sunken cliff. A mad-house thrill-
The stonework's tiny eyes, two feet, three feet,
Four feet down through my reflection
Watched for my next move.

Their schooldays were over.
Peeping man was no part of their knowledge.
So when a monkey god, a Martian
Tickled their underchins with his net rim

They snaked out and over the net rim easy
Back into the oligocene -
Only restrained by a mesh of kitchen curtain.
Then flopped out of their ocean-shifting aeons

Into a two-pound jam-jar
On a windowsill
Blackened with acid rain fall-out
From Manchester's rotten lung.

Next morning, Mount Zion's
Cowled, Satanic majecty behind me
I lobbed-one by one-high through the air
The stiff, pouting, failed, plaed moons

Back into their Paradise and mine.

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