Poetry selections
In the amber dusk
Funeral Blues Each island dreams its own night.
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone. The sea swarms with gold.
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone, James Kirpup
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling in 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 forever, I was wrong.
e. e. cummings
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.
W. H. Auden
SONNET 116
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken. Mary Ellen Solt
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
– William Shakespeare
In a station of the metro
THE apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.
Ezra Pound
Loneliness
A flitting firefly Nursery Rhymes
‘Look! Look there! I start to call –
1.
But there’s no one by.
Rain, rain, go away,
Taigi Come again another day,
Little John wants to play
2. b. Just like me.
To market to market, a. I went up two pairs of stairs.
To buy a fat pig, b. Just like me
Home again, home again,
a. I went into a room.
Jiggety-jig.
To market, to market, b. Just like me
To buy a fat hog, a. I looked out of a window.
Home again, home again, b. Just like me
Jiggety-jig. a. And there I saw a monkey.
b. Just like me.
3.
Hey, diddle, diddle,
The cat and the fiddle,
The cow jumped over the moon; Riddles and Puzzles
The little dog laughed 7.
To see such a sport, Riddle me! Riddle me! What is that:
And the dish ran away with the spoon. Over your head and under your hat?
.
4. 8.
This is the house that jack built. As I was going to St Ives,
I met a man with seven wives,
This is the malt Each wife had seven sacks,
That lay in the house that Jack built. Each sack had seven cats,
Each cat had seven kits;
This is the rat, Kits, cats, sacks, and wives,
That ate the malt How many were there going to St Ives?
That lay in the house that Jack built.
This is the cat Voices of Nonsense
That killed the rat, 9. Eletelephony
That ate the malt Once there was an elephant,
That lay in the house that Jack built. who tried to use the telephant -
No! No! I mean an elephone
This is the dog who tried to use the telephone
That worried the cat (Dear me! I am not certain quite
That ate the rat that even now I've got it right.)
That ate the malt
That lay in the house that Jack built. Howe'er it was, it got his trunk
(…) entangled in the telephunk;
the more he tried to get it free,
the louder buzzed the telephee -
Street and Game Lore (I fear I'd better drop the song
5. of the elephop and the telephong)
a. I am a gold lock. Laura E. Richards
b. I am a gold key.
a. I am a silver lock. 10.
b. I am a silver key. “Let’s marry,”
a. I am a brass lock. Said the cherry.
b. I am a brass key. “Why me?”
a. I am a monk lock. Said the pea.
b. I am a monk key. “’Cause you’re sweet,”
Said the beet.
“Say you will,”
6. Said the dill.
a. I went up one pair of stairs. “Think it over,”
Said the clover. And he’s only got – don’t laugh – two eyes.
“Don’t rush,”
Said the squash. Can you believe that?
“Here’s your dress,” When we first saw him we fell about
Said the cress. But as our teachers says
“And your cape,” We must be thoughtful and respect all visitors
Said the grape. To our galaxy
“Trimmed with fur,” Even if they only have one feeding system
Said the burr. A breathing tube that’s much too small
“Won’t that tickle?” And horrid furry stuff on their head.
Said the pickle.
N. M. Bodecker. Next month my sister and I
11. Are visiting his planet on the exchange.
It’s got a funny name, earth.
We’ve got to stay two weeks
Our teacher says we must be careful
Not to tread on the earthlings by mistake
And always, always be polite
To raise our wings in greeting
And to put rubber tips on our sharpest horns
I’m not looking forward to it so much
The food looks awful
And the sea’s dirty, not to mention the air.
Still, it’ll make a change from boring old school
And perhaps some alien
Will quite fancy me!
12. Billy doesn’t like school really
David Harmer
Billy doesn’t like school really
It’s not because he can’t do the work
But because some of the other kids
14. Serious Luv
Don’t seem to like him that much.
Monday Morning
I really luv the girl dat’s sitting next to me,
They call him names
I think she thinks like me and she’s so cool,
And make up jokes about his mother.
I think that we could live for ever happily
I want to marry her when I leave school.
Everyone laughs … except Billy.
Everyone laughs … except Billy.
She’s de only one in school allowed to call me Ben
When she does Maths I luv the way she chews her pen,
They all think it’s OK
When we are doing Art she’s so artistic
Because it’s only a laugh and a joke
in Biology she makes my heart beat so quick.
And they don’t really mean it anyway
But Billy doesn’t know that.
When we do Geography I go to paradise
She’s helped me draw a map of Borneo twice!
Billy doesn’t know that
Today she’s going to help me take me books home
And because of that
So I am going to propose to her when we’re alone.
Billy doesn’t like school really.
Paul Cookson
X The next day
I used to love the girl dat’s sitting next to me
But yesterday it all came to an end.
13. Alien Exchange
She said that I should tale love more seriously
We’ve got an alien at our school
An now I think I really luv her friend
He’s on an exchange trip
Benjamin Zephaniah
I’d quite fancy him
If he wasn’t so weird looking.
Just one head
Only two legs
And no feelers at all
He hasn’t got claws on the end of his hands
