The Jolly Company -- Rupert Brooke

Guest poem submitted by Mike Christie:

(Poem #1857) The Jolly Company The stars, a jolly company, I envied, straying late and lonely; And cried upon their revelry: "O white companionship! You only In love, in faith unbroken dwell, Friends radiant and inseparable!" Light-heart and glad they seemed to me And merry comrades (even so God out of heaven may laugh to see the happy crowds; and never know that in his lone obscure distress each walketh in a wilderness). But I, remembering, pitied well And loved them, who, with lonely light, In empty infinite spaces dwell, Disconsolate. For, all the night, I heard the thin gnat-voices cry, Star to faint star, across the sky. -- Rupert Brooke

I have never been a particular fan of Rupert Brooke, but I think he has the
occasional gift for a perfect turn of phrase.  In this case I knew the
phrase before I knew the poem: the last two and a half lines of this poem,
to be exact.  John Wyndham (the author of "The Day of the Triffids") quotes
them in one of his more obscure books, "The Outward Urge".  I read that book
many years ago and loved the lines, but I only recently found the original
poem.

The poem itself is competent, and I am glad to have found it.  But to me it
turns from silver to gold at the end; those two lines are wonderfully
evocative, and bring the poem's theme out with surgical and emotional
precision.

Mike.

PS. I found this version on the web, so if [any Minstrels reader has] a text
to check that would be good, since I have no faith in the accuracy of web
versions.

Night in Arizona -- Sara Teasdale

(Poem #1856) Night in Arizona The moon is a charring ember Dying into the dark; Off in the crouching mountains Coyotes bark. The stars are heavy in heaven, Too great for the sky to hold -- What if they fell and shattered The earth with gold? No lights are over the mesa, The wind is hard and wild, I stand at the darkened window And cry like a child. -- Sara Teasdale

      (1915)

One of my favourite things about Teasdale's work is her ability to blend the
external and the internal, to choose, time and again, precisely the right
words to both evoke a vivid sensory image and an intense feeling of empathy
with the poet's emotional reaction.

Today's poem is an excellent example - the deceptively simple and minimalist
description of the Arizona night is at once haunting and evocative; the
images just the right blend of universality and specificity that every word
triggers a flood of associations. The final two lines, far from begin an
abrupt intrusion of the first person "I" into an otherwise detached poem,
feel completely natural - the narrator has in some sense cast her presence
over the poem all along.

Like my favourite Teasdale poem, "Morning" [Poem #113], today's poem is
ultimately about the resonance between the poet's spirit and the sweep of the
world around her. When done right (and few people do it better than
Teasdale), this renders a poem both powerful and intensely memorable - not
just for the specific lines and phrases, but for a very individual 'feel'
which is hard to put into words, but which is indisputably present.

martin

The Ways We Touch -- Miller Williams

Guest poem submitted by Rachael Shaw:

(Poem #1855) The Ways We Touch Have compassion for everyone you meet, even if they don't want it. What appears bad manners, an ill temper or cynicism is always a sign of things no ears have heard, no eyes have seen. You do not know what wars are going on down there where the spirit meets the bone. -- Miller Williams

I have recently moved to Nashville, Tennessee - the home of country music. I
was fortunate on my first night in town to see a rare performance by
singer-songwriter Lucinda Williams and her father, poet Miller Williams
called 'Poetry Said, Poetry Sung'. Miller Williams recited a poem and
Lucinda picked a song to play that would fit the poem her dad had just read.

His poems really spoke to me and I went to the library the following day to
look for his work. On reading a few poems from 'Points of Departure' and
'Some Jazz a While', I was disappointed that the poems did not have such an
impact on me as they did when they were spoken by Miller the night before. I
fear this may happen with readers as well so I ask that you imagine an old,
grey man of slight stature and big glasses, whose body rocks when he laughs
and whose voice crackles when he talks ever so slowly. A man who knows of
struggle and loss. At one point during the show Lucinda said "Takes me
longer to say in a song what dad can do in a few lines." I think this is so
very true. For me, 'The Ways We Touch' was made to be spoken.

To experience Miller Williams, click on this videolink:
  [broken link] http://www.press.uillinois.edu/poetry/images/inaugural.mov.
Miller was chosen to read a poem at Bill Clinton's innaugauration in 1997
('Of History and Hope').

Rachael.

The Story We Know -- Martha Collins

(Poem #1854) The Story We Know The way to begin is always the same. Hello, Hello. Your hand, your name. So glad, Just fine, And Good-bye at the end. That's every story we know, And why pretend? But lunch tomorrow? No? Yes? An omelette, salad, chilled white wine? The way to begin is simple, sane, Hello, And then it's Sunday, coffee, the Times, a slow Day by the fire, dinner at eight or nine And Good-bye. In the end, this is a story we know So well we don't turn the page, or look below The picture, or follow the words to the next line: The way to begin is always the same Hello. But one night, through the latticed window, snow Begins to whiten the air, and the tall white pine. Good-bye is the end of every story we know That night, and when we close the curtains, oh, We hold each other against that cold white sign Of the way we all begin and end. Hello, Good-bye is the only story. We know, we know. -- Martha Collins

"To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,/ Creeps in this petty pace from
day to day,/ To the last syllable of recorded time" - poets and writers have
never had a problem expressing the dull, measured tread of day following day
following day, and "The Story We Know" is a fine example of the genre.
Collins uses a variant of the villanelle form to good effect, a series of
"every day the same" verses bracketed and counted off by the endless rounds
of "hello" and "good-bye".

Where the poem really drew me in, though, was in the penultimate verse, the
brilliantly placed "But one night" jolting the reader awake with the promise
that this time around, things are different. The poem after that gets
steadily deeper, as we take a metaphorical step back and see the darker
shadow of life and death wrap itself around the flickering round of days,
and the poignant conclusion summing it all up:

 Hello,
 Good-bye is the only story. We know, we know.

martin

[Links]

Biography:
  http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/273

Thunder Road -- Bruce Springsteen

Guest poem submitted by Mark Penney:

(Poem #1853) Thunder Road The screen door slams Mary's dress waves Like a vision she dances across the porch As the radio plays Roy Orbison singing for the lonely Hey, that's me, and I want you only Don't turn me home again Cause I just can't face myself alone again Don't run back inside, darling, You know just what I'm here for So you're scared and you're thinking That maybe we ain't that young anymore Show a little faith, there's magic in the night You're not a beauty, but hey, you're all right Oh, and that's all right with me. You can hide 'neath the covers And study your pain Make crosses from your lovers, Throw roses in the rain Waste your summer praying in vain For a savior to rise from these streets Well I'm no hero, that's understood All the redemption I can offer, girl, Is beneath this dirty hood With a chance to make it good somehow Baby, what else can we do now Except roll down the window And let the wind blow back your hair The night's busting open These two lanes will take us anywhere We've got one last chance to make it real To trade in these wings on some wheels Climb in back Heaven's waiting on down the tracks Oh, come take my hand We're riding out tonight to case the promised land Oh, Thunder Road, oh, Thunder Road Lying out there like a killer in the sun I know it's late, but we can make it if we run Oh, Thunder Road, Sit tight, take hold, Thunder Road. Well I got this guitar and I learned how to make it talk And my car's out back if you're ready to take that long walk From the front porch to my front seat The door's open but the ride it ain't free And I know you're lonely for words that I ain't spoken But tonight we'll be free All the promises will be broken There were ghosts in the eyes Of all the boys you sent away They haunt this dusty beach road In the skeleton frames of burnt-out Chevrolets They scream your name at night in the street Your graduation gown lies in rags at their feet And in the lonely cool before dawn You can hear their engines roaring on But when you get to the porch they're gone On the wind, so Mary climb in, It's a town full of losers And I'm pulling out of here to win. -- Bruce Springsteen

I've said it before, and I'll say it again:  some, but by no means all, song
lyrics work when you look at them independently as poems.  This is one of
the ones that does, in a very big way.

True, Springsteen's "story songs" are often too wordy, but he has a real
talent for indelible images.  And this song is fairly overflowing with them.
In my opinion, the ragged length of the lines (some of them actually have
too many syllables to fit the music!) and the irregular rhythm and rhyme
actually add something in this case -- a certain restless drive, that
underpins what we think of the main character.  (Listening to this song, you
keep feeling like it's going to settle into a regular ballad structure, with
abab rhymes and so on, but it never quite does.  For example, the "Thunder
Road" part in the middle looks like it's going to be a chorus, but ... nope,
it never comes back.  The whole thing almost feels improvised, a sort of
rush of disconnected thoughts.)

On the surface, it's just a testosterone-laden teenaged boy, trying to go on
a ride with, and maybe sleep with, a girl.  But Springsteen's approach to
the main character is interestingly divided -- simultaneously identifying
with this kid, but also keeping some objective distance.  (Look at that
virtuosic last verse for evidence:  what kid, trying to impress a girl,
would be thinking all those things at once?  It all of a sudden turns so
bitter and cynical -- "They haunt this dusty beach road / In the skeleton
frames of burnt-out Chevrolets" -- it's clear we're looking at the kid not
only through his own eyes, but through the author's as well.)

But my god, the images.  The first four lines are incredible.  And the third
verse.  And the last one.  It's one of those songs that you learn the words
to, because the words themselves are so delicious.

Lastly, you've got to say that the song is a little one-sided.  I'd love to
hear Mary's side of things.  Maybe it'd start something like this:

 A car horn honks
 I look to see who's there
 It's that Bruce again in his '63 Chevy
 And his unkempt hair
 "Dom-do-de-wah" sings Roy,
 "Only the lonely," and this boy.
 What can I do to make him
 Leave me alone and go away again?

Mark

Don Juan: Canto I (excerpt) -- George Gordon, Lord Byron

(Poem #1852) Don Juan: Canto I (excerpt) Most epic poets plunge 'in medias res' (Horace makes this the heroic turnpike road), And then your hero tells, whene'er you please, What went before- by way of episode, While seated after dinner at his ease, Beside his mistress in some soft abode, Palace, or garden, paradise, or cavern, Which serves the happy couple for a tavern. That is the usual method, but not mine- My way is to begin with the beginning; The regularity of my design Forbids all wandering as the worst of sinning, And therefore I shall open with a line (Although it cost me half an hour in spinning) Narrating somewhat of Don Juan's father, And also of his mother, if you'd rather. -- George Gordon, Lord Byron

I love Byron's work, both his exquisitely crafted short poems and the longer
epics like the superbly readable "Don Juan". I've just noticed that I have
yet to post an excerpt from the latter, so here's a delightfully irreverent,
tongue-in-cheek bit from the first canto.

This is one of my favourite forms of "parodic" verse, where the poet is, on
the face of it, mocking his own work as he is writing it, but on closer
examination is actually sending up the entire genre (in this case, epic
poetry). Chaucer had some nice examples of this (I speculate, with neither
proof nor knowledge, that later poets were influenced by him), and Byron
himself indulged in the practice on several occasions.

One of the things I love about Byron is how effortless he can make the
writing of perfectly polished verse seem, and that facility definitely shows
up here. Furthermore, you can read the lines and picture the enjoyment -
and, even more, the *fun* he doubtless derived from writing them.

Here's the immediately following "opening" he alludes to:

  'T is pity learned virgins ever wed
      With persons of no sort of education,
  Or gentlemen, who, though well born and bred,
      Grow tired of scientific conversation:
  I don't choose to say much upon this head,
      I 'm a plain man, and in a single station,
  But-- Oh! ye lords of ladies intellectual,
  Inform us truly, have they not hen-peck'd you all?

Not, sadly, one of his best efforts, despite the half-hour it cost him, but
I guess that's the way it goes :). Though, more seriously, while it is very
easy to pick on specific passages of Don Juan, that isn't really the point -
taken as a whole, it's a wonderful work, and well worth a read-through.

(Okay, I can't resist quoting the next verse too, since for sheer delicious
silliness it's one of my favourite bits from the first canto:

  It was upon a day, a summer's day;--
      Summer's indeed a very dangerous season,
  And so is spring about the end of May;
      The sun, no doubt, is the prevailing reason;
  But whatsoe'er the cause is, one may say,
      And stand convicted of more truth than treason,
  That there are months which nature grows more merry in,--
  March has its hares, and May must have its heroine.
)

martin

[Links]

Wikipedia on Byron:
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Gordon_Byron,_6th_Baron_Byron

A complete and annotated text of Don Juan:
  http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Delphi/7086/donjuan.htm

The Discovery of the Pacific -- Thom Gunn

Guest poem submitted by Elko Tchernev:

(Poem #1851) The Discovery of the Pacific They lean against the cooling car, backs pressed Upon the dusts of a brown continent, And watch the sun, now Westward of their West, Fall to the ocean. Where it led they went. Kansas to California. Day by day They travelled emptier of the things they knew. They improvised new habits on the way, But lost the occasions, and then lost them too. One night, no-one and nowhere, she had woken To resin-smell and to the firs' slight sound, And through their sleeping-bag had felt the broken Tight-knotted surfaces of the naked ground. Only his lean quiet body cupping hers Kept her from it, the extreme chill. By degrees She fell asleep. Around them in the firs The wind probed, tiding through forked estuaries. And now their skin is caked with road, the grime Merely reflecting sunlight as it fails. They leave their clothes among the rocks they climb, Blunt leaves of iceplant nuzzle at their soles. Now they stand chin-deep in the sway of ocean, Firm West, two stringy bodies face to face, And come, together, in the water's motion, The full caught pause of their embrace. -- Thom Gunn

I'd like to bring to your attention my favorite Thom Gunn poem. I won't
attempt "beating it with a hose to find out what it really means", as Billy
Collins says in his "Introduction To Poetry" that appeared on Minstrels in
October 2005. Rather, I'd ask all of you to enjoy it as well as you can,
hopefully as much as I enjoyed it.

Elko Tchernev.

Description -- Shel Silverstein

(Poem #1850) Description George said, "God is short and fat." Nick said, "No, He's tall and lean." Len said, "With a long white beard." "No," said John, "He's shaven clean." Will said, "He's black," Bob said, "He's white." Rhonda Rose said, "He's a She." I smiled but never showed 'em all The autographed photograph God sent to me. -- Shel Silverstein

I love the way Silverstein can write on several levels at once, and appeal
to the reader on all of those levels. Like Saxe's archetypal "Blind Men and
the Elephant" (and, seriously, who wasn't reminded of that?), today's poem
uses humour and a healthy dash of absurdity to highlight what, in other
contexts, is a very heated question indeed - and, for such is the gift of
the poet, does so entirely without offense.

The technique of using children as mouthpieces to examine philosophical
questions is by no means unique to Silverstein, but it is a technique he
wields very well, and it makes his poems both a pleasure to read and a
source of reflection. "Description" is, perhaps, a trifle more facile, a
trifle less engaging than such masterpieces as "The Little Boy and the Old
Man" [Poem #996], but it is a charming poem for all that.

martin

Response -- Mary Ursula Bethell

Guest poem submitted by Stephanie Pegg:

(Poem #1849) Response When you wrote your letter it was April, And you were glad that it was spring weather, And that the sun shone out in turn with showers of rain. I write in waning May and it is autumn, And I am glad that my chrysanthemums Are tied up fast to strong posts, So that the south winds cannot beat them down. I am glad that they are tawny coloured, And fiery in the low west evening light. And I am glad that one bush warbler Still sings in the honey-scented wattle... But oh, we have remembering hearts, And we say 'How green it was in such and such an April,' And 'Such and such an autumn was very golden,' And 'Everything is for a very short time.' -- Mary Ursula Bethell

My first encounter with this poem was on a tape on which my sister had read
out poems that she liked and sent me for my birthday, and maybe ten years
later I still remember this one.  It's just after Easter right now, which in
New Zealand means hot cross buns, chocolate eggs, and lots of rain while
everyone hunkers down for chilly winter.  This poem strikes me as an
appropriate follow up for Poem #1851 celebrating the advent of a northern
hemisphere spring.

Stephanie Pegg

In Praise of Feeling Bad About Yourself -- Wislawa Szymborska

Guest poem submitted by Sachin Desai:

(Poem #1848) In Praise of Feeling Bad About Yourself The buzzard never says it is to blame. The panther wouldn't know what scruples mean. When the piranha strikes, it feels no shame. If snakes had hands, they'd claim their hands were clean. A jackal doesn't understand remorse. Lions and lice don't waver in their course. Why should they, when they know they're right? Though hearts of killer whales may weigh a ton, in every other way they're light. On this third planet of the sun among the signs of bestiality a clear conscience is Number One. -- Wislawa Szymborska

        Translated by Stanislaw Baraczak and Clare Cavanagh.

This poem is straightforward and needs no interpretation. Wislawa Szymborska
writes simple poems that have a touch of the profound. This poem falls
neatly in that category.

Sachin Desai.

[thomas adds]

Sachin is exactly correct: Szymborska's poem seems simple enough on the
surface, but is touched by the profound. Specifically, I wonder to what
extent the poet is being ironic. It's almost a cliche to state that humans
are the only animals possesed of a conscience, and hence that they are in
some sense "superior" to mere beasts. And indeed, that's what today's poem
says, taken at face value.

But is that all there is to it? After all, one could argue that lions and
lice may "know they're right" simply because they *are* right: it is in
their nature to kill wildebeest or suck blood. Hence they should *not* feel
remorse or shame. Whereas humans can and often do do things which later
prick their conscience; feeling scruples afterward may be "civilized", but
it doesn't alter the deed itself. So perhaps humans are the more guilty ones
after all?

I'm reminded of this little gem by D. H. Lawrence, contrasting two types of
bloodsucker:

 "The Mosquito Knows"

 The mosquito knows full well, small as he is
 he's a beast of prey.
 But after all
 he only takes his bellyful,
 he doesn't put my blood in the bank.

        -- D. H. Lawrence

thomas.

Consolation for Tamar -- A E Stallings

Guest poem submitted by J. Goard:

(Poem #1847) Consolation for Tamar (on the occasion of her breaking an ancient pot) You know I am no archeologist, Tamar, And that to me it is all one dust or another. Still, it must mean something to survive the weather Of the Ages-earthquake, flood, and war- Only to shatter in your very hands. Perhaps it was gravity, or maybe fated- Although I wonder if it had not waited Those years in drawers, aeons in distant lands, And in your fingers' music, just a little Was emboldened by your blood, and so forgot That it was not a rosebud, but a pot, And, trying to unfold for you, was brittle. -- A E Stallings

    I've thought in the past about bringing a Stallings poem to the
Minstrels, since I consider her among the best living (let alone young!)
poets working primarily in formal verse.  As it turns out, a blog entry
concerning Frost's "The Road Not Taken" led me to think about "Consolation
for Tamar", another poem which manages both a concise elegance and a great
despairing depth.
    For me, this is a gutwrenching love poem, asking us to consider where
value - really valuable value - might come from, how it might ever express
itself, and how anyone might ever notice.  The narrator is apparently a
cynic, known to have expressed a disinterest in that which is precious to
Tamar, and attempts a "consolation" for what, to her, feels like a profound
loss.  But it's a strange, bittersweet consolation: Tamar herself is
special, special enough to make the eternal aspire to the ephemeral,
consuming itself.  As, presumably, does the narrator in the moment of the
poem.
    I love how the initial hexameter lines (before it settles into
pentameter in line 3) have an unwieldiness that reinforces the narrator's
reputation as a jaded soul.  I love how he (as I typically imagine it to be
a man, a point I probably wouldn't even mention if the poet were male, alas)
so casually passes over gravity and fate as explanations, as if divine
providence and pure materialism were just two versions of the same
uninspired worldview.  I love the alliteration in "emboldened by your
blood", and all of the internal rhyme and other intertwined elements of the
final three lines.
    But mostly, I'm attracted by the central reflexive metaphor. The
narrator becomes the pot, and the articulation of the poem becomes a
shattering.  His budding love for Tamar has made him (perhaps briefly)
forget his natural cynicism; yet, in crafting a confession of love and a
recognition of her specialness, he has also delivered her a dreadful idea
about longing and loss.

J. Goard.

Poet's page: [broken link] http://www.geocities.com/aestallings/

Spring and all -- William Carlos Williams

Guest poem submitted by Aseem Kaul:

(Poem #1846) Spring and all By the road to the contagious hospital under the surge of the blue mottled clouds driven from the northeast -- a cold wind. Beyond, the waste of broad, muddy fields brown with dried weeds, standing and fallen patches of standing water the scattering of tall trees All along the road the reddish purplish, forked, upstanding, twiggy stuff of bushes and small trees with dead, brown leaves under them leafless vines -- Lifeless in appearance, sluggish dazed spring approaches -- They enter the new world naked, cold, uncertain of all save that they enter. All about them the cold, familiar wind -- Now the grass, tomorrow the stiff curl of wildcarrot leaf One by one objects are defined -- It quickens: clarity, outline of leaf But now the stark dignity of entrance -- Still, the profound change has come upon them: rooted they grip down and begin to awaken -- William Carlos Williams

It's Spring!! And what better way to sing the spring's advent but with this
glorious Williams' poem.

I love the way this poem captures the sense of dead things coming to life,
that stirring, quickening sensation that makes Spring such a magical time of
the year. The way the season seems to take hold of everything ("rooted they
/ grip down and begin to awaken"), and the world seems to take on colour and
shape again.

The best adjective I can think of to describe this poem is the one Williams
gives us himself: contagious.

Aseem.

The Composer -- W H Auden

Guest poem submitted by Janice:

(Poem #1845) The Composer All the others translate: the painter sketches A visible world to love or reject; Rummaging into his living, the poet fetches The images out that hurt and connect. From Life to Art by painstaking adaption Relying on us to cover the rift; Only your notes are pure contraption, Only your song is an absolute gift. Pour out your presence, O delight, cascading The falls of the knee and the weirs of the spine, Our climate of silence and doubt invading; You, alone, alone, O imaginary song, Are unable to say an existence is wrong, And pour out your forgiveness like a wine. -- W H Auden

Auden always surprises me. Just when I think I've read everything, or almost
everything, out pops another poem that I've never seen -- and end up loving.
Take "The Composer" for example. I have Auden's collected poems lovingly
stashed on my book shelf and then I find this poem on my GRE subject test --
the one I took last Saturday! Just goes to show that poetry does truly find
you and not the other way round!

I love what he says about the painter and the poet, even though they only
'translate'... interesting how he says 'relying on us to cover the rift'.
And then suddenly -- almost like a symphony itself -- the poem takes off and
rises high above itself when he describes music. Music that delights,
uplifts, cascades over us and 'our climate of silence and doubt invading'.
So beautiful :)

Janice.

A Barred Owl -- Richard Wilbur

Guest poem sent in by an anonymous member:

(Poem #1844) A Barred Owl The warping night-air having brought the boom Of an owl's voice into her darkened room, We tell the wakened child that all she heard Was an odd question from a forest bird, Asking of us, if rightly listened to, "Who cooks for you?" and then "Who cooks for you?" Words, which can make our terrors bravely clear, Can also thus domesticate a fear, And send a small child back to sleep at night Not listening for the sound of stealthy flight Or dreaming of some small thing in a claw Borne up to some dark branch and eaten raw. -- Richard Wilbur

As the parent of a young child myself, it is easy for me to relate to what
the poet calls the easy "domestication of fear" . It is probably the eternal
conundrum of the parent, treading the line between a desire to protect and
the truth.  Richard Wilbur has a stark sense of the violence that lurks in
the mundane. The last line sends chills up my spine.

[Links]

There is an excellent recording of the poet reading the "Barred Owl"
at The Poetry Archive:
  http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoem.do?poemId=1672

Previous Wilbur Poems on Minstrels (with biography):
  http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/1116.html

Wikipedia entry:
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Wilbur

The Marines Have Landed on the Shores of Santo Domingo -- Phil Ochs

Today's lyrics are from _Phil Ochs in Concert_; I've transcribed the
introductory patter below, since it ought to count as part of the song...

 There's been a drastic change in American foreign policy in recent months.
 Take the Dominican Republic - which we did [pause while audience laughs and
 applauds] - a little while ago, killing a few people here and there (mostly
 there), saving the day for freedom and democracy in the western hemisphere
 once again, folks. I was over there, entertaining the troops (I won't say
 which troops) - over there with a USO group including Walter Lippman and
 Soupy Sales. I played there in a small coffeehouse called The Sniper, and
 this was my most unpopular song, with the poetic, symbolic title of _The
 Marines Have Landed on the Shores of Santo Domingo_ ...

(Poem #1843) The Marines Have Landed on the Shores of Santo Domingo And the crabs are crazy, they scuttle back and forth, the sand is burning And the fish take flight and scatter from the sight, their courses turning As the seagulls rest on the cold cannon nest the sea is churning. The marines have landed on the shores of Santo Domingo. The fishermen sweat, they're pausing at their nets, the day's a-borning As the warships sway and thunder in the bay, loud in the morning. But the boy on the shore's throwing pebbles no more, he runs a-warning That the the marines have landed on the shores of Santo Domingo. The streets are still, there's silence in the hills, the town is sleeping And the farmers yawn in the grey silver dawn, the fields they're keeping As the first troops land and step into the sand, the flags are weeping. The marines have landed on the shores of Santo Domingo. The unsmiling sun is shining down upon the singing soldiers In the cloud dust whirl they whistle at the girls, they're getting bolder Ah, the old women sigh, think of memories gone by, they shrug their shoulders. The marines have landed on the shores of Santo Domingo. Ready for the tricks, their bayonets are fixed, now they are rolling And the tanks make tracks past the trembling shacks where fear's unfolding All the young wives afraid, turn their backs to the parade with babes they're holding The marines have landed on the shores of Santo Domingo A bullet cracks the sound, the army hits the ground, the sniper's calling So they open up their guns, a thousand to one, no sense in stalling He clutches at his head and totters on the edge, look now he's falling The marines have landed on the shores of Santo Domingo In the red plaza square, the crowds come to stare, the heat is leaning And the eyes of the dead are turning every head to the widows screaming But the soldiers make a bid, giving candy to the kids, their teeth are gleaming The marines have landed on the shores of Santo Domingo Up and down the coast, the generals drink a toast, the wheel is spinning And the cowards and the whores are peeking through the doors to see who's winning But the traitors will pretend that it's getting near the end, when it's beginning The marines have landed on the shores of Santo Domingo And the crabs are crazy, they scuttle back and forth, the sand is burning And the fish take flight and scatter from the sight, their courses turning As the seagulls rest on the cold cannon nest, the sea is churning The marines have landed on the shores of Santo Domingo -- Phil Ochs

I recently had the pleasure to read "On the thirtieth anniversary of a
suicide" [see links], Chris Clarke's beautiful tribute to Phil Ochs, and was
moved to follow suit. So here, slightly late, is a posting in memory of that
sadly vanished genius.

Ochs has, right from the moment I first discovered him, firmly taken his
place as my favourite folksinger - his combination of lyrics, music, voice
and performance is to my mind unparalleled. Furthermore, despite a genuine
passion and, often, anger driving his songs, he never loses a certain touch
of dry irony that makes his songs extremely effective.

Today's song is unusual in how well it stands without the accompanying
music. The atmosphere is skilfully built up and sustained, the word choices
revealing considerable care that is masked by the steady flow of the lines.
The relentless rhythm, the long lines with their heavy use of internal
rhymes, carry the listener along with the course of the invasion, Ochs's
commentary indirect but powerful and unmistakable.

And, as with much of Ochs's work, the song has lost none of its relevance
with the passing of the years. Chris Clarke really did say it best:

  And so this is how it is: We need you more than we did then
  and what right you had to take yourself I cannot understand.
  We had no claim on you, we could not keep you 'gainst your will
  but the songs you sang to us before we're needing once again
  and the fires that burn in Baghdad are the same that burned Phnom Penh,
  and the color of the skin on all the children that we kill.
  There are those of us who, one more time, are trying to take a stand
  and we really could have used your help here, Phil.

martin

[Links]

 "On the thirtieth anniversary of a suicide":
   http://tinyurl.com/o8xdf

http://faultline.org/index.php/site/comments/on_the_thirtieth_anniversary_of_a_suicide/

 Phil Ochs (December 19, 1940 – April 9, 1976) on Wikipedia:
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Ochs

 Lyrics collection (including several tribute songs):
   http://web.cecs.pdx.edu/~trent/ochs/lyrics.html

 The Dominican Republic invasion:
   http://home.att.net/~jbaugher4/a26_18.html
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominican_Republic#The_twentieth_century

Hesperus -- John Clare

Guest poem submitted by Gavin Duley:

(Poem #1842) Hesperus Hesperus the day is gone Soft falls the silent dew A tear is now on many a flower And heaven lives in you Hesperus the evening mild Falls round us soft and sweet 'Tis like the breathings of a child When day and evening meet Hesperus the closing flower Sleeps on the dewy ground While dews fall in a silent shower And heaven breathes around Hesperus thy twinkling ray Beams in the blue of heaven And tells the traveller on his way That earth shall be forgiven -- John Clare

I would like to suggest John Clare's poem "Hesperus". Minstrels has already
run his most famous poem "I Am", but Clare wrote many other poems which are
equally good.

I first heard about Clare on a radio program on BBC Radio 3 a few years
back, and he is now one of my favourite poets. At his best his work has a
simplicity and immediacy to it that makes them very effective and very
moving.

Clare's patrons tried to convince him to 'raise his views' and 'prove
himself capable of talking of higher subjects than Birds and Flowers'.
Thankfully, Clare took little notice of this 'helpful' advice, and managed
to find his own voice which was at once simple, lyrical,
direct and extremely beautiful.

As a clarification, WordNet defines Hesperus thus: "S: (n) evening star,
Hesperus, Vesper (a planet (usually Venus) seen at sunset in the western
sky)"

I hope you enjoy this poem too, it's one of my favourites.

Gavin.

[ Reference: 'John Clare' (1984).
  eds. Eric Robinson & David Powell
  The Oxford Authors, Oxford University Press, Oxford. ]

Believe Me, If All Those Endearing Young Charms -- Thomas Moore

(Poem #1841) Believe Me, If All Those Endearing Young Charms Believe me, if all those endearing young charms, Which I gaze on so fondly to-day, Were to change by to-morrow, and fleet in my arms, Live fairy-gifts fading away, Thou wouldst still be adored, as this moment thou art, Let thy loveliness fade as it will, And around the dear ruin each wish of my heart Would entwine itself verdantly still. It is not while beauty and youth are thine own, And thy cheeks unprofaned by a tear, That the fervor and faith of a soul may be known, To which time will but make thee more dear! No, the heart that has truly loved never forgets, But as truly loves on to the close, As the sunflower turns on her god when he sets The same look which she turned when he rose! -- Thomas Moore

For some inexplicable reason, Moore simply doesn't seem to feature here on
Minstrels. Indeed, looking back through the archives, I see that in our
entire seven year history, we have only run one of his poems[1] - truly odd for
a poet of his charm and prominence.

Today's poem is one of Moore's most famous, and justly so. The theme itself
is a popular enough one, and Moore's gift for musical verse makes his lines
a delight to read and recite, but it is the last two lines that take a good
poem and make it immortal. As startlingly apt a comparison as any I've seen,
and far more memorable than most.

[1] I also note that I was surprised then too

martin

[Links]

Wikipedia on Moore:
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Moore

The Seed Shop -- Muriel Stuart

Another random discovery from the Poet's Corner...

(Poem #1840) The Seed Shop Here in a quiet and dusty room they lie, Faded as crumbled stone or shifting sand, Forlorn as ashes, shrivelled, scentless, dry - Meadows and gardens running through my hand. In this brown husk a dale of hawthorn dreams; A cedar in this narrow cell is thrust That will drink deeply of a century's streams; These lilies shall make summer on my dust. Here in their safe and simple house of death, Sealed in their shells, a million roses leap; Here I can blow a garden with my breath, And in my hand a forest lies asleep. -- Muriel Stuart

           (1922)

There's nothing excitingly brilliant about this poem, but it gives me a
certain quiet pleasure, both for the imagery and for the 'feel' of the verse
itself. There is a soothing consistency in the rhythm and word choices, and
some genuinely beautiful lines - it would be a lovely poem to print in an
almanac, for instance, or in a collection of 'fireside poetry'.

martin

[Links]

Wikipedia entry:
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muriel_Stuart

Poems by Muriel Stuart:
  http://www.theotherpages.org/poems/books/stuart/stuart11.html

The Lowest Trees Have Tops -- Edward Dyer

Guest poem submitted by Stephen Martin:

(Poem #1839) The Lowest Trees Have Tops The lowest trees have tops, the ant her gall, The fly her spleen, the little spark his heat; The slender hairs cast shadows, though but small, And bees have stings, although they be not great; Seas have their source, and so have shallow springs; And love is love, in beggars and in kings. Where waters smoothest run, there deepest are the fords: The dial stirs, yet none perceives it move; The firmest faith is found in fewest words, The turtles do not sing, and yet they love; True hearts have ears, and eyes, no tongues to speak: They hear, and see, and sign, and then they break. -- Edward Dyer

Sir Edward Dyer (1543?-1607) was a friend of Sidney and Spenser. He was also
Elizabeth's ambassador to the Danish court for a while and, according to
Ashmole's Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum, an associate of Dr Dee and Edward
Kelley, travelling alchemical chancers of their day. (Not that I really know
this, but I clicked on the links that might suggest I do).

The poem stands like an oak in a wood.  What did he have to sign, I wonder?

Stephen Martin.

A Green Crab's Shell -- Mark Doty

(Poem #1838) A Green Crab's Shell Not, exactly, green: closer to bronze preserved in kind brine, something retrieved from a Greco-Roman wreck, patinated and oddly muscular. We cannot know what his fantastic legs were like-- though evidence suggests eight complexly folded scuttling works of armament, crowned by the foreclaws' gesture of menace and power. A gull's gobbled the center, leaving this chamber --size of a demitasse-- open to reveal a shocking, Giotto blue. Though it smells of seaweed and ruin, this little traveling case comes with such lavish lining! Imagine breathing surrounded by the brilliant rinse of summer's firmament. What color is the underside of skin? Not so bad, to die, if we could be opened into this-- if the smallest chambers of ourselves, similarly, revealed some sky. -- Mark Doty

I like Doty's straightforward, almost stream-of-consciousness style - he
eschews stylistic tricks in favour of saying what he has to say, but his
language is precise and exquisite for all that, and his poems thoughtful and
revealing. Today's is a good example - the crab shell is described in
beautiful detail, with an engaged subjectivity that reinforces its
comparison to a work of art (note, also, the whole life-imitating-art
inversion), and the segue into a more personal musing feels perfectly
natural.

And I love the ending, with its suggestion of an Escherian
worlds-within-worlds landscape - indeed, it was that image that made me
pick this poem out of a collection of Doty's works to run here.

martin

[Links]

We've run one of Doty's poems before, the exquisite Broadway [Poem #1175]:
  http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/1175.html

Biography:
  http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/Mark-Doty

Wikipedia entry:
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Doty

Episode of Hands -- Hart Crane

Guest poem submitted by Mark Penney:

(Poem #1837) Episode of Hands The unexpected interest made him flush. Suddenly he seemed to forget the pain,-- Consented,--and held out One finger from the others. The gash was bleeding, and a shaft of sun That glittered in and out among the wheels, Fell lightly, warmly, down into the wound. And as the fingers of the factory owner's son, That knew a grip for books and tennis As well as one for iron and leather,-- As his taut, spare fingers wound the gauze Around the thick bed of the wound, His own hands seemed to him Like wings of butterflies Flickering in the sunlight over summer fields. The knots and notches,--many in the wide Deep hand that lay in his,--seemed beautiful. They were like the marks of wild ponies' play,-- Bunches of new green breaking a hard turf. And factory sounds and factory thoughts Were banished from him by that larger, quieter hand That lay in his with the sun upon it. and as the bandage knot was tightened The two men smiled into each other's eyes. -- Hart Crane

Where do you start with this beautiful poem?

Two men, described only through their hands, meet and briefly connect.  By
the way the hands are described, you know they're from vastly different
worlds, but both pairs of hands are beautiful (differently).  As the
front-office boy bandages the worker's wounded hand, a link of common
humanity is formed -- all wordlessly.  Each of them forgets who he is and
where he is, and simply becomes a fellow human being.  The bandage is, in
many ways, what knots them together.  That, and the smile, of course.

It has a certain feel of parable about it, starting with that epigrammatic
and unforgettable title, "Episode of Hands."

Of course, you're seeing the whole thing from the white-collar guy's point
of view -- Crane really did work in the front office of his father's factory
for a time -- so there are certainly questions you can ask: is it
politically too naive? is it, instead, elitist?  Also, I'd be remiss in not
pointing out that this poem is Exhibit A if you want to talk about Crane as
a gay poet, since here (for once) that particular subtext doesn't require
ridiculous leaps of logic to read in.  But you don't need to talk about any
of those things -- save that for the classroom.  As a reader, this stream of
quietly beautiful, creative images is enough.  Hands as butterflies.  Hands
as open fields, complete with horses running in them.  Hands as a microcosm
of what makes us human.

Notice also how the light -- striking the wound, as if washing it, filtering
in through the wheels (gears, etc., in the factory) -- is curative, and
seems itself to banish the sounds of the factory, to suggest or even create
the outdoor images that Crane uses.  Also, with the light comes a complete
absence of sound.  The bond between the two is almost necessarily wordless
-- a bandage, a shaft of light, an exchange of smiles.  The quiet of the
poem is palpable -- it's part of what makes it great.

I love Hart Crane like crazy, and this poem is one of the reasons why.

Mark.

Don't let that horse -- Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Guest poem submitted by Dale Rosenberg:

(Poem #1836) Don't let that horse Don't let that horse eat that violin cried Chagall's mother But he kept right on painting And became famous And kept on painting The Horse With Violin In Mouth And when he finally finished it he jumped up upon the horse and rode away waving the violin And then with a low bow gave it to the first naked nude he ran across And there were no strings attached -- Lawrence Ferlinghetti

I was surprised to see that only two of Ferlinghetti's poems have made it to
minstrels.  He's my favorite of the Beat poets, and this is one of my
favorite poems of his.  I love his exuberance and the sheer *fun* of his
poems.  In this one I admire his ability to use humor without snarkiness, to
convey the joy of creation of art.  I saw him read this one when I was in
high school.  I can still see his smile at the last line and hear the
audience's happy laughter.

Dale Rosenberg.