h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

King and Queen of the Pelicans we;
No other Birds so grand we see!

The Pelican Chorus, by Edward Lear (I think)

Now a poem by a world-influential novelist:



-lights out-
fall, hands a-clasped, into instantaneous
ecstasy like a shot of heroin or morphine,
the gland inside of my brain discharging
the good glad fluid (Holy Fluid) as
i hap-down and hold all my body parts
down to a deadstop trance-Healing
all my sicknesses-erasing all-not
even the shred of a 'I-hope-you' or a
Loony Balloon left in it, but the mind
blank, serene, thoughtless. When a thought
comes a-springing from afar with its held-
forth figure of image, you spoof it out,
you spuff it off, you fake it, and
it fades, and thought never comes-and
with joy you realize for the first time
'thinking's just like not thinking-
So I don't have to think
any
more'

"Pelican chorus," by everyone's favorite limerick-writer, Edward Lear.

"How to meditate," by jack kerouac

Next poem:

THE fog comes
on little cat feet.

It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches 5
and then moves on

Plenty of mind-forged manacles and hapless soldiers these days:


I wander through each chartered street,
Near where the chartered Thames does flow,
A mark in every face I meet,
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.

In every cry of every man,
In every infant's cry of fear,
In every voice, in every ban,
The mind-forged manacles I hear:

How the chimney-sweeper's cry
Every blackening church appals,
And the hapless soldier's sigh
Runs in blood down palace-walls.

But most, through midnight streets I hear
How the youthful harlot's curse
Blasts the new-born infant's tear,
And blights with plagues the marriage hearse.

SORRY. Paul's poem was Fog by Carl Sandburg, not as well known in these isles as he should be.

My eyesight is going, those manacles looked like manades.

Anyway, that was 'London' by William Blake.

New 'poem':

Now the crickets are singing,
The vesper bells ringing,
The cat's curled asleep in his chair.
I'll go down to Bill's Bar,
I can make it that far,
And I'll see if my friends are still there.
Yes, and here's to the few
Who forgive what you do
And the fewer who don't even care.
And the night comes on,
It's very calm,
I want to cross over, I want to go home,
But she says, "Go back, go back to the World."

This is of course a song, but the words are brilliant.The Night Comes On by Leonard Cohen. It's on YouTube but I'll refrain from giving the link after the furore over the murderous helicopters. Anyway, it couldn't be easier to find once you're on YouTube. Or get yourself a nice new sleek shiny (4 adjectives - SEE ME) Mac to avoid all problems!

The older he and I get, the more I like him. I think his lyrics are getting much better, but it might be me - never know.

The night comes on = approaching death. Very clear from the lyrics.



Now this:

It was not death, for I stood up,
And all the dead lie down.
It was not night, for all the bells
Put out their tongues for noon.

It was not frost, for on my flesh
I felt siroccos crawl,
Nor fire, for just my marble feet
Could keep a chancel cool.

And yet it tasted like them all,
The figures I have seen
Set orderly for burial
Reminded me of mine,



Absolutely breathtakingly brilliant in the context of the rest of the poem.

Jabs

Emily Dickinson - It was not Death.

My attempt:

Soldiers are citizens of death's grey land,
Drawing no dividend from time's to-morrows.
In the great hour of destiny they stand,
Each with his feuds, and jealousies, and sorrows.
Soldiers are sworn to action; they must win
Some flaming, fatal climax with their lives.
Soldiers are dreamers; when the guns begin
They think of firelit homes, clean beds and wives.

I see them in foul dug-outs, gnawed by rats,
And in the ruined trenches, lashed with rain,
Dreaming of things they did with balls and bats,
And mocked by hopeless longing to regain
Bank-holidays, and picture shows, and spats,
And going to the office in the train.

Dreamers,by the magnificently gifted Siegfried Sassoon. Titbit of tasty gossip: his family, Baghdad-Arabian jews, had built their basic wealth from the opium trade.

Now this (a part of the whole):


With saddest music all day long
She soothed her secret sorrow:
At night she sighed "I fear 'twas wrong
Such cheerful words to borrow.
Dearest, a sweeter, sadder song
I'll sing to thee to-morrow."

I thanked her, but I could not say
That I was glad to hear it:
I left the house at break of day,
And did not venture near it
Till time, I hoped, had worn away
Her grief, for nought could cheer it!

My dismal sister! Couldst thou know
The wretched home thou keepest!
Thy brother, drowned in daily woe,
Is thankful when thou sleepest;
For if I laugh, however low,
When thou'rt awake, thou weepest!

I took my sister t'other day
(Excuse the slang expression)
To Sadler's Wells to see the play
In hopes the new impression
Might in her thoughts, from grave to gay
Effect some slight digression.

I asked three gay young dogs from town
To join us in our folly,
Whose mirth, I thought, might serve to drown
My sister's melancholy:
The lively Jones, the sportive Brown,
And Robinson the jolly.

The maid announced the meal in tones
That I myself had taught her,
Meant to allay my sister's moans
Like oil on troubled water:
I rushed to Jones, the lively Jones,
And begged him to escort her.

Vainly he strove, with ready wit,
To joke about the weather -
To ventilate the last 'ON DIT' -
To quote the price of leather -
She groaned "Here I and Sorrow sit:
Let us lament together!"

That's "Melancholetta," by lewis Carroll

That's right, paul, Lewis Carroll, cheerful as ever, clown with a broken heart.


Your turn when you're ready.

Jabs

[Next week I'm running a book discussion based on poems about Spring. The next poem in this thread is from that collection...]

When daisies pied, and violets blue,
And lady-smocks all silver-white,
And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue
Do paint the meadows with delight,
The cuckoo then, on every tree,
Mocks married men, for thus sings he:
“Cuckoo!
Cuckoo, cuckoo!” O word of fear,
Unpleasing to a married ear.

Sakespeare - Love's Labour's Lost -we might find the final 2 words in the papers in weeks' time.

I'm very uncertain about this, by the way. I don't know the poem well enough.



Now: a long extract -

Cass was the youngest and most beautiful of 5 sisters. Cass was the most beautiful girl
in town. 1/2 Indian with a supple and strange body, a snake-like and fiery body with eyes
to go with it. Cass was fluid moving fire. She was like a spirit stuck into a form that
would not hold her. Her hair was black and long and silken and whirled about as did her
body. Her spirit was either very high or very low. There was no in between for Cass. Some
said she was crazy. The dull ones said that. The dull ones would never understand Cass. To
the men she was simply a sex machine and they didn't care whether she was crazy or not.
And Cass danced and flirted, kissed the men, but except for an instance or two, when it
came time to make it with Cass, Cass had somehow slipped away, eluded the men.


Her sisters accused her of misusing her beauty, of not using her mind enough, but Cass
had mind and spirit; she painted, she danced, she sang, she made things of clay, and when
people were hurt either in the spirit or the flesh, Cass felt a deep grieving for them.
Her mind was simply different; her mind was simply not practical. Her sisters were jealous
of her because she attracted their men, and they were angry because they felt she didn't
make the best use of them. She had a habit of being kind to the uglier ones; the so-called
handsome men revolted her- "No guts," she said, "no zap. They are riding on
their perfect little earlobes and well- shaped nostrils...all surface and no
insides..." She had a temper that came close to insanity, she had a temper that some
call insanity. Her father had died of alcohol and her mother had run off leaving the
girls alone.

[Format destroyed by Hootoo's auto-formstting]

Did you try and reformat it then, Jabs? That seems to be the same format in which it appears in Americanpoems.com. But it's a short story, not a poem. Isn't it? The Most Beautiful Woman In Town. By Charles Bukowski.

Here's another cheerful extract:-

In all eternity I had one chance,
One few years' term of gracious human life:
The splendours of the intellect's advance,
The sweetness of the home with babes and wife;

The social pleasures with their genial wit:
The fascination of the worlds of art,
The glories of the worlds of nature, lit
By large imagination's glowing heart;

The rapture of mere being, full of health;
The careless childhood and the ardent youth,
The strenuous manhood winning various wealth,
The reverend age serene with life's long truth:

All the sublime prerogatives of Man;
The storied memories of the times of old,
The patient tracking of the world's great plan
Through sequences and changes myriadfold.

This chance was never offered me before;
For me this infinite Past is blank and dumb:
This chance recurreth never, nevermore;
Blank, blank for me the infinite To-come.

And this sole chance was frustrate from my birth,
A mockery, a delusion; and my breath
Of noble human life upon this earth
So racks me that I sigh for senseless death.

My wine of life is poison mixed with gall,
My noonday passes in a nightmare dream,
I worse than lose the years which are my all:
What can console me for the loss supreme?

Speak not of comfort where no comfort is,
Speak not at all: can words make foul things fair?
Our life's a cheat, our death a black abyss:
Hush and be mute envisaging despair.

As with much of Bukowski, it could be either, WFAT. I can't find my copy, but it was set out, formatted, as a poem in my source on the net.

Yes, I think I do recall it was one of his short stories. The title of one of his collections, actually. Sorry for the confusion.

Jabs

Now a cheerful, beautiful, and well-known one:


She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that’s best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellow’d to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

And thankyou for the James poem. The more I read it the more I really like it.

An instance of what Pope called 'what oft was felt but ne'er so well expressed'.

Jabs

And thankyou for the James poem. The more I read it the more I really like it.

An instance of what Pope called 'what oft was felt but ne'er so well expressed'.

Jabs