The score of Harrison Birtwistle's saxophone concerto Panic is headed with this epigraph:

Oh what is he doing the great god Pan
Down by the reeds by the river
Spreading ruin and scattering ban?

to which Birtwistle appends the comment: "something I remember from school but can't remember by whom (A.A. Noyes maybe?)".

It's actually by Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

it's November, child, and time goes
in little bursts    a warm room
clean and squeaky as an orange pip
in a wet landscape

Denise Riley, from Marxism for Infants

***

This is an old fiction of reliability

is a weather presence, is a righteousness
is arms in cotton

this is what stands up in kitchens
is a true storm shelter
& is taken straight out of colonial history, master and slave

arms that I will not love folded nor admire for their ‘strength’
linens that I will not love folded but will see flop open
tables that will rise heavily in the new wind & lift away, bearing their precious burdens

of mothers who never were, nor white nor black
mothers who were always a set of equipment and a fragile balance
mothers who looked over a gulf through the cloud of an act & at times speechlessly saw it

inside a designation there are people permanently started to bear it, the not-me against sociology
inside the kitchens there is realising of tightropes
Milk, if I do not continue to love you as deeply and truly as you want and need
that is us in the mythical streets again

support, support

the houses are murmuring with many small pockets of emotion
on which spongy grounds adults lives are being erected and paid for daily
while their feet and their children’s feet are tangled around like those of fen larks
in the fine steely wires which run to and fro between love and economics


affections must not support the rent


I. neglect. the house

Denise Riley, AFFECTIONS MUST NOT

                   Just one of those things . . .

Keep 'em coming, SH's mangy patella!

Yannis Ritsos of the week:


It was not only those that came of themselves,
those that were, the inevitable, but also the others,
those he himself added, those he wanted or the others wanted,
those he chose, and the manner in which they multiplied or were added.

And perhaps these last were particularly his,
that continued as arrested or diffused things,
presenting a story or a face to the immobile like a transparent windowpane
that suddenly thickens when darkness comes and turns into a mirror,
presenting noble performances out of unsuspecting events,
presenting their forms and their phantoms, presenting
the interior of nocturnal rooms illuminated by lamps or by a bouquet of flowers,
or by anger or privation or poverty. Presenting
things known and unknown, known in another way,
in a sequence, even though constrained in a value at least interchangeable.

Just tell me you like his poems, tinners, and I'll be genuinely happy. Considering you nixed Alan Dugan. Your opinion does matter to me.

No, I don't 'set' poetry without a handsome commission and a personal letter from the poet's grandmother pleading with me in the sense of a dying wish.

From Rothenberg & Joris's irritating and useful anthology Poems for the Millennium [vol. 2] Yannis Ritsos: "Probably one of the most prolific poets ever (a writing schedule of one to sixteen poems a day; more than five thousand pages of his "selected" poems alone)." Hmm.

I like the texts you've posted, a great deal.

Keep 'em coming, SH's mangy patella!

Why not The final, wonderful stanzas of Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde.

               And whan that he was slayn in this manere,
               His lighte goost ful blisfully is went
               Up to the holownesse of the seventh spere,
               In convers letinge every element; 
               And ther he saugh, with ful avysement,
               The erratik sterres, herkeninge armonye
               With sownes fulle of hevenish melodye.

               And doun from thennes faste he gan avyse
               This litel spot of erthe, that with the see 
               Embraced is, and fully gan despyse
               This wrecched world, and held al vanitee
               To respect of the pleyn felicitee
               That is in hevene above; and at the laste,
               Ther he was slayn, his loking doun he caste; 

               And in him-self he lough right at the wo
               Of hem that wepten for his deeth so faste;
               And dampned al our werk that folweth so
               The blinde lust, the which that may not laste,
               And sholden al our herte on hevene caste. 
               And forth he wente, shortly for to telle,
               Ther as Mercurie sorted him to dwelle. —

               Swich fyn hath, lo, this Troilus for love,
               Swich fyn hath al his grete worthinesse;
               Swich fyn hath his estat real above, 
               Swich fyn his lust, swich fyn hath his noblesse;
               Swich fyn hath false worldes brotelnesse.
               And thus bigan his lovinge of Criseyde,
               As I have told, and in this wyse he deyde.

               O yonge fresshe folkes, he or she, 
               In which that love up groweth with your age,
               Repeyreth hoom from worldly vanitee,
               And of your herte up-casteth the visage
               To thilke god that after his image
               Yow made, and thinketh al nis but a fayre 
               This world, that passeth sone as floures fayre.

               And loveth him, the which that right for love
               Upon a cros, our soules for to beye,
               First starf, and roos, and sit in hevene a-bove;
               For he nil falsen no wight, dar I seye, 
               That wol his herte al hoolly on him leye.
               And sin he best to love is, and most meke,
               What nedeth feyned loves for to seke?

               Lo here, of Payens corsed olde rytes,
               Lo here, what alle hir goddes may availle; 
               Lo here, these wrecched worldes appetytes;
               Lo here, the fyn and guerdon for travaille
               Of Iove, Appollo, of Mars, of swich rascaille!
               Lo here, the forme of olde clerkes speche
               In poetrye, if ye hir bokes seche. — 

               O moral Gower, this book I directe
               To thee, and to the philosophical Strode,
               To vouchen sauf, ther nede is, to corecte,
               Of your benignitees and zeles gode.
               And to that sothfast Crist, that starf on rode, 
               With al myn herte of mercy ever I preye;
               And to the lord right thus I speke and seye:

               Thou oon, and two, and three, eterne on-lyve,
               That regnest ay in three and two and oon,
               Uncircumscript, and al mayst circumscryve, 
               Us from visible and invisible foon
               Defende; and to thy mercy, everichoon,
               So make us, Iesus, for thy grace digne,
               For love of mayde and moder thyn benigne! Amen.

Ah, Chaucer - ages since I've read that. Thank you.

I was going to post Hardy's At Day-close in November, but a quick search shows I posted it on this day last year. I think I still will, though. I think of this poem almost every day at this time of year.

The ten hours' light is abating,
And a late bird wings across,
Where the pines like waltzers waiting
Give their black heads a toss.

Beech leaves, that yellow the noon-time
Float past like specks in the eye.
I set every tree in my June-time,
And now they obscure the sky.

And the children who ramble through here
Conceive that there never has been
A time when no tall trees grew here,
And none will in time be seen.