Monday, April 21, 2008

From the Sick Bay

Not well today. Blogging will be light.
Here's a poem for the time - and sound - of the year, when the beautiful daft wood pigeons are crooing away...


The Dove In Spring

Brooder, brooder, deep beneath its walls -
A small howling of the dove
Makes something of the little there,

The little and the dark, and that
in which it is and that in which
It is established. There the dove

Makes this small howling, like a thought
That howls in the mind or like a man
Who keeps seeking out his identity

In that which is and is established... It howls
Of the great sizes of an outer bush
And the great misery of the doubt of it,

Of stripes of silver that are strips
Like slits across a space, a place
And state of being large and light.

There is this bubbling before the sun,
This howling at one's ear, too far
For daylight and too near for sleep.

Wallace Stevens of course.

12 comments:

  1. Hope you recover soon, Nige - try some Denby Dale pie (you can order it from Sainsbury's) and a flagon of red wine.

    Strange about WS, despite having read his collected poems about 4 or 5 times, i keep coming across amazing poems of his of which i have absolutely no recollection, this being yet another.

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  2. It's in the Opus Posthumous Elberry - a trasure trove...
    Sadly I am not eating. Au contraire.

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  3. Nige,

    speedy recovery and stick to plain foods your granny made!

    Thanks for the poem - I find this blog a source of such wonderful poetry - and I am rarely read any poets! You guys mght change my mind after all.

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  4. Speedy recovery Nige. Stay warm if its a cold. Lots of honey, lemon, ginger and Scotch.

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  5. Get well Nige. I'm enjoying a fine dose of the flu at the moment, so poetry is beyond me.

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  6. I have not been well either - but did I bother you with poetry? I think not....

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  7. Thanks for the messages everyone. Except you Mutley, you heartless brute!

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  8. Nige, get well! Rice and bananas are the thing.

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  9. Well Nige, I leave you for a few hours and look what happens, I said you looked dog eared, you haven't got distemper have you, its a Bob Martins for you my lad, and stay in your basket. No walkies for you tonight, get well soon.

    PS read that poem to the WPs, they crooed in appreciation.

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  11. Get better. Is Bryan dead, by the way?

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  12. Good question Semaj (something tells me that's James). He's not dead, but beyond that I know little...

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