Poetry Week

So today I am going to cheat and instead of just one poem, I’m going to throw a couple at you. Don’t worry, they are short and I’m sure you can keep up. Mervyn Peake’s poems are like pictures, and with just a few words he can describe a scene so completely that it makes me fingers itch to paint it.

Conceit

I heard a winter tree in song
Its leaves were birds, a hundred strong;
When all at once it ceased to sing,
For every leaf had taken wing.

Doesn’t that just describe trees in the winter perfectly? Coming home down Aurelius, when you pass the campground there are so many of these ‘singing’ trees and it’s amazing to listen to their song as you drive past.

Of Pygmies, palms and pirates

Of pygmies, palms and pirates,
Of islands and lagoons,
Of blood-bespotted frigates,
Of crags and octoroons,
Of whales and broken bottles,
Of quicksands cold and grey,
Of ullages and dottles,
I have no more to say.

Of barley, corn and furrows,
Of farms and turf that heaves
Above such ghostly burrows
As twitch on summer eves
Of fallow-land and pasture,
Of skies both pink and grey,
I made my statement last year
And have no more to say.

I always call this a little boy poem. To me it speaks of long summer days and little boys with cardboard swords and newspaper hats, running around and finding buried treasure.

The vastest things are those we may not learn.
We are not taught to die, nor to be born,
Nor how to burn
With love.
How pitiful is our enforced return
To those small things we are the masters of.

Such a short little piece, but strong. I love the last line the best, “to those small things we are the masters of”.