“Listen, Fritz is singing to us.”Across the pitted mounds of No Man’s Landthe gentle blending of a male voice choirhushed, and reverently sweet and sadgave Stille Nacht instead of rifle fire.“Come all ye faithful,” Englishmen replied,and found the German voices had joined in“Venite adoremus,” strong and clear.Loyalties and faiths were…
My head doth ache,O Sappho! takeThy fillet,And bind the pain,Or bring some baneTo kill it. But less that partThan my poor heartNow is sick;One kiss from theeWill counsel beAnd physic. Robert Herrick (baptized 24 August 1591 – buried 15 October 1674
Viens, mon beau chat, sur mon coeur amoureux;Retiens les griffes de ta patte,Et laisse-moi plonger dans tes beaux yeux,Mêlés de métal et d’agate. Lorsque mes doigts caressent à loisirTa tête et ton dos élastique,Et que ma main s’enivre du plaisirDe palper ton corps électrique, Je vois ma femme en esprit.…
She is coming, my own, my sweet;Were it ever so airy a tread,My heart would hear her and beat,Were it earth in an earthy bed;My dust would hear her and beat,Had I lain for a century dead,Would start and tremble under her feet,And blossom in purple and red. Alfred Lord…
When Cymri say“Pwllheli”I hear againthe pebbly ripple and lapblessing the shore.No human voice, no engine roaronly the thin cries of arctic ternganneting the sea. Across Tremadoc BaySnowdonia’s curtain of cloudblacked out war.The still aircalm as the prayersof a thousand Celtic saintscleansed my headof death, of furnace fires,so many missing friends.The…
One Love in children bornfrom a mother’s voice calm as a riverin Ghana; a father’s hands roughas Scotland’s shale; a brother’s armsstrong as bamboo from Shaanxi ; a sister’sshoulders resilient as banyans from Nepal. One Love is whispering streams,waving ferns, winding roads through greenvalleys that surprisewith a drop into turquoise…
i think of you many a timesof you and a summerlike many other summershustle of a retreating shadowjust before the darklike an ancient ritetravelingyour touch remainsin an innate stonecarved onsuch sky dotted daysa river once stormed ina chimera blue eveningat gwaliorwhen youtold me of rosesnamed after your motherand stars in…
At last they fade from sight, those fieldsof white crosses, rigid, regimented,on parade. But now the Sacred Waycuts through woodland, dense as battle-smoke,concealing still the threat of instant death.Here the war continues, birch and alderinter-strangle with their tangled limbs;some in shell holes stand like moated fortsflooded nearly ninety years ago.Some…
Spring, and the wispy clouds that fade awayAnd draw the ecstatic soul in pain to aspireIn maddening flight through heaven’s thin flood of fireTo melt in rapture at the heart of day,The powers of the world that promise and betrayHave dragged me from you in their icy ireAnd set me…
Although you hide in the ebb and flowOf the pale tide when the moon has set,The people of coming days will knowAbout the casting out of my net,And how you have leaped times out of mindOver the little silver cords,And think that you were hard and unkind,And blame you with…
Tonight I can write the saddest lines. Write for example: ‘The night is fracturedand they shiver, blue, those stars, in the distance’ The night wind turns in the sky and sings.I can write the saddest lines tonight.I loved her, sometimes she loved me too. On nights like these I held…