GCSE English Literature Teaching Resource AQA Anthology Of Poetry 8702 TG POEMS

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GCSE

ENGLISH LITERATURE

(8702)

Past and present: poetry anthology

For examinations from 2017

Version 1.2

1

Love and relationships

Lord Byron When We Two Parted

Percy Bysshe Shelley Love’s Philosophy

Robert Browning Porphyria’s Lover

Elizabeth Barrett Browning Sonnet 29 – ‘I think of thee!’

Thomas Hardy Neutral Tones

Maura Dooley Letters From Yorkshire

Charlotte Mew The Farmer’s Bride

Cecil Day Lewis Walking Away

Charles Causley Eden Rock

Seamus Heaney Follower

Simon Armitage Mother, any distance

Carol Ann Duffy Before You Were Mine

Owen Sheers Winter Swans

Daljit Nagra Singh Song!

Andrew Waterhouse Climbing My Grandfather

2

When We Two Parted

When we two parted

In silence and tears,

Half broken-hearted

To sever for years,

Pale grew thy cheek and cold,

Colder thy kiss;

Truly that hour foretold

Sorrow to this.

The dew of the morning

Sank chill on my brow –

It felt like the warning

Of what I feel now.

Thy vows are all broken,

And light is thy fame;

I hear thy name spoken,

And share in its shame.

They name thee before me,

A knell in mine ear;

A shudder comes o'er me –

Why wert thou so dear?

They know not I knew thee,

Who knew thee too well –

Long, long shall I rue thee,

Too deeply to tell.

In secret we met –

In silence I grieve,

That thy heart could forget,

Thy spirit deceive.

If I should meet thee

After long years,

How should I greet thee? –

With silence and tears.

LORD BYRON

3

Love's Philosophy

The fountains mingle with the river

And the rivers with the Ocean,

The winds of Heaven mix for ever

With a sweet emotion;

Nothing in the world is single;

All things by a law divine

In one another's being mingle —

Why not I with thine?

See the mountains kiss high Heaven,

And the waves clasp one another;

No sister-flower would be forgiven

If it disdain'd its brother:

And the sunlight clasps the earth,

And the moonbeams kiss the sea —

What are all these kisses worth,

If thou kiss not me?

PERCEY BYSSHE SHELLEY

4

Porphyria’s Lover

The rain set early in to-night,

The sullen wind was soon awake,

It tore the elm-tops down for spite,

and did its worst to vex the lake:

I listened with heart fit to break.

When glided in Porphyria; straight

She shut the cold out and the storm,

And kneeled and made the cheerless grate

Blaze up, and all the cottage warm;

Which done, she rose, and from her form

Withdrew the dripping cloak and shawl,

And laid her soiled gloves by, untied

Her hat and let the damp hair fall,

And, last, she sat down by my side

And called me. When no voice replied,

She put my arm about her waist,

And made her smooth white shoulder bare,

And all her yellow hair displaced,

And, stooping, made my cheek lie there,

And spread o’er all her yellow hair,

Murmuring how she loved me – she

Too weak, for all her heart’s endeavour,

To set its struggling passion free

From pride, and vainer ties dissever,

And give herself to me for ever.

But passion sometimes would prevail,

Nor could tonight’s gay feast restrain

A sudden thought of one so pale

For love of her, and all in vain:

So, she was come through wind and rain.

Be sure I looked up at her eyes

Happy and proud; at last I knew

Porphyria worshipped me: surprise

Made my heart swell, and still it grew

While I debated what to do.

That moment she was mine, mine, fair,

Perfectly pure and good: I found

A thing to do, and all her hair

In one long yellow string I wound

Three times her little throat around,

And strangled her. No pain felt she;

I am quite sure she felt no pain.

As a shut bud that holds a bee,

I warily oped her lids: again

Laughed the blue eyes without a stain.

And I untightened next the tress

About her neck; her cheek once more

5

Blushed bright beneath my burning kiss:

I propped her head up as before,

Only, this time my shoulder bore

Her head, which droops upon it still:

The smiling rosy little head,

So glad it has its utmost will,

That all it scorned at once is fled,

And I, its love, am gained instead!

Porphyria’s love: she guessed not how

Her darling one wish would be heard.

And thus we sit together now,

And all night long we have not stirred,

And yet God has not said a word!

ROBERT BROWNING

6

Sonnet 29 – ‘I think of thee!’

I think of thee! – my thoughts do twine and bud

About thee, as wild vines, about a tree,

Put out broad leaves, and soon there 's nought to see

Except the straggling green which hides the wood.

Yet, O my palm-tree, be it understood

I will not have my thoughts instead of thee

Who art dearer, better! Rather, instantly

Renew thy presence; as a strong tree should,

Rustle thy boughs and set thy trunk all bare,

And let these bands of greenery which insphere thee

Drop heavily down, – burst, shattered, everywhere!

Because, in this deep joy to see and hear thee

And breathe within thy shadow a new air,

I do not think of thee – I am too near thee.

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING

7

Neutral Tones

We stood by a pond that winter day,

And the sun was white, as though chidden of God,

And a few leaves lay on the starving sod;

– They had fallen from an ash, and were grey.

Your eyes on me were as eyes that rove

Over tedious riddles of years ago;

And some words played between us to and fro

On which lost the more by our love.

The smile on your mouth was the deadest thing

Alive enough to have strength to die;

And a grin of bitterness swept thereby

Like an ominous bird a-wing…

Since then, keen lessons that love deceives,

And wrings with wrong, have shaped to me

Your face, and the God curst sun, and a tree,

And a pond edged with greyish leaves. THOMAS HARDY

8

Letters from Yorkshire

In February, digging his garden, planting potatoes,

he saw the first lapwings return and came

indoors to write to me, his knuckles singing

as they reddened in the warmth.

It’s not romance, simply how things are.

You out there, in the cold, seeing the seasons

turning, me with my heartful of headlines

feeding words onto a blank screen.

Is your life more real because you dig and sow?

You wouldn’t say so, breaking ice on a waterbutt,

clearing a path through snow. Still, it’s you

who sends me word of that other world

pouring air and light into an envelope. So that

at night, watching the same news in different houses,

our souls tap out messages across the icy miles.

MAURA DOOLEY

9

The Farmer’s Bride

Three Summers since I chose a maid,

Too young maybe – but more’s to do

At harvest-time than bide and woo.

When us was wed she turned afraid

Of love and me and all things human;

Like the shut of a winter’s day

Her smile went out, and ’twasn’t a woman –

More like a little frightened fay.

One night, in the Fall, she runned away.

‘Out ’mong the sheep, her be,’ they said,

Should properly have been abed;

But sure enough she wasn’t there

Lying awake with her wide brown stare.

So over seven-acre field and up-along across the down

We chased her, flying like a hare

Before our lanterns. To Church-Town

All in a shiver and a scare

We caught her, fetched her home at last

And turned the key upon her, fast.

She does the work about the house

As well as most, but like a mouse:

Happy enough to chat and play

With birds and rabbits and such as they,

So long as men-folk keep away.

‘Not near, not near!’ her eyes beseech

When one of us comes within reach.

The women say that beasts in stall

Look round like children at her call.

I’ve hardly heard her speak at all.

Shy as a leveret, swift as he,

Straight and slight as a young larch tree,

Sweet as the first wild violets, she,

To her wild self. But what to me?

The short days shorten and the oaks are brown,

The blue smoke rises to the low grey sky,

One leaf in the still air falls slowly down,

A magpie’s spotted feathers lie

On the black earth spread white with rime,

The berries redden up to Christmas-time.

What’s Christmas-time without there be

Some other in the house than we!

10

She sleeps up in the attic there

Alone, poor maid. ’Tis but a stair

Betwixt us. Oh! my God! the down,

The soft young down of her, the brown,

The brown of her – her eyes, her hair, her hair!

CHARLOTTE MEW

11

Walking Away

It is eighteen years ago, almost to the day –

A sunny day with leaves just turning,

The touch-lines new-ruled – since I watched you play

Your first game of football, then, like a satellite

Wrenched from its orbit, go drifting away

Behind a scatter of boys. I can see

You walking away from me towards the school

With the pathos of a half-fledged thing set free

Into a wilderness, the gait of one

Who finds no path where the path should be.

That hesitant figure, eddying away

Like a winged seed loosened from its parent stem,

Has something I never quite grasp to convey

About nature’s give-and-take – the small, the scorching

Ordeals which fire one’s irresolute clay.

I have had worse partings, but none that so

Gnaws at my mind still. Perhaps it is roughly

Saying what God alone could perfectly show –

How selfhood begins with a walking away,

And love is proved in the letting go.

CECIL DAY LEWIS

12

Eden Rock

They are waiting for me somewhere beyond Eden Rock:

My father, twenty-five, in the same suit

Of Genuine Irish Tweed, his terrier Jack

Still two years old and trembling at his feet.

My mother, twenty-three, in a sprigged dress

Drawn at the waist, ribbon in her straw hat,

Has spread the stiff white cloth over the grass.

Her hair, the colour of wheat, takes on the light.

She pours tea from a Thermos, the milk straight

From an old H.P. Sauce bottle, a screw

Of paper for a cork; slowly sets out

The same three plates, the tin cups painted blue.

The sky whitens as if lit by three suns.

My mother shades her eyes and looks my way

Over the drifted stream. My father spins

A stone along the water. Leisurely,

They beckon to me from the other bank.

I hear them call, 'See where the stream-path is!

Crossing is not as hard as you might think.'

I had not thought that it would be like this.

CHARLES CAUSLEY

13

Follower

My father worked with a horse-plough,

His shoulders globed like a full sail strung

Between the shafts and the furrow.

The horse strained at his clicking tongue.

An expert. He would set the wing

And fit the bright steel-pointed sock.

The sod rolled over without breaking.

At the headrig, with a single pluck

Of reins, the sweating team turned round

And back into the land. His eye

Narrowed and angled at the ground,

Mapping the furrow exactly.

I stumbled in his hob-nailed wake,

Fell sometimes on the polished sod;

Sometimes he rode me on his back

Dipping and rising to his plod.

I wanted to grow up and plough,

To close one eye, stiffen my arm.

All I ever did was follow

In his broad shadow round the farm.

I was a nuisance, tripping, falling,

Yapping always. But today

It is my father who keeps stumbling

Behind me, and will not go away.

SEAMUS HEANEY

14

From Book of Matches, ‘Mother, any distance’

Mother, any distance greater than a single span

requires a second pair of hands.

You come to help me measure windows, pelmets, doors,

the acres of the walls, the prairies of the floors.

You at the zero-end, me with the spool of tape, recording

length, reporting metres, centimetres back to base, then leaving

up the stairs, the line still feeding out, unreeling

years between us. Anchor. Kite.

I space-walk through the empty bedrooms, climb

the ladder to the loft, to breaking point, where something

has to give;

two floors below your fingertips still pinch

the last one-hundredth of an inch ... I reach

towards a hatch that opens on an endless sky

to fall or fly.

SIMON ARMITAGE

15

Before You Were Mine

I'm ten years away from the corner you laugh on

with your pals, Maggie McGeeney and Jean Duff.

The three of you bend from the waist, holding

each other, or your knees, and shriek at the pavement.

Your polka-dot dress blows round your legs. Marilyn.

I'm not here yet. The thought of me doesn't occur

in the ballroom with the thousand eyes, the fizzy, movie tomorrows

the right walk home could bring. I knew you would dance

like that. Before you were mine, your Ma stands at the close

with a hiding for the late one. You reckon it's worth it.

The decade ahead of my loud, possessive yell was the best one, eh?

I remember my hands in those high-heeled red shoes, relics,

and now your ghost clatters toward me over George Square

till I see you, clear as scent, under the tree,

with its lights, and whose small bites on your neck, sweetheart?

Cha cha cha! You'd teach me the steps on the way home from Mass,

stamping stars from the wrong pavement. Even then

I wanted the bold girl winking in Portobello, somewhere

in Scotland, before I was born. That glamorous love lasts

where you sparkle and waltz and laugh before you were mine.

CAROL ANN DUFFY

16

Winter Swans

The clouds had given their all -

two days of rain and then a break

in which we walked,

the waterlogged earth

gulping for breath at our feet

as we skirted the lake, silent and apart,

until the swans came and stopped us

with a show of tipping in unison.

As if rolling weights down their bodies to their heads

they halved themselves in the dark water,

icebergs of white feather, paused before returning again

like boats righting in rough weather.

'They mate for life' you said as they left,

porcelain over the stilling water. I didn't reply

but as we moved on through the afternoon light,

slow-stepping in the lake's shingle and sand,

I noticed our hands, that had, somehow,

swum the distance between us

and folded, one over the other,

like a pair of wings settling after flight.

OWEN SHEERS

17

Singh Song!

I run just one ov my daddy’s shops

from 9 o’clock to 9 o’clock

and he vunt me not to hav a break

but ven nobody in, I do di lock –

cos up di stairs is my newly bride

vee share in chapatti

vee share in di chutney

after vee hav made luv

like vee rowing through Putney –

Ven I return vid my pinnie untied

di shoppers always point and cry:

Hey Singh, ver yoo bin?

Yor lemons are limes

yor bananas are plantain,

dis dirty little floor need a little bit of mop

in di worst Indian shop

on di whole Indian road –

Above my head high heel tap di ground

as my vife on di web is playing wid di mouse

ven she netting two cat on her Sikh lover site

she book dem for di meat at di cheese ov her price –

my bride

she effing at my mum

in all di colours of Punjabi

den stumble like a drunk

making fun at my daddy

my bride

tiny eyes ov a gun

and di tummy ov a teddy

my bride

she hav a red crew cut

and she wear a Tartan sari

a donkey jacket and some pumps

on di squeak ov di girls dat are pinching my sweeties –

Ven I return from di tickle ov my bride

di shoppers always point and cry:

Hey Singh, ver yoo bin?

Di milk is out ov date

and di bread is alvays stale,

di tings yoo hav on offer yoo hav never got in stock

18

in di worst Indian shop

on di whole Indian road –

Late in di midnight hour

ven yoo shoppers are wrap up quiet

ven di precinct is concrete-cool

vee cum down whispering stairs

and sit on my silver stool,

from behind di chocolate bars

vee stare past di half-price window signs

at di beaches ov di UK in di brightey moon –

from di stool each night she say,

How much do yoo charge for dat moon baby?

from di stool each night I say,

Is half di cost ov yoo baby,

from di stool each night she say,

How much does dat come to baby?

from di stool each night I say,

Is priceless baby –

DALJIT

NAGRA

19

Climbing My Grandfather

I decide to do it free, without a rope or net.

First, the old brogues, dusty and cracked;

an easy scramble onto his trousers,

pushing into the weave, trying to get a grip.

By the overhanging shirt I change

direction, traverse along his belt

to an earth-stained hand. The nails

are splintered and give good purchase,

the skin of his finger is smooth and thick

like warm ice. On his arm I discover

the glassy ridge of a scar, place my feet

gently in the old stitches and move on.

At his still firm shoulder, I rest for a while

in the shade, not looking down,

for climbing has its dangers, then pull

myself up the loose skin of his neck

to a smiling mouth to drink among teeth.

Refreshed, I cross the screed cheek,

to stare into his brown eyes, watch a pupil

slowly open and close. Then up over

the forehead, the wrinkles well-spaced

and easy, to his thick hair (soft and white

at this altitude), reaching for the summit,

where gasping for breath I can only lie

watching clouds and birds circle,

feeling his heat, knowing

the slow pulse of his good heart.

ANDREW WATERHOUSE

20

Power and conflict

Percy Bysshe Shelley Ozymandias

William Blake London

William Wordsworth Extract from, The Prelude

Robert Browning My Last Duchess

Alfred Lord Tennyson The Charge of the Light Brigade

Wilfred Owen Exposure

Seamus Heaney Storm on the Island

Ted Hughes Bayonet Charge

Simon Armitage Remains

Jane Weir Poppies

Carol Ann Duffy War Photographer

Imtiaz Dharker Tissue

Carol Rumens The Émigree

John Agard Checking Out Me History

Beatrice Garland Kamikaze

21

Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land

Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,

Half sunk, a shatter’d visage lies, whose frown

And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamp’d on these lifeless things,

The hand that mock’d them and the heart that fed;

And on the pedestal these words appear:

‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

22

London

I wander through each chartered street,

Near where the chartered Thames does flow,

And 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 black’ning church appalls,

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.

WILLIAM BLAKE

23

Extract from, The Prelude

One summer evening (led by her) I found

A little boat tied to a willow tree

Within a rocky cove, its usual home.

Straight I unloosed her chain, and stepping in

Pushed from the shore. It was an act of stealth

And troubled pleasure, nor without the voice

Of mountain-echoes did my boat move on;

Leaving behind her still, on either side,

Small circles glittering idly in the moon,

Until they melted all into one track

Of sparkling light. But now, like one who rows,

Proud of his skill, to reach a chosen point

With an unswerving line, I fixed my view

Upon the summit of a craggy ridge,

The horizon’s utmost boundary; far above

Was nothing but the stars and the grey sky.

She was an elfin pinnace; lustily

I dipped my oars into the silent lake,

And, as I rose upon the stroke, my boat

Went heaving through the water like a swan;

When, from behind that craggy steep till then

The horizon’s bound, a huge peak, black and huge,

As if with voluntary power instinct,

Upreared its head. I struck and struck again,

And growing still in stature the grim shape

Towered up between me and the stars, and still,

For so it seemed, with purpose of its own

And measured motion like a living thing,

Strode after me. With trembling oars I turned,

And through the silent water stole my way

Back to the covert of the willow tree;

There in her mooring-place I left my bark, –

And through the meadows homeward went, in grave

And serious mood; but after I had seen

That spectacle, for many days, my brain

Worked with a dim and undetermined sense

Of unknown modes of being; o’er my thoughts

There hung a darkness, call it solitude

Or blank desertion. No familiar shapes

Remained, no pleasant images of trees,

Of sea or sky, no colours of green fields;

But huge and mighty forms, that do not live

Like living men, moved slowly through the mind

By day, and were a trouble to my dreams.

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

24

My Last Duchess

Ferrara

That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall,

Looking as if she were alive. I call

That piece a wonder, now: Frà Pandolf’s hands

Worked busily a day, and there she stands.

Will’t please you sit and look at her? I said

‘Frà Pandolf’ by design, for never read

Strangers like you that pictured countenance,

The depth and passion of its earnest glance,

But to myself they turned (since none puts by

The curtain I have drawn for you, but I)

And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,

How such a glance came there; so, not the first

Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, ’twas not

Her husband’s presence only, called that spot

Of joy into the Duchess’ cheek: perhaps

Frà Pandolf chanced to say ‘Her mantle laps

Over my lady’s wrist too much,’ or ‘Paint

Must never hope to reproduce the faint

Half-flush that dies along her throat’: such stuff

Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough

For calling up that spot of joy. She had

A heart – how shall I say? – too soon made glad,

Too easily impressed; she liked whate’er

She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.

Sir, ’twas all one! My favour at her breast,

The dropping of the daylight in the West,

The bough of cherries some officious fool

Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule

She rode with round the terrace – all and each

Would draw from her alike the approving speech,

Or blush, at least. She thanked men, – good! but thanked

Somehow – I know not how – as if she ranked

My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name

With anybody’s gift. Who’d stoop to blame

This sort of trifling? Even had you skill

In speech – (which I have not) – to make your will

Quite clear to such an one, and say, ‘Just this

Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss,

Or there exceed the mark’ – and if she let

Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set

Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse,

– E’en then would be some stooping; and I choose

Never to stoop. Oh sir, she smiled, no doubt,

Whene’er I passed her; but who passed without

Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;

25

Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands

As if alive. Will’t please you rise? We’ll meet

The company below, then. I repeat,

The Count your master’s known munificence

Is ample warrant that no just pretence

Of mine for dowry will be disallowed;

Though his fair daughter’s self, as I avowed

At starting, is my object. Nay, we’ll go

Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though,

Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,

Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!

ROBERT BROWNING

26

The Charge of the Light Brigade

1.

Half a league, half a league,

Half a league onward,

All in the valley of Death

Rode the six hundred.

‘Forward, the Light Brigade!

Charge for the guns!’ he said:

Into the valley of Death

Rode the six hundred.

2.

‘Forward, the Light Brigade!’

Was there a man dismay’d?

Not tho’ the soldier knew

Some one had blunder’d:

Theirs not to make reply,

Theirs not to reason why,

Theirs but to do and die:

Into the valley of Death

Rode the six hundred.

3.

Cannon to right of them,

Cannon to left of them,

Cannon in front of them

Volley’d and thunder’d;

Storm’d at with shot and shell,

Boldly they rode and well,

Into the jaws of Death,

Into the mouth of Hell

Rode the six hundred.

4.

Flash’d all their sabres bare,

Flash’d as they turn’d in air

Sabring the gunners there,

Charging an army, while

All the world wonder’d:

Plunged in the battery-smoke

Right thro’ the line they broke;

Cossack and Russian

Reel’d from the sabre-stroke

Shatter’d and sunder’d.

Then they rode back, but not

Not the six hundred.

5.

Cannon to right of them,

27

Cannon to left of them,

Cannon behind them

Volley’d and thunder’d;

Storm’d at with shot and shell,

While horse and hero fell,

They that had fought so well

Came thro’ the jaws of Death

Back from the mouth of Hell,

All that was left of them,

Left of six hundred.

6.

When can their glory fade?

O the wild charge they made!

All the world wonder’d.

Honour the charge they made!

Honour the Light Brigade,

Noble six hundred!

ALFRED TENNYSON

28

Exposure

Our brains ache, in the merciless iced east winds that knive

us ...

Wearied we keep awake because the night is silent ...

Low, drooping flares confuse our memory of the salient ...

Worried by silence, sentries whisper, curious, nervous,

But nothing happens.

Watching, we hear the mad gusts tugging on the wire,

Like twitching agonies of men among its brambles.

Northward, incessantly, the flickering gunnery rumbles,

Far off, like a dull rumour of some other war.

What are we doing here?

The poignant misery of dawn begins to grow ...

We only know war lasts, rain soaks, and clouds sag stormy.

Dawn massing in the east her melancholy army

Attacks once more in ranks on shivering ranks of grey,

But nothing happens.

Sudden successive flights of bullets streak the silence.

Less deadly than the air that shudders black with snow,

With sidelong flowing flakes that flock, pause, and renew,

We watch them wandering up and down the wind's

nonchalance,

But nothing happens.

Pale flakes with fingering stealth come feeling for our faces -

We cringe in holes, back on forgotten dreams, and stare,

snow-dazed,

Deep into grassier ditches. So we drowse, sun-dozed,

Littered with blossoms trickling where the blackbird fusses.

– Is it that we are dying?

Slowly our ghosts drag home: glimpsing the sunk fires, glozed

With crusted dark-red jewels; crickets jingle there;

For hours the innocent mice rejoice: the house is theirs;

Shutters and doors, all closed: on us the doors are closed, -

We turn back to our dying.

Since we believe not otherwise can kind fires burn;

Now ever suns smile true on child, or field, or fruit.

For God's invincible spring our love is made afraid;

Therefore, not loath, we lie out here; therefore were born,

For love of God seems dying.

Tonight, His frost will fasten on this mud and us,

29

Shrivelling many hands. puckering foreheads crisp.

The burying-party, picks and shovels in their shaking grasp,

Pause over half-known faces. All their eyes are ice,

But nothing happens.

WILFRED OWEN

30

Storm on the Island

We are prepared: we build our houses squat,

Sink walls in rock and roof them with good slate.

This wizened earth has never troubled us

With hay, so, as you see, there are no stacks

Or stooks that can be lost. Nor are there trees

Which might prove company when it blows full

Blast: you know what I mean – leaves and branches

Can raise a tragic chorus in a gale

So that you can listen to the thing you fear

Forgetting that it pummels your house too.

But there are no trees, no natural shelter.

You might think that the sea is company,

Exploding comfortably down on the cliffs

But no: when it begins, the flung spray hits

The very windows, spits like a tame cat

Turned savage. We just sit tight while wind dives

And strafes invisibly. Space is a salvo,

We are bombarded by the empty air.

Strange, it is a huge nothing that we fear.

SEAMUS HEANEY

31

Bayonet Charge

Suddenly he awoke and was running – raw

In raw-seamed hot khaki, his sweat heavy,

Stumbling across a field of clods towards a green hedge

That dazzled with rifle fire, hearing

Bullets smacking the belly out of the air –

He lugged a rifle numb as a smashed arm;

The patriotic tear that had brimmed in his eye

Sweating like molten iron from the centre of his chest, –

In bewilderment then he almost stopped –

In what cold clockwork of the stars and the nations

Was he the hand pointing that second? He was running

Like a man who has jumped up in the dark and runs

Listening between his footfalls for the reason

Of his still running, and his foot hung like

Statuary in mid-stride. Then the shot-slashed furrows

Threw up a yellow hare that rolled like a flame

And crawled in a threshing circle, its mouth wide

Open silent, its eyes standing out.

He plunged past with his bayonet toward the green hedge,

King, honour, human dignity, etcetera

Dropped like luxuries in a yelling alarm

To get out of that blue crackling air

His terror’s touchy dynamite.

TED HUGHES

32

Remains

On another occasion, we get sent out

to tackle looters raiding a bank.

And one of them legs it up the road,

probably armed, possibly not.

Well myself and somebody else and somebody else

are all of the same mind,

so all three of us open fire.

Three of a kind all letting fly, and I swear

I see every round as it rips through his life –

I see broad daylight on the other side.

So we’ve hit this looter a dozen times

and he’s there on the ground, sort of inside out,

pain itself, the image of agony.

One of my mates goes by

and tosses his guts back into his body.

Then he’s carted off in the back of a lorry.

End of story, except not really.

His blood-shadow stays on the street, and out on patrol

I walk right over it week after week.

Then I’m home on leave. But I blink

and he bursts again through the doors of the bank.

Sleep, and he’s probably armed, possibly not.

Dream, and he’s torn apart by a dozen rounds.

And the drink and the drugs won’t flush him out –

he’s here in my head when I close my eyes,

dug in behind enemy lines,

not left for dead in some distant, sun-stunned, sand-smothered land

or six-feet-under in desert sand,

but near to the knuckle, here and now,

his bloody life in my bloody hands.

SIMON ARMITAGE

33

Poppies

Three days before Armistice Sunday

and poppies had already been placed

on individual war graves. Before you left,

I pinned one onto your lapel, crimped petals,

spasms of paper red, disrupting a blockade

of yellow bias binding around your blazer.

Sellotape bandaged around my hand,

I rounded up as many white cat hairs

as I could, smoothed down your shirt’s

upturned collar, steeled the softening

of my face. I wanted to graze my nose

across the tip of your nose, play at

being Eskimos like we did when

you were little. I resisted the impulse

to run my fingers through the gelled

blackthorns of your hair. All my words

flattened, rolled, turned into felt,

slowly melting. I was brave, as I walked

with you, to the front door, threw

it open, the world overflowing

like a treasure chest. A split second

and you were away, intoxicated.

After you’d gone I went into your bedroom,

released a song bird from its cage.

Later a single dove flew from the pear tree,

and this is where it has led me,

skirting the church yard walls, my stomach busy

making tucks, darts, pleats, hat-less, without

a winter coat or reinforcements of scarf, gloves.

On reaching the top of the hill I traced

the inscriptions on the war memorial,

leaned against it like a wishbone.

The dove pulled freely against the sky,

an ornamental stitch. I listened, hoping to hear

your playground voice catching on the wind.

JANE

WEIR

34

War Photographer

In his darkroom he is finally alone

with spools of suffering set out in ordered rows.

The only light is red and softly glows,

as though this were a church and he

a priest preparing to intone a Mass.

Belfast. Beirut. Phnom Penh. All flesh is grass.

He has a job to do. Solutions slop in trays

beneath his hands, which did not tremble then

though seem to now. Rural England. Home again

to ordinary pain which simple weather can dispel,

to fields which don't explode beneath the feet

of running children in a nightmare heat.

Something is happening. A stranger's features

faintly start to twist before his eyes,

a half-formed ghost. He remembers the cries

of this man's wife, how he sought approval

without words to do what someone must

and how the blood stained into foreign dust.

A hundred agonies in black-and-white

from which his editor will pick out five or six

for Sunday's supplement. The reader's eyeballs prick

with tears between the bath and pre-lunch beers.

From the aeroplane he stares impassively at where

he earns his living and they do not care.

CAROL ANN DUFFY

35

Tissue

Paper that lets the light

shine through, this

is what could alter things.

Paper thinned by age or touching,

the kind you find in well-used books,

the back of the Koran, where a hand

has written in the names and histories,

who was born to whom,

the height and weight, who

died where and how, on which sepia date,

pages smoothed and stroked and turned

transparent with attention.

If buildings were paper, I might

feel their drift, see how easily

they fall away on a sigh, a shift

in the direction of the wind.

Maps too. The sun shines through

their borderlines, the marks

that rivers make, roads,

railtracks, mountainfolds,

Fine slips from grocery shops

that say how much was sold

and what was paid by credit card

might fly our lives like paper kites.

An architect could use all this,

place layer over layer, luminous

script over numbers over line,

and never wish to build again with brick

or block, but let the daylight break

through capitals and monoliths,

through the shapes that pride can make,

find a way to trace a grand design

36

with living tissue, raise a structure

never meant to last,

of paper smoothed and stroked

and thinned to be transparent,

turned into your skin.

IMTIAZ DHARKER

37

The Émigree

There once was a country… I left it as a child

but my memory of it is sunlight-clear

for it seems I never saw it in that November

which, I am told, comes to the mildest city.

The worst news I receive of it cannot break

my original view, the bright, filled paperweight.

It may be at war, it may be sick with tyrants,

but I am branded by an impression of sunlight.

The white streets of that city, the graceful slopes

glow even clearer as time rolls its tanks

and the frontiers rise between us, close like waves.

That child’s vocabulary I carried here

like a hollow doll, opens and spills a grammar.

Soon I shall have every coloured molecule of it.

It may by now be a lie, banned by the state

but I can’t get it off my tongue. It tastes of sunlight.

I have no passport, there’s no way back at all

but my city comes to me in its own white plane.

It lies down in front of me, docile as paper;

I comb its hair and love its shining eyes.

My city takes me dancing through the city

of walls. They accuse me of absence, they circle me.

They accuse me of being dark in their free city.

My city hides behind me. They mutter death,

and my shadow falls as evidence of sunlight.

CAROLE RUMENS

38

Checking Out Me History

Dem tell me

Dem tell me

Wha dem want to tell me

Bandage up me eye with me own history

Blind me to me own identity

Dem tell me bout 1066 and all dat

dem tell me bout Dick Whittington and he cat

But Toussaint L’Ouverture

no dem never tell me bout dat

Toussaint

a slave

with vision

lick back

Napoleon

battalion

and first Black

Republic born

Toussaint de thorn

to de French

Toussaint de beacon

of de Haitian Revolution

Dem tell me bout de man who discover de balloon

and de cow who jump over de moon

Dem tell me bout de dish ran away with de spoon

but dem never tell me bout Nanny de maroon

Nanny

see-far woman

of mountain dream

fire-woman struggle

hopeful stream

to freedom river

Dem tell me bout Lord Nelson and Waterloo

but dem never tell me bout Shaka de great Zulu

Dem tell me bout Columbus and 1492

but what happen to de Caribs and de Arawaks too

Dem tell me bout Florence Nightingale and she lamp

and how Robin Hood used to camp

Dem tell me bout ole King Cole was a merry ole soul

but dem never tell me bout Mary Seacole

39

From Jamaica

she travel far

to the Crimean War

she volunteer to go

and even when de British said no

she still brave the Russian snow

a healing star

among the wounded

a yellow sunrise

to the dying

Dem tell me

Dem tell me wha dem want to tell me

But now I checking out me own history

I carving out me identity

JOHN

AGARD

40

Kamikaze

Her father embarked at sunrise

with a flask of water, a samurai sword

in the cockpit, a shaven head

full of powerful incantations

and enough fuel for a one-way

journey into history

but half way there, she thought,

recounting it later to her children,

he must have looked far down

at the little fishing boats

strung out like bunting

on a green-blue translucent sea

and beneath them, arcing in swathes

like a huge flag waved first one way

then the other in a figure of eight,

the dark shoals of fishes

flashing silver as their bellies

swivelled towards the sun

and remembered how he

and his brothers waiting on the shore

built cairns of pearl-grey pebbles

to see whose withstood longest

the turbulent inrush of breakers

bringing their father’s boat safe

- yes, grandfather’s boat – safe

to the shore, salt-sodden, awash

with cloud-marked mackerel,

black crabs, feathery prawns,

the loose silver of whitebait and once

a tuna, the dark prince, muscular, dangerous.

And though he came back

my mother never spoke again

in his presence, nor did she meet his eyes

and the neighbours too, they treated him

as though he no longer existed,

only we children still chattered and laughed

till gradually we too learned

to be silent, to live as though

he had never returned, that this

41

was no longer the father we loved.

And sometimes, she said, he must have wondered

which had been the better way to die.

BEATRICE GARLAND

42

Acknowledgements

C Day Lewis ‘Walking Away’ from The Gate and Other Poems by Cecil Day Lewis

reprinted by permission of Peters Fraser and Dunlop (www.petersfraserdunlop.com)

on behalf of the estate of Cecil Day Lewis.

Maura Dooley ‘Letters From Yorkshire’ reprinted with permission of Bloodaxe Books,

on behalf of the author. www.bloodaxebooks.com.

Charles Causley ‘Eden Rock’ from Collected Poems, Macmillan.

Seamus Heaney ‘Follower’ from Opened Ground by permission of Faber and Faber

Ltd.

Simon Armitage ‘Mother, any distance’ from A Book of Matches by permission of

Faber and Faber Ltd.

Carol Ann Duffy ‘Before You Were Mine’ Copyright © Carol Ann Duffy. Reproduced

by permission of Carol Ann Duffy c/o Rogers, Coleridge & White Ltd., 20 Powis

Mews, London W11 1JN.

Owen Sheers ‘Winter Swans’ Copyright © Owen Sheers 2005. Reproduced by

permission of the author c/o Rogers, Coleridge & White Ltd., 20 Powis Mews,

London W11 1JN.

Daljit Nagra ‘Singh Song!’ from Look We Have Coming to Dover! by permission of

Faber and Faber Ltd.

Andrew Waterhouse’s ‘Climbing My Grandfather’ is from his collection In (The Rialto,

2000).

Seamus Heaney ‘Storm on the Island’ from Opened Ground by permission of Faber

and Faber Ltd.

Ted Hughes ‘Bayonet Charge’ from Collected Poems by permission of Faber and

Faber Ltd.

Simon Armitage ‘Remains’ from The Not Dead by permission of Pomona.

Jane Weir ‘Poppies’ by permission of Templar Poetry Projects Ltd.

Carol Ann Duffy ‘War Photographer’ Copyright © Carol Ann Duffy. Reproduced by

permission of Carol Ann Duffy c/o Rogers, Coleridge & White Ltd., 20 Powis Mews,

London W11 1JN.

Imtiaz Dharker ‘Tissue’ reprinted with permission of Bloodaxe Books, on behalf of

the author. www.bloodaxebooks.com.

Carol Rumens ‘The émigree’ from Thinking of Skins by permission of Carol Rumens.

43

Beatrice Garland ‘Kamikaze’ from The Invention of Fireworks by permission of

Templar Poetry.

John Agard ‘Checking Out Me History’ copyright © by John Agard reproduced by

kind permission of John Agard c/o Caroline Sheldon Literary Agency Ltd.