Wednesday 22 August 2012

Which Side Are You On? [2.]

The long time
      growing lawn
                 anawim
    brute flowers  
Garden thick with
          bindweed couchgrass
       thistleheads (swollen
                  comedy thumbs)
          creeping buttercups
The future: bolted
            gone to seed
          and spreading
Uncommonly common
   flowers are all over
No place for getting
                the purchase
  on one anything
Just the red tatters
    blown down
               an uncleaned street
To catch a glimpse
What a green itch
         for other than just so

3 comments:

  1. Your beautiful poem has that bright, frail hope running through it, TC.

    My brother called my attention to another radical flowering from John Clare:

    To an insignificant flower, obscurely blooming in a lonely wild

    And though thou seem'st a weedling wild,
    Wild and neglected like me,
    Thou still art dear to Nature's child,
    And I will stop to notice thee.

    For oft, like thee, in wild retreat,
    Array'd in humble garb like thee,
    There's many a seeming weed proves sweet,
    As sweet as garden-flowers can be.

    And, like to thee, each seeming weed
    Flowers unregarded; like to thee,
    Without improvement, runs to seed,
    Wild and neglected like me.

    And like to thee, when Beauty's cloth'd
    In lowly raiment like to thee,
    Disdainful Pride, by Beauty loath'd,
    No beauties there can ever see.

    For, like to thee, my Emma blows,
    A flower like thee I dearly prize;
    And, like to thee, her humble clothes
    Hide every charm from prouder eyes.

    But though, like thee, a lowly flower,
    If fancied by a polish'd eye,
    She soon would bloom beyond my power,
    The finest flower beneath the sky.

    And, like to thee, lives many a swain
    With genious blest; but, like to thee,
    So humble, lowly, mean, and plain,
    No one will notice them, - or me.

    So, like to thee, they live unknown,
    Wild weeds obscure; and, like to thee,
    Their sweets are sweet to them alone:
    The only pleasure known to me.

    Yet when I'm dead, let's hope I have
    Some friends in store, as I'm to thee,
    That will find out my lowly grave,
    And heave a sigh to notice me.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Probably not a good idea to allow for a comparison between myself and Clare.

      Delete