POEMS - With Tongue In Cheek

[Eman]

Keith, she loved them and said you were a talented young man who feels and lives his words.

[keithgood838]

That's very gratifying, Eman. My thanks to you and your mum.
I look forward to posting more of my, and Longfellow's, stuff hereon.

[Eman]

You're very welcome Keith, and like I said you should have your stuff compiled in a book!!

[keithgood838]

Here's a favourite Matt Monro poem of mine, Eman.
I'm sure forum friends who have already read it won't
object to this reprise:

OMNIPRESENCE

When our spirits soared like birds set free,
or sank into paludal despair,
he was there.

When we were the praetorian guard of liberty,
or railed against some wars' wasteful futility,
he was there.

When we failed to capture that exquisite face,
or creatures needed saving from the human race,
he was there.

Especially in the delirium of love,
or the loss of loved ones to another sphere,
that soothing voice was there,
yet he was unaware ...

Keith Good

[Eman]

Keith, an awesome poem you wrote there. Yes it was written about our Matt, however it could apply to any singer/actor or just any non-celebrity. I think you summed up my feelings about some people and not necessarily singers that I care about in your poem.

[keithgood838]

I'm always fascinated, and flattered, by any reader's interpretation
of my words, Eman. Your kind response gives me food for thought.
I referred to Beyond The Hill on the Matt's World of Music thread
recently and I meant to post the following to underline the point
I was making:

BEYOND THE HILL
(adapted from the song
by Vic Lewis & Don Black)

Beyond the hill there lies some land,
love-steeped landscapes whereon
our home will stand;
and when we walk beyond the hill
our eyes will dilate with delight at the idyll.

Through tears-moved mists we'll see lost loves
all come and go,
then meet backstage with glee our hero Matt Monro ...
No Eden will be ours until
we find the home that lies somewhere
beyond the hill.

Keith Good

[Eman]

Wow!! I love that little spin on "Beyond The Hill", Keith. Like I said that was written with Matt in mind but could pertain to anyone's favourties celebrity, non-celebrity or just a loved one.

[keithgood838]

Matt's memorable version of First of May
has been on my mental turntable all day.

MAY

Hark! The sea-faring wild-fowl loud proclaim
My coming, and the swarming of the bees.
These are my heralds, and behold! My name
Is written in blossoms on the hawthorn trees.
I tell the mariner when to sail the seas;
I waft o'er all the land from far away
The breath and bloom of the Hesperides,
My birthplace. I am Maia. I am May

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

'Tis like the birthday of the world
When earth was born in bloom;
The light is made of many dyes
The air is all perfume:
There's crimson buds, and white and blue,
The very rainbow showers
Have turned to blossoms where they fell,
And sown the earth with flowers.

Thomas Hood (1799-1845)

May, Terpsicore of the calendar,
leading the dancing in her hawthorn crown,
nice-to-be-near wearing fragrant lavender
and complimenting apple-blossom gown.

From Calendar Characters

[Eman]

Keith, awesome retrospects on the 1st day of May,which is also my Dad's 82nd and Brother's 52nd birthdays!

[keithgood838]

Thanks Eman. Today is International Dawn Chorus Day.
It is surely one of the world's most unlifting sounds,
to be appreciated more than ever now, as species
are diminishing in number and some are threatened
with extinction. I have adapted the last line of the following
poem for the benefit of committed Matt Monro fans everywhere:

SOUNDS

The rousing welcome small birds give the dawn,
sung with feeling;
the pure exhilaration we feel
when bells are pealing.
And when the country-crier is heard
announcing Spring,
we're deaf to any dubious news
that bird might bring.
The urgent blare of hunting-horn,
the yelping chase;
a tenor voice attuned to heaven,
a rich-brown bass.
Music in laughter; grace notes that linger ...
Running on fingertips arpeggios;
the cosy feeling when a fireplace
crackles and glows.
The puppy-placid rolling of the sea
that licks the shore,
its metamorphosis of mood and lion-roar.
Shouted fanfares as kids at school
run out and play;
the slow silence that descends,
curtaining day.
If, of the world's great sounds
there were one choice,
I still think we would choose
Matt Monro's voice.

Keith Good

[ROBERT M.]

Lovely Keith

[keithgood838]

Thanks Robert. The spoilsport nature of recent British summers
continues in joyless mood with little sign of long sunny days on
the 2013 horizon. We need to invoke the lines of the nineteenth
century Northampton poet of the English countryside to remind
us of how our summers used to be:

SUMMER

Come we to the summer, to the summer we will come,
For the woods are full of bluebells and the hedges full of bloom.
And the crow is on the oak a-building of her nest,
And love is burning diamonds in my true lover's breast;
She sits beneath the whitethorn a-plaiting of her hair,
And I will to my true lover with fond request repair;
I will look upon her face, I will in her beauty rest,
And lay my aching weariness upon her lovely breast.

The clock-a-clay is creeping on the open bloom of May,
the merry bee in trampling the pinky threads all day,
And the chaffinch it is brooding on its grey mossy nest
In the whitethorn bush where I will lean upon my lover's breast;
I'll lean upon her breast and I'll whisper in her ear
That I cannot get a wink o' sleep for thinking of my dear;
I hunger at my meat and I daily fade away
Like the hedge rose that is broken in the heat of the day.

JOHN CLARE
(13 July 1793 - 20 May 1864)

[keithgood838]

At last! Courtesy of the relenting jet stream, we are currently enjoying
a sustained spell of fine weather here in Britain. Let us celebrate the fact
with another timeless poem by a great English poet:

SUMMER EVENING

The frog half fearful jumps across the path,
And little mouse that leaves its hole at eve
Nimbles with timid dread beneath a swath;
My rustling steps awhile their joys deceive,
Till past, and then the cricket sings more strong,
And grasshoppers in merry mood still wear
The short night weary with their fretting song.
Up from behind the molehill jumps the hare,
Cheat of his chosen bed, and from its bank
The yellowhammer flutters in short fears
From off its nest hid in the grasses rank,
And drops again when no more noise it hears.
Thus nature's human link and endless thrall,
Proud man, still seems the enemy of all.

JOHN CLARE (1793-1864)

[ROBERT M.]

Has been cool and cloudy near the east coast today Keith, and decidedly chilly tonight..........we have had a northerly air flow for the past three months

[keithgood838]

I hope the weather is now less bracing where the mighty Humber
meets the North Sea, Robert. At least you have the consolation
being the home of Philip Larkin's poetry - although that could be
described as a bit bracing also. Why don't we join the late great poet
on part of his journey, also at this more temperate time of year,
by train to London via the title poem from one of his slim volumes:

THE WHITSUN WEDDINGS

That Whitsun, I was late getting away:
Not till about
One-twenty on the sunlit Saturday
Did my three-quarters empty train pull out,
All windows down, all cushions hot, all sense
Of being in a hurry gone. We ran
Behind the backs of houses, crossed a street
Of blinding windscreens, smelt the fishdock; thence
The river's level drifting breadth began,
Where sky and Lincolnshire and water meet.

All afternoon, through the tall heat that slept
For miles inland,
A slow and stopping curve southwards we kept.
Wide farms went by, short-shadowed cattle, and
Canals with floatings of industrial froth;
A hothouse flashed uniquely: hedges dipped
And rose: and now and then a smell of grass
Displaced the reek of buttoned carriage-cloth
Until the next town, new and nondescript,
Approached with acres of dismantled cars ...

We hurried towards London, shuffling gouts of steam.
Now fields were building plots, and poplars cast
Long shadows over major roads, and for
Some fifty minutes, that would seem

Just long enough to settle hats and say
'I nearly died',
A dozen marriages got under way.
They watched the landscape, sitting side by side
-An odeon went past, a cooling tower,
And someone running up to bowl - and none
Thought of the others they would never meet
Or how their lives would all contain this hour.
I thought of London spread out in the sun,
Its postal districts packed like squares of wheat ...

PHILIP LARKIN (1922-1985)