For Hoddy...............

[mint]

After hearing you say you love Simon Armitage, I have searched out a couple of poems that I think will appeal to you.  You might know them already, of course, but it's always a pleasure to read and re-read one's favourites, don't you think?

Here's Charles Causeley's most well-known poem and he was, of course, also a teacher like you, Hoddy[:)]

Timothy Winters

Timothy Winters comes to school

With eyes as wide as a football pool,

Ears like bombs and teeth like splinters:

A blitz of a boy is Timothy Winters.

His belly is white, his neck is dark,

And his hair is an exclamation mark.

His clothes are enough to scare a crow

And through his britches the blue winds blow.

When teacher talks he won't hear a word

And he shoots down dead the arithmetic-bird,

He licks the patterns off his plate

And he's not even heard of the Welfare State.

Timothy Winters has bloody feet

And he lives in a house on Suez Street,

He sleeps in a sack on the kitchen floor

And they say there aren't boys like him any more.

Old man Winters likes his beer

And his missus ran off with a bombardier.

Grandma sits in the grate with a gin

And Timothy's dosed with an aspirin.

The Welfare Worker lies awake

But the law's as tricky as a ten-foot snake,

So Timothy Winters drinks his cup

And slowly goes on growing up.

At Morning Prayers the Master helves

For children less fortunate than ourselves,

And the loudest response in the room is when

Timothy Winters roars "Amen!"

So come one angel, come on ten:

Timothy Winters says "Amen

Amen amen amen amen."

Timothy Winters, Lord. 

Amen!

To quote Causley himself

"People always ask me whether this was a real boy. My God, He certainly

was. Poor old boy, I don't know where he is now. I was thunderstuck when

people thought I'd made it up! -he was a real bloke. Poor little

devil."

And here is Edward Thomas.  A poignant poem as he was killed in the great war in September 1917, so that the fag gots indeed did not warm him that winter.

There they stand, on their ends, the fifty fag gots

That once were underwood of hazel and ash

In Jenny Pink's copse. Now, by the hedge

Close packed, they make a thicket fancy alone

Can creep through with the mouse and wren. Next spring

A blackbird or robin will nest there,

Accustomed to them, thinking they will remain

Whatever is for ever to a bird:

This Spring it is too late; the swift has come.

'Twas a hot day for carrying them up:

Better they will never warm me, though they must

Light several Winters' fires. Before they are done

The war will have ended, many other things

Have ended, maybe, that I can no more

Foresee or more control than robin and wren.

And finally, Auden, with this poem that I thought a lot about during the months of my illness and treatment in the last 2 years.

Musée des Beaux Arts (1940)

About suffering they were never wrong,

The Old Masters: how well they understood

Its human position; how it takes place

While someone else is eating or opening a window or just

walking dully along;

How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting

For the miraculous birth, there always must be

Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating

On a pond at the edge of the wood:

They never forgot

That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course

Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot

Where the dogs go on with their doggy

life and the torturer’s horse

Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Breughel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away

Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may

Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,

But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone

As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green

Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen

Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,

had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

[Gardengirl]

Thank you, Mint, all poems that I know and reread often. Especially Charles Causley’s Timothy Winters, which reminds me of so many children I knew who came from such backgrounds.

Another teacher here, who taught children with learning and behaviour problems and those who didn’t thrive, for 30+ years.

[mint]

GG, as you like Musée des Beaux Arts, here is one about the same painting:

Landscape with the Fall of Icarus

William Carlos Williams

According to Brueghel

when Icarus fell

it was spring

a farmer was ploughing

his field

the whole pageantry

of the year was

awake tingling

with itself

sweating in the sun

that melted

the wings' wax

unsignificantly

off the coast

there was

a splash quite unnoticed

this was

Icarus drowning

I really like this theme of the world carrying on with its affairs so that however extreme our own circumstances, they cause not a ripple in everyone else's life.  I find that soothing.

[Gardengirl]

Mint, thank you for that poem, which I hadn’t come across.

Yes, the world carrying on as normal despite great or small events is somewhat reassuring.