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This is a poem for someone
who is juggling her life.
Be still sometimes.
Be still sometimes.
It needs repeating
over and over
to catch her attention
over and over
because someone juggling her life
finds it difficult to hear.
Be still sometimes.
Be still sometimes.
Let it all fall sometimes.
-Rose Cook
Found on the artpropelled blog, traced back to Calm Things (where I also found a link to Mary Ruefle reading her "28 Short Lectures" - watch them here; they start with "Why all our literary pursuits are useless" - and I commend to you the one on Shakespeare.)
An analysis of Rose Cook's poem is here, and the book it comes from, "Notes from a Bright Field", is available here.
Rose Cook (www.rosecook.wordpress.com) lives in south-west England. She is one of the Apples & Snakes poets and has performed and presented her work in many places in the UK, including the Soho Theatre in London, the Bristol Poetry Festival and the North Devon Festival. Her work has been published in various magazines and collections, including her own collections In 2009, HappenStance published Rose’s collection Everyday Festival (2009), Taking Flight (2009), and Notes from a Bright Field (2013). She has run writing workshops with older people and offers poems for reading aloud at the Totnes Memory Cafe. She is also a photographer and has worked as a teacher, oral historian, Person Centred Therapist and supervisor.
ReplyDeleteA waste of time
I do not drink
But I am living under this mountain
That might crush the life out of me
Any time, any day
So, I drink anyway.
Lucifer, Brightest of Bright Angels, stuttered out
"'I will not serve!'”
And that is enough, and more than enough, for me
To condemn all the big words like ‘humanity’.
I will not serve that in which I no longer believe
Whether it call itself my race, my nationality or my religion
Too much grandiosity dims the soul
Makes us old.
I hear the wise ones pleading, pleading when on fire,
Just so much screaming, as the flames get higher:
Hebane, belladonna, mandrake, datura
All of these, like mescaline, can see right through yer.
A broom, a pitchfork, a basket, or a snake
The old religion of love
For love’s old sake
The beautiful Cathars'
Heard the rumble far below
Looked at the surface, saw nothing but snow.
Hares' prints lead the way to folly
Red berries on the christmas holly:
I shall go into a hare,
With sorrow and sych and meickle, meckle care;
And I shall go in the Devil's name,
Ay while I go, I come home again.
Sometimes phantasma
Take my wits away
Sometimes for a minute
Often for a day
Glad to be rid of them
Pfff they are gone.
My wits, for a minute,
My wits, for a song.