Blue-Butterfly Day - Robert Frost

It is blue-butterfly day here in spring,
And with these sky-flakes down in flurry on flurry
There is more unmixed color on the wing
Than flowers will show for days unless they hurry.

But these are flowers that fly and all but sing:
And now from having ridden out desire
They lie closed over in the wind and cling
Where wheels have freshly sliced the April mire.

Robert Frost (1874-1963)

photo gb: Silverstudded Blue

Bring me the Sunflower - Eugenio Montale

 

 (Portami il girasole ch'io lo trapianti)

Bring me the sunflower so I can transplant it

to my earth scorched with salt, 

so it can display all day to the azure mirrors 

of sky the anxiety of its yellow face. 

Dark things stretch towards brightness, 

bodies exhaust themselves in a flow 

of colours: this in music. To vanish 

is thus the hazard of venturing.

Bring me the plant that leads
where blond transparencies rise
where life dissolves like essence;
bring me the sunflower crazy with light.

Eugenio Montale, Italy, 1896-1981

William Butler Yeats

fisherman's house, Mors, photo gb.

 

 

 

The Ballad of Moll Magee
 (from the Wanderings of Oisin and Other Poems 1889)



Come round me, little childer;
There, don't fling stones at me
Because I mutter as I go;
But pity Moll Magee.

My man was a poor fisher
With shore lines in the say;
My work was saltin' herrings
The whole of the long day.

And sometimes from the Saltin' shed
I scarce could drag my feet,
Under the blessed moonlight,
Along thc pebbly street.

I'd always been but weakly,
And my baby was just born;
A neighbour minded her by day,
I minded her till morn.

I lay upon my baby;
Ye little childer dear,
I looked on my cold baby
When the morn grew frosty and clear.

A weary woman sleeps so hard!
My man grew red and pale,
And gave me money, and bade me go
To my own place, Kinsale.

He drove me out and shut the door.
And gave his curse to me;
I went away in silence,
No neighbour could I see.

The windows and the doors were shut,
One star shone faint and green,
The little straws were turnin round
Across the bare boreen.

I went away in silence:
Beyond old Martin's byre
I saw a kindly neighbour
Blowin' her mornin' fire.

She drew from me my story -
My money's all used up,
And still, with pityin', scornin' eye,
She gives me bite and sup.

She says my man will surely come
And fetch me home agin;
But always, as I'm movin' round,
Without doors or within,

Pilin' the wood or pilin' the turf,
Or goin' to the well,
I'm thinkin' of my baby
And keenin' to mysel'.

And Sometimes I am sure she knows
When, openin' wide His door,
God lights the stats, His candles,
And looks upon the poor.

So now, ye little childer,
Ye won't fling stones at me;
But gather with your shinin' looks
And pity Moll Magee.




William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) 

MEDITATIO - Ezra Pound

photo:gb, Randers Kunstmuseum.

Meditatio

When I carefully consider the curious habits of dogs
I am compelled to conclude
That man is the superior aninal

When I consider the curious habits of man
I confess, my friend, I am puzzled.



Ezra Pound 1885-1972 

a young Ezra Pound 1913 (wikipedia)

Was There a Time - Dylan Thomas

glass art Christina Bothwell /photo: gb

 Was there a time when dancers with their fiddles
In children's circuses could stay their troubles?
There was a time they could cry over books,
But time has sent its maggot on their track.
Under the arc of the sky they are unsafe.
What's never known is safest in this life.
Under the skysigns they who have no arms
have cleanest hands, and, as the heartless ghost
Alone's unhurt, so the blind man sees best.

Dylan Thomas (1914-1953)

Seamus Heaney (1939-2013) - The Tollundman/The Grauballeman

constructed scukll of the Grauballeman, Moesgaard Museum, Aarhus/ photo gb.

Seamus Heaney wrote also about the Grauballeman, who lies in Moesgaard Museum in Aarhus. The Tollundman lies in Silkeborg Museum, but Seamus Heaney changed it to Aarhus in his poem, because he meant it sounded better.



The Tollundman

The Tollundman, photo stig bachmann nielsen, naturplan.dk

I

Some day I will go to Aarhus
To see his peat-brown head,
The mild pods of his eye-lids,
His pointed skin cap.

In the flat country near by
Where they dug him out,
His last gruel of winter seeds
Caked in his stomach,

Naked except for
The cap, noose and girdle,
I will stand a long time.
Bridegroom to the goddess,

She tightened her torc on him
And opened her fen,
Those dark juices working
Him to a saint's kept body,

Trove of the turfcutters'
Honeycombed workings.
Now his stained face
Reposes at Aarhus.


II


I could risk blasphemy,
Consecrate the cauldron bog
Our holy ground and pray
Him to make germinate

The scattered, ambushed
Flesh of labourers,
Stockinged corpses
Laid out in the farmyards,

Tell-tale skin and teeth
Flecking the sleepers
Of four young brothers, trailed
For miles along the lines.

III


Something of his sad freedom
As he rode the tumbril
Should come to me, driving,
Saying the names

Tollund, Grauballe, Nebelgard,

Watching the pointing hands
Of country people,
Not knowing their tongue.

Out here in Jutland
In the old man-killing parishes
I will feel lost,
Unhappy and at home.

Seamus Heaney
13. April 1939 - 30. August 2013.

Summer Sun - Robert Louis Stevenson

   

 

 

 

 

 

Great is the sun, and wide he goes
Through empty heaven with repose;
And in the blue and glowing days
More thick than rain he showers his rays.

Though closer still the blinds we pull
To keep the shady parlour cool,
Yet he will find a chink or two
To slip his golden fingers through.

The dusty attic spider-clad
He, through the keyhole, maketh glad;
And through the broken edge of tiles
Into the laddered hay-loft smiles.

Meantime his golden face around
He bares to all the garden ground,
And sheds a warm and glittering look
Among the ivy's inmost nook.

Above the hills, along the blue,
Round the bright air with footing true,
To please the child, to paint the rose,
The gardener of the World, he goes. 

 

 Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)

 

 photo: gb, sunstripes, morning