Seamus Heaney: Personal Helicon
As a child, they could not keep me from wells
And old pumps with buckets and windlasses.
I loved the dark drop, the trapped sky, the smells
Of waterweed, fungus and dank moss.
Audio: Robert Frost reads ‘West-Running Brook’ and ‘The Death of the Hired Man’ (with texts)
‘Home is the place where, when you have to go there,
They have to take you in.’
Robert Frost: The Fear
A lantern light from deeper in the barn
Shone on a man and woman in the door
And threw their lurching shadows on a house
Near by, all dark in every glossy window.
T.S. Eliot: Rhapsody on a Windy Night
The memory throws up high and dry
A crowd of twisted things
Robert Frost: Provide, Provide
The witch that came (the withered hag)
To wash the steps with pail and rag
Was once the beauty Abishag,
The picture pride of Hollywood.
Robert Frost: In a Disused Graveyard
The ones who living come today
To read the stones and go away
Tomorrow dead will come to stay
Robert Frost: Reluctance
The leaves are all dead on the ground,
Save those that the oak is keeping
Michael Simms: Blue Notes
I think of Fats Waller whose left hand leaped down the keys, showing the path for every jazz pianist who followed, including the great Art Tatum and the minor Billy Joel.
Robert Frost: The Need of Being Versed in Country Things
Now the chimney was all of the house that stood,
Like a pistil after the petals go.
Gary Margolis: Ending the War
one morning
in August, she can walk
away from her fury
of pines, and catch
her breath
Ed Bieber: All At Once
After weeks of waiting patiently
for the first dandelion to appear,
we opened our door on a shocking
sea of vibrant, yellow, near-stemless
lion’s teeth.
Robert Wrigley: The Consciousness of Everything
That time’s lost now, when a stone could hurt,
when a feather missed its wing,
when sky kissed clouds and grass kissed dirt
and nothing thought itself just a thing.
Robert Frost: For Once, Then, Something
Others taunt me with having knelt at well-curbs
Always wrong to the light, so never seeing
Deeper down in the well…
Robert Frost: Storm Fear
I count our strength,
Two and a child,
Those of us not asleep subdued to mark
How the cold creeps as the fire dies at length…
Vox Populi 