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The Rattle Bag: The S Poems

A platform to express and share your enthusiasm and passion for poetry. What are your treasured poems and poets? Don't hesitate to showcase the poems you've penned yourself!
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Saffron

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The Rattle Bag: The S Poems

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345. "The Sad Boy," Laura Riding
346. "The Saginaw Song," Theodore Roethke
347. "Saint Francis and the Sow," Galway Kinnell
348. "Sandpiper," Elizabeth Bishop
349. "The Scholar," Austin Clarke
350. "Scotland Small?" Hugh MacDiarmid
351. "Sea-Change," John Masefield
352. "A Sea-Chantey," Derek Walcott
353. "The Seafarer," Ezra Pound
354. "Sea-Hawk," Richard Eberhart
355. "Season Song," Anon
356. "Sea-Weed," D. H. Lawrence
357. "Self-Pity," D. H. Lawrence
358. "The Self-Unseeing," Thomas Hardy
359. "The Send-Off," Wilfred Owen
360. "Senex," John Betjeman
361. "The Seven," Anon
362. "'Seventy feet down,'" Philip Larkin
363. "The Seventh," Attila Jószef
364. "She and I," Norman Cameron
365. "Sheep," W. H. Davies
366. "'She is the fairies' midwife, and she comes,'" William Shakespeare
367. "The Shooting of Dan McGrew," Robert Service
368. "The Shooting of John Dillinger Outside the Biograph Theater, July 22 1934," David Wagoner
369. "Shroud," George Mackay Brown
370. "The Sick Rose," William Blake
371. "'the silver swan, who living had no note,'" Orlando Gibbons
372. "Similes for Two Political Characters of 1819," Percy Bysshe Shelley
373. "'Since there's no help, come, let us kiss and part,'" Michael Drayton
374. "Sir Patrick Spens," Anon
375. "Sir Walter Ralegh to His Son," Sir Walter Ralegh
376. "The Six Strings," Federico García Lorca
377. "'Slow, slow, fresh fount, keep time with my salt teares,'" Ben Jonson
378. "The Smile," William Blake
379. "Snake," D. H. Lawrence
380. "Solitude," Tomas Transtromer
381. "Song: I Hid My Love," John Clare
382. "Song for the Clatter-Bones," F. R. Higgins
383. "Song for the Head," George Peele
384. "Songs for a Colored Singer," Elizabeth Bishop
385. "Sonnet," Dante
386. "Sounds of the Day," Norman MacCaig
387. "Spring," Gerard Manley Hopkins
388. "Spring and Fall," Gerard Manley Hopkins
389. "'Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,'" W. H. Auden
390. "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," Robert Frost
391. "Strange Meeting," Wilfred Owen
392. "The Streets of Laredo," Anon
393. "A Strong Wind," Austin Clarke
394. "A Survey," William Stafford
395. "Swedes," Edward Thomas
396. "Sweeney Praises the Trees," Anon
397. "Sweet Suffolk Owl," Thomas Vautor
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realiz

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Re: The Rattle Bag: The S Poems

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Here is an interesting poem. It achieves a loving and almost sensual feel with a man and a sow and the idea of this 'something' represented by a bud. A universal love?

St. Francis And The Sow

The bud
stands for all things,
even those things that don't flower,
for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;
though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on its brow
of the flower
and retell it in words and in touch
it is lovely
until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;
as St. Francis
put his hand on the creased forehead
of the sow, and told her in words and in touch
blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow
began remembering all down her thick length,
from the earthen snout all the way
through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of
the tail,
from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine
down through the great broken heart
to the blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering
from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking
and blowing beneath them:
the long, perfect loveliness of sow.

Galway Kinnell
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giselle

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Re: The Rattle Bag: The S Poems

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My guess is that this poem refers to St Francis, the Catholic saint, and possibly that the sow represents Catholicism .. could be read as praise of St Francis and his love of the church and selflessness, but I think it could also be read as a crack at the Catholic Church. If this is correct (and I could be completely wrong), then I wonder what the "fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths" refers too?
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realiz

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Re: The Rattle Bag: The S Poems

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St Francis of Assisi is the patron saint of animals. He talked and prayed to animals. I did not get the feelings from this poem that it was a crack. Here is another good poem by Galway Kinnell and it has, to me, that same feel of love and sensuality along with everyday life.

After Making Love We Hear Footsteps

For I can snore like a bullhorn
or play loud music
or sit up talking with any reasonably sober Irishman
and Fergus will only sink deeper
into his dreamless sleep, which goes by all in one flash,
but let there be that heavy breathing
or a stifled come-cry anywhere in the house
and he will wrench himself awake
and make for it on the run—as now, we lie together,
after making love, quiet, touching along the length of our bodies,
familiar touch of the long-married,
and he appears—in his baseball pajamas, it happens,
the neck opening so small he has to screw them on—
and flops down between us and hugs us and snuggles himself to sleep,
his face gleaming with satisfaction at being this very child.

In the half darkness we look at each other
and smile
and touch arms across this little, startlingly muscled body—
this one whom habit of memory propels to the ground of his making,
sleeper only the mortal sounds can sing awake,
this blessing love gives again into our arms.
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giselle

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Re: The Rattle Bag: The S Poems

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I had forgotten that St Francis is the patron saint of animals so this poem makes more sense now. Both of these poems are filled with everyday love, I particularly like the line in the second poem "his face gleaming with satisfaction at being this very child", quite powerful.
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realiz

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Re: The Rattle Bag: The S Poems

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A Survey

Down in the Frantic Mountains
they say a canyon winds
crammed with hysterical water
hushed by placid sands.

They tried to map that country,
sent out a field boot crew,
but the river surged at night
and ripped the map in two.

So they sent out wildcats, printed
with intricate lines of fur,
to put their paws with such finesse
the ground was unaware.

Now only the wildcats know it,
patting a tentative paw,
soothing the hackles of ridges,
pouring past rocks and away.

The sun rakes that land each morning;
the mountains buck and scream.
By night the wildcats pad by
gazing it quiet again.

William Stafford
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