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The Rattle Bag: The F & G 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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giselle

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Re: The Rattle Bag: The F & G Poems

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Hmm, but I am wondering Penny if you have one of these poppet dolls ... the creepy, witchy, voodoo kind ... maybe in your kitchen?? :P (sorry but its that time of year!)
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Penelope

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Re: The Rattle Bag: The F & G Poems

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No, I don't do sticking pins into people or effigies. Life has a way of sticking its own pins into folk, without my helping.

I do light a candle for people though, whereby I send positive vibes. That's because I believe in vibes and have been reading about a new science called Epigenetics which teaches us about the link between mind and matter. Studies of the biochemical effects of the brain's functioning show that all the cells of your body are affected by your thoughts.
Only those become weary of angling who bring nothing to it but the idea of catching fish.

He was born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world is mad....

Rafael Sabatini
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giselle

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Re: The Rattle Bag: The F & G Poems

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I've picked 3 poems to post rather than go in order, the first is a G and the second 2 are H's.

Girl
How are you so smooth-faced
So slender-waisted?
Have you braided the sun’s hair
Swept the moon’s courtyards clean?

I haven’t braided the sun’s hair
Or swept the moon’s courtyards
I stood outside and watched
Lightning dancing with thunder
Lightning outdanced thunder
By two or three apples
Four oranges

Anon
From the Serbian (trans. Anne Pennington)


‘The hand that signed the paper felled a city’
The hand that signed the paper felled a city;
Five sovereign fingers taxed the breath,
Doubled the globe of dead and halved the country;
These five kings did a king to death.

The mighty hand leads to a sloping shoulder,
The finger joints are cramped with chalk;
A goose quill has put an end to murder
That put an end to talk.

The hand that signed the treaty bred a fever,
And famine grew, and locusts came;
Great is the hand that holds dominion over
Man by a scribbled name.

The five kings count the dead but do not soften
The crusted wound nor stroke the brow;
A hand rules pity as a hand rules heaven;
Hands have no tears to flow.

Dylan Thomas

He Hears the Cry of the Sedge
I wander by the edge
Of this desolate lake
Where wind cries in the sedge:
Until the axle break
That keeps the stars in their round,
And hands hurl in the deep
The banners of East and West,
And the girdle of light is unbound,
Your breast will not lie by the breast
Of your beloved in sleep.


W.B. Yeats

As a translation, the first poem presumably picks up Serbian cultural references or queues (sp?). The last lines are curious and interesting. I'm normally partial to Dylan Thomas but this is not my favourite, although I like his closing lines. I like the Yeats poem most, the image of wind 'crying' in long grass around a desolate lake really speaks to me.
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giselle

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Re: The Rattle Bag: The F & G Poems

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A light hearted poem (sonnet) to finish off the G’s, actually it’s an ‘H’, but I like it.

Hares at Play
The birds are gone to bed the cows are still
And sheep lie panting on each old mole hill
An underneath the willows grey-green bough
Like toil a resting-lies the fallow plough
The timid hares throw daylights fear away
On the lanes road to dust and dance and play
Then dabble in the grain by nought deterred
To lick the dewfall from the barley’s beard
Then out they sturt again and round the hill
Like happy thoughts dance squat and loiter still
Till milking maidens in the early morn
Gingle their yokes and start them on their corn
Through well known beaten paths each nimbling hare
Sturts quick as fear-and seeks its hidden lair

John Clare
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