Year 8 Poetry Anthology:

Relationships

Anthology Contents

Family Relationships:

Mid Term Break, Seamus Heaney

Nettles, Vernon Scannell

On My First Sonne, John Donne

Brothers, Andrew Forster

Praise Song for My Mother, Grace Nichols

Catrin, Gillian Clarke

Harmonium, Simon Armitage

Romantic Relationships:

Havisham, Carol Ann Duffy

Quickdraw, Carol Ann Duffy

La Belle Dame Sans Merci, John Keats

Isabella and the Pot of Basil (extract), John Keats

Mid-Term Break, Seamus Heaney

I sat all morning in the college sick bayCounting bells knelling classes to a close.At two o'clock our neighbours drove me home.

In the porch I met my father crying--He had always taken funerals in his stride--And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow.

The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pramWhen I came in, and I was embarrassedBy old men standing up to shake my hand

And tell me they were 'sorry for my trouble,'Whispers informed strangers I was the eldest,Away at school, as my mother held my hand

In hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs.At ten o'clock the ambulance arrivedWith the corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses.

Next morning I went up into the room. SnowdropsAnd candles soothed the bedside; I saw himFor the first time in six weeks. Paler now,

Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple,He lay in the four foot box as in his cot.No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.

A four foot box, a foot for every year.

Nettles, Vernon Scannell

My son aged three fell in the nettle bed.

‘Bed’ seemed a curious name for those green spears,

That regiment of spite behind the shed:

It was no place for rest. With sobs and tears

The boy came seeking comfort and I saw

White blisters beaded on his tender skin.

We soothed him till his pain was not so raw.

At last he offered us a watery grin,

And then I took my hook and honed the blade

And went outside and slashed in fury with it

Till not a nettle in that fierce parade

Stood upright any more. Next task: I lit

A funeral pyre to burn the fallen dead.

But in two weeks the busy sun and rain

Had called up tall recruits behind the shed:

My son would often feel sharp wounds again.

On My First Sonne, John Donne

Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy;

My sinne was too much hope of thee, lov'd boy;

Seven yeeres tho' wert lent to me, and I thee pay,

Exacted by thy fate, on the just day.

O, could I loose all father, now. For why

Will man lament the state he should envie?

To have so soone scap'd worlds and fleshes rage,

And, if no other miserie, yet age?

Rest in soft peace, and, ask'd, say here doth lye

Ben Johnson his best piece of poetrie.

For whose sake, hence-forth, all his vowes be such,

As what he loves may never like too much.

Brothers, Andrew Forster

Saddled with you for the afternoon, me and Paul

Ambled across the threadbare field to the bus-stop,

Talking over Sheffield Wednesday's chances in the cup

While you skipped beside us in your ridiculous tank-top,

Spouting six-year-old views on Rotherham United.

Suddenly you froze, said you hadn't any bus fare.

I sighed, said you should go and ask Mum

And while you windmilled home I looked at Paul.

His smile, like mine, said I was nine and he was ten

And we must stroll the town, doing what grown-ups do.

As a bus crested the hill we chased Olympic Gold.

Looking back I saw you spring towards the gate,

Your hand holding out what must have been a coin.

I ran on, unable to close the distance I'd set in motion.

Praise Song for My Mother, Grace Nichols

 

You werewater to medeep and bold and fathoming

You weremoon’s eye to mepull and grained and mantling

You weresunrise to merise and warm and streaming

You werethe fishes red gill to methe flame tree’s spread to methe crab’s leg/the fried plantain smellreplenishing replenishing

Go to your wide futures, you said

Catrin, Gillian Clarke

I can remember you, child,

As I stood in a hot, white

Room at the window watching

The people and cars taking

Turn at the traffic lights.

I can remember you, our first

Fierce confrontation, the tight

Red rope of love which we both

Fought over. It was a square

Environmental blank, disinfected

Of paintings or toys. I wrote

All over the walls with my

Words, coloured the clean squares

With the wild, tender circles

Of our struggle to become

Separate. We want, we shouted,

To be two, to be ourselves.

Neither won nor lost the struggle

In the glass tank clouded with feelings

Which changed us both. Still I am fighting

You off, as you stand there

With your straight, strong, long

Brown hair and your rosy,

Defiant glare, bringing up

From the heart's pool that old rope,

Tightening about my life,

Trailing love and conflict,

As you ask may you skate

In the dark, for one more hour.

Harmonium, Simon Armitage

The Farrand Chapelette was gathering dustin the shadowy porch of Marsden Church.And was due to be bundled off to the skip.Or was mine, for a song, if I wanted it.

Sunlight, through stained glass, which day to daycould beatify saints and raise the dead,had aged the harmonium’s softwood caseand yellowed the fingernails of its keys.And one of its notes had lost its tongue,and holes were worn in both the treadleswhere the organist’s feet, in grey, woollen socksand leather-soled shoes, had pedalled and pedalled.

But its hummed harmonics still struck a chord:for a hundred years that organ had stoodby the choristers’ stalls, where father and son,each in their time, had opened their throatsand gilded finches – like high notes – had streamed out.

Through his own blue cloud of tobacco smog,with smoker’s fingers and mottled thumbs,he comes to help me cart it away.And we carry it flat, laid on its back.And he, being him, can’t help but saythat the next box I’ll shoulder through this navewill bear the freight of his own dead weight.And I, being me, then mouth in replysome shallow or sorry phrase or wordtoo starved of breath to make itself heard.

Havisham, Carol Ann Duffy

Beloved sweetheart bastard. Not a day since thenI haven’t wished him dead. Prayed for itso hard I’ve dark green pebbles for eyes,ropes on the back of my hands I could strangle with.

Spinster. I stink and remember. Whole daysin bed cawing Nooooo at the wall; the dressyellowing, trembling if I open the wardrobe;the slewed mirror, full-length, her, myself, who did this

to me? Puce curses that are sounds not words.Some nights better, the lost body over me,my fluent tongue in its mouth in its earthen down till I suddenly bite awake. Love’s

hate behind a white veil; a red balloon burstingin my face. Bang. I stabbed at a wedding cake.Give me a male corpse for a long slow honeymoon.Don’t think it’s only the heart that b-b-b-breaks.

Quickdraw, Carol Ann Duffy

I wear the two, the mobile and the landline phones,like guns, slung from the pockets on my hips. I’m allalone. You ring, quickdraw, your voice a pelletin my ear, and hear me groan.

You’ve wounded me.Next time, you speak after the tone. I twirl the phone,then squeeze the trigger of my tongue, wide of the mark.You choose your spot, then blast me

through the heart.

And this is love, high noon, calamity, hard liqourin the old Last Chance saloon. I show the mobileto the sheriff; in my boot, another one’s

concealed. You text them both at once. I reel.Down on my knees, I fumble for the phone,read the silver bullets of your kiss. Take this …and this … and this … and this … and this …

La Belle Dame Sans Merci, John Keats

I

'O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,    Alone and palely loitering?The sedge is wither'd from the lake,            And no birds sing.

II

'O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,    So haggard and so woe-begone?The squirrel's granary is full,            And the harvest's done.

III

'I see a lily on thy brow    With anguish moist and fever dew;And on thy cheeks a fading rose            Fast withereth too.'

IV

'I met a lady in the meads,    Full beautiful—a faery's child,Her hair was long, her foot was light,            And her eyes were wild.

V

'I made a garland for her head,    And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;She look'd at me as she did love,            And made sweet moan.

VI

'I set her on my pacing steed    And nothing else saw all day long,For sideways would she lean, and sing            A faery's song.

VII

'She found me roots of relish sweet,    And honey wild and manna dew,And sure in language strange she said,            "I love thee true!"

VIII

'She took me to her elfin grot,    And there she wept and sigh'd fill sore;And there I shut her wild, wild eyes            With kisses four.

IX

'And there she lulled me asleep,    And there I dream'd—Ah! woe betide!The latest dream I ever dream'd            On the cold hill's side.

X

'I saw pale kings and princes too,Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;They cried—"La belle Dame sans Merci            Hath thee in thrall!"

XI

'I saw their starved lips in the gloam    With horrid warning gaped wide,And I awoke and found me here,            On the cold hill's side.

XII

'And this is why I sojourn here    Alone and palely loitering,Though the sedge is wither'd from the lake,            And no birds sing.'

Opening of Isabella and the Pot of Basil, John Keats

I.

FAIR Isabel, poor simple Isabel!

  Lorenzo, a young palmer in Love’s eye!

They could not in the self-same mansion dwell

  Without some stir of heart, some malady;

They could not sit at meals but feel how well

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  It soothed each to be the other by;

They could not, sure, beneath the same roof sleep

But to each other dream, and nightly weep.

 

II.

With every morn their love grew tenderer,

  With every eve deeper and tenderer still;

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He might not in house, field, or garden stir,

  But her full shape would all his seeing fill;

And his continual voice was pleasanter

  To her, than noise of trees or hidden rill;

Her lute-string gave an echo of his name,

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She spoilt her half-done broidery with the same.

 

III.

He knew whose gentle hand was at the latch,

  Before the door had given her to his eyes;

And from her chamber-window he would catch

  Her beauty farther than the falcon spies;

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And constant as her vespers would he watch,

  Because her face was turn’d to the same skies;

And with sick longing all the night outwear,

To hear her morning-step upon the stair.

IV.

A whole long month of May in this sad plight

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  Made their cheeks paler by the break of June:

“To morrow will I bow to my delight,

  “To-morrow will I ask my lady’s boon.”—

“O may I never see another night,

  “Lorenzo, if thy lips breathe not love’s tune.”—

        30

So spake they to their pillows; but, alas,

Honeyless days and days did he let pass;

 

V.

Until sweet Isabella’s untouch’d cheek

  Fell sick within the rose’s just domain,

Fell thin as a young mother’s, who doth seek

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  By every lull to cool her infant’s pain:

“How ill she is,” said he, “I may not speak,

  “And yet I will, and tell my love all plain:

“If looks speak love-laws, I will drink her tears,

“And at the least ’twill startle off her cares.”