PROUD PROW

‘Thames canal boat’ …..     Photo – WHB  2019   ©

Not quite
the chair she sat in
the burnished gold
Of its throne
proud prow
so prominent

promising power
and privilege
but
nevertheless
a statement
burned on the water
of its thames-side berth

a metaphor
proudly protesting
the humility of
being ordinary
of being old
yet proud with
the magnificence of age
the decadence of time
the innocence of resurrection

NOTE:   T.S.Eliot, in his poem, ‘The Waste Land’ (Lines 77-79:  Part II. A Game of Chess) quotes Enorbarbus, who, inAct II, Scene 2 of Shakespeare’s tragedy ‘Antony and Cleopatra’ describes Cleopatra’s royal barge as it appeared when she first pursued Marc Antony:’The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne, Burned in the water. The poop was beaten gold.’

‘Thames canal boat’ …..     Photo – WHB  2019   ©

 

T. S. Eliot: Pastiche #2

Photo by cottonbro on Pexels.com

Each day this week I am publishing a short 4-line verse, each one commencing with a well-known line, sometimes adapted to suit the context, from a renowned published poem.  The general theme is that of Isolation.

( ‘April is the cruelest month’ From ‘The Waste Land by T.S.Eliot )

On T. S. Eliot: Pastiche #2

 

April is the cruellest month

But I’m glad that I’m alive.

I tell myself I’m fit and fine,

You’d never guess I’m eighty-five.

 

Prufrock’s Lovesong Revisited

I stumbled into Prufrock’s life
At the age of twenty-one
A loner and a loser
He plucked a minor chord
How sad and sorry a life can waste
And end before death comes

Now, four twenty-ones gone,

As I stir my tedious cup
And knife still slices scone
Better by far to repeat his theme
Let daily chore recur
As daily deeds do
To live my life and measure it
In Costa coffee spoons

The fire and the rose

The ‘Unknown Remembered Gate’,  Weybridge, Surrey,UK. … Photo – WHB – 2015

By T.S.Eliot

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, remembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always –
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.

The above is an extract taken from the very end of the last of  T.S.Eliot’s ‘Four Quartets’, called ‘Little Gidding’.    Little Gidding itself is a small Anglican community in Huntingdonshire, England, and was established there in the 17th century. just before the English Civil War, during which the community was broken up and scattered.

‘The Four Quartets’is a series of 4 poems which discuss time, perspective, humanity, and salvation. It was first published in September 1942 after being delayed for over a year because of the air-raids on Great Britain during World War II and Eliot’s declining health.

The poem uses the combined image of fire and Pentecostal fire to emphasise the need for purification and purgation. According to the poet, humanity’s flawed understanding of life and turning away from God leads to a cycle of warfare, but this can be overcome by recognising the lessons of the past.

Little Gidding focuses on the unity of past, present, and future, and claims that understanding this unity is necessary for salvation. In Eliot’s imagery the resolution of mankind’s turmoil will be achieved by the coming together of the fire and the rose.

 

LIFE FORCE – TWO

Pen & Ink drawing of Andrea Mantegna’s ‘Samson and Delilah’ Oil on Canvas, c.1500, in the National Gallery, London. . . .   WHB – 1994

“These fragments I must shore against my ruin.”

I wish to put a hold on life,
freeze it at this instant;
stop my headlong race to reach
some intangible resolution
before life, and with it death,
overtake me.

Yet, a wanton fervour
forces me to write;
a defining greed pushes me on;
a need to achieve,
to find the telling phrase
to verify my competence.

There is a frenzy on me,
a new lust for life
alien to my past;
but still I draw on that very past
to colour the present
and steer me into my aspired future.

My imperative is to leave an imprint
on the foreshore of my life
before its tide recedes.
Regardless of renown,
I wish to leave a noble fragment of myself
with a proven hint of worth
to carry me beyond my grave.

Such fragments,
the flotsam of my endeavours,
washed up  and left
for those seashore scavengers,
those ardent beachcombers
of other people’s detritus;
my scraps left for Autolycus to pick over.
I need the harvest of my life to be
another’s prized perception,
their acquired inspiration.

And yet I know I must desist,
I must allow those morsels,
slivers of myself already extant,
to speak for themselves,
to represent me to the future.

I must accept
that already
I have utilised my credit with the past
and created my memorial for the future.

“These fragments I must shore against my ruin.”

The quotation appearing at the beginning and end of my poem is, slightly adapted, taken from T.S.Eliot’s poem  “The Wasteland”.

 

The impetus to write my two ‘Life Force’ poems – this second of them in free verse – also derives from Andrew Marvel’s poem ‘To His Coy Mistress’ – in particular, many readers will recall the oft repeated couplet from this poem . . .

But at my back I always hear

Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near;

 

Delilah, of course, took away Samson’s Life Force, his strength, by cutting off his hair whilst asleep.