Divorce Poems
 

I'd love to gather another of our Sphere mini-anthologies, this time of poets who have written memorably about divorce. Springing immediately to my mind are W.D. Snodgrass, Alan Shapiro and Tony Hecht, in See Naples and Die. I'd love for you guys to post your favorites; I'll post some Snodgrass when I get a chance. Thanks,

Chris

Oooo! Oooo! Teacher, pick me! I raised my hand first!

Julie Kane's "Particle Physics," on The Writer's Almanac two weeks ago:
http://writersalmanac.publicradio.or...ate=2009/09/16

Craig Raine's poem immediately jumps to mind. I really like it, and it always moves me when I get to the end:


The Onion, Memory

Divorced, but friends again at last,
we walk old ground together
in bright blue uncomplicated weather.
We laugh and pause
to hack to bits these tiny dinosaurs,
prehistoric, crenelated, cast
between the tractor ruts in mud.

On the green, a junior Douglas Fairbanks,
swinging on the chestnut's unlit chandelier,
defies the corporation spears -
a single rank around the bole,
rusty with blood.
Green, tacky phalluses curve up, romance
A gust - the old flag blazes on its pole.

In the village bakery
the pastry babies pass
from milky slump to crusty cadaver,
from crib to coffin - without palaver.
All's over in a flash,
too silently...

Tonight the arum lilies fold
back napkins monogrammed in gold,
crisp and laundered fresh.
Those crustaceous gladioli, on the sly,
reveal the crimson flower-flesh
inside their emerald armor plate.
The uncooked herrings blink a tearful eye.
The candles palpitate.
The Oistrakhs bow and scrape
in evening dress, on Emi-tape.

Outside the trees are bending over backwards
to please the wind: the shining sword
grass flattens on its belly.
The white-thorn's frillies offer no resistance.
In the fridge, a heart-shaped jelly
strives to keep a sense of balance.

I slice up the onions. You sew up a dress.
This is the quiet echo - flesh -
white muscle on white muscle,
intimately folded skin,
finished with a satin rustle.
One button only to undo, sewn up with shabby thread.
It is the onion, memory,
that makes me cry.

Because there's everything and nothing to be said,
the clock with hands held up before its face,
stammers softly on, trying to complete a phrase -
while we, together and apart,
repeat unfinished gestures got by heart.

And afterwards, I blunder with the washing on the line -
headless torsos, faceless lovers, friends of mine.
.
.

This was off to a flying start!

Petra, that was a terrific poem and I hadn't seen it. Thanks for posting.

And Julie Kane's poem is that rare thing--memorable. It will pop up in my mind at intervals in future days, I don't doubt it.

And W. D. Snodgrass to be brought to the fore--the poets of his day were important to me, a couple of small anthologies kept me in touch with poetry when I lived in an obscurey foreign village with three children under the age of four and not a library or bookstore with English books for miles and miles and miles.

Heart's Needle is the great one of the century, but I'll leave that to Chris. Berryman has some, but everyone will think of those.

So let's go to Dryden:

Why should a foolish marriage vow,
Which long ago was made,
Oblige us to each other now
When passion is decay'd?
We loved, and we loved, as long as we could,
Till our love was loved out in us both:
But our marriage is dead, when the pleasure is fled:
'Twas pleasure first made it an oath.

If I have pleasures for a friend,
And farther love in store,
What wrong has he whose joys did end,
And who could give no more?
'Tis a madness that he should be jealous of me,
Or that I should bar him of another:
For all we can gain is to give our selves pain,
When neither can hinder the other.


Thanks,

Bill

Not Going to See the Movie About a Nuclear Holocaust's Aftermath
by Philip Dacey

Here. In the way
I turned away from my wife
is all the horror
I need to consider.

A great white light
blinded me
and I wandered for years
in a desert.

I would tell you how
eventually
the green place
came to meet me,

but that would be a lie.
This poem
is radioactive.
I am sorry.

There's George Meredith's sonnet sequence about the failure of a marriage, Modern Love. Here are the first and last of the sequence (they are 16-line sonnets, by the way):

1.
By this he knew she wept with waking eyes:
That, at his hand's light quiver by her head,
The strange low sobs that shook their common bed
Were called into her with a sharp surprise,
And strangely mute, like little gasping snakes,
Dreadfully venomous to him. She lay
Stone-still, and the long darkness flowed away
With muffled pulses. Then, as midnight makes
Her giant heart of Memory and Tears
Drink the pale drug of silence, and so beat
Sleep's heavy measure, they from head to feet
Were moveless, looking through their dead black years,
By vain regret scrawled over the blank wall.
Like sculptured effigies they might be seen
Upon their marriage-tomb, the sword between;
Each wishing for the sword that severs all.

50.
Thus piteously Love closed what he begat:
The union of this ever-diverse pair!
These two were rapid falcons in a snare,
Condemned to do the flitting of the bat.
Lovers beneath the singing sky of May,
They wandered once; clear as the dew on flowers:
But they fed not on the advancing hours:
Their hearts held cravings for the buried day.
Then each applied to each that fatal knife,
Deep questioning, which probes to endless dole.
Ah, what a dusty answer gets the soul
When hot for certainties in this our life! --
In tragic hints here see what evermore
Moves dark as yonder midnight ocean's force,
Thundering like ramping hosts of warrior horse,
To throw that faint thin line upon the shore!

I think Donne has a poem about an unhappy couple, maybe not actually divorced but on the verge. I can't find it, so in the absence of a good poem I'm going to post one of the worst C & W songs I've ever heard. Yes siree, it's Tammy Wynette whining out D-I-V-O-R-C-E:


Our little boy is four years old and quite a little man
So we spell out the words we don't want him to understand
Like T-O-Y or maybe S-U-R-P-R-I-S-E
But the words we're hiding from him now
Tear the heart right out of me.

Our D-I-V-O-R-C-E becomes final today
Me and little J-O-E will be goin' away
I love you both and it will be pure H-E double L for me
Oh, I wish that we could stop this D-I-V-O-R-C-E.

Watch him smile, he thinks it’s Christmas
Or his 5th Birthday
And he thinks C-U-S-T-O-D-Y spells fun or play
I spell out all the hurtin' words
And turn my head when I speak
'Cause I can't spell away this hurt
That's drippin' down my cheek.

Our D-I-V-O-R-C-E becomes final today
Me and little J-O-E will be goin' away
I love you both and it will be pure H-E double L for me
Oh, I wish that we could stop this D-I-V-O-R-C-E.
.
****
By Braddock & Putman

That Tammy Wynette song led off Bob Dylan's theme time radio hour on divorce. Here are the rest of the songs he played. You can hear them all for free on Rhapsody if you don't go over your 25-song free quota:

D.I.V.O.R.C.E. - Tammy Wynette - (1968)


The Grand Tour - George Jones - (1974)


Alimony - Tommy Tucker - (1965)


She Got The Goldmine (I Got The Shaft) - Jerry Reed - (1982)


Alimony Blues - T-Bone Walker - (1951)


(Pay Me) Alimony - The Maddox Brothers & Rose - (1946)


Alimony Blues - Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson & His Orchestra - (1947)


Divorce Decree - Doris Duke - (1981)


Married by the Bible, Divorced by the Law - Hank Snow - (1962)


Alimony - Huey "Piano" Smith & His Clowns - (1959)


Divorce Me C.O.D. - Merle Travis - (1946)


Mexican Divorce - The Drifters - (1962)


Will Your Lawyer Talk to God? - Kitty Wells - (1964)


Mr. & Mrs. Used To Be - Ernest Tubb & Loretta Lynn - (1965)


You Can't Divorce My Heart - Lefty Frizzell - (1951)


Love Doesn't Live Here Anymore - June Christy - (1953)

Thanks all for the fine poems; please, keep them coming! Bill has suggested that I post Heart's Needle; here's a link. Yes, it is a great poem.

I've promised you some Snodgrass; apparently he got divorced four times so he had plenty of inspiration from life. There's a great run of divorce / failed marriage poems in his 1987 Selected; here are a few:

A Valediction

......Since his sharp sight has taught you
To think your own thoughts and to see
What cramped horizons my arms brought you,
......Turn then and go free.

......Unlimited, your own
Forever. Let your vision be
In your own interests; you've outgrown
......All need for tyranny.

......May his clear views save you
From those shrewd, undermining powers
That hold you close just to enslave you
......In some such love as ours.

......May this new love leave you
Your own being; may your bright rebirth
Prove treacherous, change then and deceive you
......Never on this earth.

......Now that you've seen how mindless
Our long ties were, I pray you never
Find, all your life through, such a blindness
......As we two shared together.

......My dark design's exposed
Since his tongue opened up your eyelids;
May no one ever lip them closed
......So cunningly as I did.


Old Jewelry*

This Gypsy bodice of old coins
......From seven countries, woven fast
So that a silver braidwork joins
......The years and places their tribe passed;

This crown-shaped belt, cast in Souflí--
......Jeweled, enameling on silver-gilt--
A trothplight, then that surety
......On which a family would be built;

This Roman fibula, intact
......From the fourth century though bent;
This Berber fibula, once blacked
......With layers of thick tar to prevent

Theft but that, scoured and polished, shone
......As luminous as it ever was;
This lapis, Persian, the unfading stone
Gold-flecked and implicate with flaws;

Brass arm bands, rings, pins, bracelets, earrings--
Something from nearly every place
We'd been. Once more to see these dear things
Laid out for buyers in a locked showcase.

I'd known them, each one--weighed in hand,
......Rubbed, bargained, and then with my love,
Pinned each one on for her, to stand
In fickle times for emblems of

What lasts--just as they must have once
......For someone long dead. Love that dies
Can still be wrung out for quick funds;
......Someone, no doubt, would pay the price.

*In typing this poem out I have faithfully followed the indentation format in my 2006 Selected. However, it looks wrong, for obvious reasons. Does anybody have another edition of his poems, to see if this haphazard indentation is really what he intended? I'm beginning to suspect this is a rather shoddily-edited volume...

Love Lamp

There's our candle, on the bedstand still
That served, warm nights, for lovelight
And the rays of its glass panels played
On our entangled legs and shoulders
Like some sailor's red and blue tattoos
Or as cathedral stained glass alters
Congregated flesh to things less
Carnal, tinged by its enfolding glow.

What could that frail lamp seem
To prowlers outside--the fox, say, the owl,
Or to some smaller creature, shrieking,
Pierced in the clutch of tooth and claw
That interrupted love's enactments?
Our glancing flashlight, though, showed
Only scattered grey fur, some broken
Feathers, bloodstained, on the lawn.

Scuttling back to bed, a little
Chilled from the wet grass, we scratched
A match restoring our small gleam
To see there, sinking in soft wax,
The wings and swimming dark limbs
Of that moth--still there, hardened
By the years like amber. While I remember
The scathing fire-points of his eyes.

Would Plath's "Daddy" qualify? It's a twofer: Dad and Ted.

Billy Connolly wanted to be a folk singer but found out people laughed at him so he became a comedian. Here he is singing "D.I.V.O.R.C.E.":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzZzGxReXmo

This classic Dylan song doesn't use the word "divorce," but I think it's close enough. (It's really so good it's scary).

Don't Think Twice, It's All Right

It ain't no use to sit and wonder why, babe
It don't matter, anyhow
An' it ain't no use to sit and wonder why, babe
If you don't know by now
When your rooster crows at the break of dawn
Look out your window and I'll be gone
You're the reason I'm trav'lin' on
Don't think twice, it's all right

It ain't no use in turnin' on your light, babe
That light I never knowed
An' it ain't no use in turnin' on your light, babe
I'm on the dark side of the road
Still I wish there was somethin' you would do or say
To try and make me change my mind and stay
We never did too much talkin' anyway
So don't think twice, it's all right

It ain't no use in callin' out my name, gal
Like you never did before
It ain't no use in callin' out my name, gal
I can't hear you any more
I'm a-thinkin' and a-wond'rin' all the way down the road
I once loved a woman, a child I'm told
I give her my heart but she wanted my soul
But don't think twice, it's all right

I'm walkin' down that long, lonesome road, babe
Where I'm bound, I can't tell
But goodbye's too good a word, gal
So I'll just say fare thee well
I ain't sayin' you treated me unkind
You could have done better but I don't mind
You just kinda wasted my precious time
But don't think twice, it's all right

Who Knows?
 

Does anyone know the title and singer of a song with the line,

"I was drinking doubles and she was thinking singles" (or the reverse)?

Googling and Blinging didn't find it for me. Hank Williams?

Thanks,
Ralph

This thread reminds me of a song by Aselin Debison, a relatively obscure teenage singer/songwriter from Nova Scotia:

Phase

She's lying on her bed
Alone in the dark
Remembers what's said
Staring at the marks
She's in too deep
Crying herself to sleep
There's not much I can do
She's too far away

Yeah, yeah
She needs some space
Whoa, whoa
And some time to think
I hope it's a phase
She's so out of place
And it's all thanks to you

So where will it end?
All roads have their bends
I know you feel sleepless
Wishing for Cupid
No, it's not your fault
Stop blaming yourself
It was never your call
And I really wanna help

Yeah, yeah
She needs some space
Whoa, whoa
And some time to think
I hope it's a phase
She's so out of place
And it's all thanks to you

Remember the good
Forget all the bad
She lives with her mother
But misses her dad
No, it's not your fault
Stop blaming yourself
It was never your call
And I really wanna help

Yeah, yeah
She needs some space
Whoa, whoa
And some time to think
I hope it's a phase
She's so out of place
And it's all thanks to you

Life for her now
Is an obstacle course
No thanks to her parents
Divorce

Geez, Ralph,

you just need to move to Nashville for a few years. :p

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9893od03Sc

The first bar I walked into in Nashville, they were singing "I was drunk the day that Mama got out of prison..." :cool:

Thanks,

Bill

Hi, Chris.
What a great topic. Right away, several poets come to mind. Claudia Emerson's book Late Wife is a brilliant collection that focuses almost entirely on the end of a marriage and the experience of surviving divorce. Leslie Harrison's Displacement, which won last year's Bakeless Prize in poetry and has just been published, is another book-length meditation on the subject. And, John Koethe's long poem, "Falling Water," (from the book of the same title), uses achitecture--namely Frank Lloyd Wright's work--as a metaphor for the structure of a marriage, one that ends in divorce.

Thanks to Jehanne for bumping up this thread. A couple of days ago, I read Barbara Helfgott Hyett's "This Morning" on Poetry Daily and thought it was a good candidate.

http://poems.com/poem.php?date=14532

Her whole book Rift looks apt.

And here's a Dylan song that does mention divorce:


Tangled up in blue.


Early one mornin' the sun was shinin',
I was layin' in bed
Wond'rin' if she'd changed at all
If her hair was still red.
Her folks they said our lives together
Sure was gonna be rough
They never did like Mama's homemade dress
Papa's bankbook wasn't big enough.
And I was standin' on the side of the road
Rain fallin' on my shoes
Heading out for the East Coast
Lord knows I paid some dues gettin' through,
Tangled up in blue.

She was married when we first met
Soon to be divorced
I helped her out of a jam, I guess,
But I used a little too much force.
We drove that car as far as we could
Abandoned it out West
Split up on a dark sad night
Both agreeing it was best.
She turned around to look at me
As I was walkin' away
I heard her say over my shoulder,
"We'll meet again someday on the avenue,"
Tangled up in blue.

I had a job in the great north woods
Working as a cook for a spell
But I never did like it all that much
And one day the ax just fell.
So I drifted down to New Orleans
Where I happened to be employed
Workin' for a while on a fishin' boat
Right outside of Delacroix.
But all the while I was alone
The past was close behind,
I seen a lot of women
But she never escaped my mind, and I just grew
Tangled up in blue.

She was workin' in a topless place
And I stopped in for a beer,
I just kept looking' at the side of her face
In the spotlight so clear.
And later on as the crowd thinned out
I's just about to do the same,
She was standing there in back of my chair
Said to me, "Don't I know your name?"
I muttered somethin' underneath my breath,
She studied the lines on my face.
I must admit I felt a little uneasy
When she bent down to tie the laces of my shoe,
Tangled up in blue.

She lit a burner on the stove and offered me a pipe
"I thought you'd never say hello," she said
"You look like the silent type."
Then she opened up a book of poems
And handed it to me
Written by an Italian poet
From the thirteenth century.
And every one of them words rang true
And glowed like burnin' coal
Pourin' off of every page
Like it was written in my soul from me to you,
Tangled up in blue,

I lived with them on Montague Street
In a basement down the stairs,
There was music in the cafes at night
And revolution in the air.
Then he started into dealing with slaves
And something inside of him died.
She had to sell everything she owned
And froze up inside.
And when finally the bottom fell out I became withdrawn,
The only thing I knew how to do
Was to keep on keepin' on
Like a bird that flew
Tangled up in blue.

So now I'm goin' back again,
I got to get to her somehow.
All the people we used to know
They're an illusion to me now.
Some are mathematicians
Some are carpenter's wives.
Don't know how it all got started,
I don't know what they're doin' with their lives.
But me, I'm still on the road
Headin' for another joint
We always did feel the same,
We just saw it from a different point of view,
Tangled up in blue.

– Bob Dylan

Damn, Dylan is good. Here’s another of his about breaking up or divorce or calling it quits:

It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue

You must leave now, take what you need, you think will last.
But whatever you wish to keep, you better grab it fast.
Yonder stands your orphan with his gun,
Crying like a fire in the sun.
Look out all the saints are comin' through
And it's all over now, Baby Blue.

The highway is for gamblers, better use your sense.
Take what you have gathered from coincidence.
The empty-handed painter from your street
Is drawing crazy patterns on your sheets.
This sky, too, is folding under you
And it's all over now, Baby Blue.

All your seasick sailors, they are rowing home.
Your empty-handed armies, they are going home.
The lover who just walked out your door
Has taken all his blankets from the floor.
The carpet, too, is moving under you
And it's all over now, Baby Blue.

Leave your stepping stones behind, there's something that calls for you.
Forget the dead you've left, they will not follow you.
The vagabond who's rapping at your door
Is standing in the clothes that you once wore.
Strike another match, go start anew
And it's all over now, Baby Blue.

"Tangled up in Blue" is particularly awesome, isn't it? Actually, so many of Dylan's songs are about divorce. This one, not my favorite but still darn good, is apparently not fiction but a rare Dylan song that is straightforward and personal. It was written to his wife as they were separating (she leaving him), and it may have helped him delay the divorce by a year or two:

Sara

I laid on a dune, I looked at the sky,
When the children were babies and played on the beach.
You came up behind me, I saw you go by,
You were always so close and still within reach.


Sara, Sara,
Whatever made you want to change your mind?
Sara, Sara,
So easy to look at, so hard to define.


I can still see them playin' with their pails in the sand,
They run to the water their buckets to fill.
I can still see the shells fallin' out of their hands
As they follow each other back up the hill.


Sara, Sara,
Sweet virgin angel, sweet love of my life,
Sara, Sara,
Radiant jewel, mystical wife.


Sleepin' in the woods by a fire in the night,
Drinkin' white rum in a Portugal bar,
Them playin' leapfrog and hearin' about Snow White,
You in the marketplace in Savanna-la-Mar.


Sara, Sara,
It's all so clear, I could never forget,
Sara, Sara,
Lovin' you is the one thing I'll never regret.


I can still hear the sounds of those Methodist bells,
I'd taken the cure and had just gotten through,
Stayin' up for days in the Chelsea Hotel,
Writin' "Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands" for you.


Sara, Sara,
Wherever we travel we're never apart.
Sara, oh Sara,
Beautiful lady, so dear to my heart.


How did I meet you? I don't know.
A messenger sent me in a tropical storm.
You were there in the winter, moonlight on the snow
And on Lily Pond Lane when the weather was warm.


Sara, oh Sara,
Scorpio Sphinx in a calico dress,
Sara, Sara,
You must forgive me my unworthiness.


Now the beach is deserted except for some kelp
And a piece of an old ship that lies on the shore.
You always responded when I needed your help,
You gimme a map and a key to your door.


Sara, oh Sara,
Glamorous nymph with an arrow and bow,
Sara, oh Sara,
Don't ever leave me, don't ever go.

Printing out lyrics like that is always a useful corrective for the insistence that pop lyrics are "really" poetry. All you need do is pretend you encountered the lyrics as a post here, no background music playing in your head, and imagine what sort of critique you would give the poem. If you read "Sara," as a stand-alone poem, you would, if you were nicer than I, swallow hard and say, "There are some very good forums set up to help beginners."

All of which is not to say that it isn't an effective song. It's a very good instance of its kind. But it wasn't meant to be read as a poem. When people say pop lyricists are the real poets of our time, what they mean is, "I'm not acquainted with poetry." Christopher Ricks notwithstanding.

RHE

To follow up on Richard Epstein in a different direction, though I enjoy Dylan, I'm not too interested in all these song lyrics. As per the thread title, I really wanted *poems,* not songs, though as a song lyric says, you can't always get what you want, & I appreciate that I don't own the thread, that it's a conversation, and that it will go where it will go, regardless of me. Still, I am particularly grateful for Maryann and Jehanne's recent comments, which are the sort of thing I was hoping for, as well as many of the earlier posts.

Chris

But something happens to great lyrics sometimes when you are familiar with the melody. They become something very close to "poetry." Not all of them, of course. The lyrics of "Sara" don't stand up, but, for me, "Tangled Up In Blue" survives on the page. Having first come to the lyrics through a musical performance, though, sort of trains your ear to a "meter" that is private to the particular lyrics in question. A metrical poem, of course, must come packaged with its own meter, and cannot depend on any sort of extrinsic training. Anyway, some song lyrics are closer to standing alone than others, even if the songs themselves are equally appealing to hear. Dylan does have a couple of lyrics in the Norton Anthology. Robert Burns has quite a few.

I agree with Richard's general point, though. I remember many years ago seeing Paul Simon be interviewed by some egghead on the BBC. The interviewer tried to get him to say that his songs were poems set to music, and PS naturally bristled at the invitation. No, he insisted, they were songs and there's nothing wrong with that, you don't have to call them poems to flatter them. (Last year, though, he couldn't resist publishing a book of his lyrics set out as if they were poems).

It's interesting somehow that songs seem to be about divorce a lot more than poems do. I think people started posting songs because they couldn't come up with many examples of poems.

I think people started posting songs because they couldn't come up with many examples of poems.

I think "Heart's Needle" sort of preempted the field for a whole generation or more of poets. Sometimes a field has to lie fallow a while before there's anything more to cultivate.

RHE

I'd like to nominate this, by Anne Stevenson. So much more than the sum of its parts...

Divorcing

After Gertrude Stein

I am I because my little dog knows me.
We are we because our little dog knows us.

I am I, but my little dog knows you.
You are you, but your little dog knows me.

I am I. You are you.
Poor little dog. Poor little dog.

Chris, there's a long, (tedious) one by Sexton, called Break Away, which begins:

Your daisies have come
on the day of my divorce:
the courtroom a cement box,

Always liked this one, by Pasadena homeboy, Hank Coulette (dead now, 22 years). Donald Justice and Robert Mezey edited his Collected- it's worth finding - he's wonderful.

Postscript

There are some questions one should know by heart.
A world without them must be shadowless.
Who was it said, Come let us kiss and part?

The one who asked, Why is the apple tart?
And dreamed the serpent was the letter S?
There are some questions one should know by heart.

It was the thorn that plotted to outsmart
The cunning of the rose with such success.
Who was it said, Come let us kiss and part?

There are interiors none may map or chart:
In your voice, crying, was a wilderness.
There are some questions one should know by heart.

Your ape and echo from the bitter start,
This mirror mourns your image’s caress.
Who was it said, Come let us kiss and part?

We had too little craft and too much art.
We thought two noes would make a perfect yes.
There are some questions one should know by heart.
Who was it said, Come let us kiss and part?


Henri Coulette

Who was it said, Come let us kiss and part?

Ooo, ooo, I know, I know!

So I'll save a postmodern student or two a Google - here it is:


61

SINCE there's no help, come let us kiss and part;
Nay, I have done, you get no more of me,
And I am glad, yea glad with all my heart
That thus so cleanly I myself can free;
Shake hands forever, cancel all our vows,
And when we meet at any time again,
Be it not seen in either of our brows
That we one jot of former love retain.
Now at the last gasp of Love's latest breath,
When, his pulse failing, Passion speechless lies,
When Faith is kneeling by his bed of death,
And Innocence is closing up his eyes,
Now if thou wouldst, when all have given him over,
From death to life thou mightst him yet recover.

– from Idea, by Michael Drayton (1563-1631)

I’ve been meaning to add this to this thread for a while:

Revisiting Fairwarp

Remember the soft wind and the distant voices
Riding the moist air of Spring over the harrowed fields
In March, and the horses, three of them, gamboling.
The first chiff-chaffs teetered in the thornbush, timidly
Anticipating the April sun and the first dried bents,
The advent of insects. Even in the cool late-Winter evening
Above the cold cabbage-patch the gnats would swarm
Finding a warm pocket or column of rising air.
It was there we would heel in the new young plants
Holding the damp soil with a blunt dibber. Thick cakes of mud
Like parathas clung to our boots, and we killed each wireworm singly,
If the clodhopping robin didn’t pick it off first. The blackbird
Angelically sang in the bare apple-tree opening his orange bill
In the watery air, or chased his heavy ladies on the lawn.
The woods nearby were waterlogged still, the old cart-tracks impassable
Where the charcoal-burners gathered the cordwood, and once
Long ago the green glades rang with the noise of forges.
Now they are still but for the bulky doves stuffed full of green
And grain, puffing and blowing like bellows, in the bare branches.
Here the quarrelsome jay screams at every event
And the exotic pheasant from time to time blares unseen
In the bottoms. The bright-painted woodpecker yells,
And the long-tailed tit gently warns of marauders.

It was dark by six and you used to make tea and crumpets
While I cleaned off the spade in the garage.
The house was still in the evening, and we never thought,
Sitting quietly there by the splitting logs and the dog that dreamed,
Of that unknown land of tears, and its mystery
Only a few sodden acres away.

--Peter Russell (London, 1963)