[Tim Murphy]

The Voice
Thomas Hardy

Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me,
Saying that now you are not as you were
When you had changed from the one who was all to me,
But as at first, when our day was fair.

Can it be you that I hear? Let me view you, then,
Standing as when I drew near to the town
Where you would wait for me: yes, as I knew you then,
Even to the original air-blue gown!

Or is it only the breeze in its listlessness
Travelling across the wet mead to me here,
You being ever dissolved to wan wistlessness,
Heard no more again far or near?

Thus I; faltering forward,
Leaves around me falling,
Wind oozing thin through the thorn from norward,
And the woman calling.



This is my favorite of Poems 1912-1913, which is my favorite Hardy book. My favorite of the many great poems he wrote after Emma Hardy died.

[Catherine Chandler]

As I have a naturally somber disposition, I can easily mention dozens of poems of quiet desperation that I love. Two of my favorites, "Fern Hill" and "Time Does Not Bring Relief, You All Have Lied" have already been mentioned here.

Three others I love are Dickinson's #305, Frost's "October", and Rhina Espaillat's "Find Work" (which begins with an epigraph from Dickinson's #443, I tie my hat —):

305

The difference between Despair
And Fear — is like the One
Between the instant of a Wreck —
And when the Wreck has been —

The Mind is smooth — no Motion —
Contented as the Eye
Upon the Forehead of a Bust —
That knows — it cannot see —




October

O hushed October morning mild,
Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;
To-morrow's wind, if it be wild,
Should waste them all.
The crows above the forest call;
To-morrow they may form and go.
O hushed October morning mild,
Begin the hours of this day slow.
Make the day seem to us less brief.
Hearts not averse to being beguiled,
Beguile us in the way you know.
Release one leaf at break of day;
At noon release another leaf;
One from our trees, one far away.
Retard the sun with gentle mist;
Enchant the land with amethyst.
Slow, slow!
For the grapes' sake, if they were all,
Whose leaves already are burnt with frost,
Whose clustered fruit must else be lost —
For the grapes' sake along the wall.




"Find Work"

My mother's mother, widowed very young
of her first love, and of that love's first fruit,
moved through her father's farm, her country tongue
and country heart anaesthetized and mute
with labor. So her kind was taught to do —
Find work, she would reply to every grief —
and her one dictum, whether false or true,
tolled heavy with her passionate belief.
Widowed again, with children, in her prime,
she spoke so little it was heard to bear
so much composure, such a truce with time
spent in the lifelong practice of despair.
But I recall her floors, scrubbed white as bone,
her dishes, and how painfully they shone.





***************************************

[Petra Norr]

One of Tennyson's poems from his "In Memoriam":


Dark house, by which once more I stand
..Here in the long unlovely street,
..Doors, where my heart was used to beat
So quickly, waiting for a hand,

A hand that can be clasped no more –
..Behold me, for I cannot sleep,
..And like a guilty thing I creep
At earliest morning to the door.

He is not here; but far away
..The noise of life begins again,
..And ghastly thro’ the drizzling rain
On the bald street breaks the blank day.

.

[Rhina P. Espaillat]

Here's one by A. E. Housman that is unrelieved in its total absence of light, at the end of the tunnel or anywhere else:

Be Still, My Soul, Be Still

Be still, my soul, be still; the arms you bear are brittle,
Earth and high heaven are fixt of old and founded strong.
Think rather, --call to thought, if now you grieve a little,
The days when we had rest, O soul, for they were long.

Men loved unkindness then, but lightless in the quarry
I slept and saw not; tears fell down, I did not mourn;
Sweat ran and blood sprang out and I was never sorry:
Then it was well with me, in days ere I was born.

Now, and I muse for why and never find the reason,
I pace the earth, and drink the air, and feel the sun.
Be still, be still, my soul; it is but for a season:
Let us endure an hour and see injustice done.

Ay, look: earth and high heaven ail from the prime foundation;
All thoughts to rive the heart are here, and all in vain:
Horror and scorn and hate and fear and indignation--
Oh, why did I awake? When shall I sleep again?

[Skip Dewahl]

Societal desperation from 19th century France:



PIERRE-JEAN DE BÉRANGER'S Le Vieux Vagabond


Dans ce fossé cessons de vivre,
Je finis vieux, infirme et las.
Les passants vont dire: il est ivre!
Tant mieux! Ils ne me plaindront pas.
J'en vois qui détournent la tête;
D'autres me jettent quelques sous.
Courez vite; allez à la fête.
Vieux vagabond, je puis mourir sans vous.

Oui, je meurs ici de vieillesse,
Parce qu'on ne meurt pas de faim.
J'espérais voir de ma détresse
L'hôpital adoucir la fin.
Mais tout est plein dans chaque hospice,
Tant le peuple est infortuné.
La rue, hélas! fut ma nourrice.
Vieux vagabond, mourons où je suis né.

Aux artisans, dans mon jeune age,
J'ai dit: Qu'on m'enseigne un métier.
Va, nous n'avons pas trop d'ouvrage,
Répondaient-ils, va mendier.
Riches, qui me disiez, Travaille,
J'eus bien des os de vos repas;
J'ai bien dormi sur votre paille.
Vieux vagabond, je ne vous maudis pas.

J'aurais pu voler, moi, pauvre homme;
Mais non: mieux vaut tendre la main.
Au plus, j'ai dérobé la pomme
Qui murit au bord du chemin.
Vingt fois pourtant on me verrouille
Dans les cachots, de par le roi.
De mon seul bien on me dépouille.
Vieux vagabond, le soleil est a moi.

La pauvre a-t-il une patrie?
Que me font vos vins et vos blés,
Votre gloire et votre industrie,
Et vos orateurs assemblés?
Dans vos murs ouverts à ses armes,
Lorsque l'étranger s'engraissait,
Comme un sot j'ai versé des larmes,
Vieux vagabond, sa main me nourrissait.

Comme un insecte, fait pour nuire,
Hommes, que ne m'écrasiez vous?
Ah! plutôt deviez m'instruire
A travailler au bien de tous.
Mis à l'abri du vent contraire
Le ver fût devenu fourmi;
Je vous aurais chéris en frère.
Vieux vagabond, je meurs votre ennemi.



Let us now die within this gutter,
I've ended old, infirm and worn.
Passers-by will say, 'Drunken clutter!'
That's good! They won't be moved to mourn.
I see some turn heads away, guarded;
Others who toss me several cents.
Hurry, run, the holiday's started.
Old vagabond, I can die without gents.

Yes, my dying here comes of aging,
That's because we don't starve to death.
I banked on hospices assuaging
My distress at the final breath.
But all is full in each hospital,
Many people with hopes forlorn.
My nurse the street, alas! gives little.
Old vagabond, let's die where I was born.

To men of skill, when young and ageless,
I'd say, "Would you teach me a trade?"
'Out, there's not much work for the wageless',
Was their reply, 'Beg for aid'.
Rich men, who would advise, 'Get hired!',
Your table-bones I've had for free,
Slept on your hay when I was tired.
Old vagabond, you won't be cursed by me.

Yes I could have robbed, aye, poor fellow;
But no: best to tender the palm.
At most, I plucked apples that mellow
Somewhat ripe in their roadside calm.
Yet, twenty times I've been arrested,
By king's decree thrown in a cell.
What's solely mine was then divested.
Old vagabond, the sun's mine when all's well..

The poor, are they part of a nation?
What care I your wine and your wheat,
War's applause and your corporation,
Your speechifiers who meet?
In your walls agape from his volley
While the foreign foe grew in weight,
Like a fool I wept in my folly.
Old vagabond, his hand made sure I ate.

Just like a bug meant to be killed,
Men, why not crush me the same?
Ah! but you should have made me skilled
At working for the common aim.
Sheltered from winds that cross each other,
The worm has turned into an ant;
I would have loved you like a brother.
Old vagabond, I die the foe who can't.

[Peter Coghill]

There are a few that I wouldn't call QUIET. Dylan Thomas and ESVM are hardly quiet. I'll plug Stephen Edgar again. He does quite a few poems in quiet despair mode, this one is sort of an elegy to Gwen Harwood,

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/arch...html?id=180534

[Tim Murphy]

What a knockout poem, Peter. Thanks for posting it. Among Gwen Harwood's few American fans, I'd never seen Stephen's poem before. Here's a link to the latest Able Muse where Stephen was featured poet: http://www.ablemuse.com/v8/index.html I envy Stephen his immense, intricate nonce stanzas, his ability to develop, sustain and meditate on a great theme. Magnificent poet.

There are, to be sure, degrees of quietude. By unquiet, unseemly despair, I'd have in mind Sylvia Plath's poem "Daddy," and reams of others by Lowell, Sexton, Plath and their ilk. I much prefer the brooding melancholy of Edgar.

Speaking of Peter, here's his killer featured sonnet linked elsewhere here from Rattle, where the melancholia only appears in the last seven syllables. What a poem.

GABRIELLA

My little niece rakes leaves, then runs full tilt
into the pile, busting them up all over—
with joy and guilt, and joy sprung from that guilt,
she kicks and clouts about until they cover
the grass again. A two-year-old Godzilla
on the front lawn, reveling in a power
so new and physical. A last patch fills her
arms and she flings a red and golden shower—
of words. For that is how she talked as well,
with wonder at our comprehending her,
a welter, like the spray of leaves that fell
from her throw, and caught the sun as tongues of fire.
Inspiration on the shaggy wind
of autumn—soon to be swept up and binned.

[Tim Murphy]

Woody Allen once observed: "More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly."

[Catherine Chandler]

Yes, there are degrees of quietude within quiet desperation. I feel that the Thomas and Millay references here do point towards a lesser degree of desperation, rage and bitterness than, say, in some of their other poems, i.e., "Do Not Go Gentle" and "Life, were thy pains as are the pains of hell".

[Orwn Acra]

A Child's Garden

Now there is nothing wrong with me
Except -- I think it's called T.B.
And that is why I have to lay
Out in the garden all the day.

Our garden is not very wide
And cars go by on either side,
And make an angry-hooty noise
That rather startles little boys.

But worst of all is when they take
Me out in cars that growl and shake,
With charabancs so dreadful-near
I have to shut my eyes for fear.

But when I'm on my back again,
I watch the Croydon aeroplane
That flies across to France, and sings
Like hitting thick piano-strings.

When I am strong enough to do
The things I'm truly wishful to,
I'll never use a car or train
But always have an aeroplane;

And just go zooming round and round,
And frighten Nursey with the sound,
And see the angel-side of clouds,
And spit on all those motor-crowds!

- Kipling

Is this a happy poem? I thought so at first and then I realized the boy would have probably died from the tuberculosis. Kipling perhaps hints at this demise with "angel-side of clouds". What really gets me is how the boy thinks he going to get better but will most likely not. I think the whole thing is terribly sad.