[David Callin]

Let not your heart be troubled.
This is poetry
as tranquiliser. I
have heard these words so many
times, they always work
like a charm, soothing
the throbbing moment with
their cooling touch, like
the dock leaves we applied
to nettle stings.
.................... And when
the speaking voice, impassioned
or unctuous or just
perfunctory, getting
the business done, goes on
to many mansions in
my father's house, the spell's
unbroken. I think of Help!,
the moptops entering
by different doors to meet
in one fab pad.
................... And there
may be a place for us.
If I don't find you walking
in the garden, or driving
the cattle home at night.
their tails flailing at flies,
or holding court behind
the barn, with a hapless
entourage of chickens,
I'll know you've found a new
place to hide, a good one.
But wait. One of these days
I'll be coming. Really.
Ready or not.

[Bill Dyes]

David,

I have some confusion between the identity of the "I" referenced in each of the 3 stanzas:
Stanza 1: "...I have heard these words so many times,.."
Stanza 2: "...I think of Help!,the moptops entering by different doors to meetin one fab pad..."
Stanza 3: "...I don't find you walking in the garden..."

I alternate between the poet, the disciple and perhaps Christ himself.
Maybe it is Christ himself all the way through. I'm just not sure.
The title "Our reading is taken" is not helpful to me
Plus the tone of this seems to move quckly from playful, to wosrhipful and even irreverant.
The clever Beatles refernece is startling at first but actually seems to fit well.
Maybe I just don't know my New Testament well enough. Although I did look up John 14.

That's all I can say right know.
Others may be more servicable to this piece than I have been. I hope so. It certainly deserves a more capapble reading.

Bill

[Jim Moonan]

.
Hi David, My first go at this…
The title, to me, has a religiosity to it that is reinforced by the first line. Not a “Go tell it on the mountain” kind of religiosity, but a kind of “messenger of the good news” kind of religiosity. It may be just me. Sometimes we can easily slip into what might appear to others as being religious when in fact it is something else that propels it; maybe soulfulness.

The poem initially struck me as being something of a tightrope walk through a slew of cliches and arriving mostly unscathed at the end, where I am suddenly asked to join in a game of hide and seek — a playful, child-like close. All of that is very good. I have a complicated relationship with cliches. Sometimes they act like a duck out of water and sometimes not. But sometimes I think everything we say/write wants to eventually be read and said so many times that it becomes cliche. The funny thing is, I can't identify a single cliche in the whole poem. It's more a feeling than a phrase.

That was my initial reaction. It still strikes me that way. But I’ll have to come back. I feel I've skimmed it more than read it closely. It’s an easy poem to read in that way. It has an unpretentious quality even given the feeling of religiosity I get from it; and the dancing with cliches. All that could be just me. Others will tell.


.

[Carl Copeland]

I like this quite a lot, David. So much of it’s iambic trimeter, though, that I wonder what it’s doing in non-met. The meter also seems to motivate a number of otherwise inexplicable enjambments.

“Like the dock leaves we applied to nettle stings” is a charmingly local-colorful simile, and the moptops’ fab pad as one of the “mansions in my father’s house” is far out!

The 1965 Help! also helps point to a 1961 film with a song called “There’s a Place for Us” that resonates with the sad hopefulness of the poem.

The period after “night” should be a comma, and I’d recommend losing the comma after “barn” to unite the chickens with the court.

The hide-and-seek ending is playful and childlike, as Jim says, but in context also sad, as if written to a missed child.

[Joe Crocker]

Hi David

The first two parts muse on liturgy and how that old-fashioned language still works its magic and how the mind wanders in the course of repeated listenings and not-listenings. The last part is more mysterious but Carl’s comment, that it sounds like a promise to a missed child, now makes it click for me. I do remember some time ago you wrote a sort of elegy to a child buried near Wells on the Norfolk coast. That reading does add a wistful, painful twist. (But it does raise other questions eg would a child be driving cattle home at night?) Either way it capture how religious ritual still rubs us in tender places when we are trying to make sense of the world.

I wasn’t entirely sure about the word “tranquiliser” (L3). It has strong, usually bad, medical connotations, whereas you seem to be describing the familiar words more approvingly as a sort of balm. But maybe you wanted a little ambiguity to begin with.

Cheers

Joe

[David Callin]

Hi Bill. "Our reading is taken" is a phrase often (it seems to me) used by ministers / celebrants at church services (especially funerals) to introduce a bible reading, so I appropriated it for my title.

And I am the I in every case. I wonder how I can make that clearer.

John 14 is the very thing.

Hi Jim. Your reading of it is very helpful, so thanks for that. You've given me a new way to look at the poem, which may be to its advantage.

Thanks Carl. Is it more met than I realised? That's quite possible. I may have to reconsider its classification.

Glad you liked the moptops connection. And "There's a Place" is a song on the Beatles' first LP (cf. Larkin, P) - their tribute to early Motown, apparently. But of course I like the song you're referring to, and I think it may be a better reference there. (And may - honestly - have been in my mind too.) The connection to a child is a good one too, but it's more to a shared childhood - a lost sibling (to be frankly autobiographical about it).

And that's what you picked up on too, Joe - quite rightly. I like your summary of the first two parts. I think that's exactly what I was going for. And I am slightly ambivalent about poetry as tranquiliser, but a little calming - and balming - is not a bad thing.

Thanks for those responses, everyone - and cheers all

David