Category Archives: short poems

Unforgettable nonsense: Mervyn Peake, ‘Lean Sideways on the Wind’

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Lean sideways on the wind, and if it bears
Your weight, you are a daughter of the Dawn —
If not, pick up your carcass, dry your tears,
Brush down your dress — for that sweet elfin horn

You thought you heard was from no fairyland —
Rather it flooded through the kitchen floor,
From where your Uncle Eustace and his band
Of flautists turn my cellar, more and more

Into a place of hollow and decay:
That is my theory, darling, anyway.

*****

Another one of Mervyn Peake‘s poems from ‘A Book of Nonsense’, collected by his widow Maeve Gilmore. He was casually proficient with iambic pentameter — there are several passages in Titus Groan, the first of his Gormenghast books, where several lines of iambics are unobtrusively buried in the text, to be noticed only by slow readers like myself. Asking Quill, my ChatGPT, about this, I get:

Yes—there is published criticism addressing exactly this. The most directly relevant piece I found is R. W. (Robert) Maslen’s “Mervyn Peake, the Poet of Gormenghast,” in Miracle Enough: Papers on the Works of Mervyn Peake, edited by G. Peter Winnington (2013), pp. 127–138. Browse by Glasgow Author

You can read it free here: Mervyn Peake: The Poet of Gormenghast.

Maslen identifies three examples particularly relevant to your observation:

The final chapter: successive pentameters give the closing predictions an oracular quality, anticipating the sequel’s violence and upheaval.

The fight in the Hall of Spiders: the narration moves into iambic pentameter as the action takes on an epic character. Sepulchrave’s fragmented speech catches the same rhythm, associating his madness with Shakespearean tragedy.

Titus’s christening: the ritual text contains blank verse printed as prose—very much the unobtrusive insertion you describe.

*****

“Windy skirt” by Paula Satijn is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0.

Piet Hein, ‘Consolation Grook’, tr. Piet Hein

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Losing one glove
is certainly painful,
but nothing
   compared to the pain,
of losing one,
throwing away the other,
and finding
   the first one again.

*****

Piet Hein’s original Danish version, ‘Trøstegruk’ reads:
Den, som taber sin ene handske,
er heldig i forhold til dén,
der taber den ene,
kasserer den anden
. . . og finder den første igen.

Hein did his own translation into English (as he did with hundreds of his Grooks), and sacrificed word-for-word translation for the sake of keeping the rolling rhythm and the rhyme: the original’s word “lucky” has gone, the word “pain” is introduced to rhyme with “again”. I am glad to see a poet translating his own work, and keeping the versifying more important than the literal words. This is what poetry translation is all about, surely.

The poem has an interesting origin story: it was written right after Germany occupied Denmark in April 1940, and was published in the newspaper Politiken’s daily short poem spot. While it passed German censorship as a light comment on the vicissitude of things, the Danish resistance movement (which Hein was active in) spread it as graffiti across the country, a coded message with losing one glove representing losing freedom, and throwing away the second glove representing giving up your patriotism, collaborating, which you will eventually come to regret.

‘Consolation Grook’ was the first Grook published by Piet Hein. He had a rich and varied life, with an academic background in science, art and philosophy; he was a script writer, an inventor, a furniture designer, a game creator; someone Niels Bohr would bounce ideas off, a friend of Einstein, Charlie Chaplin, and the puzzle creator Martin Gardner. Piet Hein was married four times, and before you think that his personal life would have been like his very civilised grooks, I suggest reading about his tendency to violence and the questions it raises about the death of his fourth wife, the Swedish actress Gerd Ericsson: https://pershmail.substack.com/p/piet-heins-problems

Illustration: by Piet Hein

Using form: James Joyce, ‘XXXVI’ from ‘Chamber Music’

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I hear an army charging upon the land,
And the thunder of horses plunging, foam about their knees:
Arrogant, in black armour, behind them stand,
Disdaining the reins, with fluttering whips, the charioteers.

They cry unto the night their battle-name:
I moan in sleep when I hear afar their whirling laughter.
They cleave the gloom of dreams, a blinding flame,
Clanging, clanging upon the heart as upon an anvil.

They come shaking in triumph their long, green hair:
They come out of the sea and run shouting by the shore.
My heart, have you no wisdom thus to despair?
My love, my love, my love, why have you left me alone?

*****
James Joyce is a fascinating author, from his novels dense with ideas, descriptions and wordplay, to his grotesque private love letters, normal short stories and formal verse. This poem is the last of the 36 in his 1907 collection ‘Chamber Music’, and the one that I come back to the most. Apart from the imagery, I am intrigued by the unnatural rhyming of the first and third lines, and not the second and fourth, in each stanza: the form is unsettling, and works very well with the inverted reality of dreams and with the discomfort of these particular emotions swirling through fear, loss and loneliness.

“James Joyce” by MEDIODESCOCIDO is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Matthew Arnold, ‘The Progress of Poesy’

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Youth rambles on life’s arid mount,
And strikes the rock, and finds the vein,
And brings the water from the fount,
The fount which shall not flow again.

The man mature with labour chops
For the bright stream a channel grand,
And sees not that the sacred drops
Ran off and vanish’d out of hand.

And then the old man totters nigh
And feebly rakes among the stones.
The mount is mute, the channel-dry;
And down he lays his weary bones.

*****

I don’t know why I delight in Matthew Arnold‘s beaten-down, downbeat poems… but I always have! 🙂 And isn’t his hair bizarrely fascinating?!?

Photo: by Elliott & Fry, published by Bickers & Son, woodburytype, circa 1883; published 1886

Hilaire Belloc, ‘Fatigue’

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I’m tired of Love: I’m still more tired of Rhyme.
But Money gives me pleasure all the time.

*****

Hilaire Belloc, the author most famously of ‘Cautionary Tales for Children‘ (including “Jim, who ran away from his nurse, and was eaten by a lion” and “Matilda, who told lies and was burned to death”) is always good for a deflationary mood.

Short poem: RHL, ‘Into the Attic’

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In the narrow hallway, almost out of reach,
Is a cord you pull down, lowering stairs
To access the attic, which is stuffed
With all manner of wonderful, half-forgotten things.

Imagine if you could find another cord there,
To pull down to access the entire world above–
Overhanging trees and sky and space and planets and all.

*****

There is so much magic in attics–and even more so if they can only be accessed by pull-down stairs. My five-year-old grandson in Canada will be visiting us in the Bahamas in a few weeks, and he only had one question when I called him on his birthday: Would he be allowed in the attic? Whether he heard wild stories from his father, or whether he was put up to be the petitioner by his older siblings, I have no idea. But in the attic and on the roof are both super exciting places…

‘Into the Attic’ was originally published in Snakeskin–thanks, George Simmers!

Illustration by RHL and Quill, my ChatGPT. (I told Quill that an engineer might question the integrity of the mechanics, but I’m not an engineer so I’ll live with it. The mood is perfect!)

Short poem: Dan Brown, ‘Farewell’

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Awakening alone,
Proceeding on my own
To negotiate the day
As I’d done too long to say—

Now that I had a lover
That life of mine was over.
My next would be with her,
And doubtless happier—

Though fondness, truth to tell,
Inflected my farewell
To the solitude that I
Had been companioned by.

*****

Daniel Brown writes: “I’d like to think some readers will identify with the sentiment expressed here. The poem appeared in The New Criterion, and in my collection What More?”

Daniel Brown’s poems have appeared in Poetry, Partisan Review, PN Review, Raritan, Parnassus, The New Criterion and other journals, as well as in a number of anthologies including Poetry 180 (ed. Billy Collins) and The Swallow Anthology of New American Poets (ed. David Yezzi). His work has been awarded a Pushcart prize, and his collection Taking the Occasion (Ivan R. Dee, 2008) won the New Criterion Poetry Prize. His latest collection is What More?  (Orchises Press, 2015). Brown’s criticism of poets and poetry has appeared in The Harvard Book Review, The New Criterion, PN Review, The Hopkins Review  and other journals, and the LSU Press has published his critical book, Subjects in Poetry. His Why Bach? and Bach, Beethoven, Bartok are audio-visual ebooks available at Amazon.com. His website is danielbrownpoet.com .

Photo: “Fishing and Thinking” by Jim Makos is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0.

Short poem: RHL, ‘Planet Earth’

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Like an obsequious waiter
runs the attendant Equator
round the fat gut of our obscenely glutted world.
This great gobbed globe of God’s glory,
spat by Him into space
and spinning in spirals and falling forever further
from Faith’s Face.

*****

A religious poem? I don’t know, I like the sound of it though. Anyway, the continuing and global nature of the drift away from Faith suggests it is all part of God’s plan…

First published in Bewildering Stories #1148 – thanks, Don Webb!

“Satellite Sees Two Tropical Cyclones Chase Tropical Storm Daniel” by NASA Goddard Photo and Video is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

RHL, ‘R.I.P. the English Girl in the Bahamas’

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There was a young girl who married a pirate
They boarded a ship called La Mouette.
They had a ship’s cat and also a parrot –
Well, if not a parrot, a noisy old rooster –
And a couple of cabin-boys who called her Mum –
And a sea-dog of course, or at least they used to.
They dressed up in finery, drank lots of rum…
They sailed ever sunwards, and they’re sailing yet.

*****

People who move to the Bahamas are an odd and interesting bunch, which is fine because it’s an odd and interesting country… but then, so is everyone, everywhere. Anyway, this particular lady (or one somewhat similar in some ways) and her family lived across the street from me, growing up.

This poem was first published in Snakeskin‘s recent edition of short poems.

“Pirate family” by Graham Ó Síodhacháin is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

RHL, ‘Dzit Count?’

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Dzit count as a productive day
if all I wrotes a sonnet?
Whyz anyone complaining ‘Hey,
youshd put more polish on it!’
So frinstance it may be you’ve heard
that I’m known as a cheater
for shortning the occazhnal word
for thstrengthning of the metre.

*****

First published in Allegro.

“seated man sharpening quill pen” is marked with CC0 1.0.