Category Archives: short poems

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.

Squib: Max Gutmann, ‘Pointedly’

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Seurat completely placed his trust
in pointillism, never fussed
with other styles, for they’d have just
been pointless.

*****

For me this falls right on the border of the category I call ‘Unforgettable Nonsense’ verse – typically short, with puns or other jokes… But this isn’t strictly speaking nonsense… Yet the use of rhyme and rhythm with the wordplay makes it super easy to memorise, which is something I always enjoy. Max Gutmann declines to comment on the poem – which was first published in Snakeskin – other than to suggest I classify it as a squib. – RHL

Max Gutmann has contributed to New Statesman, Able Muse, Cricket, and other publications. His plays have appeared throughout the U.S. (see maxgutmann.com). His latest book, Finish’d!: A Pleasant Trip to Hell with Byron’s Don Juan, is forthcoming from Word Galaxy.

Photo: “Georges Seurat” by rocor is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.

David Callin, ‘Sangliers’

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It is not a forest, more a sun-
dappled woodland near the Pont du Gard,
the river fol-de-rolling merrily.
Here, where they’ve been told the wild things are,
a family, a mother and her young,
step through wild garlic till they come upon
a small ménage of wild boars, sangliers:
a mother and her young, a glade away.
Their shadows lengthened by the dappling sun,
each gives way to the other and trots on.

*****

David Callin writes: “There are no deep secrets about the poem. It’s a memory from a family holiday in 2006, and my wife’s description of the experience of this strange meeting on her return from it. It struck me strongly at the time, but I must have stored it away, because I didn’t try to turn it into a poem until nearly 20 years later. Then, as a non-metrical poem, it didn’t take, but I found it again when looking for inspiration for George’s excellent short poems Snakeskin (issue 339, May 2026). It seemed to blossom in its new form.

“This is unlike the bulk of my poems, most of which – but by no means all – arise out of the life, history and folklore of the Isle of Man, where I’ve lived all my life apart from a brief period in the 1980s when I made a bolt for freedom, first to London and then to the Netherlands. But the place has a way of reeling you back in.

“My first full book of poems, From the Nab, is essentially Manx in subject matter. There is a review of it in Light (whose editor, I see, also features in your blog). This is the link to that … https://lightpoetrymagazine.com/book-reviews-summer-25/

“If any of your readers should like a copy – and who wouldn’t, based on that review? – a simple email to me, with their postal address, would do the trick:  dcallin2bvc@gmail.com

“Other than that, I pop up in Snakeskin from time to time – as often as I can, really. And occasionally in other places.”

*****

The image features a wild boar (Sus scrofa) with its piglets, commonly known as humbugs due to their striped appearance.