Another poetic interlude

I am feeling much calmer today.  Partly this is due to the fact that I haven’t had to drive anywhere, partly due to the fact that I have found some shorts in the lost property box that I have dictatorially decided are Tallulah’s, and partly because it is now half past ten at night and I have half an essay finished, which is good. Jason has also very kindly suggested I put Oscar in nursery tomorrow and write the other half during the day when I am not paralysed with tiredness.  I have gratefully taken him up on the offer and I am feeling considerably less pressured.  I am also clearer on what the shape of the second half of the essay will be, which is encouraging.

It’s probably going to look a bit like a rabbit, sitting on a fence, looking slightly offended.

Or something.

At least it has a shape.  Shape is good.

I also, I think, have got my head around the referencing, which as I suspected was more to do with my state of mind and the lateness of the hour than anything too traumatic.  It may still be wrong, but it looks o.k. and with Andrea and Mrs. Jones as my wingmen I feel that the referencing may well turn out to be the star turn of the whole essay.  In fact I may not bother to do anything else but reference lots of other people who have all said it better than me, and go home for a lie down and a bun.

I have tons of things to tell you, none of which are in the slightest bit important or interesting, but which I have been noting down and thinking; ‘Oooh!’ and ‘Aaah!’ Unfortunately they will all have to wait until tomorrow, or even the next day, depending on the essay.  I need to go and reread bits of the very excellent ‘Bloody Chamber’ by Angela Carter, and think about Freud, which is not so excellent but a bit necessary.  Just think; ‘holes and ladders, trains and tunnels, cocaine and hysteria.’

I shall return with a clearer head and more entertainment.  In the meantime I thought I’d leave you with another favourite poem.  It isn’t funny, but it is lush and gorgeous and about as exciting as poetry gets (for me, anyway).  It is by Ted Hughes.  It’s probably about Yorkshire, but whenever I read it, it takes me back to when I lived in Wales.  It’s called ‘Wind’.  No sniggering at the back please.

 

Wind

This house has been far out at sea all night,

The woods crashing through darkness, the booming hills,

Winds stampeding the fields under the window

Floundering black astride and blinding wet

Till day rose; then under an orange sky

The hills had new places, and wind wielded

Blade-light, luminous black and emerald,

Flexing like the lens of a mad eye.

At noon I scaled along the house-side as far as

The coal-house door. Once I looked up -

Through the brunt wind that dented the balls of my eyes

The tent of the hills drummed and strained its guyrope,

The fields quivering, the skyline a grimace,

At any second to bang and vanish with a flap;

The wind flung a magpie away and a black-

Back gull bent like an iron bar slowly. The house

Rang like some fine green goblet in the note

That any second would shatter it. Now deep

In chairs, in front of the great fire, we grip

Our hearts and cannot entertain book, thought,

Or each other. We watch the fire blazing,

And feel the roots of the house move, but sit on,

Seeing the window tremble to come in,

Hearing the stones cry out under the horizons.