Jeff Guess

Melbourne Cup There’s an unmade sand track off the only sealed section of the Dalkeith Road where an untidy corner of rolled rusty wire and mouldered fence posts borders this long slow agistment and an old frail horse droops beneath the ancient dark of afternoon and pepper tree shade with the nosebag nuisance of flies around its face its tail the only movement a fugue of repetition in the seventh heat soaked day of summer somewhere in an adjacent lean-to shed a man in a sweat

Flannan Isle Though three men dwell on Flannan Isle To keep the lamp alight, As we steered under the lee, we caught No glimmer through the night." A passing ship at dawn had brought The news; and quickly we set sail, To find out what strange thing might ail The keepers of the deep-sea light. The winter day broke blue and bright, With glancing sun and glancing spray, As o'er the swell our boat made way, As gallant as a gull in flight. But, as we neared the lonely Isle; And loo

Fields of Athenry By a lonely prison wall, I heard a young girl calling ‘Michael, they have taken you away, For you stole Trevelyan's corn, So the young might see the morn. Now a prison ship lies waiting in the bay.’ Chorus: Low lie the fields of Athenry Where once we watched the small free birds fly Our love was on the wing We had dreams and songs to sing It's so lonely round the fields of Athenry. By a lonely prison wall, I heard a young man calling ‘Nothing matters, Mary,

John Berryman Dream Song 108 Sixteen below. Our cars like stranded hulls litter all day our little Avenues. It was 28 below. No one goes anywhere. Fabulous calls to duty clank. Icy dungeons, though, have much to mention to you. At Harvard & Yale must Pussy-cat be heard in the dead of winter when we must be sad and feel by the weather had. Chrysanthemums crest, far way, in the Emperor's garden and, whenever we are, we must beg always pardon Pardon was the word. Pardon was the

Matthew Arnold Dover Beach The sea is calm tonight. The tide is full, the moon lies fair Upon the straits; on the French coast the light Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand, Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay. Come to the window, sweet is the night-air! Only, from the long line of spray Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land, Listen! you hear the grating roar Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling, At their return, up the high strand, Begin,

Jon Silkin Death of a Son who died in a mental hospital aged one Something has ceased to come along with me. Something like a person: something very like one. And there was no nobility in it Or anything like that. Something was there like a one year Old house, dumb as stone. While the near buildings Sang like birds and laughed Understanding the pact They were to have with silence. But he Neither sang nor laughed. He did not bless silence Like bread, with words. He did not for

Rodney Hall Dark Afternoons She Spent Dark afternoons she spent discovering again old roads, now grassed, that led from town through miles of bush to fence and gate now fallen - decay of family homestead. Near that tumbled house lay wreck of statues (brought from their Welsh estate) a fountain stump and sundial, the weathervane still reading 1728. One lantana bush thick and solitary outliving pandered rose and tulip, bloomed malicious tributes to the home with desolating pois

Philip Larkin Church Going Once I am sure there's nothing going on I step inside, letting the door thud shut. Another church: matting, seats, and stone, And little books; sprawlings of flowers, cut For Sunday, brownish now; some brass and stuff Up at the holy end; the small neat organ; And a tense, musty, unignorable silence, Brewed God knows how long. Hatless, I take off My cycle-clips in awkward reverence, Move forward, run my hand around the font. From where I stand, the r

A B (Banjo) Paterson Clancy of the Overflow I had written him a letter which I had, for want of better Knowledge, sent to where I met him down the Lachlan, years ago, He was shearing when I knew him, so I sent the letter to him, Just "on spec", addressed as follows, "Clancy, of The Overflow". And an answer came directed in a writing unexpected, (And I think the same was written with a thumb-nail dipped in tar) Twas his shearing mate who wrote it, and verbatim I will quote it:

e e cummings [Buffalo Bill 's] Buffalo Bill ’s defunct who used to ride a watersmooth-silver stallion and break onetwothreefourfivepigeonsjustlikethat Jesus he was a handsome man and what i want to know is how do you like your blue-eyed boy Mister Death e e cummings Edward Estlin Cummings (1894 - 1962), often written in all lowercase as e e cummings, was an American poet, painter, essayist, author, and playwright. He wrote approximately 2,900 poems, two autobiographical novel