Poetry Booklet for September exhibition

Poetry Booklet

to accompany

the September Exhibition

in

Morvah Schoolhouse

‘Angel’ – Needle-punch sketch

There Will Come Soft Rains

Sara Teasdale, 1884 - 1933

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white,

Robins will wear their feathery fire
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.

From The Language of Spring, edited by Robert Atwan, published by Beacon Press, 2003.

Enter a Cloud

BY W. S. GRAHAM

1

Gently disintegrate me
Said nothing at all.

Is there still time to say
Said I myself lying
In a bower of bramble
Into which I have fallen.

Look through my eyes up
At blue with not anything
We could have ever arranged
Slowly taking place.

Above the spires of the fox
Gloves and above the bracken
Tops with their young heads
Recognising the wind,
The armies of the empty
Blue press me further
Into Zennor Hill.

If I half-close my eyes
The spiked light leaps in
And I am here as near
Happy as I will get
In the sailing afternoon.

2

Enter a cloud. Between
The head of Zennor and
Gurnard’s Head the long
Marine horizon makes
A blue wall or is it
A distant table-top
Of the far-off simple sea.

Enter a cloud. O cloud,
I see you entering from
Your west gathering yourself
Together into a white
Headlong. And now you move
And stream out of the Gurnard,
The west corner of my eye.

Enter a cloud. The cloud’s
Changing shape is crossing
Slowly only an inch

Above the line of the sea.
Now nearly equidistant
Between Zennor and Gurnard’s
Head, an elongated
White anvil is sailing
Not wanting to be a symbol.

3

Said nothing at all.

And proceeds with no idea
Of destination along
The sea bearing changing
Messages. Jean in London,
Lifting a cup, looking
Abstractedly out through
Her Hampstead glass will never
Be caught by your new shape
Above the chimneys. Jean,
Jean, do you not see
This cloud has been thought of
And written on Zennor Hill.

4

The cloud is going beyond
What I can see or make.
Over up-country maybe
Albert Strick stops and waves
Caught in the middle of teeling
Broccoli for the winter.
The cloud is not there yet.

From Gurnard's Head to Zennor
Head the level line
Crosses my eyes lying
On buzzing Zennor Hill.

The cloud is only a wisp
And gone behind the Head.
It is funny I got the sea's
Horizontal slightly surrealist.
Now when I raise myself
Out of the bracken I see
The long empty blue
Between the fishing Gurnard
And Zennor. It was a cloud
The language at my time's
Disposal made use of.

5

Thank you. And for your applause.
It has been a pleasure. I
Have never enjoyed speaking more.
May I also thank the real ones
Who have made this possible.
First, the cloud itself. And now
Gurnard's Head and Zennor
Head. Also recognise
How I have been helped
By Jean and Madron's Albert
Strick (He is a real man.)
And good words like brambles,
Bower, spiked, fox, anvil, teeling.

The bees you heard are from
A hive owned by my friend
Garfield down there below
In the house by Zennor Church.

The good blue sun is pressing
Me into Zennor Hill.

Gently disintegrate me
Said nothing at all.

W. S. Graham, "Enter a Cloud" from Selected Poems. Copyright © 1980 by W. S. Graham. Reprinted by
permission of The Estate of W.S. Graham.

Source: Ecco Press, 1980

'Sometimes, I need only to stand where I am to be blessed'
Mary Oliver

‘When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it is over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.
I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.’

― Mary Oliver

from Cyclamens in a Bowl

by Ted Hughes (1930 – 1998)

A pink one. A white one. Each
A butterfly - caught by an uptwisting
Slender snake and held. Without hurt.
Without fear.

Now, it seems, a serpent of plants
Rearing and angling, gently writhing
Has opened a butterfly face.

The five petals elated -
A still of tensile flight!

When I was making this piece, I suddenly thought about a poem, remembered from
long ago - ‘For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry’ by Christopher Smart (1763)

Some of my favourite lines:
‘For by stroking of him I have found out electricity.’
‘For in his morning orisons he loves the sun and the sun loves him.’
‘For he can tread to all the measures upon the music.’
‘For he counteracts the powers of darkness by his electrical skin and glaring eyes.’
‘For he is a mixture of gravity and waggery’
‘For the divine spirit comes about his body to sustain it in complete cat.’

And my own – v rapidly considered! - considerings of our cat Charley…
For his white paws curl the April night softly in
For there is something of the North star in his quick eyes
And Silver …
For she flickers her whiskers with stories and curses
For the ten grey stripes on her tail ring magnificent changes

***Please share your ‘cat considerings’! *** or perhaps to my FB page ☺

Charley Bonnard

Inspired by the French Post-Impressionist painter Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947) :-)

I altered mine in order to better resemble our cat Charley ☺

Ginger in the Garden with Silver

My faithful felting companion, missed very much x

His favourite place ☺

Moloch Horridus (or Thorny Desert Devil)

Inspired by watching ‘Naomi’s Nightmares of Nature’ with my son on CBBC!

'The Moloch Horridus in the dew-coated grass'
These Australian lizards stand over puddles and soak up water through their feet ... they have such a
funny slow walk - stopping frequently and deliberately, rocking back and forth and then continuing...

They also have a false head on their shoulders …and their name was inspired by John Milton’s
poem ‘Paradise Lost’; Milton describes the god Moloch as the horrific king, smeared with the blood of

human sacrifice…and the Latin ‘horridus’ meaning rough or bristly, or dreadful.
I love the beautiful contrast, in how these creatures, so gnarly and spiky, 'absorb water from the dew
that condenses on their bodies overnight, or by brushing up against dew-coated grass. Any water that
gets into the grooves between its thorns is drawn by capillary action to its mouth, allowing it to suck

water from all over its body. Fascinating!

‘They had a great bird that turned into a shaft of lightning!’

To add to my 'Watership Down' series...the wonderful, garrulous, faithful friend to the rabbits - Kehaar,
the Black-headed gull.

Have just read the novel again - so wonderful, for all ages; beautiful nature writing, poetic, allegory,
stories within stories of Frith and El-ahrairah, creation myths and great, varied chapter epigraphs

including Shakespeare, Greek myth, American folk songs...Richard Adams notes in his introduction
that he based Kehaar on a Norwegian resistance fighter...

Hazel saves Kehaar after an attack by a cat and then all the rabbits find insects to feed him until his
wing is stronger. He's rude and angry in the beginning and then becomes a firm and faithful friend,
helping and forging a close friendship with Bigwig…Meester Pigvig, ‘e plenty good fella’! He removes
two shot-gun pellets from Hazel’s leg and guides and protects them on their way to the tyrannous

Efrafa warren run by despot General Woundwort.

Kehaar's descriptions of migration and the sea are incredulous to the rabbits and his name is derived
from the water – ‘This water, [Bigwig tells Hazel] apparently moves all the time and keeps breaking
against the earth: and when he can’t hear that, he misses it. That’s his name – Kehaar. It’s the noise

the water makes.’
:-)

Kehaar often relapses into 'hedgerow vernacular’ Here he is, looking a little scary... quick-tempered
and annoyed at Hazel, in a needle-punch sketch - 'Go vay! Ving no good, but I walk plenty good! (he
then falls over).

‘Yark! Yark!’

Art inspired by Poetry and Nature
Rowena Scotney Feltings
www.rowenascotney.com
©Rowena Scotney 2017