Thanks Doug. The deletion though - I think it would unbalance the poem to
the point where I wouldn't consider it viable. The bovine constituency is
certainly required for its democratic base (!) while the impetus of rhythm
would disappear. I looked at bit without the lines and found myself reading
a relative of those moneyed poems of perception that travel throughout
English language poetry.
Why did you want to delete them, might I ask? (The bells are electrically
operated btw and the tower has a kind of squat, muscular look that hints at
a neighbourliness to nineteenth century muscular christianity, despite its
catholicism. The abbey, you might not know, has a dark side, in that it was
enlisted in running a reformatory, at which the monks were hopelessly
incompetent, but the experiences there were used at the base of the late
19th/ early 20th century children's penal system: the monk' incapacity in
dealing with precociously tough kids from Liverpool's docksides became a
further argument for disciplinarianism.)
best
dave
On 31 October 2011 21:14, Douglas Barbour <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> I too like it David, but unlike Chris, although I understand why he liked
> those lines, I would suggest deleting
>
> > All meat and milk
> >
> > in steep sunk sleep, a cud of dreams,
> >
> > untroubled by the muscled tower's
> >
> > electric prod, its bells' peals' starry tongue
> >
> > this herd has never heard
> >
> >
> >
> > since its first day tired.
>
> as the rest seems slippery & more interesting in the way it moves...
>
> Doug
> On 2011-10-29, at 8:10 AM, David Bircumshaw wrote:
>
> > I don't know whether anyone would like to comment on the following piece
> but
> > it is something I've been pushing about recently following a short stay
> at a
> > Cistercian monastery guest-lodge. I'm not a Roman Catholic myself, so the
> > poem has no doctrinal sensitivities or claims:
> >
> >
> > *Monk's Guest House*
> >
> >
> > Some distant schools of stars in swarm
> >
> > above a spire, and farm,
> >
> > and drowsing cows. All meat and milk
> >
> > in steep sunk sleep, a cud of dreams,
> >
> > untroubled by the muscled tower's
> >
> > electric prod, its bells' peals' starry tongue
> >
> > this herd has never heard
> >
> >
> >
> > since its first day tired. My watch face
> >
> > says three and my slow animal wakes
> >
> > as the bells' claw and clamber breaks
> >
> > the burr and mumble
> >
> > of where am I am. Legs and arms, feet
> >
> > to hands assemble
> >
> >
> > like lines racing a plough. I snub
> >
> > forward into night-buttoned, carbon
> >
> > promising air, head down
> >
> > toward shell spills of crackle, side
> >
> > slips of gravel and a door
> >
> >
> > homed low on a still stone hull
> >
> > where a shy
> >
> > bay chapel waits
> >
> > us and the hushed sparse wash
> >
> >
> > of dark and morning vigil.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > David Joseph Bircumshaw
> > "The surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe
> is
> > that none of it has tried to contact us."
> > - Calvin & Hobbes
> > Website and A Chide's Alphabet
> > http://www.staplednapkin.org.uk
> > The Animal Subsides http://www.arrowheadpress.co.uk/books/animal.html
> > Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/david.bircumshaw
> > twitter: http://twitter.com/bucketshave
> > blog: http://groggydays.blogspot.com/
> >
>
> Douglas Barbour
> [log in to unmask]
> [log in to unmask]
>
> http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/
> http://eclecticruckus.wordpress.com/
>
> Latest books:
> Continuations (with Sheila E Murphy)
> http://www.uap.ualberta.ca/UAP.asp?LID=41&bookID=664
> Wednesdays'
>
> http://abovegroundpress.blogspot.com/2008/03/new-from-aboveground-press_10.html
>
> Why poetry? And why not, I asked,
> my right brain humming sedition.
>
> Phyllis Webb
>
>
>
>
--
David Joseph Bircumshaw
"The surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is
that none of it has tried to contact us."
- Calvin & Hobbes
Website and A Chide's Alphabet
http://www.staplednapkin.org.uk
The Animal Subsides http://www.arrowheadpress.co.uk/books/animal.html
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/david.bircumshaw
twitter: http://twitter.com/bucketshave
blog: http://groggydays.blogspot.com/
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