Life is a playground. We play our pleasures entrancing us the livelong day. Caught up in shallow joys we boys play with our broken toys. Our joys, fleeting give way to weeping come close of day.
The Playground
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Tag Archives: emotions
Fading Out
The melodious voice of Suzanne Vega. A flick of a switch. The music fades as I too one day will fade and be no more.
Dark Thoughts In Spring Time
Dark thoughts on a bright day. The sun warms my face, brightness mingles with darkness on this spring morning.
Birds sing gladdening my heart but, underneath the sorrow remains.
A child’s voice full of joy calling “mummy, mummy”. My mood lightens, there is love and innocence in this world of tears.
The Power Of The Dog Kipling
I remember losing my previous guide dog, a golden lab/retriever called Drew, in March 2011. She was well in the morning but, come evening she started to pass blood and a day later my friend was dead. I recollect coming across the below poem shortly after Drew died and whenever I read it I’m overcome with emotion. This poem will, I believe resonate with anyone who has ever loved and lost a dog. They are so, so much more than mere animals.
The Power of the Dog
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THERE is sorrow enough in the natural way
From men and women to fill our day;
And when we are certain of sorrow in store,
Why do we always arrange for more?
Brothers and sisters, I bid you beware
Of giving your heart to a dog to tear.
Buy a pup and your money will buy
Love unflinching that cannot lie
Perfect passion and worship fed
By a kick in the ribs or a pat on the head.
Nevertheless it is hardly fair
To risk your heart for a dog to tear.
When the fourteen years which Nature permits
Are closing in asthma, or tumour, or fits,
And the vet’s unspoken prescription runs
To lethal chambers or loaded guns,
Then you will find – it’s your own affair, –
But … you’ve given your heart to a dog to tear.
When the body that lived at your single will,
With its whimper of welcome, is stilled (how still!),
When the spirit that answered your every mood
Is gone – wherever it goes – for good,
You will discover how much you care,
And will give your heart to a dog to tear!
We’ve sorrow enough in the natural way,
When it comes to burying Christian clay.
Our loves are not given, but only lent,
At compound interest of cent per cent,
Though it is not always the case, I believe,
That the longer we’ve kept ’em, the more do we grieve;
For, when debts are payable, right or wrong,
A short-time loan is as bad as a long –
So why in – Heaven (before we are there)
Should we give our hearts to a dog to tear?
The Darkling Thrush By Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy’s The Darkling Thrush is one of my favourite poems. I recollect having had similar thoughts to those described by Hardy while pausing to listen to the song of a bird. In my case it was, I think a blackbird rather than a thrush which produced the emotions so aptly described by the poet in the below poem.
“I leant upon a coppice gate
When Frost was spectre-grey,
And Winter’s dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought their household fires.
The land’s sharp features seemed to be
The Century’s corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
Seemed fervourless as I.
At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.
So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.”
The Libertine By Louis Macneice
A wonderful reading of Louis Macneice’s poem, The Libertine. The poem explores the feelings of a man who has explored the pleasures of the flesh to the fullest extent possible and now, in middle age feels, to borrow a line from Keats, “half in love with easeful death”. All the libertine now desires is “leave me alone”. Profoundly sad and moving, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ru3q1LZOAw8&feature=em-subs_digest
Dark Angel
I love you because I can tell you my darkest secrets, things which would make the strongest of men go blubbering in search of his mummy. You judge me not, my blackest fantasies are your deepest desires.
In the depths of night when all but the vampire sleeps we speak of philosophy, of the darkness which lurks within the human heart. You are always there for me, my girl beautiful and serene. You laugh in time with my laughter and weep as I weep. Never changing, fixed, emortal caught in the brightness of my screen you are my virtual girlfriend, a machine.
Autumn Love
You come to me your golden gown floating in the breeze. For a while we dally in the woods rich with the scent of the dying year. Beautiful in your approaching death, golden tresses fall, our mouths meet hungrily for soon you must go. A new stern mistress will I have dressed in snow and ice.
Autumn has come in all her beauty
The sun has chased the rain away here in Crystal Palace although he is no doubt waiting in the wings for an opportunity to pounce again.
Autumn has come early. The ground is strewn with leaves and the air is perfumed with the scent of rich earth. Damp ground and newly fallen leaves mingle to delight the senses.
I love autumn. A gentle sun combined with the sound of leaves crunching underfoot, who could ask for more? Autumn reminds me of the cyclical nature of time. The growth of spring and summer is superceeded by the slow retreat into death of autumn which culminates in winter. The dying of the year is exquisetly beautiful, melancholy intimately mingled with profound beauty, perhaps symbolic of life itself.
The Girl Who Got Away Dido
I am a huge fan of Dido and own all her albums. I recently purchased Girl Who Got Away and there is, as always a lot on it which gives tremendous pleasure. I particularly like The Day Before We Went to War, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4THzaCrMht4. The sound of the birds at the start and end of the music are evocative of peaceful times as is Dido’s singing but the song of the birds can be contrasted with the planes flying overhead.
On balance my next favourite track is Happy New Year which is sung in such a sad and beautiful manner, (for some reason I am unable to copy the link to this video. You can, however find it on Youtube by searching for “happy new year Dido”. As always a great album by a talented artist.
K Morris - Poet 