November Poems

November
--Thomas Hood

No sun--no moon!
No morn--no noon--
No dawn--no dusk--no proper time of day--
No sky--no earthly view--
No distance looking blue--
No road--no street--no "t' other side the way"--
No end to any Row--
No indications where the Crescents go--
No top to any steeple--
No recognitions of familiar people--
No courtesies for showing 'em--
No knowing 'em!
No traveling at all--no locomotion,
No inkling of the way--no notion--
No go--by land or ocean--
No mail--no post--
No news from any foreign coast--
No park--no ring--no afternoon gentility--
No company--no nobility--
No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease,
No comfortable feel in any member--
No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees.
No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds.
November!

Yep, that October thread is yesterday's news; November's here and we must face it.

Wonderful poem, Jjorge, we have as many natives here who insist the rain and gray holds a bleak beauty. I love his (Frost's) attitude though and the words he uses.

My daughter called to say it was snowing this morning. Here it just rained and rained and rained.


In the Rain
William Wetmore Story
1819-1895

I STAND in the cold gray weather,
..In the white and silvery rain;
The great trees huddle together,
..And sway with the windy strain.
I dream of the purple glory
..Of the roseate mountain-height
And the sweet-to-remember story
.. Of a distant and clear delight.

The rain keeps constantly raining,
.. And the sky is cold and gray,
And the wind in the trees keeps complaining
...... That never will come again.


Bree - <teehee> Great NO poem!

bookmark

Hoping that, as I suspect, the Australian Winter-Flowering Eucalypt flowers ithis month... here's a poem for November in Oz in honor of Olga. It was a long search!



Flowering Eucalypt In Autumn
That slim creek out of the sky
the dried-blood western gum tree
is all stir in its high reaches:

its strung haze-blue foliage is dancing
points down in breezy mobs, swapping
pace and place in an all-over sway

retarded en masse by crimson blossom.
Bees still at work up there tack
around their exploded furry likeness

and the lawn underneath's a napped rug
of eyelash drift, of blooms flared
like a sneeze in a redhaired nostril,

minute urns, pinch-sized rockets
knocked down by winds, by night-creaking
fig-squirting bats, or the daily

parrot gang with green pocketknife wings.
Bristling food tough delicate
raucous life, each flower comes

as a spray in its own turned vase,
a taut starbust, honeyed model
of the tree's fragrance crisping in your head.

When the japanese plum tree
was shedding in spring, we speculated
there among the drizzling petals

what kind of exquisitely precious
artistic bloom might be gendered
in a pure ethereal compost

of petals potted as they fell.
From unpetalled gun-debris
we know what is grown continually,

a tower of fabulous swish tatters,
a map hoisted upright, a crusted
riverbed with up-country show towns.

Les Murray

Autumn

The leaves are falling, falling as if from far up,
as if orchards were dying high in space.
Each leaf falls as if it were motioning "no."

And tonight the heavy earth is falling
away from all other stars in the loneliness.

We're all falling. This hand here is falling.
And look at the other one. It's in them all.

And yet there is Someone, whose hands
infinitely calm, holding up all this falling.

(Rainer Maria Rilke
Translated by Robert Bly)

A November Night
by Sarah Teasdale

There! See the line of lights,
A chain of stars down either side the street --
Why can't you lift the chain and give it to me,
A necklace for my throat? I'd twist it round
And you could play with it. You smile at me
As though I were a little dreamy child
Behind whose eyes the fairies live. . . . And see,
The people on the street look up at us
All envious. We are a king and queen,
Our royal carriage is a motor bus,
We watch our subjects with a haughty joy. . . .
How still you are! Have you been hard at work
And are you tired to-night? It is so long
Since I have seen you -- four whole days, I think.
My heart is crowded full of foolish thoughts
Like early flowers in an April meadow,
And I must give them to you, all of them,
Before they fade. The people I have met,
The play I saw, the trivial, shifting things
That loom too big or shrink too little, shadows
That hurry, gesturing along a wall,
Haunting or gay -- and yet they all grow real
And take their proper size here in my heart
When you have seen them. . . . There's the Plaza now,
A lake of light! To-night it almost seems
That all the lights are gathered in your eyes,
Drawn somehow toward you. See the open park
Lying below us with a million lamps
Scattered in wise disorder like the stars.
We look down on them as God must look down
On constellations floating under Him
Tangled in clouds. . . . Come, then, and let us walk
Since we have reached the park. It is our garden,
All black and blossomless this winter night,
But we bring April with us, you and I;
We set the whole world on the trail of spring.
I think that every path we ever took
Has marked our footprints in mysterious fire,
Delicate gold that only fairies see.
When they wake up at dawn in hollow tree-trunks
And come out on the drowsy park, they look
Along the empty paths and say, "Oh, here
They went, and here, and here, and here! Come, see,
Here is their bench, take hands and let us dance
About it in a windy ring and make
A circle round it only they can cross
When they come back again!" . . . Look at the lake --
Do you remember how we watched the swans
That night in late October while they slept?
Swans must have stately dreams, I think. But now
The lake bears only thin reflected lights
That shake a little. How I long to take
One from the cold black water -- new-made gold
To give you in your hand! And see, and see,
There is a star, deep in the lake, a star!
Oh, dimmer than a pearl -- if you stoop down
Your hand could almost reach it up to me. . . .

There was a new frail yellow moon to-night --
I wish you could have had it for a cup
With stars like dew to fill it to the brim. . . .

How cold it is! Even the lights are cold;
They have put shawls of fog around them, see!
What if the air should grow so dimly white
That we would lose our way along the paths
Made new by walls of moving mist receding
The more we follow. . . . What a silver night!
That was our bench the time you said to me
The long new poem -- but how different now,
How eerie with the curtain of the fog
Making it strange to all the friendly trees!
There is no wind, and yet great curving scrolls
Carve themselves, ever changing, in the mist.
Walk on a little, let me stand here watching
To see you, too, grown strange to me and far. . . .
I used to wonder how the park would be
If one night we could have it all alone --
No lovers with close arm-encircled waists
To whisper and break in upon our dreams.
And now we have it! Every wish comes true!
We are alone now in a fleecy world;
Even the stars have gone. We two alone!

'Flowering Eucalypt In Autumn' -- another Les Murray gem!


...and Rilke and Teasdale too. Wonderful!

Keep 'em coming boys and girls!

Oh, Piffka, that was beautiful! Thank you so much for taking the time to find it ... for me!!! I feel truly honoured!

#131

Besides the Autumn poets sing
A few prosaic days
A little this side of the snow
And that side of the Haze --

A few incisive Mornings --
A few Ascetic Eves --
Gone -- Mr. Bryant's "Golden Rod" --
And Mr. Thomson's "sheaves."

Still, is the bustle in the Brook --
Sealed are the spicy valves --
Mesmeric fingers softly touch
The Eyes of many Elves --

Perhaps a squirrel may remain --
My sentiments to share --
Grant me, Oh Lord, a sunny mind --
Thy windy will to bear!
-Emily Dickinson

Jjorge -- Another beautiful prayer from Emily, thank you for knowing her so well and finding the perfect sentiment from her. "A sunny mind" is just what we need on this day. <nodding> Maybe we need a new dream, too. As it happens, I have gone back three times to this poem, another Les Murray I found while trying to connect "November" and the Antipodes. (Those Ozzies and Kiwis just don't think in our terms!!!!)

I hope this brings a smile to your face and takes you, as it did me, away on a mini-vacation. Tomorrow... I'll be back to rain and snow. Meanwhile, I swear, the poet mentions "winter" so I'm offering this poem as one worthy for the November thread.

Olga -- I'm glad you liked the Eucalypts poem. I'd like to know if they are blooming now. Do you know this one by Murray? It is a beautiful dream, I think.

The Dream Of Wearing Shorts Forever

To go home and wear shorts forever
in the enormous paddocks, in that warm climate,
adding a sweater when winter soaks the grass,

to camp out along the river bends
for good, wearing shorts, with a pocketknife,
a fishing line and matches,

or there where the hills are all down, below the plain,
to sit around in shorts at evening
on the plank verandah -

If the cardinal points of costume
are Robes, Tat, Rig and Scunge,
where are shorts in this compass?

They are never Robes
as other bareleg outfits have been:
the toga, the kilt, the lava-lava
the Mahatma's cotton dhoti;

archbishops and field marshals
at their ceremonies never wear shorts.
The very word
means underpants in North America.

Shorts can be Tat,
Land-Rovering bush-environmental tat,
socio-political ripped-and-metal-stapled tat,
solidarity-with-the-Third World tat tvam asi,

likewise track-and-field shorts worn to parties
and the further humid, modelling negligee
of the Kingdom of Flaunt,
that unchallenged aristocracy.

More plainly climatic, shorts
are farmers' rig, leathery with salt and bonemeal;
are sailors' and branch bankers' rig,
the crisp golfing style
of our youngest male National Costume.

Most loosely, they are Scunge,
ancient Bengal bloomers or moth-eaten hot pants
worn with a former shirt,
feet, beach sand, hair
and a paucity of signals.

Scunge, which is real negligee
housework in a swimsuit, pyjamas worn all day,
is holiday, is freedom from ambition.
Scunge makes you invisible
to the world and yourself.

The entropy of costume,
scunge can get you conquered by more vigorous cultures
and help you notice it less.

To be or to become
is a serious question posed by a work-shorts counter
with its pressed stack, bulk khaki and blue,
reading Yakka or King Gee, crisp with steely warehouse odour.

Satisfied ambition, defeat, true unconcern,
the wish and the knack of self-forgetfulness
all fall within the scunge ambit
wearing board shorts of similar;
it is a kind of weightlessness.

Unlike public nakedness, which in Westerners
is deeply circumstantial, relaxed as exam time,
artless and equal as the corsetry of a hussar regiment,

shorts and their plain like
are an angelic nudity,
spirituality with pockets!
A double updraft as you drop from branch to pool!

Ideal for getting served last
in shops of the temperate zone
they are also ideal for going home, into space,
into time, to farm the mind's Sabine acres
for product and subsistence.

Now that everyone who yearned to wear long pants
has essentially achieved them,
long pants, which have themselves been underwear
repeatedly, and underground more than once,
it is time perhaps to cherish the culture of shorts,

to moderate grim vigour
with the knobble of bare knees,
to cool bareknuckle feet in inland water,
slapping flies with a book on solar wind
or a patient bare hand, beneath the cadjiput trees,

to be walking meditatively
among green timber, through the grassy forest
towards a calm sea
and looking across to more of that great island
and the further tropics.
Les Murray

Piffka



I haven't seen Eucalyptus flowering just now, but mind you, I'm an urban girl! However, the bottle brushes are positively BRILLIANT right now ... Hot, hot flushes of bright red on (native) bushes all over the inner suburbs. Lovely to see! I have 4 in my back yard. We're encouraged to grow them because they attract the native birds ... they're drawn to them (the red!) like a magnet!

Les & his feelings about liberating "shorts" I can relate to! Except in my case I wear them as an urban gardener & a general slob in the summer. A pair of cut-offs, garden soil under my finger nails & in between my toes & a glass of white wine in hand as I survey my small kingdom is my idea of bliss at the end of a warm day! Dirty & happy!

This is what bottle brushes look like, Piffka.



Now back to the poetry!

Piffka, speaking of shorts...



I wore my lucky underpants
and lo, my Red Sox won!

They didn't work for Kerry tho,
and so, I'm all undone.



msolga, love those bottlebrushes!






My Contribution for today:

'November Night'

LISTEN . . .
With faint dry sound,
Like steps of passing ghosts,
The leaves, frost-crisp'd, break from the trees
And fall.
-Adelaide Crapsey





Adelaide Crapsey's unique contribution to poetry is the cinquain: a compressed five-line, twenty-two syllable, verse resembling the Japanese haiku.
For more info. about her see:
http://www.britannica.com/women/articles/Crapsey_Adelaide.html
http://www.theotherpages.org/poems/crapsey1.html
http://www.karenalkalay-gut.com/crap.htm

At least you're batting .500 this fall, jjorge -- we Kerry-voting Yankee fans don't even have that consolation!

Speaking of which, I hope you'll forgive me if I digress from the "November" theme of this thread to post this haiku. (I considered posting it on the "Haikus of protest" thread, but decided not to because it seemed a little too light-hearted for that thread.)

Bad signs everywhere:
first the Yankees lose, now this.
What would Yogi say?

Bien dicho bree.


In my case, many years as a Red Sox fan have helped to prepare me for this day.

Collectively, Red Sox fans endured the equivalent of one long, bitter, New England Winter lasting eighty-six years... always hoping, and looking for signs of 'Spring'.

I shared in fifty-one years of that long Winter.

So, I guess I can hunker down and get through THIS new Winter of discontent.

I 'll be looking and hoping for the first signs of Spring in the 2006 midterm elections.

jjorge

PS

bree,
you are probably aware that Adelaide Crapsey, like ESVM and E. Bishop is another alumna of your alma mater.

No, I didn't know that, jjorge -- thanks for the info!

To a Mouse
On Turning Up Her Nest with the Plough, November, 1785


1 Wee, sleeket, cowrin, tim'rous beastie,
2 Oh, what a panic's in thy breastie!
3 Thou need na start awa sae hasty
4 Wi' bickerin brattle!
5 I wad be laith to rin an' chase thee
6 Wi' murd'ring pattle!


7 I'm truly sorry man's dominion
8 Has broken Nature's social union,
9 An' justifies that ill opinion
10 Which makes thee startle
11 At me, thy poor earth-born companion,
12 An' fellow-mortal!


13 I doubt na, whyles, but thou may thieve:
14 What then? poor beastie, thou maun live!
15 A daimen icker in a thrave
16 'S a sma' request;
17 I'll get a blessin wi' the lave,
18 An' never miss 't!


19 Thy wee bit housie, too, in ruin!
20 Its silly wa's the win's are strewin!
21 An' naething, now, to big a new ane,
22 O' foggage green!
23 An' bleak December's winds ensuin
24 Baith snell an' keen!


25 Thou saw the fields laid bare an' wast,
26 An' weary winter comin fast,
27 An' cozie here beneath the blast
28 Thou thought to dwell,
29 Till crash! the cruel coulter past
30 Out thro' thy cell.


31 That wee bit heap o' leaves an' stibble
32 Has cost thee monie a weary nibble!
33 Now thou's turn'd out for a' thy trouble,
34 But house or hald,
35 To thole the winter's sleety dribble
36 An' cranreuch cauld!


37 But, Mousie, thou art no thy lane
38 In proving foresight may be vain:
39 The best laid schemes o' mice an' men
40 Gang aft agley,
41 An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain
42 For promis'd joy.


43 Still thou art blest, compar'd wi' me!
44 The present only toucheth thee:
45 But, och! I backward cast my e'e
46 On prospects drear!
47 An' forward, tho' I canna see,
48 I guess an' fear!

-Robert Burns (1759-1796)

Notes

1] Burns's brother Gilbert is responsible for the story that the poem was composed while the poet was ploughing, after he had turned up a mouse's nest and had saved the mouse from the spade of the boy who was holding the horses.
sleekit: sleek.


4] bickerin brattle: hurrying scamper.


5] laith: loth.


6] pattle: a small long-handled spade for removing clay from the ploughshare.


13] whyles: sometimes.


14] mawn: must.


15] daimen: occasional.
icker: ear of corn.
a thrave: twenty-four sheaves.


17] lave: rest.


20] silly: feeble.


21] big: build.


22] foggage: coarse grass.


24] snell: piercing.


34] But: without.
house or hald: house or habitation; cf. Address to the Deil, 104.


35] thole: endure.


36] cranreuch: hoar-frost.


37] no thy lane: not alone.


40] a-gley: amiss.