Poetry Reading

One inky black night in December,

the 11th day, falling on a Friday

We gathered round a table brightly lit from above

In a mostly dark, mostly empty, rambling old school.

Not 13, as a coven, nor 12, as disciples,

But 11 of us, men and women sharing only a keen love of words.

We sat unmoving for over an hour

Faces turned to the pages before us

Poring over One Poem comprising six stanzas,

nine lines each, covering two pages

No rhyme nor reason

than the same number 

of syllables on

equivalent lines

of each verse all told.

But even that did not hold the ballet of a Sonnet

- first two lines of 14, three of 9s, a six, a seven,

but no elevens.

Each person spoke once, a few, more than that,

some, quite often.

Moving line by line through astounding pastoral visions,

Plumbing the depths and heights

Everyone notices different treasures, connections,

delights but never dismay,

Dylan Thomas once crafted Fern Hill

Placing words in order of perfection

We read of Gold and Green and Time and him

the like never seen before or since.

One poem, the magic flashed and glimmered.

We left, back into the dark night, forever changed.

And now - here's the poem followed by a portrait of my nephew Quinn, on his birthday, which I think perfectly illustrates it:

Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs

About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,

The night above the dingle starry,

Time let me hail and climb

Golden in the heydays of his eyes,

And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns

And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves 

Trail with daisies and barley

Down the rivers of the windfall light.

And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns 

About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,

In the sun that is young once only,

Time let me play and be

Golden in the mercy of his means,

And green and golden I as huntsman and herdsman, the calves

Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold,

And the sabbath rang slowly

In the pebbles of the holy streams.

All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay

Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air

And playing, lovely and watery

And fire green as grass.

And nightly under the simple stars

As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,

All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars

Flying with the ricks, and the horses

Flashing into the dark.

And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white

With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all

Shining, it was Adam and maiden,

The sky gathered again

And the sun grew round that very day.

So it must have been after the birth of the simple light

In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm

Our of the whinnying green stable

On to the fields of praise.

And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house

Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,

In the sun born over and over,

I ran my heedless ways,

My wishes raced through the house high hay

And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows

In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs

Before the children green and golden

Follow him out of grace,

Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me

Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,

In the moon that is always rising,

Nor that riding to sleep

I should hear him fly with the high fields

And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.

Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,

Time held me green and dying

Though I sang in my chains like the sea.