Modern British Literature: Robert Stilling

"Museé de Beaux Art" (W. H Auden)

About suffering they were never wrong, The old Masters: how well they understood Its human position: how it takes place While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along; How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting For the miraculous birth, there always must be Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating On a pond at the edge of the wood: They never forgot That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse Scratches its innocent behind on a tree. In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry, But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky, Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

"Pygmalion's Bride" (Carol Ann Duffy)

Cold, I was, like snow, like ivory. I thought "He will not touch me", but he did. He kissed my stone-cool lips. I lay still as though I'd died. He stayed. He thumbed my marbled eyes. He spoke - blunt endearments, what he'd do and how. His words were terrible. My ears were sculpture, stone-deaf shells. I heard the sea. I drowned him out. I heard him shout. He brought me presents, polished pebbles, little bells. I didn't blink, was dumb. He brought me pearls and necklaces and rings. He called them girly things. He ran his clammy hands along my limbs. I didn't shrink, played statue, shtum. He let his fingers sink into my flesh, he squeezed, he pressed. I would not bruise. He looked for marks, for purple hearts, for inky stars, for smudgy clues. His nails were claws. I showed no scratch, no scrape, no scar. He propped me up on pillows, jawed all night. My heart was ice, was glass. His voice was gravel, hoarse. He talked white black. So I changed tack, grew warm, like candle wax, kissed back, was soft, was pliable, began to moan, got hot, got wild, arched, coiled, writhed, begged for his child, and at the climax screamed my head off - all an act. And haven't seen him since. Simple as that

Mrs Dalloway (Virginia Woolf)

For Heaven only knows why one loves it so, how one sees it so, making it up, building it round one, tumbling it, creating it every moment afresh; but the veriest frumps, the most dejected of miseries sitting on doorsteps (drink their downfall) do the same; can't be dealt with, she felt positive, by Acts of Parliament for that very reason: they love life

"The Haunter" (Thomas Hardy)

He does not think that I haunt here nightly: How shall I let him know That whither his fancy sets him wandering I, too, alertly go? - Hover and hover a few feet from him Just as I used to do, But cannot answer the words he lifts me - Only listen thereto! When I could answer he did not say them: When I could let him know How I would like to join in his journeys Seldom he wished to go. Now that he goes and wants me with him More than he used to do, Never he sees my faithful phantom Though he speaks thereto. Yes, I companion him to places Only dreamers know, Where the shy hares print long paces, Where the night rooks go; Into old aisles where the past is all to him, Close as his shade can do, Always lacking the power to call to him, Near as I reach thereto! What a good haunter I am, O tell him, Quickly make him know If he but sigh since my loss befell him Straight to his side I go. Tell him a faithful one is doing All that love can do Still that his path may be worth pursuing, And to bring peace thereto.

"Good Advice is Rarer than Rubies" (Salman Rushdie)

Her innocence made him shiver with fear for her. She was a sparrow, he told her, and they were men with hooded eyes, like eagles. He explained that they would ask her questions, personal questions, questions such as a lady's own brother would be shy to ask. They

"Your Last Drive" (Thomas Hardy)

Here by the moorway you returned, And saw the borough lights ahead That lit your face—all undiscerned To be in a week the face of the dead, And you told of the charm of that haloed view That never again would beam on you. And on your left you passed the spot Where eight days later you were to lie, And be spoken of as one who was not; Beholding it with a heedless eye As alien from you, though under its tree You soon would halt everlastingly. I drove not with you. . . . Yet had I sat At your side that eve I should not have seen That the countenance I was glancing at Had a last-time look in the flickering sheen, Nor have read the writing upon your face, "I go hence soon to my resting-place; "You may miss me then. But I shall not know How many times you visit me there, Or what your thoughts are, or if you go There never at all. And I shall not care. Should you censure me I shall take no heed And even your praises no more shall need." True: never you'll know. And you will not mind. But shall I then slight you because of such? Dear ghost, in the past did you ever find The thought "What profit", move me much? Yet abides the fact, indeed, the same,— You are past love, praise, indifference, blame.

"Queen Kong" (Carol Ann Duffy)

I remember peeping in at his skyscraper room and seeing him fast asleep. My little man. I'd been in Manhattan a week, making my plans; staying at 2 quiet hotels in the Village, where people were used to strangers and more or less left you alone. To this day I'm especially fond of pastrami on rye. I digress. As you see, this island's a paradise. He'd arrived, my man, with a documentary team to make a film. (There's a particular toad that lays its eggs only here.) I found him alone in a clearing, scooped him up in my palm, and held his wriggling, shouting life till he calmed. For me, it was absolutely love at first sight. I'd been so lonely. Long nights in the heat of my own pelt, rumbling an animal blues. All right, he was small, but perfectly formed and gorgeous. There were things he could do for me with the sweet finesse of those hands that no gorilla could. I swore in my huge heart to follow him then to the ends of the earth. For he wouldn't stay here. He was nervous. I'd go to his camp each night at dusk, crouch by the delicate tents, and wait. His colleagues always sent him out pretty quick. He'd climb into my open hand, sit down; and then I'd gently pick at his shirt and his trews, peel him, put the tip of my tongue to the grape of his flesh. Bliss. But when he'd finished his prize-winning film, he packed his case; hopped up and down on my heartline, miming the flight back home to New York. Big metal bird. Didn't he know I could swat his plane from these skies like a gnat? But I let him go, my man. I watched him fly into the sun as I thumped at my breast, distraught. I lasted a month. I slept for a week, then woke to binge for a fortnight. I didn't wash. The parrots clacked their migraine chant. The swinging monkeys whinged. Fevered, I drank handfuls of river right by the spot where he'd bathed. I bled with a fat, red moon rolled on the jungle roof. And after that, I decided to get him back. So I came to sail up the Hudson one June night, with the New York skyline a concrete rainforest of light; and felt, lovesick and vast, the first glimmer of hope in weeks. I was discreet, prowled those streets in darkness, pressing my passionate eye to a thousand windows, each with its modest peep-show of boredom or pain, of drama, consolation, remorse. I found him, of course. At 3 a.m. on a Sunday, dreaming alone in his single bed; over his lovely head a blown-up photograph of myself. I stared for a long time till my big brown eyes grew moist; then I padded away through Central Park, under the stars. He was mine. Next day, I shopped. Clothes for my main, mainly, but one or two treats for myself from Bloomingdale's. I picked him, like a chocolate from the top layer of a box, one Friday night, out of his room and let him dangle in the air between my finger and my thumb in a teasing, lover's way. Then we sat on the tip of the Empire State Building, saying farewell to the Brooklyn Bridge, to the winking yellow cabs, to the helicopters over the river, dragonflies. Twelve happy years. He slept in my fur, woke early to massage the heavy lids of my eyes. I liked that. He liked me to gently blow on him; or scratch, with care, the length of his back with my nail. Then I'd ask him to play on the wooden pipes he'd made in our first year. He'd sit, cross-legged, near my ear for hours: his plaintive, lost tunes making me cry. When he died, I held him all night, shaking him like a doll, licking his face, breast, soles of his feet, his little rod. But then, heartsore as I was, I set to work. He would be pleased. I wear him now around my neck, perfect, preserved, with tiny emeralds for eyes. No man has been loved more. I'm sure that, sometimes, in his silent death, against my massive, breathing lungs, he hears me roar.

"September 1, 1939" (W. H Auden)

I sit in one of the dives On Fifty-second Street Uncertain and afraid As the clever hopes expire Of a low dishonest decade: Waves of anger and fear Circulate over the bright And darkened lands of the earth, Obsessing our private lives; The unmentionable odour of death Offends the September night. Accurate scholarship can Unearth the whole offence From Luther until now That has driven a culture mad, Find what occurred at Linz, What huge imago made A psychopathic god: I and the public know What all schoolchildren learn, Those to whom evil is done Do evil in return. Exiled Thucydides knew All that a speech can say About Democracy, And what dictators do, The elderly rubbish they talk To an apathetic grave; Analysed all in his book, The enlightenment driven away, The habit-forming pain, Mismanagement and grief: We must suffer them all again. Into this neutral air Where blind skyscrapers use Their full height to proclaim The strength of Collective Man, Each language pours its vain Competitive excuse: But who can live for long In an euphoric dream; Out of the mirror they stare, Imperialism's face And the international wrong. Faces along the bar Cling to their average day: The lights must never go out, The music must always play, All the conventions conspire To make this fort assume The furniture of home; Lest we should see where we are, Lost in a haunted wood, Children afraid of the night Who have never been happy or good. The windiest militant trash Important Persons shout Is not so crude as our wish: What mad Nijinsky wrote About Diaghilev Is true of the normal heart; For the error bred in the bone Of each woman and each man Craves what it cannot have, Not universal love But to be loved alone. From the conservative dark Into the ethical life The dense commuters come, Repeating their morning vow; "I will be true to the wife, I'll concentrate more on my work," And helpless governors wake To resume their compulsory game: Who can release them now, Who can reach the deaf, Who can speak for the dumb? All I have is a voice To undo the folded lie, The romantic lie in the brain Of the sensual man-in-the-street And the lie of Authority Whose buildings grope the sky: There is no such thing as the State And no one exists alone; Hunger allows no choice To the citizen or the police; We must love one another or die. Defenceless under the night Our world in stupor lies; Yet, dotted everywhere, Ironic points of light Flash out wherever the Just Exchange their messages: May I, composed like them Of Eros and of dust, Beleaguered by the same Negation and despair, Show an affirming flame.

"Hap" (Thomas Hardy)

If but some vengeful god would call to me From up the sky, and laugh: "Thou suffering thing, Know that thy sorrow is my ecstasy, That thy love's loss is my hate's profiting!" Then would I bear it, clench myself, and die, Steeled by the sense of ire unmerited; Half-eased in that a Powerfuller than I Had willed and meted me the tears I shed. But not so. How arrives it joy lies slain, And why unblooms the best hope ever sown? —Crass Casualty obstructs the sun and rain, And dicing Time for gladness casts a moan. . . . These purblind Doomsters had as readily strown Blisses about my pilgrimage as pain.

The Lonely Londoners (Sam Selvon)

It was a summer night: laughter fell softly: it was the sort of night that if you wasn't making love to a woman you feel like you was the only person in the world like that

"Frau Freud" (Carol Ann Duffy)

Ladies, for argument's sake, let us say that I've seen my fair share of ding-a-ling, member and jock, of todger and nudger and percy and cock, of tackle, of three-for-a-bob, of willy and winky; in fact, you could say, I'm as au fait with Hunt-the-Salami as Ms. M. Lewinsky - equally sick up to here with the beef bayonet, the pork sword, the saveloy, love-muscle, night-crawler, dong, the dick, prick, dipstick and wick, the rammer, the slammer, the rupert, the shlong. Don't get me wrong, I've no axe to grind with the snake in the trousers, the wife's best friend, the weapon, the python - I suppose what I mean is, ladies, dear ladies, the average penis - not pretty... the squint of its envious solitary eye...one's feeling of pity...

"The More Loving One" (W. H Auden)

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well That, for all they care, I can go to hell, But on earth indifference is the least We have to dread from man or beast. How should we like it were stars to burn With a passion for us we could not return? If equal affection cannot be, Let the more loving one be me. Admirer as I think I am Of stars that do not give a damn, I cannot, now I see them, say I missed one terribly all day. Were all stars to disappear or die, I should learn to look at an empty sky And feel its total dark sublime, Though this might take me a little time.

The Emperor's Babe (Bernadine Evaristo)

My fingers penetrated your bushy hair, pulled it up in tufts, squeezed the tension out of your head, to your quiet, grateful groans. I untied the Gordian knots in your shoulders with juniper oil, pummelled your back with my fists, knuckle each vertebrae down to your coccyx, knead your hard buttocks, rub oil into your legs, bathe your tired feet, squeeze them until your tingles shoot up my arm, I chew each toe in turn until it is softened, bite into your soles like a joint of pork, you cannot help but giggle, sir, I turn you over, with my palms, rotate your temples, trace the curves on your face, touching yet not, three fingers inside your mouth, let you suckle, baby, from belly to breast, I massage your chest in concentric circles, pinch your nipples, nibble gently, set my belly-dancer tongue on to them, take your hands, my love, tie them above your head, with your belt, I sit astride my steed, take the reins, my flexible muscles holding you in, flexing like strong fists, tighten and release, teasing you, taming you, your eyes are shut, you have died and gone to Olympus, smiling, I slap it off, so hard my hand hurts, your eyes shoot open like a dead man dying, I slap you again, you feign amusement, your eyes suggest so this is slap and tickle? I take your riding crop, fold it, lash your chest. 'Take that!' I hiss. 'How dare you humour me. Who's the boss now?

"The Market Girl" (Thomas Hardy)

Nobody took any notice of her as she stood on the causey kerb, All eager to sell her honey and apples and bunches of garden herb; And if she had offered to give her wares and herself with them too that day, I doubt if a soul would have cared to take a bargain so choice away. But chancing to trace her sunburnt grace that morning as I passed nigh, I went and I said "Poor maidy dear! --and will none of the people buy?" And so it began; and soon we knew what the end of it all must be, And I found that though no others had bid, a prize had been won by me.

"Anne Hathaway" (Carol Ann Duffy)

The bed we loved in was a spinning world of forests, castles, torchlight, cliff-tops, seas where he would dive for pearls. My lover's words were shooting stars which fell to earth as kisses on these lips; my body now a softer rhyme to his, now echo, assonance; his touch a verb dancing in the centre of a noun. Some nights I dreamed he'd written me, the bed a page beneath his writer's hands. Romance and drama played by touch, by scent, by taste. In the other bed, the best, our guests dozed on, dribbling their prose. My living laughing love - I hold him in the casket of my widow's head as he held me upon that next best bed.

"Johnny" (W. H Auden)

Poet's PagePoemsCommentsStatsShare on FacebookShare on Twitter Poems by WH Auden : 27 / 70 « prev. poem next poem » Johnny - Poem by WH Auden Autoplay next video O the valley in the summer where I and my John Beside the deep reiver would walk on and on While the flowers at our feet and the birds up above Argued so sweetly on reciprocal love, And I leaned on his shoulder; 'O Johnny, let's play': But he frowned like thunder and he went away. O that Friday near Christmas as I well recall When we went to the Charity Matinee Ball, The floor was so smooth and th band was so loud And Johnny so handsome I felt so proud; 'Squeeze me tighter, dear Johnny, let's dance till it's day': But he frowned like thunder and he went away. Shall I ever forget at the Grand Opera When music poured out of each wonderful star. Diamonds and pearls they hung dazzling down Over each silver or golden silk gown; 'O John I'm in heaven, ' I whispered to say: But he frowned like thunder and he went away. O but he was as fair as a garden in flower, As slender and tall as the great Eiffel Tower, When the waltz throbbed out on the long promenade O his eyes and his smile they went straight to my heart; 'O marry me, Johnny, I'll love and obey': But he frowned like thunder and he went away. O last night I dreamed of you, Johnny, my lover, You'd the sun on one arm and the moon on the other, The sea it was blue and the grass it was green, Every star rattled a round tambourine; Ten thousand miles deep in a pit there I lay: But he frowned like thunder and he went away.

"Yorick" (Salman Rushdie)

References to Shakepeare, wife of bad breath, etc.

"The Going" (Thomas Hardy)

Why did you give no hint that night That quickly after the morrow's dawn, And calmly, as if indifferent quite, You would close your term here, up and be gone Where I could not follow With wing of swallow To gain one glimpse of you ever anon! Never to bid good-bye Or lip me the softest call, Or utter a wish for a word, while I Saw morning harden upon the wall, Unmoved, unknowing That your great going Had place that moment, and altered all. Why do you make me leave the house And think for a breath it is you I see At the end of the alley of bending boughs Where so often at dusk you used to be; Till in darkening dankness The yawning blankness Of the perspective sickens me! You were she who abode By those red-veined rocks far West, You were the swan-necked one who rode Along the beetling Beeny Crest, And, reining nigh me, Would muse and eye me, While Life unrolled us its very best. Why, then, latterly did we not speak, Did we not think of those days long dead, And ere your vanishing strive to seek That time's renewal? We might have said, "In this bright spring weather We'll visit together Those places that once we visited." Well, well! All's past amend, Unchangeable. It must go. I seem but a dead man held on end To sink down soon. . . . O you could not know That such swift fleeing No soul foreseeing— Not even I—would undo me so!

"The Free Radio" (Salman Rushdie")

"I knew those cronies of his. They all wore the armbands of the new youth Movement. This was the time of the State of Emergency, and these friends were not peaceful persons, there were stories of beatings-up, so I sat quiet under my tree. Ramani wore no armband but he went with them because they impressed him, the fool."

Pygmalion (George Bernard Shaw)

"I sold flowers. I didn't sell myself. Now you've made a lady of me I'm not fit to sell anything else"

Pygmalion (George Bernard Shaw)

"I tell you I have created this thing out of the squashed cabbage leaves of Covent Garden: and now she pretends to play the fine lady with me"

Pygmalion (George Bernard Shaw)

"I've taken a sort of fancy to you, Governor, and if you want the girl, I'm not so set on having her back home again but what I might be open to an arrangement"

The Lonely Londoners (Sam Selvon)

"It ain't have no place in the world that exactly like a place where a lot of men get together to look for work and draw money from the Welfare State while they ain't working. Is a kind of place where hate and disgust and avarice and malice and sympathy and sorrow and pity all mix up. Is a place where everyone is your enemy and your friend."

The Lonely Londoners (Sam Selvon)

"It had a fellar call Five Past Twelve. A test look at him and say, 'Boy, you black like midnight.' Then the test take a second look and say, 'No, you more like Five Past Twelve."

The Lonely Londoners (Sam Selvon)

"So, cool as a lord, the old Galahad walking out to the road, with plastic raincoat hanging on the arm, and the eyes not missing one sharp craft that pass, bowing his head in a polite 'Good evening' and not giving a blast if they answer or not. This is London, this is life oh lord, to walk like a king with money in your pocket, not a worry in the world."

"The Free Radio" (Salman Rushdie")

"They were wonderful letters, brimming with confidence, but whenever I read them, and sometimes I read them still, I remember the expression which came over his face in the days just before he learned the truth about his radio, and the huge mad energy which he had poured into the act of conjuring reality, by an act of magnificent faith, out of the hot thin air between his cupped hand and his ear."

"The Free Radio" (Salman Rushdie)

"We all knew nothing good would happen to him while the thief's window has her claws dug into his flesh, but the boy was an innocent, a real donkey's child, you can't teach such people The boy could have had a good life, God had blessed him with God's own looks, and his father had done to the grave for him, but didn't he leave the boy a brand-new first-class cycle rickshaw with plastic covered seats and all?"

The Emperor's Babe (Bernadine Evaristo)

"We exist only in the reflection of others"

Pygmalion (George Bernard Shaw)

"Yes: you can turn round and make up to me now that I am not afraid of you, and can do without you"

"Yorick" (Salman Rushdie)

"for it's a true face that men take an equal pleasure in annihilating both the ground upon which they stand while they live and the substance (I mean paper) upon which they remain, immortalized, once this same ground over their heads of under their feet; and that the complete inventory of such strategies of destruction would over-fill pages than my ration,...so then to the devil with that list and on with my story; which, as I had begun to say, is itself the tale of a piece of vellum,- both the tale of the vellum itself and the tale inscribed thereupon."

The Lonely Londoners (Sam Selvon)

"Always, from the first time he went there to see Eros and the lights, that circus have a magnet for him, that circus represent life, that circus is the beginning and the ending of the world. Every time he go there, he have the same feeling like when he see it the first night, drink coca-cola, any time is guinness time, bovril and the fireworks, a million flashing lights, gay laughter, the wide doors of theatres, the huge posters, everready batteries, rich people going into tall hotels, people going to the theatre, people sitting and standing and walking and talking and laughing and buses and cars and Galahad Esquire, in all this, standing there in the big city, in London. Oh Lord."

Pygmalion (George Bernard Shaw)

"He's no right to take away my character. My character is the same to me as any lady's" (Act I, p. 26)

"Little Red Cap" (Carol Ann Duffy)

At childhood's end, the houses petered out Into playing fields, the factory, allotments Kept, like mistresses, by kneeling married men The silent railway line, the hermit's caravan Till you came at last to the edge of the woods It was there that I first clapped eyes on the wolf He stood in a clearing, reading his verse out loud In his wolfy drawl, a paperback in his hairy paw Red wine staining his bearded jaw. What big ears He had! What big eyes he had! What teeth! In the interval, I made quite sure he spotted me Sweet sixteen, never been, babe, waif, and bought me a drink My first. You might ask why. Here's why. Poetry The wolf, I knew, would lead me deep into the woods Away from home, to a dark tangled thorny place Lit by the eyes of owls. I crawled in his wake My stockings ripped to shreds, scraps of red from my blazer Snagged on twig and branch, murder clues. I lost both shoes But got there, wolf's lair, better beware. Lesson one that night Breath of the wolf in my ear, was the love poem I clung till dawn to his thrashing fur, for What little girl doesn't dearly love a wolf?1 Then I slid from between his heavy matted paws And went in search of a living bird - white dove - Which flew, straight, from my hands to his open mouth One bite, dead. How nice, breakfast in bed, he said Licking his chops. As soon as he slept, I crept to the back Of the lair, where a whole wall was crimson, gold, aglow with books Words, words were truly alive on the tongue, in the head Warm, beating, frantic, winged; music and blood But then I was young - and it took ten years In the woods to tell that a mushroom Stoppers the mouth of a buried corpse, that birds Are the uttered thought of trees, that a greying wolf Howls the same old song at the moon, year in, year out Season after season, same rhyme, same reason. I took an axe To a willow to see how it wept. I took an axe to a salmon To see how it leapt. I took an axe to the wolf As he slept, one chop, scrotum to throat, and saw The glistening, virgin white of my grandmother's bones I filled his old belly with stones. I stitched him up Out of the forest I come with my flowers, singing, all alone

"Eurydice" (Carol Ann Duffy)

Girls, I was dead and down in the Underworld, a shade, a shadow of my former self, nowhen. It was a place where language stopped, a black full stop, a black hole Where the words had to come to an end. And end they did there, last words, famous or not. It suited me down to the ground. So imagine me there, unavailable, out of this world, then picture my face in that place of Eternal Repose, in the one place you'd think a girl would be safe from the kind of a man who follows her round writing poems, hovers about while she reads them, calls her His Muse, and once sulked for a night and a day because she remarked on his weakness for abstract nouns. Just picture my face when I heard - Ye Gods - a familiar knock-knock at Death's door. Him. Big O. Larger than life. With his lyre and a poem to pitch, with me as the prize. Things were different back then. For the men, verse-wise, Big O was the boy. Legendary. The blurb on the back of his books claimed that animals, aardvark to zebra, flocked to his side when he sang, fish leapt in their shoals at the sound of his voice, even the mute, sullen stones at his feet wept wee, silver tears. Bollocks. (I'd done all the typing myself, I should know.) And given my time all over again, rest assured that I'd rather speak for myself than be Dearest, Beloved, Dark Lady, White Goddess etc., etc. In fact girls, I'd rather be dead. But the Gods are like publishers, usually male, and what you doubtless know of my tale is the deal. Orpheus strutted his stuff. The bloodless ghosts were in tears. Sisyphus sat on his rock for the first time in years. Tantalus was permitted a couple of beers. The woman in question could scarcely believe her ears. Like it or not, I must follow him back to our life - Eurydice, Orpheus' wife - to be trapped in his images, metaphors, similes, octaves and sextets, quatrains and couplets, elegies, limericks, villanelles, histories, myths... He'd been told that he mustn't look back or turn round, but walk steadily upwards, myself right behind him, out of the Underworld into the upper air that for me was the past. He'd been warned that one look would lose me for ever and ever. So we walked, we walked. Nobody talked. Girls, forget what you've read. It happened like this - I did everything in my power to make him look back. What did I have to do, I said, to make him see we were through? I was dead. Deceased. I was Resting in Peace. Passé. Late. Past my sell-by date... I stretched out my hand to touch him once on the back of the neck. Please let me stay. But already the light had saddened from purple to grey. It was an uphill schlep from death to life and with every step I willed him to turn. I was thinking of filching the poem out of his cloak, when inspiration finally struck. I stopped, thrilled. He was a yard in front. My voice shook when I spoke - Orpheus, your poem's a masterpiece. I'd love to hear it again... He was smiling modestly, when he turned, when he turned and he looked at me. What else? I noticed he hadn't shaved. I waved once and was gone. The dead are so talented. The living walk by the edge of a vast lake near, the wise, drowned silence of the dead.

"Mrs. Icarus" (Carol Ann Duffy)

I'm not the first or the last to stand on a hillock, watching the man she married prove to the world he's a total, utter, absolute Grade A pillock.

"Queen Herod" (Carol Ann Duffy)

Ice in the trees. Three Queens at the Palace gates, dressed in furs, accented; their several sweating, panting beasts laden for a long hard trek, following the guide and boy to the stables; courteous, confident; oh, and with gifts for the King and Queen of here - Herod, me - in exchange for sunken baths, curtained beds, fruit, the best of meat and wine, dancers, music, talk - as it turned out to be, with everyone fast asleep, save me, those vivid three - till bitter dawn. They were wise. Older than I. They knew what they knew. Once drunken Herod's head went back, they asked to see her, fast asleep in her crib, my little child. Silver and gold, the loose change of herself, glowed in the soft bowl of her face. Grace, said the tallest Queen. Strength, said the Queen with the hennaed hands. The black Queen made a tiny starfish of my daughter's fist, said Happiness; then stared at me, Queen to Queen, with insolent lust. Watch, they said, for a star in the east - a new star pierced through the night like a nail. It means he's here, alive, newborn. Who? Him. The Husband. Hero. Hunk. The Boy Next Door. The Paramour. The Je t'adore. The Marrying Kind. Adulterer. Bigamist. The Wolf. The Rip. The Rake. The Rat. The Heartbreaker. The Ladykiller. Mr Right. My baby stirred, suckled the empty air for milk, till I knelt and the black Queen scooped out my breast, the left, guiding it down to the infant's mouth. No man, I swore, will make her shed one tear. A peacock screamed outside. Afterwards, it seemed like a dream. The pungent camels kneeling in the snow, the guide's rough shout as he clapped his leather gloves, hawked, spat, snatched the smoky jug of mead from the chittering maid - she was twelve, thirteen. I watched each turbaned Queen rise like a god on the back of her beast. And splayed that night below Herod's fusty bulk, I saw the fierce eyes of the black Queen flash again, felt her urgent warnings scald my ear. Watch for a star, a star. It means he's here... Some swaggering lad to break her heart, some wincing Prince to take her name away and give a ring, a nothing, a nought in gold. I sent for the Chief of Staff, a mountain man with a red scar, like a tick to the mean stare of his eye. Take men and horses, knives, swords, cutlasses. Ride East from here and kill each mother's son. Do it. Spare not one. The midnight hour. The chattering stars shivered in a nervous sky. Orion to the South who knew the score, who'd seen, not seen, then seen it all before; the yapping Dog Star at his heels. High up in the West a studded, diamond W. And then, as prophesied, blatant, brazen, buoyant in the East - and blue - The Boyfriend's Star. We do our best, we Queens, we mothers, mothers of Queens. We wade through blood for our sleeping girls. We have daggers for eyes. Behind our lullabies, the hooves of terrible horses thunder and drum.

Pygmalion (George Bernard Shaw)

It was a silly notion: the whole thing has been a bore

"Mundus et Infans" (W. H Auden)

Kicking his mother until she let go of his soul Has given him a healthy appetite: clearly, her role In the New Order must be To supply and deliver his raw materials free; Should there be any shortage She will be held responsible; she also promises To show him all such attentions as befit his age. Having dictated peace, With one fist clenched behind his head, heel drawn up to thigh, The cocky little ogre dozes off, ready, Though, to take on the rest Of the world at the drop of a hat or the mildest Nudge of the impossible, Resolved, cost what it may, to seize supreme power, and Sworn to resist tyranny to the death with all Forces at his command. A pantheist not a solipsist, he cooperates With a universe of large and noisy feeling states, Without troubling to place Them anywhere special; for, to his eyes, Funny face Or Elephant as yet Mean nothing. His distinction between Me and Us Is a matter of taste; his seasons are Dry and Wet; He thinks as his mouth does. Still, his loud iniquity is still what only the Greatest of saints become—someone who does not lie: He because he cannot Stop the vivid present to think; they by having got Past reflection into A passionate obedience in time. We have our Boy- Meets-Girl era of mirrors and muddle to work through, Without rest, without joy. Therefore we love him because his judgments are so Frankly subjective that his abuse carries no Personal sting. We should Never dare offer our helplessness as a good Bargain, without at least Promising to overcome a misfortune we blame History or Banks or the Weather for; but this beast Dares to exist without shame. Let him praise his Creator with the top of his voice, Then, and the motions of his bowels; let us rejoice That he lets us hope, for He may never become a fashionable or Important personage. However bad he may be, he has not yet gone mad; Whoever we are now, we were no worse at his age: So of course we ought to be glad When he bawls the house down. Has he not a perfect right To remind us at any moment how we quite Rightly expect each other To go upstairs or for a walk if we must cry over Spilt milk, such as our wish That since, apparently, we shall never be above Either or both, we had never learned to distinguish Between hunger and love?

"Good Advice is Rarer than Rubies" (Salman Rushdie)

On the last Tuesday of the month the dawn bus brought Miss Rehana to the gates of the British Embassy. It arrived pushing a cloud of dust, veiling her beauty from the eyes of strangers until she descended. The bus was brightly painted in multicolored arabesques

"Epitaph on a Tyrant" (W. H Auden)

Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after, And the poetry he invented was easy to understand; He knew human folly like the back of his hand, And was greatly interested in armies and fleets; When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter, And when he cried the little children died in the streets.

Mrs Dalloway (Virginia Woolf)

She felt somehow very like him—the young man who had killed himself. She felt glad that he had done it; thrown it away. The clock was striking. The leaden circles dissolved in the air. He made her feel the beauty; made her feel the fun. But she must go back. She must assemble.

Mrs Dalloway (Virginia Woolf)

She had a perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, out, far out to sea and alone; she always had the feeling that it was very, very dangerous to live even one day

"Funeral Blues" (W. H Auden)

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone, Silence the pianos and with muffled drum Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come. Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead Scribbling on the sky the message 'He is Dead'. Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves, Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves. He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and my Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong. The stars are not wanted now; put out every one, Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun, Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood; For nothing now can ever come to any good.

"Wessex Heights" (Thomas Hardy)

There are some ________ in _______, shaped as if by a kindly hand For thinking, dreaming, dying on, and at crises when I stand, Say, on Ingpen Beacon eastward, or on Wylls-Neck westwardly, I seem where I was before my birth, and after death may be. In the lowlands I have no comrade, not even the lone man's friend - Her who suffereth long and is kind; accepts what he is too weak to mend: Down there they are dubious and askance; there nobody thinks as I, But mind-chains do not clank where one's next neighbour is the sky. In the towns I am tracked by phantoms having weird detective ways - Shadows of beings who fellowed with myself of earlier days: They hang about at places, and they say harsh heavy things - Men with a frigid sneer, and women with tart disparagings. Down there I seem to be false to myself, my simple self that was, And is not now, and I see him watching, wondering what crass cause Can have merged him into such a strange continuator as this, Who yet has something in common with himself, my chrysalis. I cannot go to the great grey Plain; there's a figure against the moon, Nobody sees it but I, and it makes my breast beat out of tune; I cannot go to the tall-spired town, being barred by the forms now passed For everybody but me, in whose long vision they stand there fast. There's a ghost at Yell'ham Bottom chiding loud at the fall of the night, There's a ghost in Froom-side Vale, thin lipped and vague, in a shroud of white, There is one in the railway-train whenever I do not want it near, I see its profile against the pane, saying what I would not hear. As for one rare fair woman, I am now but a thought of hers, I enter her mind and another thought succeeds me that she prefers; Yet my love for her in its fulness she herself even did not know; Well, time cures hearts of tenderness, and now I can let her go. So I am found on Ingpen Beacon, or on Wylls-Neck to the west, Or else on homely Bulbarrow, or little Pilsdon Crest, Where men have never cared to haunt, nor women have walked with me, And ghosts then keep their distance; and I know some liberty.

Mrs Dalloway (Virginia Woolf)

This late age of the world's experience had bred in them all, all men and women, a well of tears. Tears and sorrows; courage and endurance; a perfectly upright and stoical bearing.

The Emperor's Babe (Bernadine Evaristo)

To leave a whisper of myself in the world, my ghost, a magna opera of words

"Friends Beyond" (Thomas Hardy)

WILLIAM DEWY, Tranter Reuben, Farmer Ledlow late at plough, Robert's kin, and John's, and Ned's, And the Squire, and Lady Susan, lie in Mellstock churchyard now! "Gone," I call them, gone for good, that group of local hearts and heads; Yet at mothy curfew-tide, 5 And at midnight when the noon-heat breathes it back from walls and leads, They've a way of whispering to me—fellow-wight who yet abide— In the muted, measured note Of a ripple under archways, or a lone cave's stillicide: "We have triumphed: this achievement turns the bane to antidote, 10 Unsuccesses to success, Many thought-worn eves and morrows to a morrow free of thought. "No more need we corn and clothing, feel of old terrestrial stress; Chill detraction stirs no sigh; Fear of death has even bygone us: death gave all that we possess." 15 W. D.—"Ye mid burn the wold bass-viol that I set such vallie by." Squire.—"You may hold the manse in fee, You may wed my spouse, my children's memory of me may decry." Lady.—"You may have my rich brocades, my laces; take each household key; Ransack coffer, desk, bureau; 20 Quiz the few poor treasures hid there, con the letters kept by me." Far.—"Ye mid zell my favorite heifer, ye mid let the charlock grow, Foul the grinterns, give up thrift." Wife.—"If ye break my best blue china, children, I sha'n't care or ho." All—"We've no wish to hear the tidings, how the people's fortunes shift; 25 What your daily doings are; Who are wedded, born, divided; if your lives beat slow or swift. "Curious not the least are we if our intents you make or mar, If you quire to our old tune, If the City stage still passes, if the weirs still roar afar." 30 Thus, with very gods' composure, freed those crosses late and soon Which, in life, the Trine allow (Why, none witteth), and ignoring all that haps beneath the moon, William Dewy, Tranter Reuben, Farmer Ledlow late at plough, Robert's kin, and John's, and Ned's, 35 And the Squire, and Lady Susan, murmur mildly to me now.

"Spain" (W. H Auden)

Yesterday all the past. The language of size Spreading to China along the trade-routes; the diffusion Of the counting-frame and the cromlech; Yesterday the shadow-reckoning in the sunny climates. Yesterday the assessment of insurance by cards, The divination of water; yesterday the invention Of cartwheels and clocks, the taming of Horses. Yesterday the bustling world of the navigators. Yesterday the abolition of fairies and giants, the fortress like a motionless eagle eyeing the valley, the chapel built in the forest; Yesterday the carving of angels and alarming gargoyles; The trial of heretics among the columns of stone; Yesterday the theological feuds in the taverns And the miraculous cure at the fountain; Yesterday the Sabbath of witches; but to-day the struggle Yesterday the installation of dynamos and turbines, The construction of railways in the colonial desert; Yesterday the classic lecture On the origin of Mankind. But to-day the struggle. Yesterday the belief in the absolute value of Greek, The fall of the curtain upon the death of a hero; Yesterday the prayer to the sunset And the adoration of madmen. but to-day the struggle. As the poet whispers, startled among the pines, Or where the loose waterfall sings compact, or upright On the crag by the leaning tower: "O my vision. O send me the luck of the sailor." And the investigator peers through his instruments At the inhuman provinces, the virile bacillus Or enormous Jupiter finished: "But the lives of my friends. I inquire. I inquire." And the poor in their fireless lodgings, dropping the sheets Of the evening paper: "Our day is our loss. O show us History the operator, the Organiser. Time the refreshing river." And the nations combine each cry, invoking the life That shapes the individual belly and orders The private nocturnal terror: "Did you not found the city state of the sponge, "Raise the vast military empires of the shark And the tiger, establish the robin's plucky canton? Intervene. O descend as a dove or A furious papa or a mild engineer, but descend." And the life, if it answers at all, replied from the heart And the eyes and the lungs, from the shops and squares of the city "O no, I am not the mover; Not to-day; not to you. To you, I'm the "Yes-man, the bar-companion, the easily-duped; I am whatever you do. I am your vow to be Good, your humorous story. I am your business voice. I am your marriage. "What's your proposal? To build the just city? I will. I agree. Or is it the suicide pact, the romantic Death? Very well, I accept, for I am your choice, your decision. Yes, I am Spain." Many have heard it on remote peninsulas, On sleepy plains, in the aberrant fishermen's islands Or the corrupt heart of the city. Have heard and migrated like gulls or the seeds of a flower. They clung like burrs to the long expresses that lurch Through the unjust lands, through the night, through the alpine tunnel; They floated over the oceans; They walked the passes. All presented their lives. On that arid square, that fragment nipped off from hot Africa, soldered so crudely to inventive Europe; On that tableland scored by rivers, Our thoughts have bodies; the menacing shapes of our fever Are precise and alive. For the fears which made us respond To the medicine ad, and the brochure of winter cruises Have become invading battalions; And our faces, the institute-face, the chain-store, the ruin Are projecting their greed as the firing squad and the bomb. Madrid is the heart. Our moments of tenderness blossom As the ambulance and the sandbag; Our hours of friendship into a people's army. To-morrow, perhaps the future. The research on fatigue And the movements of packers; the gradual exploring of all the Octaves of radiation; To-morrow the enlarging of consciousness by diet and breathing. To-morrow the rediscovery of romantic love, the photographing of ravens; all the fun under Liberty's masterful shadow; To-morrow the hour of the pageant-master and the musician, The beautiful roar of the chorus under the dome; To-morrow the exchanging of tips on the breeding of terriers, The eager election of chairmen By the sudden forest of hands. But to-day the struggle. To-morrow for the young the poets exploding like bombs, The walks by the lake, the weeks of perfect communion; To-morrow the bicycle races Through the suburbs on summer evenings. But to-day the struggle. To-day the deliberate increase in the chances of death, The consious acceptance of guilt in the necessary murder; To-day the expending of powers On the flat ephemeral pamphlet and the boring meeting. To-day the makeshift consolations: the shared cigarette, The cards in the candlelit barn, and the scraping concert, The masculine jokes; to-day the Fumbled and unsatisfactory embrace before hurting. The stars are dead. The animals will not look. We are left alone with our day, and the time is short, and History to the defeated May say Alas but cannot help nor pardon.

Pygmalion (George Bernard Shaw)

"A woman who utters such depressing and disgusting sounds has no right to be anywhere—no right to live. Remember that you are a human being with a soul and the divine gift of articulate speech" .

The Lonely Londoners (Sam Selvon)

"But big headlines in the papers every day, and whatever the newspaper and the radio say in this country, that's the people Bible."

Pygmalion (George Bernard Shaw)

"Come _______ (character name) : you must learn to know yourself. I haven't heard such language as yours since we used to review the volunteers in Hyde Park twenty years ago"

The Lonely Londoners (Sam Selvon)

"Is one of those summer evenings, when it look like night would never come, a magnificent evening, a powerful evening, rent finish paying, rations in the cupboard, twenty pounds in the bank, and a nice piece of skin waiting under the big clock in Piccadilly Tube Station. The sky blue, sun shining, the girls ain't have on no coats to hide the legs. "Mummy, look at that black man!" A little child, holding on to the mother hand, look up at Sir Galahad. "You mustn't say that, dear!" The mother chide the child."

Pygmalion (George Bernard Shaw)

"Is she to have any wages? And what is to become of her when you've finished your teaching? You must look ahead a little"

Pygmalion (George Bernard Shaw)

"They all thought she was dead; but my father he kept ladling gin down her throat til she came to so sudden that she bit the bowl off the spoon

"Good Advice is Rarer than Rubies" (Salman Rushdie)

'I do not think,' she told him as she climbed aboard the bus and gave a wave to the driver, 'I truly do not think you should be sad.' Her last smile, which he watched from the compound until the bus concealed it in a dust cloud, was the happiest thing he had ever seen in his long, hot, hard, unloving life

"In Memory of W. B. Yeats" (W. H Auden)

I He disappeared in the dead of winter: The brooks were frozen, the airports almost deserted, And snow disfigured the public statues; The mercury sank in the mouth of the dying day. What instruments we have agree The day of his death was a dark cold day. Far from his illness The wolves ran on through the evergreen forests, The peasant river was untempted by the fashionable quays; By mourning tongues The death of the poet was kept from his poems. But for him it was his last afternoon as himself, An afternoon of nurses and rumours; The provinces of his body revolted, The squares of his mind were empty, Silence invaded the suburbs, The current of his feeling failed; he became his admirers. Now he is scattered among a hundred cities And wholly given over to unfamiliar affections, To find his happiness in another kind of wood And be punished under a foreign code of conscience. The words of a dead man Are modified in the guts of the living. But in the importance and noise of to-morrow When the brokers are roaring like beasts on the floor of the Bourse, And the poor have the sufferings to which they are fairly accustomed, And each in the cell of himself is almost convinced of his freedom, A few thousand will think of this day As one thinks of a day when one did something slightly unusual. What instruments we have agree The day of his death was a dark cold day. II You were silly like us; your gift survived it all: The parish of rich women, physical decay, Yourself. Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry. Now Ireland has her madness and her weather still, For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives In the valley of its making where executives Would never want to tamper, flows on south From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs, Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives, A way of happening, a mouth. III Earth, receive an honoured guest: William Yeats is laid to rest. Let the Irish vessel lie Emptied of its poetry. In the nightmare of the dark All the dogs of Europe bark, And the living nations wait, Each sequestered in its hate; Intellectual disgrace Stares from every human face, And the seas of pity lie Locked and frozen in each eye. Follow, poet, follow right To the bottom of the night, With your unconstraining voice Still persuade us to rejoice; With the farming of a verse Make a vineyard of the curse, Sing of human unsuccess In a rapture of distress; In the deserts of the heart Let the healing fountain start, In the prison of his days Teach the free man how to praise.

"Going and Staying" (Thomas Hardy)

I The moving sun-shapes on the spray, The sparkles where the brook was flowing, Pink faces, plightings, moonlit May, These were the things we wished would stay; But they were going. II Seasons of blankness as of snow, The silent bleed of a world decaying, The moan of multitudes in woe, These were the things we wished would go; But they were staying. III Then we looked closelier at Time, And saw his ghostly arms revolving To sweep off woeful things with prime, Things sinister with things sublime Alike dissolving.

"The Convergence of Twain" (Thomas Hardy)

I In a solitude of the sea Deep from human vanity, And the Pride of Life that planned her, stilly couches she. II Steel chambers, late the pyres Of her salamandrine fires, Cold currents thrid, and turn to rhythmic tidal lyres. III Over the mirrors meant To glass the opulent The sea-worm crawls — grotesque, slimed, dumb, indifferent. IV Jewels in joy designed To ravish the sensuous mind Lie lightless, all their sparkles bleared and black and blind. V Dim moon-eyed fishes near Gaze at the gilded gear And query: "What does this vaingloriousness down here?" ... VI Well: while was fashioning This creature of cleaving wing, The Immanent Will that stirs and urges everything VII Prepared a sinister mate For her — so gaily great — A Shape of Ice, for the time far and dissociate. VIII And as the smart ship grew In stature, grace, and hue, In shadowy silent distance grew the Iceberg too. IX Alien they seemed to be; No mortal eye could see The intimate welding of their later history, X Or sign that they were bent By paths coincident On being anon twin halves of one august event, XI Till the Spinner of the Years Said "Now!" And each one hears, And consummation comes, and jars two hemispheres.

"After a Journey" (Thomas Hardy)

I come to interview a Voiceless ghost; Whither, O whither will its whim now draw me? Up the cliff, down, till I'm lonely, lost, And the unseen waters' soliloquies awe me. Where you will next be there's no knowing, Facing round about me everywhere, With your nut-coloured hair, And gray eyes, and rose-flush coming and going. Yes: I have re-entered your olden haunts at last; Through the years, through the dead scenes I have tracked you; What have you now found to say of our past - Viewed across the dark space wherein I have lacked you? Summer gave us sweets, but autumn wrought division? Things were not lastly as firstly well With us twain, you tell? But all's closed now, despite Time's derision. I see what you are doing: you are leading me on To the spots we knew when we haunted here together, The waterfall, above which the mist-bow shone At the then fair hour in the then fair weather, And the cave just under, with a voice still so hollow That it seems to call out to me from forty years ago, When you were all aglow, And not the thin ghost that I now frailly follow! Ignorant of what there is flitting here to see, The waked birds preen and the seals flop lazily, Soon you will have, Dear, to vanish from me, For the stars close their shutters and the dawn whitens hazily. Trust me, I mind not, though Life lours, The bringing of me here; nay, bring me here again! I am just the same as when Our days were a joy, and our paths through flowers.

"Mrs. Beast" (Carol Ann Duffy)

These myths going round, these legends, fairytales, I'll put them straight; so when you stare Into my face - Helen's face, Cleopatra's, Queen of Sheba's, Juliet's - then, deeper, Gaze into my eyes - Nefertiti's, Mona Lisa's, Garbo's eyes - think again. The Little Mermaid slit Her shining, silver tail in two, rubbed salt Into that stinking wound, got up and walked, In agony, in fishnet tights, stood up and smiled, waltzed, All for a Prince, a pretty boy, a charming one Who'd dump her in the end, chuck her, throw her overboard. I could have told her - look, love, I should know, They're bastards when they're Princes. What you want to do is find yourself a beast. The sex Is better. Myself, I came to the House of the Beast No longer a girl, knowing my own mind, My own gold stashed in the bank, My own black horse at the gates Ready to carry me off at one wrong word, One false move, one dirty look. But the Best fell to his knee's at the door To kiss my glove with his mongrel lips - good - Showed by the tears in his bloodshot eyes That he knew he was blessed - better - Didn't try to conceal his erection, Size of a mules - best. And the Beast Watched me open, decant and quaff A bottle of Château Margaux '54, The year of my birth, before he lifted a paw. I'll tell you more. Stripped of his muslin shirt And his corduroys, he steamed in his pelt, Ugly as sin. He had the grunts, the groans, the yelps, The breath of a goat. I had the language, girls. The lady says Do this. Harder. The lady says Do that. Faster. The lady says That's not where I meant. At last it all made sense. The pig in my bed Was invited. And if his snout and trotters fouled My damask sheets, why, then, he'd wash them. Twice. Meantime, here was his horrid leather tongue To scour between my toes. Here Were his hooked and yellowy claws to pick my nose, If I wanted that. Or to scratch my back Till it bled. Here was his bullock's head To sing off-key all night where I couldn't hear. Here was a bit of him like a horse, a ram, An ape, a wolf, a dog, a donkey, dragon, dinosaur. Need I say more? On my poker nights, the Beast Kept out of sight. We were a hard school, tough as ****, All of us beautiful and rich - the Woman Who Married a Minotaur, Goldilocks, the Bride Of the Bearded Lesbian, Frau Yellow Dwarf, et Moi. I watched those wonderful women shuffle and deal - Five and Seven Card Stud, Sidewinder, Hold 'Em, Draw - I watched them bet and raise and call. One night, A head-to-head between Frau Yellow Dwarf and Bearded's Bride Was over the biggest pot I'd seen in my puff. The Frau had the Queen of Clubs on the baize And Bearded the Queen of Spades. Final card. Queen each. Frau Yellow raised. Bearded raised. Goldilocks' eyes Were glued to the pot as though porridge bubbled there. The Minotaur's wife lit a stinking cheroot. Me, I noticed the Frau's hand shook as she placed her chips. Bearded raised her final time, then stared, Stared so hard you felt your dress would melt If she blinked. I held my breath. Frau Yellow Swallowed hard, then called. Sure enough, Bearded flipped Her Aces over; diamonds, hearts, the pubic Ace of Spades. And that was a lesson learnt by all of us - The drop-dead gorgeous Bride of the Bearded Lesbian didn't bluff. But behind each player stood a line of ghosts Unable to win. Eve, Ashputtel. Marilyn Monroe. Rapunzel slashing wildly at her hair. Bessie Smith unloved and down and out. Bluebeard's wives, Henry VIII's, Snow White Cursing the day she left the seven dwarfs, Diana, Princess of Wales. The sheepish Beast came in With a tray of schnapps at the end of the game And we stood for the toast - Fay Wray - Then tossed our fiery drinks to the back of our crimson throats. Bad girls. Serious ladies. Mourning our dead. So I was hard on the Beast, win or lose, When I got upstairs, those tragic girls in my head, Turfing him out of bed; standing alone On the balcony, the night so cold I could taste the stars On the tip of my tongue. And I made a prayer - Thumbing my pearls, the tears of Mary, one by one, Like a rosary - words for the lost, the captive beautiful, The wives, those less fortunate than we. The moon was a hand-mirror breathed on by a Queen. My breath was a chiffon scarf for an elegant ghost. I turned to go back inside. Bring me the Beast for the night. Bring me the wine-cellar key. Let the less-loving one be me.

"During Wind and Rain" (Thomas Hardy)

They sing their dearest songs— He, she, all of them—yea, Treble and tenor and bass, And one to play; With the candles mooning each face. . . . Ah, no; the years O! How the sick leaves reel down in throngs! They clear the creeping moss— Elders and juniors—aye, Making the pathways neat And the garden gay; And they build a shady seat. . . . Ah, no; the years, the years, See, the white storm-birds wing across. They are blithely breakfasting all— Men and maidens—yea, Under the summer tree, With a glimpse of the bay, While pet fowl come to the knee. . . . Ah, no; the years O! And the rotten rose is ript from the wall. They change to a high new house, He, she, all of them—aye, Clocks and carpets and chairs On the lawn all day, And brightest things that are theirs. . . . Ah, no; the years, the years; Down their carved names the rain-drop ploughs.

"Drummer Hodge" (Thomas Hardy)

They throw in Drummer Hodge, to rest Uncoffined -- just as found: His landmark is a kopje-crest That breaks the veldt around: And foreign constellations west Each night above his mound. Young Hodge the drummer never knew -- Fresh from his Wessex home -- The meaning of the broad Karoo, The Bush, the dusty loam, And why uprose to nightly view Strange stars amid the gloam. Yet portion of that unknown plain Will Hodge for ever be; His homely Northern breast and brain Grow to some Southern tree, And strange-eyed constellations reign His stars eternally.

The Emperor's Babe (Bernadine Evaristo)

You're either a figure for **** or a ***** freak. Everyone needs a one-and-only after a while. I'm twenty-two, Zuky-do. Middle aged! A Venus must 'ave an Adonis. Even if it's just for a while. Bronzed, rippling, adoring, preferably, compliant, essentially. Someone to come home to, to cook a pease pudding for of a winter's night. Look at the facts

Mrs Dalloway (Virginia Woolf)

_______ (Character name) had a theory in those days . . . that since our apparitions, the part of us which appears, are so momentary compared with the other, the unseen part of us, which spreads wide, the unseen might survive, be recovered somehow attached to this person or that, or even haunting certain places after death . . . perhaps—perhaps.

"O where are you going' said reader to rider" (W. H Auden)

____________________ (Title of Poem) "That valley is fatal when furnaces burn, Yonder's the midden whose odors will madden, That gap is the grave where the tall return." "O do you imagine," said fearer to farer, "That dusk will delay on your path to the pass, Your diligent looking discover the lacking Your footsteps feel from granite to grass?" "O what was that bird," said horror to hearer, "Did you see that shape in the twisted trees? Behind you swiftly the figure comes softly, The spot on your skin is a shocking disease?" "Out of this house" ‚ said rider to reader, "Yours never will" ‚ said farer to fearer, "They're looking for you" ‚ said hearer to horror, As he left them there, as he left them there.

"Oh what is that sound which so thrills the ear" (W. H Auden)

_____________________ (Title of Poem) Down in the valley drumming, drumming? Only the scarlet soldiers, dear, The soldiers coming. O what is that light I see flashing so clear Over the distance brightly, brightly? Only the sun on their weapons, dear, As they step lightly. O what are they doing with all that gear, What are they doing this morning, this morning? Only their usual manoeuvres, dear, Or perhaps a warning. O why have they left the road down there, Why are they suddenly wheeling, wheeling? Perhaps a change in their orders, dear. Why are you kneeling? O haven't they stopped for the doctor's care, Haven't they reined their horses, their horses? Why, they are none of them wounded, dear, None of the forces. O is it the parson they want, with white hair, Is it the parson, is it, is it? No, they are passing his gateway, dear, Without a visit. O it must be the farmer who lives so near. It must be the farmer so cunning, so cunning? They have passed the farmyard already, dear, And now they are running. O where are you going? Stay with me here! Were the vows you swore deceiving, deceiving? No, I promised to love you, dear, But I must be leaving. O it's broken the lock and splintered the door, O it's the gate where they're turning, turning; Their boots are heavy on the floor And their eyes are burning.