Tuesday, 3 March 2009

Off topic.

Any poetry buffs out there?

I'm reading a poem on Sunday. Anyone got any thoughts on Gerard Manley Hopkins' "Carrion Comfort"?

It's a bit of a bitch to work out how to read aloud:

Not, I’ll not carrion-comfort, Despair, not feast on thee;

Not untwist-slack they may be – these last strands of man

In me or, most weary, cry I can no more. I can;

Can something, hope, wish day come, not choose not to be.

But ah, but O thou terrible, why wouldst thou rude on me

Thy wring-world right foot rock? Lay a limb against me? Scan

With darksome devouring eyes my bruised bones? and fan

O in turns of tempest, me heaped there; me frantic to avoid thee and flee?

Why? That my chaff might fly; my grain lie, sheer and clear.

Nay in all that toil, that coil, since (it seems) I kissed the rod,

Hand rather, my heart lo! sapped strength, stole joy, would laugh, cheer.

Cheer whom though? the hero whose heaven-handling flung me, foot trod

Me? or me that fought him? O which one? is it each one? that night, that year.

O now done darkness I wretch lay wrestling with (my God!) my God.


Doesn't mean I don't rather like it ;-D Xxxc

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