Carol Ann Duffy: Last Post

Carol Ann Duffy's tribute to the dead of the Great War seems as much about the craft of poetry as the senseless bloodshed of battle. I find her melancholy acceptance of poetry's limited power to change the world incredibly moving.

LAST POST

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If poetry could tell it backwards, true, begin
that moment shrapnel scythed you to the stinking mud…
but you get up, amazed, watch bled bad blood
run upwards from the slime into its wounds;
see lines and lines of British boys rewind
back to their trenches, kiss the photographs from home-
mothers, sweethearts, sisters, younger brothers
not entering the story now
to die and die and die.
Dulce- No- Decorum- No- Pro patria mori.
You walk away.

You walk away; drop your gun (fixed bayonet)
like all your mates do too-
Harry, Tommy, Wilfred, Edward, Bert-
and light a cigarette.
There's coffee in the square,
warm French bread
and all those thousands dead
are shaking dried mud from their hair
and queuing up for home. Freshly alive,
a lad plays Tipperary to the crowd, released
from History; the glistening, healthy horses fit for heroes, kings.

You lean against a wall,
your several million lives still possible
and crammed with love, work, children, talent, English beer, good food.
You see the poet tuck away his pocket-book and smile.
If poetry could truly tell it backwards,
then it would.

Getting On

I've watched a couple of episodes of this comedy drama on BBC4 now. It stars Jo Brand, Joanna Scanlan and Vicki Pepperdine and is set in a busy (or to be more accurate, chaotic) geriatric ward in an NHS hospital. The humour is dark and the performances excellent. This is gritty, poignant and very funny stuff. I've heard that the series has been 'pulled' for some reason - that would be another mistake by the BBC then.

No Womad No Cry

Due to a horrible combination of cat politics and meteorology I have had to miss my fave weekend of the year for the first time in five years. If getting muddy, wet and smelly for 3 or 4 days is character-building then so is staying home when you really want to be there. Luckily my other interests have kept me occupied, but I have learned my lesson for next year - it's the dreaded cattery for Tom!

Malick Pathe Sow

Appearing at Womad this weekend - unmissable I'd say.

Richard Long at Tate Britain Sunday 19th July

Finally got to see this exhibition today - a satisfyingly comprehensive survey of Long's work. The slate and other stone installations were worth the entry charge alone. Although I have seen these and similar works many times in various Bristol galleries over the last twenty years or so, they are always very beautiful. They are unmediated by text and lens and I find them the most successful of Long's oeuvre. The wall paintings inspired by the I-Ching are equally impressive and have a monumental, almost Rothko-like intensity.

Long's relationship with landscape and wilderness could be seen as crudely interventionist and therefore essentially suspect but my own feelings towards him are far more charitable - he attempts to communicate both the internal and external landscape by framing his experiences within the taut limitations of measured time and space, resulting in an amalgam of mathematics and mysticism which I find wholly convincing.

Wild Monty

While I continue to be so lazy about posting on this 'ere blog, why not have a gander at my Montpelier wildlife sightings? It may very well change your life.