counting

[incandescens]

Tired, as is not unusual for Mondays. Cold, as winter seems to have decided to come charging in with wild enthusiasm. (Though not with snow. It's a damp sort of cold.)

Clinical Audit Training course coming up for the next three days. This will be interesting.

Time seems to halt and stammer in the run up to Christmas; we check the post each day, count the hours, check off another mark on the calendar, chalk up another point on the blood pressure, create our own pulse to have as background to the day, and does time itself listen to us? No. It just goes on.

---

The Explosion

On the day of the explosion
Shadows pointed towards the pithead:
In the sun the slagheap slept.

Down the lane came men in pitboots
Coughing oath-edged talk and pipe-smoke,
Shouldering off the freshened silence.

One chased after rabbits; lost them;
Came back with a nest of lark's eggs;
Showed them; lodged them in the grasses.

So they passed in beards and moleskins,
Fathers, brothers, nicknames, laughter,
Through the tall gates standing open.

At noon, there came a tremor; cows
Stopped chewing for a second; sun,
Scarfed as in a heat-haze, dimmed.

The dead go on before us, they
Are sitting in God's house in comfort,
We shall see them face to face -

Plain as lettering in the chapels
It was said, and for a second
Wives saw men of the explosion

Larger than in life they managed -
Gold as on a coin, or walking
Somehow from the sun towards them,

One showing the eggs unbroken.

-- Philip Larkin

Comments

[lisajulie.livejournal.com]

Can I reiterate my appreciation for your poetry selections?

Thank you. You send me off searching poetry in directions that I never contemplated.

Thank you.

And if you ever get to the mid-Atlantic area of the United States, please let me know. I'd like to take you out for interesting food and conversation.

[incandescens]

Thank you. It is nice to know that other people are getting something out of the poetry which I enjoy, and I'm glad you find them interesting.

And as for America -- well, no plans for the moment, but the offer is appreciated.