8 English Poems (Comings & Goings)

1.A Visit to the Theatre,1942 My husband has treated us to a box seat Directly overlooking the stage. I shall of course, still be using My opera glasses. A woman in my position Must maintain standards There is no point in having wealth, If you cannot display it. We are neither furtive people Nor are we by nature, hoarders The three bastions of the city: Education, Salvation, and Damnation The statue of William Wallace points the way Our Clarence has settled nicely into Gordons (such a decent set of pupils, those of his class) And Edward and I have our own pew Right at the front of St Nicholas church itself We just HAD to come to enjoy the Noel Coward season Blithe Spirit, (though Edward says that séances are tosh…) And then there was that dreadful stagehand business Decapitated, we're told by a stage hoist. They say he walks, that he's been seen to glide. Myself, I think it's a trick to pull folk in. Still, with the war on, one must do one's bit By supporting our entertainers. It is our civic duty, after all. Edward, poor dear was dreadfully cut up When he was deemed as being unfit to serve Flat feet are such a burden for him to bear 2. Aberdeen Comb Works, Hutcheon Street At its peak, the largest in the world, The comb works fashioned goods from horn and hoof, From patterned tortoiseshell and modern plastics From whalebone, ivory, to groom men's beards And turn out cups, scoops, combs of every style And paper cutters, shoehorns and the like From buffalo horns, shipped in from round the world Not catering for coxcombs, fops, or dandies But Aberdonians, weeding out the lice Or parting shades to keep their locks in check Sliding though brillcream, dandruff, tangles, knots 3.The Song Birds Stolen from the nest with skill Blinded. Pain unspeakable All to sweeten each bird's trill Singing from a heart on fire No wind strokes each feathery quill No cloud-bound flight, o'er tree or rill No mate, no hope of life tranquil All, all to bend to man's desire Imprisoned by a wicker grille Caged close: a fate insufferable Trained and bent to owner's will Can such enforcèd art inspire Never as free's the whip-o-will A prison's gloom, a captive bill Never to see the dawn-light spill Over the trees of town and shire Delicate, timid oh how chill A world of dark. Lamentable Day upon dreary day to fill Never to join the woodland choir Sweet songster, I would not fulfil My jailor's orders. Rather, kill The music on a funeral pyre And dying, burn the cursèd lyre 4.Memorabilia: Aberdeen In this city, skulls and bones Curses, witchcraft, storma and sailors Granite, cobbles, tunnels, oil Ghosts of gallows, ghost of jailors Guilds and unicorns of stone Markets. Universities Fitty, Torry, Don & Dee Whey-faced beggars cough and wheeze Pocra Quey, Houdini's antics Docks and fogs, seafaring city North Sea gales, the Devil's Hole Skate's nose, Abercrombie's jetty Ferries, trawlers, cruisers, vessels Rubislaw quarry: lover's leap Holding deep the drowned detritus Stolen car, abandoned jeep The Seven Trades. The Flesher's Window Mason's old mysterious walls Face of Hate at Provost Skene's Glowers at glassy shopping malls 5.Visit Scotland Arbuthnott, Gleneagles, Crieff Hydro, Glencoe Little Sparta, and Samy Ling, Troon, Linlithgow The Kelpies, the Quiraing, Glen Affric, The Spey Pluscarden, Rothiemurchas, Iona, Orkney Dumfries, Puck's Glen, Campbeltown, Dyce, Inverness Ben Nevis, Loch Lomond, Glen Etive, Stromness Stac Polly, The Summer Isles, Old Man of Storr The Trossachs, the Pentland Firth where storm roar Stonehave, Skye, Knoidart, Glen Lyon & Crathes The Eildon Hills, Barra, The Lairig Ghru's passes The Canongate, Forth Road Bridge, Pennan, Rosehearty Dunningston, Gardenstown, Rosslyn, Cromarty Colonsay, Kelvingrove, Callander, Harris Argyll, Lewis, Stirling, Skara Brae and the Barras Aberdeen, Inverness, Cults and Buccleugh All jewels in our country, come, visit and view 6.Smugglerius Carlini, Italian sculptor, settled in England Is known for church monuments, Paintings in oils and such And for making a cast Of the flayed corpses of a smuggler Posed as a Roman statue, ‘The Dying Gaul' An unusual commission by any artistic standards Thomas Henmen, fresh-hung tea smuggler, Murderer of a poor customs officer Upon the Deptford turnpike Provided, post mortem, the necessary corpse For the furtherance of medical students' knowledge His body, separated from the gallows Prior rigor mortis, was arranged and posed Dried out overnight.(The Murder Act had given surgeons rights To dissect six hanged corpses, year on year) Now Henmen's viewed by fine art connoisseurs A copy of his musculature, In Edinburgh's fine College of Art Is a source for decades of young artists' sketches William Hunter, famed anatomist, Physician, leading obstetrician South Lanarkshire man by birth Travelled to London, worked until he dropped Physician of Queen Charlotte He studied the anatomical work of Da Vinci (His home in Glasgow, now the Hunterian Museum) He it was who acquired the smuggler's body Had him flayed and reproduced in bronze Affording the subject a kind of immortality Willing or not, a felon's gift to science 7.Six American Proverbs Life is simpler when you plough around the stump. Words that soak into your ears are whispered. Meanness doesn't happen overnight. Forgive your enemies; it messes up their heads. It don't take a very big person to carry a grudge. Don't judge folk by their relatives. 8.New-Born You drink love in like dew From a pure snowdrop Your mind is cloudless We tilt our faces over you like trees Hungry to shelter and greet you