The Grove New notes the editors: from
Issue 2: June 2008
ʻHere I reposʼd ; but scarce well set, A grove descried Of stately height, whose branches met And mixʼd, on very side ; I entered, and once in, Amazʼd to seeʼt, Found all was changeʼd, and a new Spring Did all my senses greetʼ
1. Hi Guys, it’s our pleasure to bring you the second issue of ‘The Grove’. Henry Vaughan, ʻRegenerationʼ Thanks go to this month’s contributers, and judging on the interest expressed first time round our mission to expand appears that bit more achievable. Until next time! Chris Hogg and Maxime Dargaud-Fons. 2. We NEED your poems and suggestions if we are to print one of these a month. No bloody CV required. E-mail us at c.m.hogg@dur.ac.uk or/and maxdf@hotmail.fr. Instructions for use : Read. Consider reading again. Do not re-heat using a microwave. PS : The Grove is still using post-design as its official aesthetic position. However, this may evolve by the next issue. Copyright for MIlosz belongs to Random House, Tranströmer and Holub to Bloodaxe and Du Bouchet to Fata Morgana. Our thanks to Bloodaxe for their kind permission.
Poems of the month: Two poems featuring hedgehogs Half a hedgehog The rear half had been run over, leaving the head and thorax and the front legs of the hedgehog shape. A scream from a cramped-open jaw. The scream of the mute is more horrible than the silence after a flood, when even black swans float belly upwards. And even if some hedgehog doctor were to be found in a hollow trunk or under the leaves in a beechwood there’d be no hope for the mere half on Road E12. In the name of logic, in the name of the theory of pain, in the name of the hedgehog god the father, the son and the holy ghost amen, in the name of games and unripe raspberries, in the name of tumbling streams of love ever different and ever bloody, in the name of the roots which overgrow the heads of aborted foetuses, in the name of satanic beauty, in the name of skin bearing human likeness, in the name of all halves and double helices, or purines and pyrimidines we tried to run over the hedgehog’s head with the front wheel.
Contents: Page 1: Poems of the month - on hedgehogs. Page 2: English language poets picked by Chris Hogg. John Burnside, Jack Kerouac, Pascale Petit and Gregory Warren Wilson. Page 3: Translations picked by Maxime DF. André Du Bouchet, Miroslav Holub, Czeslaw Milosz and Thomas Tranströmer. Page 4: Student poets. Johnty Carr, ‘Durhamiah Jones’ and Sorrel Wood.
And it was like guiding a lunar module from a planetary distance, from a control centre seized by cataleptic sleep. And the mission failed. I got out and found a heavy piece of brick. Half the hedgehog continued screaming. And now the scream turned into speech, prepared by the vaults of our tombs: Then death will come and it will have your eyes. Miroslav Holub Translation from Czech by Ewald Osers
From ʻThroughout Our Landsʼʼ III If I had to show what the world is for me I would take a hamster of a hedgehog or a mole and place him in a theatre seat one evening and, bringing my ear close to his humid snout, would listen to what he says about the spotlights, sounds of the music, and movements of the dance.
Czeslaw Milosz Translation from Polish by Peter Dale Scott and the author.
Mexico City Blues, Chorus 113
Bethany Got up and dressed up and went out & got laid Then died and got buried in a coffin in the grave, Man – Yet everything is perfect, Because it is empty, Because it is perfect with emptiness, Because it's not even happening.
Waking at 3.a.m is becoming an art; an art, or a gift, delivered through sleep and quiet, parcels of snow and sky from another country, lights from a childhood that feels so recent, we might not have aged at all. Give us this day, we say, and continue moving the pieces, trying to puzzle it out, a picture of fog, or stars, through an open window, hares in the long grass, mice in the folds of the yard, the wisp of sun unfurling from a wall that matches us
Everything Is Ignorant of its own emptiness— Anger Doesn't like to be reminded of fits— You start with the Teaching Inscrutable of the Diamond And end with it, your goal is your startingplace, No race was run, no walk of prophetic toenails Across Arabies of hot meaning— you just numbly don't get there
for warmth and transience, the fabric of a life, asleep and waking, finding and losing its way in the house of the echo. John Burnside
Jack Kerouac
Sleepless At Dawn What comes to mind is the canary brought up with nightingales whose improvisation it learned to imitate and knowing no other believed were its own. Gregory Warren Wilson
The Treekeeper s Tale I have set up house in the hollow trunk of a giant redwood. My bed is a mat of pine needles. Cones drop their spirals
Frank O’Hara Five, Geoffrey Chaucer Nil I think on the whole I would rather read Frank O’Hara than Geoffrey Chaucer, and this fine, none-smoking morning could well be the right time to try out a new (uh hum) poetic form. It’s the funniest thing: I am here, thirty years of age, having put booze and all sorts of, say, ‘dubious substances’ behind me, now sweating it all out in a small, constipated room with a plump tomato of a woman, conjugating Middle English verbs. I have developed a line, a very brief line,
on my face as I sleep. I have the usual flying dreams. But all I know when I wake is that this bark is my vessel As I hurtle through space. Once, I rocked in a cradle carved from a coast redwood, its lullabies were my coracle. I searched for that singing grove and became its guardian. There are days when the wind plays each tree like a new instrument in the forest-orchestra. On wild nights mine is a flute. After years of solitude I have started to hear its song. I lie staring at the stars until the growth rings enclose me in hoops̶
in gestures of friendliness, and in my trousers an idea is taking shape.
choirs of concentric colours, as if my tree is remembering the music of the spheres. And I almost remember speaking my first word, how it flew out of my mouth like a dove. I have forgotten how another of my kind sounds.
Geoff Hattersley
Pascale Petit
A helping hand A Song on the End of the World
We gave a helping hand to grass – and it turned into corn. We gave a helping hand to fire – and it turned into a rocket. Hesitatingly, cautiously, we give a helping hand to people, to some people…
On the day the world ends A bee circles a clover, A fisherman mends a glimmering net. Happy porpoises jump in the sea, By the rainsprout young sparrows are playing And the smoke is gold-skinned as it always should be. On the day the world ends Women walk through the fields under their umbrellas, A drunkard grows sleepy at the edge of a lawn, Vegetable vendors shout in the street And a yellow-sailed boat comes nearer the island, The voice of violin lasts in the air And leads into a starry night.
Miroslav Holub Allegro I play Haydn after a black day and feel the simple warmth in my hands. The keys are willing. Soft hammers strike. The resonance green, lively and calm. The music says freedom exists and someone doesn’t pay the emperor tax. I push down my hands in my Haydnpockets and imitate a person looking at the world calmly. I hoist the Haydnflag – it signifies : ‘We don’t give in. But want peace.’ The music is a glass-house on the slope where stones fly, the stones roll.
And those who expected lightning and thunder Are disappointed. And those who expected signs and archangels’ trumps Do not believe it is happening now. As long as the sun and the moon are above, As long as the bumblebee visits the rose, As long as rosy infants are born No one believes it is happening now. Only a white-haired old man, who would be a prophet Yet is not a prophet, for he’s much too busy, Repeats while he binds his tomatoes: No other end of the world will there be, No other end of the world will there be. 1944 By Czeslaw Milosz.
And the stones roll right through but each pane stays whole. From March 1979 Thomas Tranströmer
Weary of all who come with words, words but no language I make my way to the snow-covered island. The untamed has no words. The unwritten pages spread out on every side! I come upon the tracks of deer’s hooves in the snow Language but no words. Thomas Tranströmer
... lips’ movement, nothing more, speech, nothing anymore, will have had taken place -- on a moving enclave... or the rising of a breaking similar to the jolting - a lacking stay, in words as well - by which, sometimes, it is passed on to ‘us’ the reminder of of many-worded sleep... André Du Bouchet Miroslav Holub translated from Check by George Theiner, Czeslaw Milosz from Polish by the author, Thomas Tranströmer from Swedish by Robin Fulton and André Du Bouchet from French by Maxime Dargaud-Fons
An August Evening
Archeology
A slammed door,
a crumbling fragment of a glittering tower is salvaged from the dust A pale sandy green Gem from a woman’s necklace. It was called “London”.
An incredulous question,
Sorrel Wood
There has been no laughter today.
Muffled murmurings of repentance Subsiding into the twilight.
Cummings would not be happy And nor am I. Create New Message The vowel has been consciously mislaid, and all that now remains is the spaceless stream of acronymic garbage that scornfully chronicles the demise of the word.
Thoughts flitter back to her, A pinprick to buoyant focus – The inescapable deflation
All I can say in 160 characters
Bringing silent resignation.
For you are clearly not worth the extra ten pence.
There is nothing to inspire me tonight.
Johnty Carr The phone begins to buzz next to the radio. Is it just feedback? Negative
Alupka I used to hate mums Who bawled at screaming kids In the busy street. Then I saw a child, Silent, beaten with branches On a lonely beach.
Fi&een seconds of electronic samba A desert blowing through our fingers
Glances, songs, irrelevancies
Sorrel Wood
A watch ticks, But makes no sound, one i wrote today in class when i was excited about Frank O'Hara and Jackson Pollock: like one time, when i hung my head down in class the Ashbery juicy and staining everyone's fingers and i saw your foot tap in rhythm to mine black shoe tap Durhamiah Jones
Largely due to it being of the digital genus.
The desert rolls on.
Johnty Carr.
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