The Nativity? No. Something has gone wrong. There is a hole in the stable acid rain drips through onto an absence. Beauty is hoisted upside down. The truth is Pilate not lingering for an answer. The angels are prostrate 'beaten into the clay' as Yeats thundered. Only Satan beams down, poisoning with fertilisers the place where the child lay, harrowing the ground for the drumming of the machine- gun tears of the rich that are seed of the next war.
By R. S. Thomas from Counterpoint (1990) 2. Incarnation
Below us like five fists full of pebbles. About us
Lay the snow, deep in the hollows,
Very clean and dry, untouched.
I arrived breathless, my head breaking
The surface of the glittering light, thinking
No place could claim more beauty, white
Slag tips like cones of sugar spun
By the pit wheels under Machen mountain.
I sat on a rock in the sun, watching
My snowboys play. Pit villages shine
Like anthracite. Completed, the pale rider
Rode away. I turned to him and saw
His joy fall like the laughter down a dark
Crack. The black crow shadowed him.
by Gillian Clarke
from The Sundial (Gwasg Gomer, 1978)
Machen mountain mentioned in this poem is Mynydd Machen which is a 362-metre-high (1,188 ft) hill lying between the town of Risca and the village of Machen in Caerphilly County Borough in south Wales. Its summit is crowned by a trig point and a mast. The poem was written when Wales still had a coal mining industry and there were slag heaps, refuse from the mines and quarries, outside communities across the country.
‘There suck my breast: there, grow and take our bread,
and learn to bear your cross and bow your head.’
Time passes. War returns. Rebellion rages.
The farms and villages go up in flame,
and Russia in her ancient tear-stained beauty,
is yet the same,
unchanged through all the ages. How long will
the mother grieve and the kite circle still?
by Александр Александрович Блок (Alexander Alexandrovich Blok)
(22 March 1916)
translated by Frances Cornford and Esther Polianowsky Salaman
Fun fact: As you can tell from the date this was written into the lead up to the Russian Revolution. To be more exact, during the early months of 1916, there were increasing food and fuel shortages and increasingly high prices. Thus the Progressive Bloc was formed. Despite successes in the Brusilov offensive, the Russian war effort was still characterised by shortages, poor command, death and desertion. Away from the front, the conflict caused starvation, inflation and a torrent of refugees. Both soldiers and civilians blamed the incompetence of the Tsar and his government. This lead, later in the year, to increasing strikes which are supported by the military who declare they won’t protect the Tsar from a revolution – which would be successful in October 1917 after many further events and internal conflicts.
A recital of the poem in Russian:
The original Russian text in Cyrillic:
Чертя за кругом плавный круг,
Над сонным лугом коршун кружит
И смотрит на пустынный луг. —
В избушке мать над сыном тужит:
«На́ хлеба, на́, на́ грудь, соси,
Расти, покорствуй, крест неси».
Идут века, шумит война,
Встаёт мятеж, горят деревни,
А ты всё та ж, моя страна,
В красе заплаканной и древней. —
Доколе матери тужить?
Доколе коршуну кружить?
William Henry Davies or W. H. Davies (3 July 1871 – 26 September 1940) was a Welsh poet and writer. Davies spent a significant part of his life as a tramp or hobo, in the United Kingdom and United States, but became one of the most popular poets of his time. The principal themes in his work are observations about life’s hardships, the ways in which the human condition is reflected in nature, his own tramping adventures and the various characters he met. Davies is usually considered one of the Georgian Poets, although much of his work is not typical of the group, in either style or theme.
The sunlight on the garden
Hardens and grows cold,
We cannot cage the minute
Within its nets of gold,
When all is told
We cannot beg for pardon.
Our freedom as free lances
Advances towards its end;
The earth compels, upon it
Sonnets and birds descend;
And soon, my friend,
We shall have no time for dances.
The sky was good for flying
Defying the church bells
And every evil iron
Siren and what it tells:
The earth compels,
We are dying, Egypt, dying
And not expecting pardon,
Hardened in heart anew,
But glad to have sat under
Thunder and rain with you,
And grateful too
For sunlight on the garden.
