Another Diet by Helen Hough

The more I think about losing weight,
The more I pile upon my plate.
The more I look in the mirror and see,
The more depressed I get about me.
I’ve tried all the diet’s that you can name,
It’s just that I hate the starvation pain.
I wish I had the will-power to fight,
Instead of eating night after night.
I’d like to lose quite a few stone,
Start to exercise and begin to tone,
I’d like to have the perfect figure,
Instead of feeling bigger and bigger.
they tell us to eat smaller quantities.
instead of a hoard.
But I know I eat because I’m bored.
I’m going to try and try again
It’s just that I hate the starvation pain.

.

By Helen Hough

(1992)

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‘Drawing the youthful Goethe to their breast’ by Osip Mandelstam

Drawing the youthful Goethe to their breast,

those Roman nights took on the weight of gold…

I’ve much to answer for, yet still am graced;

an outlawed life has depths yet to be told.

 

by Осип Эмильевич Мандельштам (Osip Emilyevich Mandelshtam. His surname is commonly latinised as Mandelstam)

(1935)

translated by Robert Chandler

Nightride by Gillian Clarke

The road unwinding under our wheels

New in the headlamps like a roll of foil.

The rain is a recorder writing tunes

In telegraph wires, kerbs and cats’ eyes,

Reflections and the lights of little towns.

 

He turns his head to look at me.

“Why are you quiet?” Shiny road rhythm,

Rain rhythm, beat of the windscreen wipers,

I push my knee against his in the warmth

And the car thrusts the dark and rain away.

 

The child sleeps, and I reflect, as I breathe

His brown hair, and watch the apple they gave him

Held in his hot hands, that a tree must ache

With the sweet weight of the round rosy fruit,

As I with Dylan’s head, nodding on its stalk.

 

by Gillian Clarke

from The Sundial, Gwasg Gomer, 1978)