Two poems from Alan Brownjohn
Alan Brownjohn’s poem was featured today on VerseDaily. It’s not the greatest poem I’ve ever read, but it’s resonating for me right now, so I’m putting it up here. I also like how old fashioned it is. A very cursory search of this guy informs me that he studies Philip Larkin, who’s another semi conservative poet I like. The second poem I’ve included here is, I think, a little better, though honestly I’m terrible at judging quality. I like the backwardness of his description of trees as “monkey-puzzle,” the sound of “rush-hours” (in plural; does anyone know if that’s a Britishism?), and the slant rhymes and assonance. Here’s “All Best.”
ALL BEST
I go with the grain of foreign courtesies
By writing, to somebody met only twice,
I remain, your impassioned eternal lover
Or My soul is yours each minute of day and night.
Inevitably, a laughing answer comes:
“No, no! It is all wrong. I tell you, please
The words we are using here, and you will find
The nearest words in English to say it right.’
So for months all my letters begin and end
With ever more misjudged felicities,
Still striving to please correspondents for whom
I love you until death is no stronger than
Good morning, and for whom not to say,
In concluding the simplest thank-you letter,
I touch you all over, always, in my thoughts
Is tantamount to insult. It does not work.
I watch the leaves turn colour, at different speeds
And start another letter wondering
Should I go back to intriguing understatement?
The kind I used once, coaxing long threads of hair
From between a pillow and the incomparable
Shoulders which trapped them, so as to release
A head and lips for a more than thank-you kiss
– When I only had strength enough for kind regards?
SNOW IN BROMLEY
As of some unproved right, the snow
Settles the outer suburbs now,
Laying its claim unhurriedly
On gnome and monkey-puzzle tree.
Observe its power to shape and build,
Even in this unfruitful world,
Its white informal fantasies,
From roofs and paths and rockeries.
And swayed by such soft moods, I fall
Into forgiving nearly all
The aspirations of the place,
And what it does to save its face:
The calm and dutiful obsession
With what is “best in our position”,
The loyal and realistic views,
The rush-hours with the Evening News–
The snow fulfills its pure design
And softens every ugly line,
And for a while will exorsize
These virulent properties.
Within one mile of here there is
No lovelier place to walk than this,
On days when these kind flakes decide
That what it boasts of, they shall hide.
