The Law of the Jungle

NOW this is the Law of the Jungle — as old and as true as the sky;
And the Wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the Wolf that shall break it must die.

In Defence of Poetry

Older than we are by however many ages,
it doesn’t need defending against anything.
No more do air or fire, earth or water.
Not even in our empty times. Neglected, it will
go underground, or into interstellar space.

Until out of the blue someone calls it up,
like the Greek who cut my hair last week.
Where was he from? ‘Spar-ta,’ he said.
‘You are a Spartan!’ I exclaimed. ‘Oh no,’
he said, ‘there are no Spartans anymore.’

Andrew McNeillie, TLS, August 16 2002

The woman answering this description

5ft 3in
Slim
And with a long back

When You Are Old

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

WB Yeats 1892

The other

There are nights that are so still
that I can hear the small owl calling
far off and a fox barking
miles away. It is then that I lie
in the lean hours awake listening
to the swell born somewhere in the Atlantic
rising and falling, rising and falling
wave on wave on the long shore
by the village that is without light
and companionless. And the
thought comes
of that other being who is awake, too,
letting our prayers break on him,
not like this for a few hours,
but for days, years, for eternity.

RS Thomas. (Destinations, 1985) 1993. Collected Poems, 1945-1990. London: JM Dent

Retort to the Anti-Abstractionists

The world had grown too complicated, so
He went back to the cause of things and laid
The fiery day within an early shade.
It was impossible to see things grow.

And this he knew and meant. Do not believe
This picture was achieved without much care.
The man drew dangerously toward despair.
Trying to show what inward eyes perceive.

The pattern now demands our firm attention,
But still spectators say, ‘What does it mean?
This is not anything that I have seen.’
There is so much the painter could not mention.

His picture shows the meaning, not the things-
The look without the face, flight without wings.

Elizabeth Jennings. 1967. Elizabeth Jennings Collected Poems 1967. London: Macmillan.

The round moon climbs up Cold Mountain

As for me, I delight in the everyday Way
Among mist-wrapped vines and rocky caves.
Here in the wilderness, I am completely free,
With my friends, the white clouds, idling forever.
There are roads, but they do not reach the world;
Since I am mindless, who can rouse my thoughts?
On a bed of stone I sit alone in the night
While the round moon climbs up Cold Mountain

Hanshan (tr. Burton Watson)

Peter Harris. ed., 1999. Zen Poems. UK: Random House.