Sunday, September 27, 2009

Don Paterson, a poet from Scotland



The Swing

The swing was picked up for the boys,
for the here-and-here-to-stay
and only she knew why it was
I dug so solemnly

I spread the feet two yards apart
and hammered down the pegs
filled up the holes and stamped the dirt
around its skinny legs

I hung the rope up in the air
and fixed the yellow seat
then stood back that I might admire
my handiwork complete

and saw within its frail trapeze
the child that would not come
of what we knew had two more days
before we sent it home

I know that there is nothing here
no venue and no host
but the honest fulcrum of the hour
that engineers our ghost

the bright sweep of its radar-arc
is all the human dream
handing us from dark to dark
like a rope over a stream

But for all the coldness of my creed
and for all those I denied
for all the others she had freed
like arrows from her side

for all the child was barely here
and for all that we were over
I could not square the ghosts we are
with those that we deliver

I gave the empty seat a push
and nothing made a sound
and swung between two skies to brush
her feet upon the ground

This poem was taken from Don Paterson's new poem collection entitled "Rain".

Monday, September 21, 2009

See the sounds



A manuscript musical score of Ludwig van Beethoven was discovered in some obscure second hand shop. The composition was dated from the last years of Beethoven's life when he was stone deaf. The notes, scribbled furiously with ink on the yellowish paper, would grow in size when the music reached a crescendo and become small in the slow, softer passages.