Poetry and Dementia: A Practical Guide John Killick Jessica Kingsley Publishers 2017 ISBN: 9781785921766 £16.99 I wonder what your relationship to poetry is? I have met some people that simply do not get this way of expression; others who simply haven’t got the time or the inclination to attend very closely to the shape and form and sound words. Others live by its art form as a profound expression of truth through the limitations of human language. They…
a lyrical manifesto for large-hearted living. Walk through life Beautiful more than anything Stand in the sunlight Walk through life Love all the things That make you strong, be lovers, be anything For all the people of Earth You have brothers You love each other, change up And look at the world Now, it’s Our’s, take it slow We’ve got a long time, a long way To go, We have Each other, and…
The Windows Lord, how can man preach thy eternall word? He is a brittle crazie glasse: Yet in thy temple thou dost him afford This glorious and transcendent place, To be a window, through thy grace. But when thou dost anneal in glasse thy storie, Making thy life to shine within The holy Preachers; then the light and glorie More rev’rend grows, and more doth win: Which else shows watrish, bleak, and thin. …
Affinity Consider this man in the field beneath, Gaitered with mud, lost in his own breath, Without joy, without sorrow,… Without children, without wife, Stumbling insensitively from furrow to furrow, A vague somnambulist; but hold your tears, For his name also is written in the Book of Life. Ransack your brainbox, pull out the drawers That rot in your heart’s dust, and what have you to give To enrich his spirit or the way he lives? From the standpoint of…
glass It is like the light coming through blue stained glass, Yet not quite like it, For the blueness is not transparent, Only translucent. Her soul’s light shines through, But her soul cannot be seen. It is something elusive, whimsical, tender, wanton, childlike, wise And noble. Joyce Kilmer
and listening to the voices …… Erich Fried When we were the persecuted I was one of you How can I remain one when you become the persecutors? Your longing was to become like other nations who murdered you Now you have become like them You have outlived those who were cruel to you Does their cruelty live on in you now? You ordered the defeated : ‘Take off your boots’ Like the scapegoat you…
they go there with empty hands What do they do, The singers, tale writers, dancers, painters, Shapers, makers? They go there with empty hands, into The gap between. They come back with things in their hands. They go silent and come back with words, with tunes. They go into confusion and come back with patterns. They go limping and weeping, ugly and frightened, And come back with the wings of a red wing hawk, The eye of a mountain…
tulip Perhaps the tulip knows about impermanence and that is why, on a green stem it carries a wine cup in the wilderness Hafiz, (re)transl. Tom Davis
light O splendour of what is, by which I saw the high delight, the true communion: please show me how to say all I could see. Up there there is a light. The light is God. Creation contemplates its own creator, and only in that seeing is there peace. It stretches in a circle shape so great, that its circumference can so much more than wrap around the sun. From top to bottom, that enormous light collected, complex, is…
blossom There are days we live as if death were nowhere in the background; from joy to joy to joy, from wing to wing, from blossom to blossom to impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom. From Li-Young Lee, From Blossoms
crystal I am unjust, but I can strive for justice. My life’s unkind, but I can vote for kindness. I, the unloving, say life should be lovely. I, that am blind, cry out against my blindness. Man is a curious brute — he pets his fancies — Fighting mankind, to win sweet luxury. So he will be, tho’ law be clear as crystal, Tho’ all men plan to live in harmony. Come, let us vote against our human…
spiral wine the colour of day wine the colour of night wine deep purple o topaz blood wine: starlit son of earth wine, smooth as a golden sword wine like a spiral seashell wondrous loving marine unconfinable in one glass or one song, or drunk alone: choral, gregarious and always shared from Neruda, To wine, transl. Tom Davis
thorn In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread: you put this rather beautifully, and gave me leave to sing my work until my work became the song. In sorrow shalt thou eat of it: a line on which a man might ring the changes as he tills the ground from which he was taken. Thistle, thorn (in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed), these too shall it bring forth to thee, all…
what we need is here Geese appear high over us, pass, and the sky closes. Abandon, as in love or sleep, holds them to their way, clear in the ancient faith: what we need is here. And we pray, not for new earth or heaven, but to be quiet in heart, and in eye, clear. What we need is here. Wendell Berry
morning rain The dawn light. A light rain. I hear it on the treetop leaves. Then, the mist. The morning wind blows it and the clouds away. Now colours deepen, and a sense of grace: the presence of water. And then, across the landscape the smell of morning rain. Du Fu (712-770 AD) tr. Tom Davis
veins Look: how they grow to be each other. In their veins there is only God. Each other’s axis, a shimmering shape that glows, like fire, a rapture, a delight. They thirst, and are each other’s wine; see, how they are each other’s seeing. Let us let each rejoice into the other: outlasting self, outlasting all. Rilke, The Lovers, transl. Tom Davis.
who died? When death comes like an iceberg between the shoulder blades, I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness? And therefore I look upon everything as a brotherhood and a sisterhood, and I look upon time as no more than an idea, and I consider eternity as another possibility, and I think of each life as a flower, as common as a field daisy,…
focus Walking, snow falling, it is possible to focus at various distances in turn on separate flakes, sharply engage the attention at several spatial points: the nearer cold and more uncomfortable, the farther distanced and almost pleasing. Living, time passing, it is preferable to focus the memory in turn upon the more distant retrospects in order that the present mind may retain its peace. Yet knowing that seeing and remembering are both of course personal illusions. B.S. Johnson, Living…
radiant this blessing God’s love calls us to that elsewhere world which only lovers eyes alight, eyes aflame can see at all. only those who have self surrendered: once, they were flecks of fire; now, they are the radiant sun. Rumi
Love After Love The time will come when, with elation, you will greet yourself arriving at your own door, in your own mirror, and each will smile at the other’s welcome, and say, sit here. Eat. You will love again the stranger who was your self. Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart to itself, to the stranger who has loved you all your life, whom you ignored for another, who knows you by heart. Take down the…