Jenny Joseph has died

And I just noticed when I was looking up the copyright date of her poem, “Warning” (1961).

She died just over a year ago, January 8, 2018.

Her best known poem starts out,

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple

And a red hat that doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me,

That second line was the inspiration for the Red Hat Society, a social group for older women.

I once used her poem in my blog. I was contacted by her lawyers, who said she was quite assiduous at protecting it. I thanked them for letting me know and removed it. As the copyright line is now works published in 1923, I’ll be dead before it comes out of copyright.

The Rubaiyat of a Persian Kitten

For your amusement: The Rubaiyat of a Persian Kitten.

And that Inverted Bowl of Skyblue Delf
That helpless lies upon the Pantry Shelf—
Lift not your eyes to It for help, for It
Is quite as empty as you are yourself.

Original quatrain:
And that inverted Bowl they call the Sky,
Whereunder crawling coop’d we live and die,
Lift not your hand to It for help—for It
Rolls on impotently as you or I.

Woodlands

W. H. Auden wrote:

A well-kempt forest begs Our Lady’s grace;
Someone is not disgusted, or at least
Is laying bets upon the human race
Retaining enough decency to last;
The trees encountered on a country stroll
Reveal a lot about a country’s soul.

A small grove massacred to the last ash,
An oak with heart-rot, give away the show:
This great society is going smash;
They cannot fool us with how fast they go,
How much they cost each other and the gods.
A culture is no better than its woods.

Poem: The Passing Strange

“The Passing Strange” by John Masefield. Verses from Sanjeev.

Out of the earth to rest or range
Perpetual in perpetual change,
The unknown passing through the strange.

Water and saltness held together
To tread the dust and stand the weather,
And plough the field and stretch the tether,

To pass the wine-cup and be witty,
Water the sands and build the city,
Slaughter like devils and have pity,

Be red with rage and pale with lust,
Make beauty come, make peace, make trust,
Water and saltness mixed with dust;

Drive over earth, swim under sea,
Fly in the eagles secrecy,
Guess where the hidden comets be;

Know all the deathy seeds that still
Queen Helens beauty, Caesars will,
And slay them even as they kill;

Fashion an altar for a rood,
Defile a continent with blood,
And watch a brother starve for food:

Love like a madman, shaking, blind,
Till self is burnt into a kind
Possession of another mind;

Brood upon beauty, till the grace
Of beauty with the holy face
Brings peace into the bitter place;

Prove in the lifeless granites, scan
The stars for hope, for guide, for plan;
Live as a woman or a man;

Fasten to lover or to friend,
Until the heart break at the end:
The break of death that cannot mend;

Then to lie useless, helpless, still,
Down in the earth, in dark, to fill
The roots of grass or daffodil.

Down in the earth, in dark, alone,
A mockery of the ghost in bone,
The strangeness, passing the unknown.

Time will go by, that outlasts clocks,
Dawn in the thorps will rouse the cocks,
Sunset be glory on the rocks:

But it, the thing, will never heed
Even the rootling from the seed
Thrusting to suck it for its need.

Since moons decay and suns decline,
How else should end this life of mine?
Water and saltness are not wine.

But in the darkest hour of night,
When even the foxes peer for sight,
The byre-cock crows; he feels the light.

So, in this water mixed with dust,
The byre-cock spirit crows from trust
That death will change because it must;

For all things change, the darkness changes,
The wandering spirits change their ranges,
The corn is gathered to the granges.

The corn is sown again, it grows;
The stars burn out, the darkness goes;
The rhythms change, they do not close.

They change, and we, who pass like foam,
Like dust blown through the streets of Rome,
Change ever, too; we have no home,

Only a beauty, only a power,
Sad in the fruit, bright in the flower,
Endlessly erring for its hour,

But gathering, as we stray, a sense
Of Life, so lovely and intense,
It lingers when we wander hence,

That those who follow feel behind
Their backs, when all before is blind,
Our joy, a rampart to the mind.

Random poetry: Uprising

I found this on a memorial page for Dirk in D.C.

UPRISING
—Stephen Dobyns

Straitjacket, straitjacket, straitjacket:
we are tired of this quiet life, tired of climbing
this mountain of pleases and thank yous.
It’s time to kick a nun in the butt,
time to buy our prick a goddamned big car
and let the world frazzle our ears.
It’s time to stop this tiptoeing around,
to stop being the property of our property.
Who lives in this holy temple anyhow?
Let’s get the formaldehyde out of our veins.
Let’s strip this lampshade off of our head.
It’s time to stand at the door, shouting, Come back!
And here comes Envy sliding along on greased feet,
and gray-suited Lechery with his little cane,
and twin-headed Vanity winking into his own eyes,
and Anger going Grum, Grum on his little red scooter,
and chubby Appetite panting along behind the rest.
The beer’s cold, the insults are hot. We’ll dance
all night to the complaints of our neighbors.
We’ve got to get moving! Somewhere that shovel
stands propped against a wall, the patch of grass
is freshly cut where that final hole will be dug.
Let’s march toward our grave scratching and farting,
our own raucous music of shouted good-byes.
Let’s make sure they bury us standing up.