Tag: Kathleen Raine

Poems by Rosemarie Rowley

August 3rd, 2013

ALL’S FAIR IN LOVE AND WAR

I have not been keeping a ledger or account book
Of double entries, for the cost and price
Is not reckoned in the way you look
Or what you said, in whatever form or guise
I’ll never know your motives or intentions
Whether you acted blindly or on trust
But your suspicion of all engines and inventions
Does not bury the lost meaning, or let rust

The iron will, the gold enamelling –
Byzantine portraits in detail are enthralling
And with the years there comes the mellowing
Of my survivor’s guilt, the clarity of my calling
It was not fair, but lust and beauty
Caused the raid, and not excise on love’s duty.

© Rosemarie Rowley 2012

A RING TINGLE OF FEAR IN GOLDENBRIDGE ORPHANAGE.

A ring tingle of fear ran around my belly
Deep in my secret folds a spark of anger flew
To where your ears had picked up jelly-
Fish stings that wanted to be blue
It raced back to the womb of your un-desiring
Self where, abandoned, you brindled in your edge
Of razor sharp innuendo which was firing
Your awestruck envy of a child’s winter knowledge
Your long arm bent my back, a spancel
Till it almost broke with the weight of zealous
Might that needs exorcism in a chancel
To make a penitent nun like you jealous

So clapped my eyes and ears that were burning
As you roasted me on the spit your ire was turning.

ALL THIS DOING GOOD IS VERY CATHOLIC

He said as he sat at the wrought-iron utility desk
Beside the window whose frame was too large
You’ll get over me, you will risk
The transfer of love from the office to the barge
Of the old canal of desiring in my Dutch hometown
For we knew little, who were the divine elect
But that the balance of justice He wore in his crown
Of thorns on his head hurt, yet He was not perfect
But jealous of the worship of other Gods
He admits Himself, he is staff and rod
Knew Eve’s peccadillo and Adam’s pelf.
Everything ordained, the elect will be saved
Some go to Hell on the path you have paved
With good intentions, but lacking in free will
I see your progress in my view from the hill.

Rosemarie Rowley has written extensively in form: Flight into Reality (1989) is the longest original work in terza rima in English, reprinted 2010 and now available on CD. She has also written in rhyme royal and rhyming couplets. She has four times won the Epic award in the Scottish International Open Poetry Competition. Her books in print are: The Sea of Affliction (1987,one of the first works in ecofeminism, reprinted 2010, and Hot Cinquefoil Star, (2002) (which contains The Puzzle Factory a crown of sonnets and Letter to Kathleen Raine in rhyming couplets). Her most recent book is In Memory of Her (2004, 2008) which includes Betrayal into Origin – Dancing & Revolution in the Sixties (an 80 stanza poem in decima rima (ten line rhyme) and The Wake of Wonder (a regular sonnet sequence) and many other sonnets; all books, except her first, The Broken Pledge (1985, Martello) published by Rowan Tree Ireland Press, Dublin.

In 2003, she co-edited, with town planner John Haughton, an anthology of tree poems, Seeing the Wood and the Trees (Rowan Tree Press with Cairde na Coille)

Rosemarie has given papers for academic conferences in the Universities of Galway and Limerick and the Clinton Institute (UCD) in Ireland, in Bath, Edinburgh, St. Andrews’ and Stirling, Louisville, Sarasota and Atlanta Universities in the USA. in the UK, and in Prague, Venice, Paris ,and Valladolid on the European mainland. She has been active in the green movement in Ireland and in the Irish Byron Society and worked for a time in the European institutions in Europe.

Rosemarie has degrees in Irish and English Literature, and philosophy from Trinity College Dublin, an M.Litt on the nature poet Patrick Kavanagh, and a diploma in psychology from NUI.

“Dreamers” by Dorothy Wellesley

September 1st, 2012

We are become like phantoms of the night
Thro’ the heart’s pity and the heart’s delight.

For we have wandered with the wasting streams
Across the flower-stained solitude of dreams,
The blossom-scattered waterways of dreams.

For we have crossed the lotus-covered lake,
Where only the sunk places do shake
Beneath the waters, and the serpents make
A beauteous shining for their passion’s sake.

Behold, we are like spectres of the night
For the soul’s longing and the soul’s delight.

Who for dream’s pleasure and for love’s relief
Have drugged dull Time, the heavy footed thief
Of old sorrows and the old belief.

For we are taught the sea’s iniquities,
And see, like fearful-thoughted reveries
Sunk vessels by the borders of lost quays.
And pale and dreadful hills below the seas.

Behold, we are the dreams of vanished nights
For love’s old anguish and new love’s delights.

We are become like lost men on the moon,
Strangers on plains of everlasting noon,
Dread wanderers on the mountains of the moon

Thus have we seen the moons’ dark fortresses
Grown over with moon-moss, where the tree
Hung with old dews and woeful radiances
Stand like the ghosts of stunted fantasies.

We are dumb phantoms of the hollow night
Thro’ the soul’s pity and the soul’s delight.

Dreamers is by Dorothy Wellesley

Dreamers, by Dorothy Wellesley is taken from Early Poems by Dorothy Wellesley. I accessed the .pdf of her publication, digitized by The Library of the University of California, Los Angeles. Those readers interested in Wellesley can find out more about the writer at the Orlando Project. One of Wellesley’s editors was Kathleen Raine, whose poem, Winter Fire is linked on this blog. Raine also prefaced an edition of A Vision, by W.B Yeats.

Index of Women poets on Poethead.

‘Angelus’ by Kathleen Raine.

August 13th, 2011

I see the blue, the green, the golden and the red,
I have forgotten all the angel said.

The flower, the leaf, the meadow and the tree,
But of the words I have no memory.

I heard the swift, the martin, and the wren,
But what was told me, past all thought is gone.

The dove, the rainbow, echo, and the wind,
But of the meaning, all is out of mind.

Only I know he spoke the word that sings its way
in my blood streaming, over rocks to sea,

A word engraved in the bone, that burns within
To apotheosis the substance of a dream,

That living I shall never hear again,
because I pass, I pass, while dreams remain.

by Kathleen Raine.

Angelus , is from The Collected Poems of Kathleen Raine / http://www.amazon.co.uk/Collected-Poems-Kathleen-Raine/dp/0903880741

Kathleen Raine

Chris Murray