From City to Sea by Robert Youngson
Published by open window Publishing.
I have just published a book encompassing the last 6 years of my work.
It will be available to purchase in the Spring.
Posted 4 weeks ago
Posted 7 months ago
After Vija Celmins (Heater and Lamp#1)
Posted 9 months ago
Wait - what ?: A Poem For Saturday “Fire Graffiti” by Tomas Tranströmer: As the...
A Poem For Saturday
“Fire Graffiti” by Tomas Tranströmer:
As the firefly ignites and fades, ignites and fades, we follow the flashes
of its flight in the dark among the olive trees.Throughout those dismal months, my soul sat slumped and lifeless
but my body walked to yours.
…
Posted 9 months ago
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
Robert Frost,
“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”
from The Poetry of Robert Frost /
The Random House Book of Poetry for Children (1983)
Posted 10 months ago
Black are the horses.
The horseshoes are black.
On the dark capes glisten stains of ink and of wax.
Their skulls are leaden, wich is why they don’t weep.
With their patent-leather souls they come down the street.
Hunchbacked and nocturnal, where they go, they command silences of dark rubber and fears like fine sand.
They pass where they want, and they hide in their skulls a vague astronomy of shapeless pistols
The horseshoes are black.
On the dark capes glisten stains of ink and of wax.
Their skulls are leaden, wich is why they don’t weep.
With their patent-leather souls they come down the street.
Hunchbacked and nocturnal, where they go, they command silences of dark rubber and fears like fine sand.
They pass where they want, and they hide in their skulls a vague astronomy of shapeless pistols
First stanza of Ballad of the Spanish Civil Guard, Federico Lorca. Tr. A.L. Lloyd
Posted 10 months ago
He knocks at the door and listens to his heart approaching
Visitor, by Les Murray
Posted 10 months ago
Before We Came Here, LQ
The shingle roars
as the blade
crashes into the rocks
a spade through shingle laid
down over the garden bed
before we came here
and hisses
as it falls from
the receding shovel
crash and hiss
roar and recede
Before We Came Here is one of a few pieces originally created to be hung on a wall as works of fine art that I am contemplating including in my forthcoming collection of poems. I feel that its subject of change and the passing of time will work well with the turning of pages in a book. This poem shows, I think, the influence ‘Oread’ by Hilda Doolittle, posted below has had on me as both poems depict two scenes simultaneously. In my case the garden is described and the ocean suggested or evoked.
Posted 10 months ago
Work in progress, LOQ
Our well-tilled plot has taken both
diving and blasting weather today
The fibrous net of roots beneath us has
caught the deluge and is quenched
Fallen oases remain, scattered
on its wider surface of powder
Sunlight crosses at forty-two degrees,
separates on our daydreams,
is peeled apart and
arched across the sky:
a spectrum, brilliant
reaffirms our eyes
against bruised and
darkened clouds
Our spade reveals onion layers;
a cross-section stained by
off pinks and reds; a
coagulated rainbow
lifted between earthy fingers,
held up to softening skies -
up to laundered white
and freshly aired blue
Posted 10 months ago
We lay on our backs, face-down
From the bottom of the bench,
Beneath the patio; gazing down
Past gabled end and chimneystack
Way down
At constellations below
Posted 10 months ago
First Song, by Galway Kinnell
Then it was dusk in Illinois, the small boy
After an afternoon of carting dung
Hung on the rail fence, a sapped thing
Weary to crying. Dark was growing tall
And he began to hear the pond frogs all
Calling on his ear with what seemed their joy.Soon their sound was pleasant for a boy
Listening in the smoky dusk and the nightfall
Of Illinois, and from the fields two small
Boys came bearing cornstalk violins
And they rubbed the cornstalk bows with resins
And the three sat there scraping of their joy.It was now fine music the frogs and the boys
Did in the towering Illinois twilight make
And into dark in spite of a shoulder’s ache
A boy’s hunched body loved out of a stalk
The first song of his happiness, and the song woke
His heart to the darkness and into the sadness of joy.
Pictures in words and poems in pictures.All new work copywright L.O.Quant
