Month: July 2009

Sir, I am a better judge of mutton than any sheep.

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In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If poetry could tell it backwards, true, begin
that moment shrapnel scythed you to the stinking mud…
but you get up, amazed, watch bled bad blood
run upwards from the slime into its wounds;
see lines and lines of British boys rewind
back to their trenches, kiss the photographs from home-
mothers, sweethearts, sisters, younger brothers
not entering the story now
to die and die and die.
Dulce- No- Decorum- No- Pro patria mori.
You walk away.

You walk away; drop your gun (fixed bayonet)
like all your mates do too-
Harry, Tommy, Wilfred, Edward, Bert-
and light a cigarette.
There’s coffee in the square,
warm French bread
and all those thousands dead
are shaking dried mud from their hair
and queuing up for home. Freshly alive,
a lad plays Tipperary to the crowd, released
from History; the glistening, healthy horses fit for heroes, kings.

You lean against a wall,
your several million lives still possible
and crammed with love, work, children, talent, English beer, good food.
You see the poet tuck away his pocket-book and smile.
If poetry could truly write it backwards,
then it would.

I am famous, but I am not well known.

Aristotle taught that the brain exists merely to cool the blood and is not involved in the process of thinking. This is true only of certain persons.

Life is mostly froth and bubble;
Two things stand like stone:
Kindness in another’s trouble,
Courage in our own.

Don’t expect too much and don’t attempt too little.

1) The Three Good Things
a) Certainty held in Reserve.
b) Unexpected Praise from and Artist.
c) Discovery of Nobility in Oneself.

2) The Three Bad Things
a) Unworthiness crowned.
b) Unconscious Infraction of the the Laws of Behaviour.
c) Friendly Condescension of the Imperfectly Educated.

3) The Three Things of both Good and Bad Effect
a) Triumphant Anger.
b) Banquets of the Rich.
c) Honour preserved.

If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is not part of the Christian faith.

Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak.

We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.

The poet who writes “free” verse is like Robinson Crusoe on his desert island: he must do all his cooking, laundry and darning for himself. In a few exceptional cases, this manly independence produces something original and impressive, but more often the result is squalor – dirty sheets on the unmade bed and empty bottles on the unswept floor.

The best substitute for experience is being sixteen.

In each human heart are a tiger, a pig, an ass and a nightingale. Diversity of character is due to their unequal activity.

A small task, if it be really daily, will beat the labors of a spasmodic Hercules.

Person in a street near near Carnegie Hall: “Pardon me sir, how do I get to Carnegie Hall?”

Arthur Rubinstein: “Practice, practice, practice.”

Anyone who can handle a needle convincingly can make us see a thread which is not there.

To pretend, I actually do the thing: I have therefore only pretended to pretend.

I believe no one qualification is so likely to make a good writer, as the power of rejecting his own thoughts.

In mathematics you don’t understand things. You just get used to them.