There are
many others, of course, but here’s a short selection In no particular order:
Crow by Ted
Hughes
Faber 1972
‘He tried
ignoring the sea
But it was
bigger than death, just as it was bigger in life.’
Crow and the Sea
Sentenced
to Life by Clive James
Picador
2015
‘Tired out
from getting up and getting dressed
I lie down
for a while to get some rest,
And so
begins another day of not
Achieving
much except to dent the cot.’
Elementary Sonnet
North by
Seamus Heaney
Faber 1975
‘As if he
has been poured
in tar, he
lies
on a pillow
of turf
and seems
to weep
the black
river of himself.’
The Grauballe Man
Poems by
Agatha Christie
Collins
1973
‘The
fairies talk to little girls,
They push
aside their golden curls
And whisper
in a shell-pink ear
But what
they say we cannot hear.’
From a Grown-up to a
Child
Market
Street by Damian Smyth
Lagan Press
2010
‘It was
over in seconds, a total waste of a good man.
The shop
was there from 1896 and had a language all its own.
A “footprint”
– a plumber’s wrench; “bastard” for rough files;
You could
even buy bubbles for a spirit level.’
A Wrench from McMaster’s
How To Be Well-Versed In Poetry edited by E. O. Parrott
Penguin
1990
‘The eye
rhyme
Is
generally used by me
To show how
you can rely
On foreign
pronunciations to upset the applecart completely.’
Eye Rhymes by Paul
Griffin
Domestic
Flight by James Ellis
Lagan Press
1998
‘For
better, worse, memory which serves us, right,
Or wrong –
storehouse of being, well-spring
And
fountainhead, recording and recounting
Sounds,
odours, touch, taste, sight;
Yet fallible
as flesh, and prone to error.’
Pictures In The Fire
The Rattle
Bag edited by Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes
Faber 1982
‘There was
this road,
And it led
up-hill,
And it led
down-hill
And round
and in and out.
And the
traffic was legs,
Legs from
the knees down,
Coming and
going,
Never
Pausing.’
The Legs by Robert
Graves
A number of
years ago, I would have automatically included one of Roger McGough’s books
but, sadly
in my view, the poems don’t really stand the test of time, entertaining as they are.
And
finally, one I am reading at the moment:
On Balance by Sinead Morrissey
Carcanet 2017
‘No matter
the shift, the only food he’d take with him
down the
pit was bread and jam, two slices wrapped up
in
greaseproof paper, and a bottle of gone-cold tea.’
Collier
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