A couple of blogs ago (March 27th) I included a piece of mine called ‘Spring Song’, and added but, if you call a poem ‘Song’, the question then arises ‘Can you sing it?’ The poet P.J.Kavanagh (1931-2015) once- before he was ever published, I suppose- showed his poems to a rather scary man (editor? publisher?), who, finding a poem Kavanagh had called ‘Song’, fixed him with his glittering eye and asked the same question- Can you sing it? Kavanagh found himself able to.
Next month the theme for our Poets’ Corner Folkestone event is ‘Music’, so this is much on my mind. I shall be reading this.
‘Love Song’ *-
If only you were different
And I were different
And we lived in another place
In another time
We might be lovers
If only you were dead
And I were dead
We might be remembered
Like Romeo and Juliet
As great lovers
Live for the moment! You advised me once.
Yes- life is for living, for sure.
If only we’d known
What moments are for
We might have been lovers
If only you loved me
And I you
And you told me
And I told you
We might be lovers
It’s made like a song- verse, verse, bridge, verse- and I guess it could be sung, but I don’t know that I can sing it, so I shall read it, trying to do so musically, bring out the music in it, if that makes sense.
Here’s a poem called ‘Song’- it’s by Christina Rossetti
When I am dead, my dearest,
Sing no sad songs for me;
Plant thou no roses at my head,
Nor shady cypress tree:
Be the green grass above me
With showers and dewdrops wet;
And if thou wilt, remember,
And if thou wilt, forget.
I shall not see the shadows,
I shall not feel the rain;
I shall not hear the nightingale
Sing on, as if in pain:
And dreaming through the twilight
That doth not rise nor set,
Haply I may remember,
And haply may forget.
There are dozens of settings of this, including by Vaughan Williams, John Ireland, Eric Coates, Donald Swann. It’s a ‘proper’ song, ‘officially’ a song.
None of this has anything to do with my title of Mankind Cannot Bear Too Many Dreams, so I will just add this, which is John Berryman’s Dream Song 14-
Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so.
After all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns,
we ourselves flash and yearn,
and moreover my mother told me as a boy
(repeatedly) ‘Ever to confess you’re bored
means you have no
Inner Resources.’ I conclude now I have no
inner resources, because I am heavy bored.
Peoples bore me,
literature bores me, especially great literature,
Henry bores me, with his plights & gripes
as bad as achilles,
Who loves people and valiant art, which bores me.
And the tranquil hills, & gin, look like a drag
and somehow a dog
has taken itself & its tail considerably away
into mountains or sea or sky, leaving
behind: me, wag.
* ‘Love Song’ is included in my collection ‘Miserable Love Poetry and Other Poems’, available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Waterstones, and lots of other places online.
freeversefolkestone 