#philip hobsbaum

[thequietabsolute]

Which is the truer? I, speaking of Donne, Calling the act a means and not an end, Or at your sweet pudenda, sleeking you down: Was there no other way to be your friend? None, none. The awkward pauses when we talk, The literary phrases, are a lie. It was for this your teacher ran amock: Truth lies between your legs, and so do I.

from A Lesson in Love, by Philip Hobsbaum

[ukdamo]

Blackberry-Picking

Seamus Heaney on exquisite form!

for Philip Hobsbaum

Late August, given heavy rain and sun For a full week, the blackberries would ripen. At first, just one, a glossy purple clot Among others, red, green, hard as a knot. You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for Picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam-pots Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots. Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drills We trekked and picked until the cans were full, Until the tinkling bottom had been covered With green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned Like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard's. We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre. But when the bath was filled we found a fur, A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache. The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour. I always felt like crying. It wasn't fair That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot. Each year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would not.

[saraia]

Can I Fly Too?

You are a witch. You taught me To hear in the slurping of mud The cry of the Ban Shee To see in the life cycle of the caterpillar The struggle of the soul Towards immortality. Take me. You alone could turn the weight of years Into release, ecstacy. - Philip Hobsbaum

[jazzicated]

Household Gods

“I mirrored their breaking lives, I saw their pale

Distraught coming and going, lined despair,

His shaken bulk, her calm pose in the dorway—

I saw them. I was there.”

“I have so long been silent, even now

Hardly at all remember how her slim

Long fingers once caressed me— was that how

At one time she touched him?”

“His lips on mine in the morning, or, in darkness,

After a happy embrace, warmed my clay.

Where is the firm mouth now, where the kiss?

Broken and swept away.”

“They lay me down to serve their steady feet,

How many times they strode over my pile!

Of late those steps were tentative. Now, a street

For strangers, I am so much jute and wool.”

“Bit by bit they painted my walls, the ceiling

Made me in terms of their vision — I was glad.

But signs of time flake down, the walls are peeling,

What is a house when occupants are fled?”

“My hands repeat themselves, so does not time.

The climactical moment is past, whoever will come.

I gather myself to cough on cautious chime,

But the works are rusted. Henceforth I am dumb.”

“I mirrored their coming here, I see their going,

Together once, now separately. Their outer

Semblance concerns me. I have no way of knowing

Their motives, or their reasons for departure.”

“Dust settles in the fireplace, and the curtains

Hang without a purpose in neat folds.

The books are stacked, chairs not to be sat on

Grouped over-nicely in a house grown cold.”

“I see no more. Their life gave our lives meaning,

But broken homes will not set again.

Their parting was our dissolution, they

Will never know their household gods are slain.” 

- Philip Hobsbaum, The Pattern of Poetry (1962)