#tessimond

[nudeartpluspoetry]

Two Short Modern Poems About Music

“Music,” by A.S.J. Tessimond and “The Composer,” W.H. Auden

[outsiderlookinginward]

Cats – by someone less well known than T.S. Eliot

Cats – by someone less well known than T.S. Eliot

One of the 20th century’s great English poets, A.S.J. Tessimond’s work was rediscovered in the 1970s and has since received great acclaim. (more…)

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[bewarethings]

[ukdamo]

Black Monday Lovesong

ASJ Tessimond - evocative of a dance, with a light touch, and a searing validity

In love's dances, in love's dances One retreats and one advances. One grows warmer and one colder, One more hesitant, one bolder. One gives what the other needed Once, or will need, now unheeded. One is clenched, compact, ingrowing While the other's melting, flowing. One is smiling and concealing While the other's asking, kneeling. One is arguing or sleeping While the other's weeping, weeping.

And the question finds no answer And the tune misleads the dancer And the lost look finds no other And the lost hand finds no brother And the word is left unspoken Till the theme and thread are broken.

When shall these divisions alter? Echo's answer seems to falter: "Oh the unperplexed, unvexed time Next time...one day...one day...next time!"

[curlychameleon-blog]

One day people will touch and talk perhaps easily, And loving be natural as breathing and warm as sunlight, And people will untie themselves, as string is unknotted, Unfold and yawn and stretch and spread their fingers, Unfurl, uncurl like seaweed returned to the sea, And work will be simple and swift as a seagull flying, And play will be casual and quiet as a seagull settling, And the clocks will stop, and no one will wonder or care or notice, And people will smile without reason, Even in winter, even in the rain.

Day Dream, Arthur Seymour John Tessimond

[theycallmecatalyst]

Cats

Cats, no less liquid than their shadows, Offer no angles to the wind, They slip, diminished, neat, through loopholes Less than themselves; will not be pinned To rules or routes for journeys; counter- Attack with non-resistance; twist Enticing through the curving fingers And leave an angered, empty fist. They wait, obsequious as darkness, Quick to retire, quick to return; Admit no aims or ethics; flatter With reservations; will not learn To answer to their name; are seldom Truly owned till shot and skinned. Cats, no less liquid than their shadows, Off no angles to the wind. -A. S. J. Tessimond

[dk-thrive]

Day Dream

One day people will touch and talk perhaps easily, And loving be natural as breathing and warm as sunlight, And people will untie themselves, as string is unknotted, Unfold and yawn and stretch and spread their fingers, Unfurl, uncurl like seaweed returned to the sea, And work will be simple and swift as a seagull flying, And play will be casual and quiet as a seagull settling, And the clocks will stop, and no one will wonder or care or notice, And people will smile without reason, Even in winter, even in the rain.

- A. S. J. Tessimond

[dostoyevsky-official]

Arthur Seymour John Tessimond, "Not Love Perhaps"

This is not Love, perhaps,  Love that lays down its life,  that many waters cannot quench,  nor the floods drown,  But something written in lighter ink,  said in a lower tone, something, perhaps, especially our own. A need, at times, to be together and talk,  And then the finding we can walk  More firmly through dark narrow places,  And meet more easily nightmare faces;  A need to reach out, sometimes, hand to hand,  And then find Earth less like an alien land;  A need for alliance to defeat  The whisperers at the corner of the street. A need for inns on roads, islands in seas,  Halts for discoveries to be shared,  Maps checked, notes compared;  A need, at times, of each for each,  Direct as the need of throat and tongue for speech.