Adrian Hickford

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Original text in yellow, anagram in pink.

My Garden
by Thomas Edward Brown

A garden is a lovesome thing,
God wot!
Rose plot,
Fringed pool,
Ferned grot -
The veriest school
Of peace; and yet the fool
Contends that God is not -
Not God! in gardens! when the eve is cool?
Nay, but I have a sign;
'Tis very sure God walks in mine.

My Garden
Adrian Hickford

Grass - overgrown (hay, weeds and nettles).
Vegetable patch - is vegetating, foetid.
Garden pond - Darned pong!
My hothouse - now ever hid - is an ivy-entwined cocoon.
Mighty toadstool festooneries, too!
Herbs? Flowers? No!
Slugs ate the blooming lot!

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Diving
by Andrew Motion

The moment I tire
of difficult sand-grains
and giddy pebbles,
I roll with the punch
of a shrivelling wave
and am cosmonaut
out past the fringe
of a basalt ledge
in a moony sea-hall
spun beyond blue.
Faint but definite
heat of the universe

flutters my skin;
quick fish apply
as something to love,
what with their heads
of gong-dented gold;
plankton I push

an easy way through
would be dust or dew
in the world behind
if that mattered at all,
which is no longer true,
with its faces and cries.

"We sign up shoddy Poet Laureate" Shock!

The unavoidably vapid, fat-witted ("Hamlet? Chaff!"), high-handed incumbent ("Bard-like" Professor of Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia - treading in Malcolm Bradbury's filthy footsteps, Motion's look awfully Lilliputian), affirmed as Ted Hughes' replacement (who was quite good) in nineteen-ninety-nine, has had the sudden, but not worthwhile, publication of hundreds of lightweight verses - none outstanding, few highlights, most damnably below standard.

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A poem by George Crabbe (1754–1832).

The Marriage

The ring, so worn as you behold,
So thin, so pale, is yet of gold:
The passion such it was to prove--
Worn with life's care, love yet was love.

Suppose it's Over

Though it was brilliant, yet it's tarnished now,
The wooing's gone, also the former vow.
A horoscope says "Away he'll flee."
D. I. V. O. R. C. E.

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The Question
By Rachel Annand Taylor

I saw the Son of God go by
  Crowned with the crown of Thorn.
'Was It not finished, Lord?' I said,
  'And all the anguish borne?'

He turned on me His awful eyes:
  'Hast thou not understood?
Lo! Every soul is Calvary,
  And every sin a Rood.'

No Answers

Father in Heaven,
Your Son
Who gave His life for ours
On the blood-stained wooden cross,

Faced with hollow, voluntary betrayal,
Hand-in-hand with Death...
Desolation...
And nothingness...

Miraculously resurrected,
The body not dying...

Quite a story...

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Anthem for Doomed Youth, by Wilfred Owen

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
    - Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
  Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells;
  Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, -
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
  And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

What candles may be held to speed them all?
  Not in the hands of boys but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of good-byes.
  The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

Wilfred Owen

Born in Oswestry, Shropshire, his first passions arose for botany and poetry.

Later, he met worldly Siegfried Sassoon; both were soldiers admitted to Craiglockhart Hospital, Edinburgh, Owen with shell-shock. While convalescing, he composed the matchless "Anthem for Doomed Youth", symbolising frightful ghastliness and monstrousness of war.

November the Fourth passed by; he fell, shot. As his mother and her husband learnt the news, local bells gleefully pealed on, resplendently fanfaring the Armistice, rather than tolling, lamenting the loss of their brilliant, talented young son.

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Updated: May 10, 2016


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