Charles Causley's Eden Rock (#poem)

Eden Rock

They are waiting for me somewhere beyond Eden Rock:

My father, twenty-five, in the same suit

Of Genuine Irish Tweed, his terrier Jack

Still two years old and trembling at his feet.

My mother, twenty-three, in a sprigged dress

Drawn at the waist, ribbon in her straw hat,

Has spread the stiff white cloth over the grass.

Her hair, the colour of wheat, takes on the light.

 

She pours tea from a Thermos, the milk straight

From an old H.P. sauce-bottle, a screw

Of paper for a cork, slowly sets out

The same three plates, the tin cups painted blue.

 

The sky whitens as if lit by three suns.

My mother shades her eyes and looks my way

Over the drifted stream. My father spins

A stone along the water. Leisurely,

 

They beckon to me from the other bank.

I hear them call, 'See where the stream-path is!

Crossing is not as hard as you might think.'

 

I had not thought it would be like this. 

-Charles Causley

One more Charles Causley and I'm done with the book for now. This is likely his most famous poem; at any rate it's the one I first saw anthologized and made me want to read more. It comes from his final book of poetry for adults, which came out when he was 71, though he lived on fifteen years after and wrote several more books of verse for children.

Etienne Jodelle's I Love the Laurel Green (tr. Charles Causley)

I Love The Laurel Green

I love the laurel green, whose verdant flame

Burns its bright victory on the winter day,

Calls to eternity its happy name,

And neither death nor time shall wear away.

I love the holly tree with branches keen,

Each leaflet fringed with daggers sharp and small,

I love the ivy, too, winding its green,

Its ardent stem about the oak, the wall.

I love these three, whose living green and true

Is as unfailing as my love for you

Always by night and day whom I adore.

Yet the green wound that stays with me more

Is ever greener than these three shall be:

Laurel and ivy and the holly tree.

-Etienne Jodelle (tr. Charles Causley)

 

Well, it's not winter yet, but we've reached that time when most of the greens have changed to red and yellow and are fast disappearing; all the green that's left are those three.

 

Étienne Jodelle (1532-1573) was a French poet and dramatist, one of the members of that group of poets known as La Pléiade. Joachim du Bellay, the founder of La Pléiade, showed up on the blog in a translation by Richard Wilbur. This lovely translation is by Charles Causley and is from his book Secret Destinations. 

 

I looked up the French, just because...

J'aime le verd laurier

J'aime le verd laurier, dont l'hyver ny la glace

N'effacent la verdeur en tout victorieuse,

Monstrant l'eternité à jamais bien heureuse

Que le temps, ny la mort ne change ny efface.

J'aime du hous aussi la toujours verte face

Les poignons eguillons de sa fueille espineuse:

J'aime la lierre aussi, et sa branche amoureuse

Qui le chesne ou le mur estroitement embrasse.

J'aime bien tous ces trois, qui toujours verds ressemblent

Aux pensers immorteles, qui dedans moy s'assemblent,

De toy que nuict et jour idolatre, j'adore:

Mais ma playe, et poincture, et le Noeu qui me serre,

Est plus verte, et poignante, et plus estroit encore

Que n'est le verd laurier, ny le hous, ny le lierre.

-Étienne Jodelle

It's archaic now, of course, but it didn't actually seem that difficult, at least once I learned the words for ivy and holly...

Charles Causley's 'The Dancers' (#poetry)

The Dancers

To a clearing

in the foyer

at the Gallery

of Art,

and a chatter

of spectators

waiting for the show

to start,

five young men, black,

naked, dotted

white, and daddy-long-

legs thin

out of forty

thousand years of 

dreamtime came lightfoot-

ing in.

    Ssss! hissed the dancers from Arnhem Land.

 

And a primal

stillness fell as

when arose the earl-

iest sun,

each dancer an

emblem painted

on rockface, or scored

in stone.

With an unpre-

meditated 

seemliness they took 

the floor,

staring sightless

as is lightning

through a bronze by Hen-

ry Moore.

    Ssss! hissed the dancers from Arnhem Land.

    

To an insect

buzz of music,

snap of sticks, high nas-

al whine,

touched with brown and 

saffron ochre,

and their teeth a yell-

ow shine,

five young men came

barefoot, dancing--

the sun halting in

its climb--

effortlessly,

forwards, backwards

through the littoral

of time.

    Ssss! hissed the dancers from Arnhem Land.

 

Beaded and in 

feather bracelets

to the hoarse-voiced didge-

ridoo,

they were emu

and echidna,

swirling snake and kang-

aroo;

razoring this and

that way sharply,

swifter than the bush-

fire flame,

each a demon,

each an angel,

each a god without

a name.

    Ssss! hissed the dancers from Arnhem Land.

 

Suddenly the 

dance was ended,

clocks took back the Mel-

bourne day,

and it was as

if the dancers

melted like a mist

away.

In the restaur-

ant I saw them,

serious, and at smil-

ing ease:

five young men in

T-shirts, jeans, with

pavlovas and five

white teas.

    Ssss! hissed the dancers from Arnhem Land.

 

-Charles Causley

 

One of a series of poems in the volume about traveling in Australia.

Charles Causley was a British poet from Cornwall who died at the age of 86 in 2003.

 

 

Arnhem Land is an area in the north of Australia near Darwin with a majority aboriginal population. I lifted this picture from Wikipedia, though the individual (Timmy Burrarwanga) in the picture isn't quite 'daddy-long-legs thin'.