|
Louis
MacNeice (1907-63) was the author of the following poem. He can be heard reading it on a
Youtube copy of a radio
broadcast. He introduces it with a comment that the nonsense-rhyming scheme attempts to
reproduce the sound of bagpipes and that its focus was the disappearance of West Highland
folk-culture under the
encroaching influence of modernism (it was written in the 1930s).
Its no go the merry-go-round , its no go the rickshaw ,
All we want is a limousine and a ticket for the peepshow.
Their knickers are made of crêpe-de-chine , their shoes are made of python ,
Their halls are lined with tiger rugs and their walls with heads of bison.
John MacDonald found a corpse , put it under the sofa ,
Waited till it came to life and hit it with a poker ,
Sold its eyes for souvenirs , sold its blood for whisky ,
Kept its bones for dumb-bells to use when he was fifty.
Its no go the Yogi-Man , its no go Blavatsky ,
All we want is a bank-balance and a bit of skirt in a taxi.
The hashish-smoking Russian émigré Madame Blavatsky founded the Theosophical Society
in 1875 and its blend of mediaeval western mysticism
and eastern esoteric traditions attracted many writers and artists of the earlier twentieth
century. Their aspirations to access her 'divine wisdom' required credulity on an heroic scale
: “ Before incarnating
into physical bodies , human beings had existed in a purely spiritual form. First came the
Lemurians , who had no memory at all and so , like absent-minded children , promptly forgot
everything they were told.
The succeeding Atlanteans , by contrast so much more incarnate , possessed extraordinary
memories , thought in pictures and used the energy latent in plants to drive a kind of
hovercraft. ”
Willie Murray cut his thumb , couldn't count the damage ,
Took the hide of an Ayrshire cow and used it for a bandage.
His brother caught three hundred cran when the seas were lavish ,
Threw the bleeders back in the sea and went upon the parish.
Its no go the Herring Board , its no go the Bible ,
All we want is a packet of fags when our hands are idle.
Beyond the Outer Hebridean islands of Harris and Lewis , into the lonelier reaches of the
north Atlantic , lie the five small islands of St. Kilda. The last 36 inhabitants were
evacuated in 1930 but a short
documentary film made in 1928 shows a way of life little changed over centuries. There was
footage of men abseiling down steep sea cliffs to collect sea-birds and their eggs. Their
sparse agriculture was
eventually compromised by the use of bird-corpses as fertiliser. Remote enough to escape the
hand of political authority or (until the mid-nineteenth century) , the stern gaze of the
Church , no resident of
St. Kilda was known to have fought in a war and , over four centuries of historical records ,
not one serious crime was reported. This was truly a world apart and so modernity was late on
the scene here ,
when the first year-long inhabitants for decades became military personnel manning part of a
missile-tracking range in 1957. A few decades later and the defence contractor QinetiQ took
over their installation.
Understanding this sort of thing is a monumental taski. You'll get more sense from Madame
Blavatsky than from any of the political manoeuverings of our last dismal half-century.
|
Archive
Poets' Corner #1 – Poetic
Pessimism, 13th September 2012
Poets' Corner #2 – The Workman's
Friend, 10th October 2012
Poets' Corner #3 – On The Trail of
Two Dylans, 12th November 2012
Poets' Corner #4 – Omar Khayyam,
14th December 2012
Poets' Corner #5 – William Blake,
25th January 2013
Poets' Corner #6 – A Minor Poet,
19th February 2013
Poets' Corner #7 – Thomas Hardy,
20th March 2013
Poets' Corner #8 – Shakespeare's
Sonnets, 21st April 2013
Poets' Corner #9 – Edward Thomas,
20th May 2013
Poets' Corner #10 – Harry Smith's
Anthology, 19th June 2013
Poets' Corner #11 – William
Plomer, 21st July 2013
Poets' Corner #12 – Ghosts ,
20th August 2013
Poets' Corner #13 – William
Dunbar, 20th September 2013
Poets' Corner #14 – Bathtub
Thoughts, 20th October 2013
Poets' Corner #15 – Bagpipe Music,
20th November 2013
Poets' Corner #16 – Sylvia &
Emily, 20th December 2013
Poets' Corner #17 – The Fall Of
Icarus, 16th January 2014
Poets' Corner #18 – Those Gone
Before, 20th February 2014
Poets' Corner #19 – Rudyard
Kipling, 20th March 2014
Poets' Corner #20 – Martin Bell,
20th April 2014
Poets' Corner #21 – Another Modest
Proposal, 20th May 2014
Poets' Corner #22 – Thomas Gray
and The Eighteenth Century, 20th June 2014
Poets' Corner #23 – Edgar Allan
Poe, 18th July 2014
Poets' Corner #24 – Tread Softly,
19th August 2014
Poets' Corner #25 – Mad To Be
Saved, 24th December 2015
Poets' Corner #26 – Wants,
20th January 2016
Poets' Corner #27 – Samuel
Johnson, 15th February 2016
Poets' Corner #28 – T.S.Eliot,
10th March 2016
Poets' Corner #29 – Alfred Lord
Tennyson, 18th April 2016
Poets' Corner #30 – Leonard Cohen,
12th November 2016
|