FACING THE STARS AND SUN
Pure poetry is not the decoration of a preconceived and clearly defined matter: it springs from the creative impulse of a vague imaginative mass pressing for development and definition...while the poet is at work on the poem he does not possess the meaning, the meaning possesses him. -A.C. Bradley,Oxford Lectures on Poetry, 1909.
I’ve been drowning all those years,
but always I try to rise up
and face the stars and sun.
For noone should drown when young
and face his Maker’s cordial visage?
Though many have done, my Lord, many.
Some things now keep this heart on hold:
that new heaven on the hill
which like those white clouds in the sky
offers a lofty, ethereal thrill.
He also gives me fresh-made joy
like some juicy peach
and so I’ll wait to drown when old,
when my time has come.
For now I’ll just continue
to face the stars and sun.
Ron Price
27 December 1995
A PLACE TO COME TO
(1)...because poetry is words, we vainly fancy that some other words than its own will express its meaning....(2) the main value of poetry lies in a process not in a result.
--(1) A.C. Bradley, Oxford Lectures on Poetry, 1909 and (2) Gilbert Murray, The Interpretation of Ancient Greek Literature.
Why would I want a world of wealth
when beauty is here for free?
When gardens and domes have diadems of
gold and diamonds crowning Thee?
The coins and precious metals here
were minted in Their brains,
the result of 15 billion years
making epochal, flashing gains.
These are resplendent tokens
as if from planes of glory and
their lights. This centre of realities
in our abode of dust
is a place to come to;
it is just a must.
A place on your itinerary
at least once while you’re alive.
Watch that you don’t miss it after you’ve arrived.
Ron Price
27 December 1995
THE POEM BEGINS TO LIVE
Watch that in explaining a poem you don’t explain it away. It is not so much a question of ‘what does it mean?’, but a situation in which even the poet does not know what it means. -Ron Price with thanks to T.S. Elliot for the idea in ‘The Aims of Poetic Drama’, Adam, 1951.
His words’ not dead
now that they’ve been said.
They’ve begun to live-just see!
There are matters praying-homage
to His grandeur, beauty; it is free.
Ron Price
27 December 1995
A SEA OF FORESTS
Poetry had far better imply things than preach them directly....in the open pulpit her voice grows hoarse and fails. -F.L. Lucas, Decline and Fall of the Romantic Ideal.
These days we venerate,
major historic thrust,
simple days of sun and rain,
we invest existence with a stately trust.
For there is being born right now
in this acorn on the hill
a great sea of forests from His
burgeoning will.
Ron Price
27 December 1995
HOW WILL I DANCE?
Telling never dilates the mind with suggestion as implication does.-Sean O’Faolain, The Short Story, 1948.
The tree has branches
blowing so slender and free
with the wind.
They dance on softly
and drop their leaves on me.
They seem to blow
so easily, no effort
with their trunk and bark,
just responding to the wind
when it blows in light and dark.
Could I but bend when
life blows my branches,
thin at end, occasionally
rattling when their’s force,
even breaking with no mend.
Dieing dry upon the field
or garden by the path
and burning so clean to dust
and ash a touch of white gone free.
Is this the soul you’ve given me?
Is this what blows beyond the grave
after my life of doing here?
In Your long Undiscovered Country
how will I dance for Thee?
Ron Price
27 December 1995
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