GOOD MORNING.... I know Sue Armstrong is our resident poet, but i saw this and thought of our very English Floppsies. I hope you like it . Show Saturday by Philip Larkin (From the Collection High Windows, 1974) Note: this poem was written about the 1973 Bellingham Show. Grey day for the Show, but cars jam the narrow lanes. Inside, on the field, judging has started: dogs (Set their legs back, hold out their tails) and ponies (manes Repeatedly smoothed, to calm heads); over there, sheep (Cheviot and Blackface); by the hedge, squealing logs (Chain Saw Competition). Each has its own keen crowd. In the main arena, more judges meet by a jeep: The jumping’s on next. Announcements, splutteringly loud, Clash with the quack of a man with pound notes round his hat And a lit-up board. There’s more than just animals: Bead-stalls, balloon-men, a Bank; a beer-marquee that Half-screens a canvas Gents; a tent selling tweed, And another, jackets. Folks sit about on bales Like great straw dice. For each scene is linked by spaces Not given to anything much, where kids scrap, freed, While their owners stare different ways with incurious faces. The wrestling starts, late; a wide ring of people; then cars; Then trees; then pale sky. Two young men in acrobats’ tights And embroidered trunks hug each other: rock over the grass, Stiff-legged, in a two-man scrum. One falls: they shake hands. Two more start, one grey-haired: he wins, though. They’re not so much fights As long immobile strainings that end in unbalance With one on his back, unharmed, while the other stands Smoothing his hair. But there are other talents- The long high tent of growing and making, wired-off Wood tables past which crowds shuffle, eyeing the scrubbed spaced Extrusions of earth: blanch leeks like church candles, six pods of Broad beans (one split open), dark shining-leafed cabbages- rows Of single supreme versions, followed (on laced Paper mats) by dairy and kitchen; four brown eggs, four white eggs, Four plain scones, four dropped scones, pure excellences that enclose A recession of skills. And, after them, lambing-sticks, rugs, Needlework, knitted caps, baskets, all worthy, all well done, But less than the honeycombs. Outside, the jumping’s over. The young ones thunder their ponies in competition Twice round the ring; then trick races, Musical Stalls, Sliding off, riding bareback, the ponies dragged to and fro for Bewildering requirements, not minding. But now, in the background, Like shifting scenery, horse-boxes move; each crawls Towards the stock entrance, tilting and swaying, bound For far-off farms. The pound-note man decamps. The car park has thinned. They’re loading jumps on a truck. Back now to private addresses, gates and lamps In high stone one-street villages, empty at dusk, And side roads of small towns (sports final stuck In front doors, allotments reaching down to the railway); Back now to autumn, leaving the ended husk Of summer that brought them here for Show Saturday- The men with hunters, dog-breeding wool-defined women, Children all saddle-swank, mugfaced middleaged wives Glaring at jellies, husbands on leave from the garden Watchful as weasels, car-tuning curt-haired sons- Back now, all of them, to their local lives: To names on vans, and business calendars Hung up in kitchens; back to loud occasions In the Corn Exchange, to market days in bars, To winter coming, as the dismantled Show Itself dies back into the area of work. Let it stay hidden there like strength, below Sale-bills and swindling; something people do, Not noticing how time’s rolling smithy-smoke Shadows much greater gestures; something they share That breaks ancestrally each year into Regenerate union. Let it always be there. Sorry about the spacing and phrasing. I just couldnt get it right
Posted on: Sat, 30 Aug 2014 08:43:46 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015