The chimney sweepers
Wash their faces and forget to wash the neck,
The lighthouse keepers
Let the lamps go out and leave the ships to wreck,
The prosperous baker
Leaves the rolls in hundreds in the oven to burn
The undertaker
pins a a small note on the coffin saying "Wait till I return,
I've got a date with love>"
And deep-sea divers
Cut their boots off and come bubbling to the top,
And engine-drivers
Bring expresses in the tunnel to a stop,
The village rector
Dashed down the side-aisle half-way through a psalm,
The sanitary inspector
Runs off with the cover of the cesspool on his arm --
To keep his date with love.
(W.H. Auden)
BIG NUMBERS
Million a seven digit baby
Measured in seconds
Just a couple of weeks
Billion has ten keys to press
Enough seconds
For thirty four years
Trillion has thirteen numbers
If you started saving
A dollar per second
During the last ice age
Thirty four thousand
years ago
You would
now have almost
a trillion dollars
The pile would
reach beyond
the moon
Two hundred
Seventy one
Thousand miles
A trillion atoms
side by side as long
as a football pitch
(WRM)
6 comments:
like the big numbers.
Significant Numbers.
One
Alone,
Not lonely.
Independent;
Individual,
Unattached.
Two,
Together,
United;
Not necessarily
Well matched.
Three,
An incongruent
Triangle,
Too many sides to take.
Four,
Two pairs,
A perfect square,
No need to accommodate.
Each
And every number,
Significant in it's way,
Makes a marked difference,
If added or taken away.
j
Thanks so much for all your poems j
I am still not sure who you are but the spelling of colour puts you in the green and pleasant land.
You are a better poet than me you should start your own blog!
jen's journal?
j's ????
WRM
I like this blog. It contains things that I would otherwise never see. That is a little odd as i spend (waste?) a lot of time loooking for interesting things, but have previously dismissed any ideas of reading such stuff. Oh the wonderful influence of learning English as I did. I didn't read a book by choice from starting secondary school until I was 25 and living without a TV for the first time and I have never read poetry by choice. Until now.
Oh ... Auden, I'd forgotten how much I love his work! I remember studying him in college and the prof brought in a recording of A. reciting his own work and I was all ready for this strong, interesting voice but then I heard this slow almost pained, monotone voice came out and I was so struck how unhappy he sounded in comparison with his work. But I still think he's written great stuff.
Di
Oh ... Auden, I'd forgotten how much I love his work! I remember studying him in college and the prof brought in a recording of A. reciting his own work and I was all ready for this strong, interesting voice but then I heard this slow almost pained, monotone voice came out and I was so struck how unhappy he sounded in comparison with his work. But I still think he's written great stuff.
Di
new computer finishes my things before I mean to sometimes, but liked your poem alot too!
Di
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