Below are copies of two poems written by Richard who shared the walk. He also recited two other poems: 'The Weathers' by Hardy, which was very apt as we heard the first cuckoo of the year, and 'Spring and Fall' by Gerard Manley Hopkins. Thanks to Richard for allowing me to publish them here.
The walk and the talk was an experience which I will never forget.
Hopefully another walk will be arranged in midsummer.
On reading poetry in print
I
cannot hear the poets, all I have
Is
print on paper, and I give my own
Sound
to hear the poets’ words, and make
What
seems to me they want to say, live on.
I
do not see their molten silver flow
Toward
the mould of press or pen; that thought,
That
spirit freezes to the words I read.
Then,
heated to the melt, I feel my own
Liquid
silver glisten and go.
Richard Harris
Metaphors of a mountain day
Lifting
away the first quiet dew of dawn
the
monarch of the morning takes the sky,
warming
the golden cliffs and earth and grass,
and
as his powers rise, burning the rock,
parching
from earth the last dark patch to pale
dry
dust, commanding all the leaves on trees
to
give up every drop stored in their veins.
The
daughters of this moisture, prim, demure
white
damsels sail before the king, grow fat
and
blousy, till their kin take umbrage, and
with
darkened brows, gather to menace him,
join
shoulders to become a threatening mass
and
swarm across the landscape for revenge.
As
dim rain-curtains sweep across far hills
the
first-to-fire, leopard-lightning, claws
to
rend the sky; black hordes like charging beasts
thunder
their hooves in answer. Whispered breeze
foretells
the rain: first statements from great
drops,
an urgent
wide accord, till the whole scene
a torrent of wet splashy words, that prompts
a
childish babble of meadow rivulets.
Now,
as
sudden as it starts, the rain is gone,
and
while the grey-stacked sky parts for the king
to
show red sunset smiles, the earth lies still;
the
sound of silence listening to itself,
reflecting
on the drama of the day.
Richard Harris
