Those who know me will know that I’m a big Bob Dylan fan and that I get recurrent bouts of depression. It’s time to admit that I choose “Gas” as a poem to learn during one, as the attendant posts - Gas #2 Body Horror - readily testify. Time then I think to kick that project into the long grass at the very least. The Dylan song that sees me past the Black Dog is “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere” (a fine redition by Rosanne Cash here [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXTbplTXkq8] on YouTube). And it is certainly true that I was getting nowhere with the Fleur Adcock. So it’s time to cut my losses and move on!
I’ve just finished reading Jeanette Winterson’s memoir “Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal” and that introduced me to a striking extract from a poem from the 17C (unfortunately not the 13C as would have been appropriate to a Bobcat - take a star if you get that reference) :
“Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball,
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life:
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.”
So let “Gas” disperse; I’m going to learn “His Coy Mistress” by Andrew Marvell. Here’s the beginning:
Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime.
We would sit down and think which way
To walk, and pass our long love’s day;
Thou by the Indian Ganges’ side
Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the Flood;
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
