In The Poetry » Anne Ridler

Snakeshead Fritillaries

admin — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 18:57:07 +0000

‘Snakeshead Fritillaries’. These are waterside plants that grow beside the Thames in Oxford, and very famously in the gardens of Magdalene College, and Geoffrey Grigson – I remember reading about them before I was aware of the flowers – saying that everyone should walk once in a fritillary field before he died, and that the best position to look at fritillaries was when the sun was low in the sky and you kneel down and get the light of the sun through their petals, which is quite true. They’re called Snakeshead Fritillaries because with the dapple they are supposed to resemble the head of a snake. The fritillary has this, as I’ve remarked, this curious habit of coming out first with its head laying close to the ground before it begins to raise it on the stem, and when I first grew them in our garden, I didn’t know this habit of theirs, and I thought “Oh damn, the children have trodden on them, and there I’ve lost another precious thing.”

Snakeshead Fritillaries

Some seedlings shoulder the earth away
Like Milton’s lion plunging to get free,
Demanding notice. Delicate rare fritillary,
You enter creeping, like the snake
You’re named for, and lay your ear to the ground.
The soundless signal comes, to arch the neck -
Losing the trampled look -
Follow the code for colour, whether
White or freckled with purple and pale,
A chequered dice-box tilted over the soil,
The yellow dice held at the base.

When light slants before the sunset, this is
The proper time to watch fritillaries.
They entered creeping; you go on your knees,
The flowers level with your eyes,
And catch the dapple of sunlight through the petals.

Expectans Expectavi

admin — Sat, 08 Oct 2011 13:34:43 +0000

This poem, ‘Expectans Expectavi’, which is the title of a psalm, “I waited patiently for the Lord”, is about waiting, written at the end of the last war when the whole world, really, seemed to be holding its breath for the return of ordinary life, and all the soldiers from overseas, and I thought of it in the wintertime, at Christmas, with the carols and the children’s faces, recalling the refugees of the time. The poem happened to be chosen to be posted up on the underground, so although I never saw it myself, several of my friends have been surprised by it in the middle of a crowd of people standing up in the tube train.

Expectans Expectavi

The candid freezing season again:
Candle and cracker, needles of fir and frost;
Carols that through the night air pass, piercing
The glassy husk of heart and heaven;
Children’s faces white in the pane, bright in the tree-light.

And the waiting season again,
That begs a crust and suffers joy vicariously:
In bodily starvation now, in the spirit’s exile always.
O might the hilarious reign of love begin, let in
Like carols from the cold
The lost who crowd the pane, numb outcasts into welcome.

Villanelle for the Middle of the Way

admin — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 03:54:08 +0000

‘Villanelle for the Middle of the Way’. This poem was written in the strict form where you have two rhyming lines and a third between them, which are repeated all the way through the poem with other rhymes added to them and in attempting to write a villanelle, I always thought of T S Eliot saying that sometimes for the release of the deepest and most secret feeling, to use a very strict form is a help, because you concentrate on the technical difficulties of mastering the form, and allow the content of the poem a more unconscious and freer release.

Villanelle for the Middle of the Way

When we first love, his eyes reflect our own;
When mirrors change to windows we can see;
Seeing, we know how much is still unknown.

Was it a trite reflection? What is shown
When we gaze deep begins the mystery:
When we first love, his eyes reflect our own.

Neither of us could cast the first stone,
And to forgive is tender. ‘Now’, thought we,
‘Seeing, we know.’ How much was still unknown

We later learnt. But by forgiveness grown -
As Blake discovered – apt for eternity,
Though in first love his eyes reflect our own.

What was the crime for which you would atone
Or could be crime now between you and me
Seeing we know how much is still unknown?

I know you now by heart not eyes alone,
Dearer the dry than even the green tree.
When we first love, his eyes reflect our own,
Seeing, we know how much is still unknown.

Choosing a Name

admin — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 16:46:29 +0000

Choosing a Name

My little son, I have cast you out
To hang heels upward, wailing over a world
With walls too wide.
My faith till now, and now my love:
No walls too wide for that to fill, no depth
Too great for all you hide.

I love, not knowing what I love,
I give, though ignorant for whom
The history and power of a name.
I conjure with it, like a novice
Summoning unknown spirits: answering me
You take the word, and tame it.

Even as the gift of life
You take the famous name you did not choose
And make it new.
You and the name exchange a power:
Its history is changed, becoming yours,
And yours by this: who calls this, calls you.

Strong vessel of peace, and plenty promised,
into whose unsounded depths I pour
This alien power;
Frail vessel, launched with a shawl for sail,
Whose guiding spirit keeps his needle-quivering
Poise between trust and terror,

And stares amazed to find himself alive;
This is the means by which you say I am,
Not to be lost till all is lost,
When at the sight of God you say I am nothing,
And find, forgetting name and speech at last,
A home not mine, dear outcast.

Villanelle for the Middle of the Way

admin — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 12:00:11 +0000

Villanelle for the Middle of the Way

When we first love, his eyes reflect our own;
When mirrors change to windows we can see;
Seeing, we know how much is still unknown.

Was it a trite reflection? What is shown
When we gaze deep begins the mystery:
When we first love, his eyes reflect our own.

Neither of us could cast the first stone,
And to forgive is tender. ‘Now’, thought we,
‘Seeing, we know.’ How much was still unknown

We later learnt. But by forgiveness grown -
As Blake discovered – apt for eternity,
Though in first love his eyes reflect our own.

What was the crime for which you would atone
Or could be crime now between you and me
Seeing we know how much is still unknown?

I know you now by heart not eyes alone,
Dearer the dry than even the green tree.
When we first love, his eyes reflect our own,
Seeing, we know how much is still unknown.

Snakeshead Fritillaries

admin — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 22:21:33 +0000

Snakeshead Fritillaries

Expectans Expectavi

admin — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 11:52:15 +0000

Expectans Expectavi

Choosing a Name

admin — Wed, 13 May 2009 17:50:30 +0000

Choosing a Name