Category: Books

The sunlight on the garden

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The sunlight on the garden
Hardens and grows cold,
We cannot cage the minute
Within its nets of gold,
When all is told
We cannot beg for pardon.

Our freedom as free lances
Advances towards its end;
The earth compels, upon it
Sonnets and birds descend;
And soon, my friend,
We shall have no time for dances.

The sky was good for flying
Defying the church bells
And every evil iron
Siren and what it tells:
The earth compels,
We are dying, Egypt, dying

And not expecting pardon,
Hardened in heart anew,
But glad to have sat under
Thunder and rain with you,
And grateful too
For sunlight on the garden.

Louis MacNeice

Deer

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I wrote a poem a while back. Ash Akhtar read it and decided to do something with it. He got the miraculous Christopher Fairbank to read it (yes, that one), wrote some beautiful music and made this short film. It’s a privilege to have been involved.

See more of Ash’s fantastic work, and some of our other collaborations over at the Fervent Arts YouTube channel.

William Empson, Rolling the Lawn

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You can’t beat English lawns. Our final hope
Is flat despair. Each morning therefore ere
I greet the office, through the weekday air,
Holding the holy roller at the slope
(The English fetish, not the Texas Pope)
Hither and thither on my toes with care
I roll ours flatter and flatter. Long, in prayer,
I grub for daisies at whose roots I grope.

Roll not the abdominal wall; the walls of Troy
Lead, since a plumb-line ordered, could destroy.
Roll rather, where no mole dare sap, the lawn,
And ne’er his tumuli shall tomb your brawn.
World, roll yourself, and bear your roller, soul,
As martyrs gridirons, when God calls the roll.

William Empson, 1928