Thread by @TomLondon6

I love reading poetry. I am no kind of expert at all
For some years I have been sending poems weekly to friends at work. Poems by brilliant poets
I thought in these very strange times, I would tweet a poem daily
The first may make you smile. Others may elicit different emotions

Poem #1

CELIA, CELIA by Adrian Mitchell

When I am sad and weary
When I think all hope has gone
When I walk along High Holborn
I think of you with nothing on

Poem #2

ODE TO THE ONION by Pablo Neruda

Ode To The Onion by Pablo Neruda
Onion,
luminous flask,
your beauty formed
petal by petal,
crystal scales expanded you
and in the secrecy of the dark earth
your belly grew round with dew.
Under the earth
the miracle
happened
and

when your clumsy
green stem appeared,
and your leaves were born
like swords
in the garden,
the earth heaped up her power
showing your naked transparency,
and as the remote sea
in lifting the breasts of Aphrodite
duplicating the magnolia,
so did the earth
make you,

onion,
clear as a planet
and destined
to shine,
constant constellation,
round rose of water,
upon
the table
of the poor.

You make us cry without hurting us.
I have praised everything that exists,
but to me, onion, you are
more beautiful than a bird
of dazzling feathers,

you are to my eyes
heavenly globe, platinum goblet,
unmoving dance
of the snowy anemone

and the fragrance of the earth lives
in your crystalline nature.

THE END

Poem #3
NO MAN IS AN ISLAND by John Donne (1572-1631)

No man is an island entire of itself; every man
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;
if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe
is the less, as well as if a promontory were,

1/2

as well as any manner of thy friends or of thine
own were; any man's death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom
the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

THE END

Poem #4

A MAN MAY MAKE A REMARK by Emily Dickinson

A Man may make a Remark -
In itself - a quiet thing
That may furnish the Fuse unto a Spark
In dormant nature - lain -

1/2

Let us divide - with skill -
Let us discourse - with care -
Powder exists in Charcoal -
Before it exists in Fire -

THE END

#UKisolatepoem 5

THIS ROOM by Imtiaz Dharker

This room is breaking out
of itself, cracking through
its own walls
in search of space, light,
empty air.

The bed is lifting out of
its nightmares.
From dark corners, chairs
are rising up to crash through clouds.

1/3

This is the time and place
to be alive:
when the daily furniture of our lives
stirs, when the improbable arrives.
Pots and pans bang together
in celebration, clang
past the crowd of garlic, onion, spices,
fly by the ceiling fan.
No one is looking for the door.

2/3

In all this excitement
I'm wondering where
I've left my feet, and why

my hands are outside, clapping.

THE END

#UKIsolatepoem 6

Dylan Thomas, Under Milk Wood

FIRST VOICE (Very softly)
To begin at the beginning:

1/?

It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless
and bible-black, the cobblestreets silent and the hunched,
courters'-and-rabbits' wood limping invisible down to the
sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboatbobbing sea.
The houses are blind as moles

2/?

(though moles see fine to-night in the snouting, velvet dingles) or blind as Captain Cat there in the muffled middle by the pump and the town clock, the shops in mourning, the Welfare Hall in widows' weeds. And all the people of the lulled and dumbfound town are sleeping now.
3/4

bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01…

Richard Burton reads Dylan Thomas. Wooah!

THE END

#UKIsolatepoem 7

ETERNITY by William Blake (1757-1827)

He who binds to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy
He who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity’s sunrise

#UKIsolatepoem 8

This poem is by W.H. Davies who spent a significant part of his life as a tramp or hobo, in UK & US

LEISURE

What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.

1/?

No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.

No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.

No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.

2/3

No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.

A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

THE END

#UKIsolatepoem 9



ONLY BREATH by RUMI (1207-1273)

Not Christian or Jew or Muslim, not Hindu
Buddhist, sufi, or zen. Not any religion

or cultural system. I am not from the East
or the West, not out of the ocean or up

1/3

from the ground, not natural or ethereal, not
composed of elements at all. I do not exist,

am not an entity in this world or in the next,
did not descend from Adam and Eve or any

origin story. My place is placeless, a trace
of the traceless. Neither body or soul.

2/3

I belong to the beloved, have seen the two
worlds as one and that one call to and know,

first, last, outer, inner, only that
breath breathing human being.

THE END

Rumi was a Persian philosopher, mystic and scholar and founder of the order of the Whirling Dervishes

#UKIsolatepoem 10
This poem is by Michael Rosen
He is in hospital now due to #coronavirus
His family have been tweeting on his twitter handle @MichaelRosenYes
He wrote this for the 60th anniversary of the NHS in 2008
I send him all heartfelt best wishes
He is a wonderful man

THESE ARE THE HANDS

These are the hands
That touch us first
Feel your head
Find the pulse
And make your bed.

These are the hands
That tap your back
Test the skin
Hold your arm
Wheel the bin
Change the bulb
Fix the drip
Pour the jug
Replace your hip.

2/3

These are the hands
That fill the bath
Mop the floor
Flick the switch
Soothe the sore
Burn the swabs
Give us a jab
Throw out sharps
Design the lab.

And these are the hands
That stop the leaks
Empty the pan
Wipe the pipes

3/4

Carry the can
Clamp the veins
Make the cast
Log the dose
And touch us last.

THE END

#UKIsolatepoem 11

This poem is by John Gillespie Magee Jr. a Canadian Air Force fighter pilot in WW2. He was 19 when he wrote the poem. He tragically died in an accidental mid-air collision over England a few months later.

HIGH FLIGHT

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds, – and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of –

2/4

wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air…

3/?

Up, up the long, delirious burning blue
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or ever eagle flew –
And, while with silent, lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

THE END

#UKIsolatepoem 12

THIS IS JUST TO SAY by William Carlos Williams

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold