Secondary 1 Scaffolded Poetry



THE RAILINGS

You came to watch me playing cricket once.

Quite a few of the fathers did.

At ease, outside the pavilion

They would while away a Sunday afternoon

Joke with the masters, urge on

their flannelled offspring. But not you.

Fielding deep near the boundary

I saw you through the railings.

You were embarrassed when I waved

and moved out of sight down the road.

When it was my turn to bowl though

I knew you’d still be watching.

Third ball, a wicket, and three more followed.

When we came in at the end of the innings

the other dads applauded and joined us for tea.

Of course, you’d gone by then. Later,

you said you’d found yourself there by accident.

Just passing. Spotted me through the railings.

Speech days. Prize-givings. School plays

The twenty-first. The Wedding. The Christening

You would find yourself there by accident.

Just passing. Spotted me through the railings.

Roger McGough

The Tyger

BY WILLIAM BLAKE

Tyger Tyger, burning bright,

In the forests of the night;

What immortal hand or eye,

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies.

Burnt the fire of thine eyes?

On what wings dare he aspire?

What the hand, dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder, & what art,

Could twist the sinews of thy heart?

And when thy heart began to beat,

What dread hand? & what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain,

In what furnace was thy brain?

What the anvil? what dread grasp,

Dare its deadly terrors clasp!

When the stars threw down their spears

And water'd heaven with their tears:

Did he smile his work to see?

Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tyger Tyger burning bright,

In the forests of the night:

What immortal hand or eye,

Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

Rupert Brooke

The Soldier

IF I should die, think only this of me:

That there's some corner of a foreign field

That is forever England. There shall be

In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;

A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,

Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,

A body of England's, breathing English air,

Washed by the rivers, blest by the suns of home.

And think, this heart, all evil shed away,

A pulse in the eternal mind, no less

Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;

Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;

And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,

In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

“Metaphors” by Sylvia Plath

I’m a riddle in nine syllables,

An elephant, a ponderous house,

A melon strolling on two tendrils.

O red fruit, ivory, fine timbers!

This loaf’s big with its yeasty rising.

Money’s new-minted in this fat purse.

I’m a means, a stage, a cow in calf.

I’ve eaten a bag of green apples,

Boarded the train there’s no getting off.

Song of the Witches: “Double, double toil and trouble”

BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

(from Macbeth)

Double, double toil and trouble;

Fire burn and caldron bubble.

Fillet of a fenny snake,

In the caldron boil and bake;

Eye of newt and toe of frog,

Wool of bat and tongue of dog,

Adder's fork and blind-worm's sting,

Lizard's leg and howlet's wing,

For a charm of powerful trouble,

Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.

Double, double toil and trouble;

Fire burn and caldron bubble.

Cool it with a baboon's blood,

Then the charm is firm and good.

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

Miss World - Benjamin Zephaniah

Beauty is about how you behold

more than silver more than gold

if I say I am beautiful

it means beauty is accessible,

beauty is about how you greet

de everyday people dat you meet

you are beautiful so all rejoice

your beauty is a natural choice.

My sister is a beautiful girl

she don't want to be Miss World

her value is not prize money

more value than a pearl

my sister is a beautiful girl

human delight

she could be out of sight but she would rather stay and fight.

Her legs are firm and strong

best for self-defence

my sister kicks like wildfire

so cause her no grievance

she won't walk the platform

to upsex people's lust

and you can't get the number of her height, age or bust,

she don't want to go to the market

to be viewed like a slave

the viewing time is over

put de judge in the grave,

she don't need to go to the market

'cause she's already won

beauty contest no contest

she don't need to run.

I talk 'bout people in society who judge you by your looks, den,

give you a number dat is written in a book, and, lustful eyes

from all around come to look at you, and, day judge your lifetime

by a quick interview.

My sister is a beautiful girl

But she don't want to be Miss World

her personality cannot be rewarded by no judge or earl.

My sister is a beautiful girl

She needs no contest

and you can't put her with another judging who's the best.

And you cannot judge my sister's heart

By looking at her breasts.

‘For Heidi With Blue Hair’, Fleur Adcock

When you dyed your hair blue

(or, at least ultramarine

for the clipped sides, with a crest

of jet-black spikes on top)

you were sent home from school

because, as the headmistress put it,

although dyed hair was not

specifically forbidden, yours was,

apart from anything else,

not done in the school colours.

Tears in the kitchen, telephone-calls

to school from your freedom-loving father:

'She's not a punk in her behaviour;

it's just a style.' (You wiped your eyes,

also not in a school colour.)

'She discussed it with me first -

we checked the rules.' 'And anyway, Dad,

it cost twenty-five dollars.

Tell them it won't wash out -

not even if I wanted to try.

It would have been unfair to mention your

mother's death, but that shimmered

behind the arguments.

The school had nothing else against you;

the teachers twittered and gave in.

Next day your black friend had hers done

in grey, white and flaxen yellow -

the school colours precisely:

an act of solidarity, a witty tease.

The battle was already won.

Advice to a Discarded Lover by Fleur Adcock.

Think, now: if you have found a dead bird,

not only dead, not only fallen,

but full of maggots: what do you feel –

more pity or more revulsion?

Pity is for the moment of death,

and the moments after. It changes

when decay comes, with the creeping stench

and the wriggling, munching scavengers.

Returning later, though, you will see

a shape of clean bone, a few feathers,

an inoffensive symbol of what

once lived. Nothing to make you shudder.

It is clear then. But perhaps you find

the analogy I have chosen

for our dead affair rather gruesome –

too unpleasant a comparison.

It is not accidental. In you

I see maggots close to the surface.

You are eaten up by self-pity,

crawling with unlovable pathos.

If I were to touch you I should feel

against my fingers fat, moist worm-skin.

Do not ask me for charity now:

go away until your bones are clean.

How To Eat a Poem

by Eve Merriam

Don't be polite.

Bite in.

Pick it up with your fingers and lick the juice that

may run down your chin.

It is ready and ripe now, whenever you are.

You do not need a knife or fork or spoon

or plate or napkin or tablecloth.

For there is no core

or stem

or rind

or pit

or seed

or skin

to throw away.

I Waited All Day - Pearl Jam (Vitalogy album)

“I waited all day.

you waited all day..

but you left before sunset..

and I just wanted to tell you

the moment was beautiful.

Just wanted to dance to bad music

drive bad cars..

watch bad TV..

should have stayed for the sunset…

if not for me.”

Dissection

This rat looks like it is made of marzipan,

Soft and neatly packaged in its envelope;

I shake it free.

Fingering the damp, yellow fur, I know

That this first touch is far the worst.

There is a book about it that contains

Everything on a rat, with diagrams

Meticulous, but free from blood

Or all the yellow juices

I will have to pour away.

Now peg it out:

My pins are twisted and the board is hard

But, using force and fracturing its legs,

I manage though

And crucify my rat.

From the crutch to the throat the fur is ripped

Not neatly, not as shown in the diagrams,

But raggedly;

My hacking has revealed the body wall

As a sack that is fat with innards to be torn

By the inquisitive eye

And the hand that strips aside.

Inside this taut, elastic sack is a surprise;

Not the chaos I had thought to find,

No oozing mash; instead of that

A firmly coiled discipline

Of overlapping liver, folded gut;

A neatness that is like a small machine -

And I wonder what it is that has left this rat,

Why a month of probing could not make it go again,

What it is that has disappeared . . .

The bell has gone; it is time to go for lunch.

I fold the rat, replace it in its bag,

Wash from my hands the sweet

Smell of meat and formalin

And go and eat a meat pie afterwards.

So, for four weeks or so, I am told,

I shall continue to dissect this rat;

Like a child

Pulling apart a clock he cannot mend.

Colin Rowbotham

Ozymandias

Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1792 - 1822

I met a traveller from an antique land

Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert . . . Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:

And on the pedestal these words appear:

‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

A Birthday

BY CHRISTINA ROSSETTI

My heart is like a singing bird

Whose nest is in a water'd shoot;

My heart is like an apple-tree

Whose boughs are bent with thickset fruit;

My heart is like a rainbow shell

That paddles in a halcyon sea;

My heart is gladder than all these

Because my love is come to me.

Raise me a dais of silk and down;

Hang it with vair and purple dyes;

Carve it in doves and pomegranates,

And peacocks with a hundred eyes;

Work it in gold and silver grapes,

In leaves and silver fleurs-de-lys;

Because the birthday of my life

Is come, my love is come to me.

Coal Fire

And once in some swamp-forest, these

Were trees.

Before the first fox thought to run,

These dead black chips were one

Green net to hold the sun.

Each leaf in turn was taught the right

Way to drink light;

The twigs were made to learn

How to catch flame and yet not burn;

Branch and then bough began to eat

Their diet of heat.

And so for years, six million years, or higher,

They held that fire.

And here, out of the splinters that remain,

The fire is loose again.

See how its hundred hands reach here and there,

Finger the air;

Then, growing bolder, twisting free,

It fastens on the remnants of the tree

And, one by one,

Consumes them; mounts beyond them; leaps; is done;

And goes back to the sun.

Louis Untermeyer

Poem About Writing a Poem - Eric Finney

‘Write a poem,’ she says

‘About anything you like.’

You can practically feel the class all thinking,

‘On your blooming bike!’

A poem! I’ll tell you one thing:

Mine’s not going to rhyme.

A poem between now and playtime!

There’s not the time.

In half an hour she’ll say,

‘Have you done? Hand papers in

And go out.’

I mean, does she have the slightest idea

What writing a poem’s about?

I mean, it’s agony:

It’s scribbling thoughts

And looking for rhymes

And ways to end and begin;

And giving it up in total despair –

‘I’m chucking it in the bin.’

But tomorrow it pulls you back again,

And hey, a bit of it clicks!

And you sweat with the words

But it’s hopeless again

And it sticks.

And you put it away for ever …

But it nags away in the back of your head

And the bits of it buzz and roam,

And maybe- about a century later –

You’ve got a kind of poem

PIGTAIL

When all the women in the transport

had their heads shaved

four workmen with brooms made of birch twigs

swept up

and gathered up the hair

Behind clean glass

the stiff hair lies

of those suffocated in gas chambers

there are pins and side combs

in this hair

The hair is not shot through with light

is not parted by the breeze

is not touched by any hand

or rain or lips

In huge chests

clouds of dry hair

of those suffocated and a faded plait

a pigtail with a ribbon

pulled at school

by naughty boys.

Tadeusz Różewicz

The Museum. Auschwitz 1948

Vegetarians, Roger Mcgough

Vegetarians are cruel, unthinking people.

Everybody knows that a carrot screams when grated.

That a peach bleeds when torn apart.

Do you believe an orange insensitive

to thumbs gouging out its flesh?

That tomatoes spill their brains painlessly?

Potatoes, skinned alive and boiled,

the soil’s little lobsters.

Don’t tell me it doesn’t hurt

when peas are ripped from the scrotum,

the hide flayed off sprouts,

cabbage shredded, onions beheaded.

Throw in the trowel

and lay down the hoe.

Mow no more

Let my people go!

Rain - Hone Tuwhare

I can hear you making

small holes in the silence

rain

If I were deaf

the pores of my skin

would open to you

and shut

And I should know you

by the lick of you

if I were blind:

the steady drum-roll

sound you make

when the wind drops

the something

special smell of you

when the sun cakes

the ground

But if I should not

hear

smell or feel or see you

You would still

define me

disperse me

wash over me

rain

JABBERWOCKY

Lewis Carroll

(from Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, 1872)

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:

All mimsy were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!

The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!

Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun

The frumious Bandersnatch!"

He took his vorpal sword in hand:

Long time the manxome foe he sought --

So rested he by the Tumtum tree,

And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,

The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,

Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,

And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through

The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!

He left it dead, and with its head

He went galumphing back.

"And, has thou slain the Jabberwock?

Come to my arms, my beamish boy!

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!'

He chortled in his joy.

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;

All mimsy were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe.

High Flight

John Gillespie Magee, Jr

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 --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...

Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue

I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace

Where never lark or even 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.

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