Thursday, May 14, 2009














Prose is the rest of the time;
workaday words, with a job to do.

If you're lucky, they like their work,
go to it with a light step and heart,
not plodding, dreary or reluctant,
though breaking a healthy sweat at times.

They may have satisfying moments,
laughs with their mates, even perhaps
some light-filled days and revelations,
and carry out their tasks with grace and joy.

But poems are the words on pilgrimage.
(Or, at the very least, on holiday...)

15 comments:

Zhoen said...

Something about those narrow spaces between, I want to slip through them, hands touching both sides.

Lucy said...

Thanks Zhoen. Those alleyways with steps, 'tertres', are very old.

I posted this needing editing, then couldn't get access and had to leave it with the spaces all buggered up... better now, sorry about that!

Kim said...

So lovely! There series of black and whites is so romantic and makes me yearn for Europe. And your words make me happy.

Rouchswalwe said...

Oh, Lucy ... what kind of wine is in the glasses?

christopher said...

Lucy, I am not depressed, I don't think. I just went with the gray narrow passages and my myocardial infarction (what a name!) and linked them with the common thinking about what causes heart attacks. My actual experience was actually rather upbeat some of the time in hospital.

Getting The Picture

Corner spillage piles
slow us down, narrow alleys
turn and clog like this
in forgotten lives,
lost lives overfed in place
of love, fatty lives
aching, short of breath,
seeking for the one true cure
as if arteries
held open with stents
would allow a recovery,
let me see my God.

Bee said...

So, poems are words at play . . . or words with serious and ambitious intent?

Your black and white pictures are wonderful, Lucy. There is something so beautifully clear about them.

herhimnbryn said...

Oh Lucy! What a treasure to find this morning. Words and images both.

Lucy said...

Thanks.

Kim - lovely to see you. The black and white looks nostalgic and Old World, I suppose!

Rouchswalwe - I rather detect a theme in your comments! In fact it was just the chilled water in the glasses, I think, but there was wine in the jug. As Tom was, I believe, having onion soup that day, and I was having quiche Lorraine, I think it was a white one!

Christopher - even if I don't make anything remarkable out of this, if it's inspiring you to write, that's good! Funny how we feel the need to reassure that we're OK when we go somewhere like this in our writing, but your poem doesn't speak of depression anyway. Thank you for it.

Bee - I suppose it's to do with going beyond... achieving a different state. Not that I say I can always do it. B&W can be lovely and fresh, can't it?

HHB - you'd have liked it there!

Granny J said...

my sort of poem, Lucy.

The Joined up Cook said...

Poems are words on a pilgrimage only when the writer has belief in them.

So many are not.

Your poem allowed me to believe.

Photos tell a story too.

HLiza said...

Had googled Chartres..looks like a very interesting place with unique architechture..but I think the whole of France is a huge wonder to me..it'll be a whole new experience if I ever land my feet there! Breath taking photos Lucy..

Roderick Robinson said...

Is that vers libre or blank verse? For me terra australis incognita, both of 'em. Isn't prose being (more or less) in control and poetry risking lack of control? As a guide to someone only on the first step of the ladder please provide a link to a sentence somewhere in your blog that is "plodding, dreary or reluctant" and I'll respond with one (in mine) that is all three.

Jan said...

LOvely idea, Lucy...
and your snaps made me want to book a holiday in your part of the world PRONTO!
WE had lots of camping holidays in Brittany when my kids were young...
think it's time to take the grandchildren and do it all over again!

Unknown said...

Words on a pilgrimage. The minds of pilgrims are concentrated. Verse is when pilgrims march and sing in unison. Poetry is when they proceed driven by something important going on inside their heads. The two are not mutually exclusive. Prose is business as usual.

Pamela Terry and Edward said...

Poems are words on a pilgrimage, or a holiday. I love that. So much!