tree_and_leaf | Entries tagged with norman nicholson

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Reload page in style: light

One from an unjustly neglected poet from Millom, Cumbria, who was frequently pre-occupied with landscape and people and the places where they meet (for ill as well as good: he wrote a very powerful one about the Windscale fire).

Wall
( The wall walks the fell - Grey millipede on slow Stone hooves; )

... And since I haven't made a National Poetry Month post yet, I thought I'd share this poem by the little known Cumbrian poet, Norman Nicholson, of whom I'm rather fond. The poem's three weeks late, but never mind. This seems , incidentally, to be an internet first.

The Burning Rose (Poem for Lady Day)

Above the golden crocus climbs the rose,
The rose that is the world's flesh and our own,
Rolled inward, folded, foliated close,
The red bud rocking on the bright green bone.

The calyx flickers hairy fire, the tight
Petals are flayed with flame and burn like coal;
The wicks of stamens flower into light
And leave the shy flesh smouldering, but whole.