Pike – Ted Hughes

1 Pike, three inches long, perfect

2 Pike in all parts, green tigering the gold.
3 Killers from the egg: the malevolent aged grin.
4 They dance on the surface among the flies.
5 Or move, stunned by their own grandeur,
6 Over a bed of emerald, silhouette
7 Of submarine delicacy and horror.
9 A hundred feet long in their world.
10 In ponds, under the heat-struck lily pads –
11 Gloom of their stillness:
12 Logged on last year’s black leaves, watching upwards.
13 Or hung in an amber cavern of weeds
14 The jaws’ hooked clamp and fangs
15 Not to be changed at this date;
16 A life subdued to its instrument;
17 The gills kneading quietly, and the pectorals.
18 Three we kept behind glass,
19 Jungled in weed: three inches, four,
20 And four and a half: fed fry to them –
21 Suddenly there were two. Finally, one
22 With a sag belly and the grin it was born with.
23 And indeed they spare nobody.
24 Two, six pounds each, over two feet long.
25 High and dry in the willow-herb –
26 One jammed past its gills down the other’s gullet:
27 The outside eye stared: as a vice locks –
28 The same iron in his eye
29 Though its film shrank in death.
30 A pond I fished, fifty yards across,
31 Whose lilies and muscular trench
32 Had outlasted every visible stone
33 Of the monasteries that planted them –
34 Stilled legendary depth:
35 It was as deep as England. It held
36 Pike too immense to stir, so immense and old
37 That past nightfall I dared not cast
38 But silently cast and fished
39 With the hair frozen on my head
40 For what might move, for what eye might move.
41 The still splashes on the dark pond,
42 Owls hushing the floating woods
43 Frail on my ear against the dream
44 Darkness beneath night’s darkness had freed,
45 That rose slowly towards me, watching.

Caged Bird – Maya Angelou

1 A free bird leaps

2 on the back of the wind
3 And floats downstream
4 till the current ends
5 and dips his wing
6 in the orange sun rays
7 and dares to claim the sky.

8 But a bird that stalks

9 down his narrow cage
10 can seldom see through
11 his bars of rage
12 his wings are clipped and
13 his feet are tied
14 so he opens his throat to sing.

15 The caged bird sings

16 with a fearful trill
17 of things unknown
18 but longed for still
19 and his tune is heard
20 on the distant hill
21 for the caged bird
22 signs of freedom.
23 The free bird thinks of another breeze
24 and the trade winds soft through the sighing trees
25 and the fat worms waiting on a dawn bright lawn
26 and he names the sky his own.

27But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams

28 his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream
29 his wings are clipped, and his feet are tied
30 so he opens his throat to sing.

31 The caged bird sings

32 with a fearful trill
33 of things unknown
34 but longed for still
35 and his tune is heard
36 on the distant hill
37 for the caged bird
38 signs of freedom.

The Lake Isle of Innisfree – WB Yeats

1 I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,

2 And a small cabin builds there, of clay and wattles made;
3 Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee;
4 And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

5 And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
6 Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
7 There midnight is all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
8 And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

9 I will arise and go now, for always night and day

10 I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
11 While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
12 I hear it deep in the heart’s core.

5 Ways to Kill a Man – Edwin Brock

1 There are many cumbersome ways to kill a man.
2 You can make him carry a plank of wood
3 to the top of a hill and nail him to it.
4 To do this properly you require a crowd of people
5 wearing sandals, a cock that crows, a cloak
6 to dissect, a sponge, some vinegar and one
7 man to hammer the nails home.

8 Or you can take a length of steel,

9 shaped and chased in a traditional way,
10 and attempt to pierce the metal cage he wears.
11 But for this you need white horses,
12 English trees, men with bows and arrows,
13 at least two flags, a prince, and a
14 castle to hold your banquet in.
15 Dispensing with nobility, you may, if the wind
16 allows blow gas at him. But then you need
17 a mile of mud sliced through with ditches,
18 not to mention black boots, bomb craters,
19 more mud, a plague of rats, a dozen songs
20 and some round hats made of steel.

21 In an age of airplanes, you may fly

22 miles above your victim and dispose of him by
23 pressing one small switch. All you then
24 require is an ocean to separate you, two
25 systems of government, a nation's scientists,
26 several factories, a psychopath and
27 land that no-one has needed for several years.
28 These are, as I began, cumbersome ways to kill a man.
29 Simpler, direct, and much neater is to see
30 that he is living somewhere in the middle
31 of the twentieth century and leave him there.

Barn Owl – Gwen Harwood

1 Daybreak: the household slept.
2 I rose, blessed by the sun.
3 A horny fiend, I crept
4 out with my father's gun.
5 Let him dream of a child
6 obedient, angel-mind-

7 old no-sayer, robbed of power

8 by sleep. I knew my prize
9 who swooped home at this hour
10 with day-light riddled eyes
11 to his place on a high beam
12 in our old stables, to dream

13 light's useless time away.

14 I stood, holding my breath,
15 in urine-scented hay,
16 masters of life and death,
17 a wisp-haired judge whose law
18 would punish beak and claw.

19 My first shot struck. He swayed,

20 ruined, beating his only
21 wings, as I watched, afraid
22 by the fallen gun, a lonely
23 child who believed death clean
24 and final, not this obscene

25 bundle of stuff that dropped,

26 and dribbled through the loose straw
27 tangling in bowels, and hopped
28 blindly closer. I saw
29 those eyes that did not see
30 mirror my cruelty

31 while the wrecked thing that could

32 not bear the light nor hide
33 hobbled in its own blood.
34 My father reached my side,
35 gave me the fallen gun.
36 'End what you have begun.'
37 I fired. The blank eyes shone
38 once into mine and slept.
39 I leaned my head upon
40 my father's arms, and wept,
41 owl blinds in early sun
42 for what I had begun
Warning – Jenny Joseph

1 When I am an old woman, I shall wear purple

2 With a red hat which doesn't go and doesn't suit me.
3 And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves,
4 And satin sandals and say we've no money for butter.
5 I shall sit down on the pavement when I am tired,
6 And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells,
7 And run my stick along public railings,
8 And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
9 I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
10 And pick the flowers in other peoples' gardens
11 And learn to spit.
12 You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
13 And eat three pounds of sausages at a go
14 Or only bread and pickle for a week
15 And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes.
16 But now we must have clothes that keep us dry
17 And pay our rent and not swear in the street
18 And set a good example for our children.
19 We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.
20 But maybe I ought to practice a little now?
21 So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
22 When suddenly I am old and start to wear purple.
Ozymandias – Percy Bysshe Shelley

1 I met a traveler from an antique land,

2 Who said— “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
3 Stand in the desert. . .. Near them, on the sand,
4 Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
5 And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
6 Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
7 Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
8 The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
9 And on the pedestal, these words appear:
10 My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
11 Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
12 Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
13 Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
14 The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

`1 – I – first person narrative

Antique Land – Historical Significance, Set in old land – maybe fable.
Hurricane Hits England

1 It took a hurricane, to bring her closer

2 To the landscape.

3 Half the night she lay awake,

4 The howling ship of the wind,

5 Its gathering rage,

6 Like some dark ancestral specter.

7 Fearful and reassuring.

8 Talk to me Huracan

9 Talk to me Oya

10 Talk to me Shango

11 And Hattie,

12 My sweeping, back-home cousin.

13 Tell me why you visit

14 An English coast?

15 What is the meaning

16 Of old tongues

17 Reaping havoc

18 In new places?

19 The blinding illumination,

20 Even as you short

21 Circuit us
22 Into further darkness?

23 What is the meaning of trees

24 Falling heavy as whales

25 Their crusted roots

26 Their cratered graves?

27 O why is my heart unchained?

28 Tropical Oya of the Weather,

29 I am aligning myself to you,

30 I am following the movement of your winds,

31 I am riding the mystery of your storm.

32 Ah, sweet mystery,

33 Come to break the frozen lake in me,

34 Shaking the foundations of the very trees within me,

35 Come to let me know

36 That the earth is the earth is the earth

Friend – Hone Tuwhere
1 Do you remember
2 that wild stretch of land
3 with the lone tree guarding the point
4 from the sharp-tongued sea?
5 The fort we built out of branches
6 wrenched from the tree, is dead wood now.
7 The air that was thick with the whirr of
8 toetoe spears succumbs at last to the grey gull’s wheel.

9 Oyster-studded roots
10 of the mangroves yield no finer feast
11 of silver-bellied eels, and sea-snails
12 cooked in a rusty can

13 Allow me to mend the broken ends

14 of shared days:
15 but I wanted to say
16 that the tree we climbed
17 that gave food and drink
18 to youthful dreams, is no more.
19 Pursed to the lips her fine-edged
20 leaves made whistle – now stamp
21 no silken tracery on the cracked
22 clay floors.

23 Friend,
24 in this drear
25 dreamless time I clasp
26 your hand if only for reassurance
27 that all our jeweled fantasies were
28 real and wore splendid rags.

29 Perhaps the tree

30 will strike root again:
31 give soothing shade to a hurt and
32 troubled worlds.
Night of the Scorpion – Nissim Ezekiel

1 I remember the night my mother

2 was stung by a scorpion. Ten hours
3 of steady rain had driven him
4 to crawl beneath a sack of rice.

5 Parting with his poison - flash

6 of diabolic tail in the dark room -
7 he risked the rain again.

8 The peasants came like swarms of flies

9 and buzzed the name of God a hundred times
10 to paralyze the Evil One.

11 With candles and with lanterns

12 throwing giant scorpion shadows
13 on the mud-baked walls
14 they searched for him: he was not found.
15 They clicked their tongues.
16 With every movement that the scorpion made his poison moved in Mother's blood, they said.

17 May he sit still, they said

18 May the sins of your previous birth
19 be burned away tonight, they said.
20 May your suffering decrease
21 the misfortunes of your next birth, they said.
22 May the sum of all evil
23 balanced in this unreal world

24 against the sum of good

25 become diminished by your pain.
26 May the poison purify your flesh

27 of desire, and your spirit of ambition,

28 they said, and they sat around
29 on the floor with my mother in the center,
30 the peace of understanding on each face.
31 More candles, more lanterns, more neighbors,
32 more insects, and the endless rain.
33 My mother twisted through and through,
34 groaning on a mat.
35 My father, sceptic, rationalist,
36 trying every curse and blessing,
37 powder, mixture, herb and hybrid.
38 He even poured a little paraffin
39 upon the bitten toe and put a match to it.
40 I watched the flame feeding on my mother.
41 I watched the holy man perform his rites to tame the poison with an incantation.
42 After twenty hours
43 it lost its sting.

44 My mother only said

45 Thank God the scorpion picked on me
46 And spared my children
Peckham ley lines – Tyreece Asamoah