Just a poem and a song for a wet sunday

This afternoon I’ve been making a music CD for someone I love. Hurding up some of the best music I’ve heard in the last few months (there is so much of it) I came back to the songs of Luke Sital Singh. A young man with a tremendous voice and turn of phrase. There’s a good selection of his songs on Soundcloud.

One thing leads to another and Singh got me thinking about the poetry of W D Snodgrass.

Snodgrass was massively underated as a poet possibly because his work was written off as ‘confessional’, which was a turn off for the literary elite when he first came to prominance in America in the 50’s.

Maybe this song and these words will resonate with someone else on this grey wet Sunday. Maybe you.

A Locked House

As we drove back, crossing the hill,
The house still
Hidden in the trees, I always thought—
A fool’s fear—that it might have caught
Fire, someone could have broken in.
As if things must have been
Too good here. Still, we always found
It locked tight, safe and sound.

I mentioned that, once, as a joke;
No doubt we spoke
Of the absurdity
To fear some dour god’s jealousy
Of our good fortune. From the farm
Next door, our neighbors saw no harm
Came to the things we cared for here.
What did we have to fear?

Maybe I should have thought: all
Such things rot, fall—
Barns, houses, furniture.
We two are stronger than we were
Apart; we’ve grown
Together. Everything we own
Can burn; we know what counts—some such
Idea. We said as much.

We’d watched friends driven to betray;
Felt that love drained away
Some self they need.
We’d said love, like a growth, can feed
On hate we turn in and disguise;
We warned ourselves. That you might despise
Me—hate all we both loved best—
None of us ever guessed.

The house still stands, locked, as it stood
Untouched a good
Two years after you went.
Some things passed in the settlement;
Some things slipped away. Enough’s left
That I come back sometimes. The theft
And vandalism were our own.
Maybe we should have known.
William De Witt Snodgrass