INTERNATIONAL WOMENS DAY / A Century beyond the Fragments.1911-2011

Some writings for International Womens Day.

SARA TEASDALE (1884 -1933)

American Poet, work much influenced by Christina Rossetti. Died after an overdose.


There Will come soft Rains

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,,
And swallows calling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild-plum trees in tremulous white;

Robins will wear their feathery fire
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of thewar, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.


Irina Ratushiskaya (4/3/54)

I Shall Write

I shall write about all the sad people
Who have remained on the shore
About those who have been condemned to silence-
I shall write.
Then burn what I have written.
Oh, how these lines will soar,
How the sheets of paper will fall back
Under the fierce blast
Of irrepparable emptiness!
With what haughty movement
The fire will outstrip me!
And the ashen foam will tremble.
But give birth to nothing.

Henriettte Roland- Holst (24/12/1865 - 21/11/52)

Henriette Roland Holst was born in Amsterdam. A student of Marx, she joined the Socialist Party, but broke away and founded the Revolutionary Socialist Party in 1915.
Her poetry shocked readers at the time for its unorthodox rhyme and rhythyms and its subject matter.

Untitled.

Throughout the day we are able to ban the voices
Because the task takes all our strength,
But when day's fruit has ripened ito evening
We feel the many questions tightening like bows.

Half content we settle around lamps
Ans around the sadbess-defeating hearth's fire,
Relieved that the day which has emptied
Has left no dregs of greater pain.

For there is always something that we fear;
We are like the wives of fishermen at sea
Who day after day scan water and wind:
All they have heaves on the waves.

Our heart is embarked on world-whirling;
Storms and stillnesses move us,
Surf breaks against us, and we feel
Each shuddering go through our depths.

Clara Zetkin (1857-1933)

Was a German, Marxist law reformer, pacifist and political anarchist. Jailed in 1914 for anti-war activities.

... far too many do not shrink from demanding from the workers once more new sacrifices of blood and property for imperialist wars. ' We went through the World War with its terrible demands and horrors, let the young men now bear what we had to bear,' so declaim, in heroic pose, men who in their time in the trenches piteously complained of being cannon fodder for capitalist profits, and ater the conclusion of peace swore, 'no more war.' The meaness of their attitude is self evident. The progressive workers have always felt it to be their elementarry duty that the fight of the 'old generation' should spare oncoming youth the pain that they have suffered, in order that the youth might reap where their fathers sowed, in order that they might grow beyond them, promoting the rise of mankind to higher life in freedom and culture. With our glances firmly fixed on the fate, the rights and the tasks of the youth, we say: 'The workers against imperialist wars.'

In the misery-laden atmosphere, with the unemployment totalling thirty-five millions, not a few are led astray by the imperialist war provocateurs and war makers, through the illusion that massacres of the peoples will provide bread. Men and women whose years have suffered bitter want, who have often hungered and frozen for months together without bread or shelter, find employment in war industries. Their propertyless , exploited slave existence compels them to hard servile labour there. The boom in the armament industry allows its controlling, profit-swallowing 'magnates' to pay to individual working men and women and clerks, and to small groups of them, higher wages for overtime and premiums for special output. Such expenditure is tainted with the corruption of bribery for the purpose of splitting the workers and crippling their power of resistance to imperialst wars; they are insurance premiums paid for carrying through the latter. The growth of the armament madness of the bourgeois states increases their miltary budgets and their need for revenue. For what those employed in the armament industry take home as wages, the masses of the workers must pay in taxes and through tariffs.

TOGETHER LET US ALL WORK TOGETHER FOR PEACE AND JUSTICE

GENERAL STRIKE - ERIC DROOKER

AWAKENING!

Trees offer shelter
as spring gives promise
and we go mad with song.
Blue haze and mist
comes creeping, wraps around
whispers protection.
Images of broken light
gently obstruct
barricades still being formed.
Far beyond stars move
look down
nature finds a soul,a voice.
From distant borders
winds scatter delusions
pokes in corners
shoots out branches ,earth answers back.
Petal bombs explode
sending magic echoes into dark clouds
buds wake early to greet the dawn.
Time drifts alongside never forgetting what is lost,
digging away the ground beneath our feet
epic heartbeats rise and fall.
New cadences sap and spin towards the infinite
shadows irreversibally change the paradox of seeing
a choreographed bloom, effortlessly rearranged.

A Poem Like a Grenade. - John Haines ((June 29, 1924 – March 2, 2011)

John Meade Haines, who was born n Norfolk, Virginia, published nine  collections of poetry and numerous works of nonfiction, including his acclaimed Alaskan book ' The Stars,The Snow, The Fire.
In May 1947 he decided to move to Alaska, which had a decisive effect on his life and work.
He built a cabin on a deserted hillside above the Tanana River about 70 miles southeast of Farbanks in a spotso remote that he claimed ne could walk north from his homestead all the way to the Artic Ocean and never cross a road or encounter a village.
LivIng alone most of the tme, Haines spent 25 of the next 42 years in the Alaskan interior. In this isolated landscape he would become self-reliant largely supporting himself through hunting and trapping.
He had to relearn what his ancestors knew, how to live off the land. Working as a hunter, grdener, fisherman, trapper and homesteader. He also used these solitary years to master another primitive craft,making poems.
He was appointed the Poet Laureate of Alaska in 1969. A collection of critical essays about his poetry The Wilderness of Vision,  was published  in 1998. He went on to teach graduate level and honors English classes at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. He died in Fairbanks, Alaska aged 86.
Alaska has lost one of its most creative minds.  singular and prophetic  voice of the times and the world in which we live.

A Poem like a Grenade

It is made to be rolled down
a flight of stairs,
placed under a guilty hat,
or casually dropped into a basket
among the desks
of the wrongheaded statesmen.

As it tumbles on the carpeted stairs
or settles quietly
in its wire-wicker nest,
it begins to unfold,
a ragged flower whose raw petals
burn and scar...

Its wastepaper soil catches fire,
the hat is blown from its hook.
Five or six faces are suddenly,
permanently changed...

There will be many poems written
in the shape of a grenade-
one hard piece of metal flying off
might even topple a government.

Y Ddraig Goch - Henry Treece (22/12/11 - 19/6/66 )

Henry Treece was a midlander of Welsh parentage who was particularly known as a childrens novelist, but also wrote  adult historical novels.
Dragons are leader, but are prone to slumber until aroused, then it is a force to be reckoned with, powerful and mysterious. Beware, one  woken inspires action. Slays apathy.
Dydd Dewi Sant hapus/ Happy St David's Day

The dragon of our dreams roared in the hills
That ring the sunlit land of children's songs.
Red with the lacquer of a fairy tale,
His fiery breath fried all besieging knights.
Whole seasons could he lay the land in waste
By puffing once upon the standing corn!

He was our dragon dressed in red, who kept
Sly ghosts from lurking underneath the thatch,
And made the hen lay dark-brown eggs for tea.
One word to him, just as you went to bed,
Made Twm, the postman, call next afternoon;
"Ho, Bachgen," That is what he'd say, "Just look,
A fine blue postal-order from your Mam!
Twm gets a pint for being that, I bet!"

The dragon cured us when the measles came,
And let the mare drop me a coal-black foal.
He taught us where nests lay, and found us fish,
Then thawed the snow to save the winter lamb.

Ho, Ddraig Goch, my pretty, pretty friend!
We were his children, knowing all his ways;
We laid out nightly gifts beneath the hedge,
Five linnet's eggs, a cup, a broken whip,
And heard his gracious sighs sweep through the trees.
But tears for all the fools who called him false!
One lad who sniggered fell down Parry's well;
The English Parson had a plague of warts;
Old Mrs Hughes was bitten by a cat;
The school roof fell in when the teacher smiled!

Ho, Ddraig Goch, they tell me you are dead;
They say heard you weeping in the hills
For all your children gone to London Town.
They say your tears set Tawe in a flood.
I'm older now, but still I like to think
Of your grat green glass-green eyes fixed on the Fferm,
Guarding the children, keeping them from harm.

Don't die, old dragon, wait a few years more,
I shall come back and bring you boys to love.

Picture of Henry Treece.

Harri Webb -( 7/9/20 -31/12/94) - A Sermon on St David's Day.

( The first H-Bomb was dropped on Bikini Atoll on March 1st 1954.)


Saint David sprung his big surprise
On far Bikini's isle
He watched the mushroom cloud arise
And allowed himself a smile.

And as that anger shook the world
He spoke to all mankind:
Heed now the warning I have hurled,
You are deaf and blind.

God's final messenger am I,
So allow me to acquaint
You sinners with what it is to try
The patience of a saint.

To you I breathed my dying word:
Remember the little things.
Now, since quiet counsel goes unheard,
My voice in thunder rings.

And since, in all creation's scale
The atom is the least,
That is the power that shall prevail
Till all your wars have ceased.

America, I have dried your seas,
Russia, I have thawed your snows,
Europe, your ancient rivalries
Must go as a bad dream goes.

Paris, Peking and Leningrad,
London, Washington, Rome,
Are egual now with the meanest pad
That the poorest man calls home.

And for the sake of a little place,
Accounted of little worth,
Behold, I have abolished space
And shrunk the globe of earth.

Now naked every nation stands
And egual in the scales,
And those once-proud imperial lands
Are all the size of Wales.

To her I speak as a father should
As her new life now begins:
Leave whoredom, seek the highest good,
Renounce your servile sins.

Although unworthy, it may be
For this you have spared,
To lead men's thoughts to a world that's free
Where all good things are shared.

My sign, it is the gentle dove,
So listen to my voice:
Mankind, it's time you learnt to love.
You haven't got much choice.

Reprinted from GLASNOS/POEMS FOR PEACE
CND CYMRU 1987

More on this Red Welsh Republican coming soon.

Oh have a good St David's Day/Dydd St Dewi Da

Lis of Greedy CEOS Who thought the best way to support region wide movement for change was go on a junket selling arms to dodgy Governments..

Samir Brikho CEO, AMEC

Steve Marshall Chairman, Balfour Beatty

Graham Cartldge Chaiman, Benoy

Mouzan Majidi CEO Foster & Partners

Ben Gordon CEO Mothercare

Keith Howells Chairman, Mott MacDonald

Chris Hyman CEO, Serco

John Stanion, Chairman & CEO, Taylor Woodrow

Prof Malcolm Grant President/Provost, UCL

Paul Skinner CEO, Infrastructure UK

Bob Fryar Executive Vice President foProduction, BP

Ian Gray Non Exec Chairman of Vodafone Egypt

Phillip Dilley Chairman, Arup

Stuart Laing Deputy Vice Chancellor, Cambridge University

Peter Gammie CEO, Halcrow

Lord Dazi Imperial College

Malcolm Brinded Exec VP, Shell

John Peace Chairman, Standard Chartered

Ian Conn MD & CE, BP

Richard Barrett Regional Director. Atkins

Rob Watson, Reginal Director, Rolls Royce

Victor Chavez Thales Uk

Ian King CEO, BAE Systems

Prof John Hughes Vice Chancellor, Bangor University

Dean Webster EO, Cyril Sweett

Michael Soeting Global Head of ENR/Oil & Gas, KPMG

Rob King Development Director ME, the Edge

Shaun Carter Regional Director, Carillion

Sam Laidlaw CEO, Centrica

Charles Hughes VP Marketing, Cobham Group

Dr Rajan Jethwa CEO, Virgin Healthbank

Sir Frank Williams Team Principle, Williams F1

Alastair Bisset Group InternationalDirector, QinetilQ

Andy Pearson MD, Babcock International Group

Elizabeth Reid CEO, SSA Trust

Douglas Caster CEO, Ultra Electronics


As you can see the usual suspects, dictatorhip loving phone companies and tax dodgers , oh the odd university, and look closely some other surprises. Profit is a serial business.

INTEGRITY, THIS MAN DOES NOT KNOW THE MEANING OF THE WORD. I THINK I HEAR A STORM A BREWING.

Adolf Wolfli (26/2/1864 - 6/11/30) General View of the Island Neveranger, 1911 and other tales.

Adolf Wolfli , a swiss man of peasant stock was diagnosed with schizophrenia at the age of thirty-one and was subsequently whisked of to a mental asylum near Bern where he lived until his death thirty-five years later.He was on all accounts a highly disturbed and dangerous individual prone to pshychosis and violent hallucinations.
Hovever after his incarcenation he began to produce an astounding oeuvre of drawings, collages, sheet music, prose and poetry. These illustrations are included in Fromthe Cradle to the Grave a series of nine hand bound books (2,970 total pages, with 752 illustations) that recount Wolfi's imaginary life life story from ages two through eight ( his real life was one of grimness and despair, abused physically, sexually and mentally throughout his life). In his pictures or dreams the protaganist travels around the globe, imposing his own sense of on it. On all accounts a bit of a control freak, it appears Wolfi based his descriptions of faraway places on the familiar topography of Bern and the Swiss countryside and also on a school atlas he owned, but what is clear that the fantastical visions he had were very much his own. Out of his miserable existence he actually produced some astonishing work.
A spontaneity emerged and whatever his life had been before a transformation was achieved that would not have been achieved outside his prison walls. It was his own captors the psychiatrist's who began to regard hiswork in aeshetic terms and actually valued their immedacy and their uniqueness so gave Wolfi (the Beast) a taste of freedom.
His work belongs I suppose inthe schools of Art Brut and of course outsider art.


General View of the Island Neveranger,1911


Big Thing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/?wiki?Adolf_W%C3%B6lfi

Eleanor Dare - FIVE FINGER DISCOUNTS.

For the Sisters

'A great deal of talent is lost in this world for
want of a little courage.'

About shoplifting,
for all those who still believe
Big Daddy is watching You -
Bullshit.
Just say the shoplifters prayer:
Survive Danger
Be afraid and go on
See fear and diminish it.
There are luscious things
crying out for a woman's swift touch,
Take them!

As for store detectives
They are easily uncovered,
they look like they are at work
i.e. depressed, unimaginatevely dressed.
They hold us down with fear -
An army of omniscient fathers
Ubiquitie eyes,
Surveillance cameras, their
dissaproving lenses tracking
our private minds.

Shed guilt, take more than is given and pass it on,
forget the fathers, headmaster
they all had an interest in keeping us down
Stealing is exhilarating, ribcage acceleration
two fingers to drab minds of
primary school teachers and tedious preachers.

Besides,
the rich are unworthy of some things-
Star fruit,
Lapis Lazuli, Beautiful books.
We are dangerous
We have ingenuity, defiance
the righteous indignation
of a thousand years.
Laugh out Loud -
all they come up with
is the
rattle of keys.

Originally published

in the virago book of wicked verse,virago press 1992.

1992.