Midweek Motif ~ 'Let your song be delicate' – or not

SONG BE DELICATE by John Shaw Neilson

Let your song be delicate.
   The skies declare
No war — the eyes of lovers
   Wake everywhere.

Let your voice be delicate.
   How faint a thing
Is Love, little Love crying
   Under the Spring.

Let your song be delicate.
   The flowers can hear:
Too well they know the tremble,
   Of the hollow year.

Let your voice be delicate.
   The bees are home:
All their day's love is sunken
   Safe in the comb.

Let your song be delicate.
   Sing no loud hymn:
Death is abroad . . . Oh, the black season!
   The deep — the dim!

I featured the late Australian poet John Shaw Neilson in 'I Wish I'd Written This' in August 2012, with a mysterious, haunting poem called The Orange Tree. This one is almost equally so, and the line 'Let your song be delicate' has come back to me at random moments all my life, since the age of 13 when I first became acquainted with this poet — as a sweet phrase rather than an instruction.

But let's take it as an instruction now, and attempt some writing with the delicacy and song-like qualities he both recommends and exemplifies.

So your challenge is to let your song be delicate . . . 

Or not – read on:

On the other hand, though delicate poetry can be very lovely, there's also a place for the harsh and uncompromising. Perhaps you're more inclined to fire in the belly, a poetry of strength and passion? Even the ugly and the shocking may have a place in poetry, if it has a point to make. Let another dead Aussie, Shelton Lea, also featured here, and capable himself of great delicacy, put you in a very different mood with this brief untitled piece from The Paradise Poems:

COULD YOU KILL A DOG WITH A HAMMER?

WOULD YOU STAMMER WHEN YOU CRUSHED THE SKULL OF A CHILD?

AND IF YOU FOUGHT A MAN TO DEATH WITH BOOTS WOULD YOU BE BEGUILED BY HIS BLOOD?

AND WHEN YOU'VE STABBED AND STABBED AT YOUR UNFAITHFUL LOVER, WOULD YOU FEEL MILD AND CALM, LIKE AFTER A BLOODY GOOD SCREW?

OR WOULD YOU BLUBBER TO INSANITY?

SOME PEOPLE DO.

SOME PEOPLE DO.

Nothing song-like about that! It's a yell. (Yes, it was written and published in all caps, before the internet existed.) He makes a great case for writing like John Shaw Nielson, doesn't he?Yet I know some of you, dear readers, don't shirk the confrontational either.

Perhaps there need be no contradiction; it is also possible for delicacy and strength, mystery and the mundane, to combine. You might like to try that possibility too. For instance Joyce Lee, yet another late great Australian, wrote this when she was close to dying (aged 94):

Still small voice
(from Bountiful Years)

1

An earthbound day,
thick cloud, oppressive air,
you spend hours
cleaning up spills and breakages.

Sunset
paints on cloud canvas,
bathes you
in afterglow. Reflections
of the Presence always known,
crystallise.

2

Soft warm light
filters through, unlocks
your dark recesses.

The place you dreamed
gives way
to rooms inhabited
beyond your furthest thought.

A voice advises
"Ask me in joy as well as need."

Truthfully, I'd love it if you all tried for delicate song today, as it suits my mood – but if your mood is otherwise, by all means express that.


(Images used are free from the internet.)

(Next week's Motif will be 'choices.')

Please share your new poem using Mr. Linky below and visit others in the spirit of the community.

I Wish I'd Written This

The Orange Tree

By John Shaw Neilson (1872-1942)

The young girl stood beside me.  I 

Saw not what her young eyes could see:
– A light, she said, not of the sky
Lives somewhere in the Orange Tree.

– Is it, I said, of east or west?
The heartbeat of a luminous boy
Who with his faltering flute confessed
Only the edges of his joy?

Was he, I said, borne to the blue
In a mad escapade of Spring
Ere he could make a fond adieu
To his love in the blossoming?

– Listen! the young girl said. There calls
No voice, no music beats on me;
But it is almost sound: it falls
This evening on the Orange Tree.

– Does he, I said, so fear the Spring
Ere the white sap too far can climb?
See in the full gold evening
All happenings of the olden time?

Is he so goaded by the green?
Does the compulsion of the dew
Make him unknowable but keen
Asking with beauty of the blue? 

– Listen! the young girl said. For all

Your hapless talk you fail to see
There is a light, a step, a call
This evening on the Orange Tree.

– Is it, 1 said, a waste of love
Imperishably old in pain,
Moving as an affrighted dove
Under the sunlight or the rain?

Is it a fluttering heart that gave
Too willingly and was reviled?
Is it the stammering at a grave,
The last word of a little child?

– Silence! the young girl said. Oh, why,
Why will you talk to weary me?
Plague me no longer now, for I
Am listening like the Orange Tree. 

When I was  only 13, I won a High School prize for a poem in the school magazine. (Yes, you bet I'm skiting about it, even now!) The prize was The Collected Poems of John Shaw Neilson, whom I had been unaware of until then.  Beautiful, magical verses — a revelation to me. He has remained one of my most beloved poets ever since, and I still have that treasured volume.  This is my favourite of his poems — for its mysticism and mystery.

The link on his name takes you to a detailed biography.  

Poem Hunter says, in part: 

Slightly built, for most of his life [Australian poet] John Shaw Neilson worked as a labourer, fruit-picking, clearing scrub, navvying and working in quarries, and, after 1928, working as a messenger with the Country Roads Board in Melbourne. Largely untrained and only basically educated, Neilson became known as one of Australia's finest lyric poets, who wrote a great deal about the natural world, and the beauty in it.

He was a slender man of medium height with a face that suggested his kindliness, refinement and innate beauty of character. He was glad to have his work appreciated, but it never affected his simplicity and modesty. He was slow in developing, perhaps ... he had to learn the words with which to express himself. There is little suggestion of an intellectual background to his work, but the range of his emotions is beautifully expressed with apparently unconscious artistry, in phrases that often have the touch of magic that marks the true poet.

His books are available at Amazon.  Or you can read all his poems here or here.  Enjoy!

Any poem or photo used in ‘I Wish I’d Written This’ remains the property of the copyright holder (usually its author).