Verse

By Donagh MacDonagh In Dublin City in 1913 the boss was rich and the poor were slaves The women working, the children starving, then on came Larkin like a mighty wave The workmen cringed when the boss man thundered, seventy hours was his weekly chore He asked for little and less was granted, lest gettin' little, then he'd ask for more But on came Larkin in 1913, a mighty man with a mighty tongue The voice of labor, the voice of justice, and he was gifted and he was young God sent Larkin in 1913, a labor man with a union tongue He raised the workers and gave them courage; he was their hero, the...

Had we but World enough, and Time, This coyness Lady were no crime. We would sit down, and think which way To walk, and pass our long Loves Day. Thou by the Indian Ganges side Should’st Rubies find: I by the Tide Of Humber would complain. I would Love you ten years before the Flood: And you should if you please refuse Till the Conversion of the Jews. My vegetable Love should grow Vaster then Empires, and more slow. An hundred years should go to praise Thine Eyes, and on thy Forehead Gaze. Two hundred to adore each Breast. But thirty thousand to the rest. An Age at least to every part, And the...

It is 12:20 in New York a Friday three days after Bastille day, yes it is 1959 and I go get a shoeshine because I will get off the 4:19 in Easthampton at 7:15 and then go straight to dinner and I don’t know the people who will feed me I walk up the muggy street beginning to sun and have a hamburger and a malted and buy an ugly NEW WORLD WRITING to see what the poets in Ghana are doing these days I go on to the bank and Miss Stillwagon (first name Linda I once heard) doesn’t even look up my balance for once in her life and in the GOLDEN GRIFFIN I get a little Verlaine for Patsy with drawings by...

A sudden blow: the great wings beating still Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed, By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill, He holds her helpless breast upon his breast. How can those terrified vague fingers push The feathered glory from her loosening thighs? And how can body, laid in that white rush, But feel the strange heart beating where it lies? A shudder in the loins engenders there The broken wall, the burning roof and tower And Agamemnon dead. Being so caught up So mastered by the brute blood of the air, Did she put on his knowledge with his power Before the indifferent...

During his eight years on the old General Electric Theater, Reagan enjoyed certain distinct professional advantages. Hundreds of women worked at those benches. With prosperity, more and more were added. References for authoritative capitalization of American and British names: Who’s Who, Who’s Who in America, Dictionary of National Biography, Dictionary of American Biography. But when the market crashed in 1929, the benches were emptied almost overnight. While the program’s other performers were at the mercy of the weekly dramatic material — it was an anthology series — the star was not. I don...

A socialist perspective on some great poems throughout history... The Prelude A favourite pleasure hath it been with me From time of earliest youth to walk alone Along the public way, when, for the night Deserted, in its silence it assumes A character of deeper quietness Than greater solitudes. At such an hour Once, ere these summer months were passed away, I slowly mounted up a steep ascent Where the road’s wat’ry surface, to the ridge Of that sharp rising, glittered in the moon And seemed before my eyes another stream Creeping with silent lapse to join the brook That murmured in the valley...

The sea of faith Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl’d; But now I only hear Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, Retreating to the breath Of the night-wind down the vast edges drear And naked shingles of the world. ...For the world, which seems To lie before us like a land of dreams, So various, so beautiful, so new, Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain; And we are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night...

Long-haired preachers come out every night, Try to tell you what’s wrong and what’s right, But when asked about something to eat, They will answer in voices so sweet: Chorus: You will eat bye and bye, In that glorious land above the sky. Work and pray, (work and pray), Live on hay, (live on hay), You’ll get Pie in the Sky, When you die, (that’s a lie!) And the starvation army they play, They sing and they dance and they pray, Till they get all your coin on the drum, Then they tell you when you’re on the bum: CHORUS If you fight hard for the good things in life, They will tell you to stop all...

An Spailpin Fanach (Phrases in italics are James Connolly's) Young nightsoil man who shovels human shit Left in the streets for such as you to lift, Half-starved Hiberno-Scot untouchable Who sign yourself in print 'R. Ascal', Here in the crumbling 'Labour Chronicle' Of Edinburgh and Leith, I find your tracks: A young man's anger stains the page like blood; A thoughtful, humorous, loving, bitter man, In hasty, driven, sometimes muddled work, Still rages, jokes, is fervent: - Hope, and fight! A full free happy life for all, or none! Rage, for a father's useless, broken bones, For childhood in a...

Mark Sandell honours Benjamin Zephaniah Christmas is coming so it is appropriate that Her Majesty the Queen will be dishing out feudal baubles in the honors list. Of course most of these gongs go to the ageing segment of the British ruling class for services to... the rich and powerful. Some gongs are kept aside for populist gestures towards the great unwashed. A handful go to sporting heroes (D Beckham) and other celebrities - "thank you kindly ma'am" - a few to do gooders from ordinary backgrounds - "it's such an honour". It's enough to make you want to vomit, but this year the whole vile...