Seven Decades Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABCDEDFDGD HIJKLMNKOK PQRHSHTHUH EVWXYXZXHX A2B2C2XQXD2XHX E2PZOF2OXOG2O H2I2C2J2K2J2HJ2L2J2At ten I read Mayakovsky had died | A |
learned my first word of Russian lyublyu | B |
watched my English teacher poke his earwax | C |
with a well chewed HB and get the class | D |
to join his easy mocking of my essay | E |
where I'd used verdant herbage for green grass | D |
So he was right So I hated him | F |
And he was not really right the ass | D |
A writer knows what he needs | G |
as came to pass | D |
- | |
At twenty I got marching orders kitbag | H |
farewell to love not arms though our sole arms | I |
were stretchers a freezing Glentress winter | J |
where I was coaxing sticks at six to get | K |
a stove hot for the cooks found myself picked | L |
quartermaster's clerk 'this one seems a bit | M |
less gormless than the bloody others' did | N |
gas drill in the stinging tent met | K |
Tam McSherry who farted at will | O |
a musical set | K |
- | |
At thirty I thought life had passed me by | P |
translated Beowulf for want of love | Q |
And one night stands in city centre lanes | R |
they were dark in those days were wild but bleak | H |
Sydney Graham in London said 'you know | S |
I always thought so' kissed me on the cheek | H |
And I translated Rilke's Loneliness | T |
is like a rain and week after week after week | H |
strained to unbind myself | U |
sweated to speak | H |
- | |
At forty I woke up saw it was day | E |
found there was love heard a new beat heard Beats | V |
sent airmail solidarity to Sa | W |
Paulo's poetic concrete revolution | X |
knew Glasgow what knew Glasgow new somehow | Y |
new with me with John with cranes diffusion | X |
of another concrete revolution not bad | Z |
not good but new And new was no illusion | X |
a spring of words a sloughing | H |
an ablution | X |
- | |
At fifty I began to have bad dreams | A2 |
of Palestine and saw bad things to come | B2 |
began to write my long unwritten war | C2 |
I was a hundred handed Sindbad then | X |
rolled and unrolled carpets of blood and love | Q |
raised tents of pain made the dust into men | X |
and laid the dust with men I supervised | D2 |
a thesis on Doughty that great Englishman | X |
who brought all Arabia back | H |
in his hard pen | X |
- | |
At sixty I was standing by a grave | E2 |
The winds of Lanarkshire were loud and high | P |
I knew what I had lost what I had had | Z |
The East had schooled me about fate but still | O |
it was the hardest time oh more it was | F2 |
the worst of times in self reproach the will | O |
that failed to act the mass of good not done | X |
Forgiveness must be like the springs that fill | O |
deserted furrows till they wait | G2 |
until until | O |
- | |
At seventy I thought I had come through | H2 |
like parting a bead curtain in Port Said | I2 |
to something that was shadowy before | C2 |
figures and voices of late times that might | J2 |
be surprising yet The beads clash faintly | K2 |
behind me as I go forward No candle light | J2 |
please keep that for Europe Switch the whole thing | H |
right on When I go in I want it bright | J2 |
I want to catch whatever is there | L2 |
in full sight | J2 |
Edwin Morgan
(1)
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