Six String Poetry

D.K. Mckenzie, Warwick poet, musician, and creator of The Poe Underground, explores the possibilities of combining the voice of the guitar with the haunting words and expressions of poetry.

In this episode, hear the poems Remembrance by Walter de la Mare and At Baia by Hilda Doolittle or H.D. accompanied by improvised classical guitar.

Remembrance

The sky was like a water drop

in shadow of a thorn,

clear, tranquil, beautiful,

dark, forlorn.

Lightning along its margin ran;

a rumour of the sea

rose in profundity and sank

into infinity.

Lofty and few the elms, the stars

in the vast boughs most bright;

I stood a dreamer in a dream

in the unstirring night.

Not wonder, worship, not even peace

seemed in my heart to be:

only the memory of one,

of all most dead to me.

At Baia

I should have thought

in a dream you would have brought

some lovely, perilous thing,

orchids piled in a great sheath,

as who would say (in a dream),

"I send you this,

who left the blue veins

of your throat unkissed."

Why was it that your hands

(that never took mine),

your hands that I could see

drift over the orchid-heads

so carefully,

your hands, so fragile, sure to lift

so gently, the fragile flower-stuff—

ah, ah, how was it

You never sent (in a dream)

the very form, the very scent,

not heavy, not sensuous,

but perilous—perilous—

of orchids, piled in a great sheath,

and folded underneath on a bright scroll,

some word:

"Flower sent to flower;

for white hands, the lesser white,

less lovely of flower-leaf,"

or

"Lover to lover, no kiss,

no touch, but forever and ever this."

Watch D.K. record Remembrance.

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