This Monday's poem comes courtesy of Billy Mills. It is, he tells me, "the coda to Basil Bunting's long autobiographical poem Briggflatts (1966), described by Thom Gunn as 'One of the few great poems of this century'. I love it because of the sound patterns Bunting creates through his use of assonances and alliterations. Although he has never been as popular as contemporaries like Auden and MacNeice, I think that Bunting has the best ear of any English poet of his generation."
Now, it shames me to confess that Bunting is one of the gaps in my poetry reading - I've scarcely read anything by him, despite the fact that he's a fellow Northumbrian (even the most tenuous local connection resulted, in the normal run of things, in at least a term's-worth of lessons. Our school kept the Kielder Water visitor centre in business). This fragment, though, sent me scurrying around the internet looking for the full text of the poem (thus far to no avail: if anyone knows where it can be found, do post a link below). The brief lines and strong simple words create a feeling of spaciousness and hush that I found intensely beguiling.
Coda to Briggflatts by Basil Bunting
A strong song tows us, long earsick. Blind, we follow rain slant, spray flick to fields we do not know.
Night, float us. Offshore wind, shout, ask the sea what's lost, what's left, what horn sunk, what crown adrift.
Where we are who knows of kings who sup while day fails? Who, swinging his axe to fell kings, guesses where we go?
