Poems for Children
04.08.07 - 1:15 p.m.
from the Puffin Book of Modern Children's Verse (first published as The Puffin Book of 20th Century Children's Verse, 1991), The Penguin Group, Clays Ltd, England, 2006.



Some Opposites
Richard Wilbur



What is the opposite of riot?
It's lots of people keeping quiet.

The opposite of doughnut? Wait
A minute while I meditate.
This isn't easy. Ah, I've found it!
A cookie with a hole around it.

What is the opposite of two?
A lonely me, a lonely you.

The opposite of a cloud could be
A white reflection in the sea,
Or a huge blueness in the air,
Caused by a cloud's not being there.

The opposite of opposite?
That's much too difficult. I quit.

Whale
Mary Ann Hoberman

A whale is stout about the middle,
He is stout about the ends,
& so is all his family
& so are all his friends.

He's pleased that he's enormous,
He's happy he weighs tons,
& so are all his daughters
& so are all his sons.

He eats when he is hungry
Each kind of food he wants,
& so do all his uncles
& so do all his aunts.

He doesn't mind his blubber,
He doesn't mind his creases,
& neither do his nephews
& neither do his nieces.

You may find him chubby,
You may find him fat,
But he would disagree with you:
He likes himself like that.


Funeral March
John Fuller

Here come the hounds alive from the kennels,
Keen for their taste of Mr Reynolds.

Here comes the Master with set lips.
Here comes the Huntsman. Here come the Whips.

Here comes the Hunt in black and red,
Colour of death and colour of blood.

The Hunt is after you. Beware!
O Mr Reynolds, take care, take care!

A cup is raised in the village square.
A bell rings roundly through the air.

How quiet the meadows, like a sea
Shifting the wrecks of woods so silently!

The bell rings out and rings its fill
And all the little farms are still.

The Hunt is setting off. Beware!
O Mr Reynolds, take care, take care!

Past the church and through a gate
Trots in line the fox's fate.

The cautious Huntsman slows and stops.
The hounds are worrying a nearby copse.

O Mr Reynolds, were you there?
And left your odour on the air?

The eager hounds from nose to tail
Quiver as they sniff your trail.

They lift their ears, and growl and whine,
Then openly they own the line.

Hear the horn and holloas sing!
Hear the pack's wild yelping ring!

Hear the smallest rider's shout:
Oh they will surely find you out!

The hounds are busy and intent,
Now feathering to change the scent.

Now the Huntsman's viewed his quarry.
Danger, Mr Reynolds, hurry!

There, there beyond the stream -
A brush of russet tipped with cream.

Now disappearing slowly through the trees,
Padding softly at his ease.

The Hunt is after you. Beware!
O Mr Reynolds, take care, take care!



The Kitten in the Falling Snow
James Kirkup

The year-old kitten
has never seen snow,
fallen or falling, until now
this late winter afternoon.

He sits with wide eyes
at the firelit window, sees
white things falling
from black trees.

Are they petals, leaves or birds?
They cannot be the cabbage whites
he batted briefly with his paws,
or the puffball seeds in summer grass.

They make no sound, they have no wings
and yet they can whirl and fly around
until they swoop like swallows, and
disappear into the ground.

'Where do they go?' he questions,
with eyes ablaze, following their flight
into black stone. So I put him
out into the yard, to make their acquaintance.

He has to look up at them: when one
blanches his coral nose, he sneezes,
and flicks a few from his whiskers, from
his sharpened ear, that picks up silences.

He catches one on a curled-up paw
and licks it quickly, before
its strange milk fades, then sniffs its ghost,
a wetness, while his black coat

shivers with stars of flickering frost.
He shivers at something else that makes his thin
tail swish, his fur stand on end! 'What's this?...'
Then he suddenly scoots in to safety

and sits again with wide eyes
at the firelit window, sees
white things falling
from black trees.

The Newcomer
Brian Patten

'There's something new in the river,'
The fish said as it swam,
'It's got no scales, no fins, no gills,
And ignores the impassable dam.'

'There's something new in the trees,'
I heard a bloated thrush sing,
'It's got no beak, no claws, no feathers,
And not even the ghost of a wing.'

'There's something new in the warren,'
The rabbit said to the doe,
'It's got no fur, no eyes, no paws,
Yet digs deeper than we can go.'

'There's something new in the whiteness,'
Said the snow-bright polar-bear,
'I saw its shadow on a glacier
But it left no foot-prints there.'

Throughout the animal kingdom
The news was spreading fast -

No beak no claws no feathers,
No scales no fur no gills,
It lives in the trees and the water,
In the earth and the snow and the hills,
And it kills and it kills and it kills.

And remember this one? In my reading in later life I continue to come across poems which I read as a child, at a time when I knew nothing about poetry or the famous names, and those are special.

Mid-Term Break
Seamus Heaney



I sat all morning in the college sick bay
Counting bells knelling classes to a close.
At two o'clock our neighbours drove me home.

In the porch I met my father crying -
He had always taken funerals in his stride -
And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow.

The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram
When I came in, and I was embarrassed
By old men standing up to shake my hand

And tell me they were 'sorry for my trouble';
Whispers informed strangers I was the eldest,
Away at school, as my mother held my hand

In hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs.
At ten o'clock the ambulance arrived
With the corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses.

Next morning I went up into the room. Snowdrops
And candles soothed the bedside; I saw him
For the first time in six weeks. Paler now,

Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple,
He lay in the four foot box as in his cot.
No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.

A four foot box, a foot for every year.

=========

One of the greatest debts I owe the GEP is the poems and short passages from great books that we were exposed to over the first five years of English and Literature lessons - often in snippets, as asides, not elaborated on, but scattered almost carelessly across notes and comprehension passages. No doubt they were actually carefully selected in order to expose us to powerful themes and beautiful writing; they were most concentrated experience of emotion and language I had ever encountered - and I am sure that was a big reason that literature and poetry in particular ended up becoming such a big part of my life.

I am enamoured with children's poems (that is, poems in collections of poetry for children) - they tend to
a) be simple (which is why so few of them can be bad, since it's hard to go wrong with a simple poem)
b) be powerful as a result
c) be descriptive or narrative (remembering a certain moment or event) rather than didactic or tell a long story
d) use a lot of imagery, often fantastic or humorous
e) and sound effects

which I like!! :)

In fact, I think, reading poems for children, one can remember a lot of things one loves about the English language which one has forgotten in the process of growing up.

It's always good to sometimes take a break from the heavy stuff and pick up a book of poems for children instead. Nowadays I always find myself going to the children's section of the national libraries first of all.