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[nineveh_uk]

I came across this poem recently in a children’s anthology of verse. I haven’t found it on the internet, it isn’t in the author’s Collected Verse, and it isn’t in the local copyright library. Quite why, goodness only knows, because it is simply marvellous. Those who like poems about chained mermaids, read on.

They call to one another

They call to one another
    in the prisons of the sea
the mermen and mermaidens
    bound under lock and key 
down in the green and salty dens 
    and dungeons of the sea,
lying about in chains but
    dying to be free:
and this is why shortsighted men
    believe them not to be
for down in their dark dungeons it
    is very hard to see.

But sometimes morning fishermen
    drag up in the net
bits of bright glass or the silver comb
    of an old vanity set
or a letter rather hard to read
    because it is still wet
sent to remind us never, never
    never to forget
the mermen and mermaidens
    in the prisons of the sea
who call to one another
    when the stars of morning rise
and the stars of evening set
    for I have heard them calling
and I can hear them yet.

George Barker, from To Aylsham Fair

Comments

[dolabellae.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, that's nice. I like the sometimes morning fishermen... lines.

I don't think I've ever read any George Barker before. Just had a vague awareness of him because of the Elizabeth Smart affair (not that I've read Grand Central Station... but still, you pick things up...). Had a look on the net and thought some of the others there were quite interesting, if a little too obviously influenced by Thomas/Auden.

Songs about chained mermaids are good things. The end is rather like Prufrock, isn't it?

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

Barker does spark the occasional ‘been here before’ feeling, but a man who wrote a poem “To the Memory of James Elroy Flecker” (the ultimate swooning Edwardian) can be forgiven a lot. I like what I might call ‘picture poems’, and the mermaids are certainly that.

Regarding Prufrock, I confess to blanking out most of the Eliot I’ve ever read, but thanks to Google, I see what you mean.