Poetry

[Bush Tucker Man]

Yes, I know, perhaps not a subject generally dealt with on here.
However, I found a 'modern' version of an old (WH Auden) classic the other day

Original.
'Night Mail' ~ WH Auden

This is the Night Mail crossing the border,
Bringing the cheque and the postal order,
Letters for the rich, letters for the poor,
The shop at the corner and the girl next door.
Pulling up Beattock, a steady climb:
The gradient's against her, but she's on time.
Past cotton-grass and moorland boulder
Shovelling white steam over her shoulder,
Snorting noisily as she passes
Silent miles of wind-bent grasses.

Birds turn their heads as she approaches,
Stare from the bushes at her blank-faced coaches.
Sheep-dogs cannot turn her course;
They slumber on with paws across.
In the farm she passes no one wakes,
But a jug in the bedroom gently shakes.

Dawn freshens, the climb is done.
Down towards Glasgow she descends
Towards the steam tugs yelping down the glade of cranes,
Towards the fields of apparatus, the furnaces
Set on the dark plain like gigantic chessmen.
All Scotland waits for her:
In the dark glens, beside the pale-green sea lochs
Men long for news.

Letters of thanks, letters from banks,
Letters of joy from the girl and the boy,
Receipted bills and invitations
To inspect new stock or visit relations,
And applications for situations
And timid lovers' declarations
And gossip, gossip from all the nations,
News circumstantial, news financial,
Letters with holiday snaps to enlarge in,
Letters with faces scrawled in the margin,
Letters from uncles, cousins, and aunts,
Letters to Scotland from the South of France,
Letters of condolence to Highlands and Lowlands
Notes from overseas to Hebrides
Written on paper of every hue,
The pink, the violet, the white and the blue,
The chatty, the catty, the boring, adoring,
The cold and official and the heart's outpouring,
Clever, stupid, short and long,
The typed and the printed and the spelt all wrong.

Thousands are still asleep
Dreaming of terrifying monsters,
Or of friendly tea beside the band at Cranston's or Crawford's:
Asleep in working Glasgow, asleep in well-set Edinburgh,
Asleep in granite Aberdeen,
They continue their dreams,
And shall wake soon and long for letters,
And none will hear the postman's knock
Without a quickening of the heart,
For who can bear to feel himself forgotten?



I like the comments & the 'Junk-Mail'version


The modern electronic era version (courtesy of a column in'RAIL' magazine)
The Night E-Mail

This is the e-mail crossing the ether
Taking the place of a heavy phone breather
E-mails good, e-mails bad
E-mails almost unbearably sad
Mails from babes in Miami Beach
Actually nerds in Luton called Keith
Mails from geeks, mails from freaks
Mails that clog up the system for weeks
Pages of carefully scrambled digits
Which can't be decoded without the new widgets
E-mails from unsolicited vendors
E-mails that bounce back to their senders
Wrongly addressed ones from half-witted newbies
Scantily dressed ones with pictures of boobies
E-mails bursting with internet questions
More of them bursting with kinky suggestions
Whingeing to BBC Radio 4
That the internets programmes not on anymore
E-mails spreading conspiracy theories
Posing the stupidest technical queries
E-mails from females, e-mails from blokes
Many whose gender is clearly a hoax
Pages of unfunny internet jokes
Newspages created by fans of John Noakes
Binaries, smileys and arcane notations
TLA's, three letter abbreviations
URL, IRC &FTP
In my humble opinion it's all C..R..A..P

[Dangermouse]

:lol:  Spot on  :lol:

[Bush Tucker Man]

Yes, the 'Night Mail' is a wonderful piece.

I don't know if anyone has seen the Royal Mail promotional film that it was shown with, but it was superb.

I also like the
High Flight

"High Flight"

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds - and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of - wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew -
And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.