Author Archives: Matthew Pullar

For there we hung our harps

On the poplars, drooping, drooping, weeping in the river’s run, there we hung our harps, no singing; singing is now silent, dead. The songs are gone, our tongues are weeping; singing is now silent, dead. Where’s the Zion of our singing, weeping in the river’s run? Zion is a memory, fading, weeping in the river’sContinue reading “For there we hung our harps”

The Lesson (After W.H. Auden’s “But I Can’t”)

One of W.H. Auden’s greatest gifts as a poet was his versatility, being one of the major figures in the 20th century for resurrecting a wide range of traditional poetic forms. He was as comfortable with free verse as he was with long-forgotten French forms. His masterly villanelle, “But I Can’t” – an achingly simpleContinue reading “The Lesson (After W.H. Auden’s “But I Can’t”)”

Poems for World Mental Health Day 2013

Today is World Mental Health Day, and it’s becoming a tradition at The Consolations of Writing for me to put together a collection of 10 poems (for the 10th of the 10th) which explore mental health issues. I hope that these poems can be of comfort and encouragement. To everyone who struggles with mental illness:Continue reading “Poems for World Mental Health Day 2013”

All the wisdom of Babylon

“The thing that the king asks is difficult, and no one can show it to the king except the gods, whose dwelling is not with flesh.” They can only rearrange, those magi whose god is their own minds. Taking what is known already, they squint first through this eye then that. Ask for wisdom, theyContinue reading “All the wisdom of Babylon”

Redress: For Seamus Heaney

The last time we were here the smell was fresh, The paper crisp, the window-drapes afloat. You smiled to see the pages dance; your dress Swam, buoyant, triumphant on the sea. Our boat Of words, of rhymes and stanzas, sailed atop An ocean, swaying current – on, no stop, Just lucid movement; ever running run,Continue reading “Redress: For Seamus Heaney”

What It Is

is a giving, a direction,             a relation to God, a movement within the eternal.          At His core is what we fail to be, to do, to know.             And so we love to show             what we are not and what He is:             relationship, community, righteous love, perfected from             the start,Continue reading “What It Is”

Like Love (After W.H. Auden’s “Law, say the gardeners, is the sun”)

The first of our Auden poems for the month is the wonderful “Law, say the gardeners, is the sun”, a poem that Auden wrote in 1939 around the time of his conversion to Christianity. It was famously written shortly after his profound and emphatic “September 1, 1939”, the poem he wrote on the outbreak ofContinue reading “Like Love (After W.H. Auden’s “Law, say the gardeners, is the sun”)”