Poems By Anna Cowan

Week 2 Poem

Week 2, Michaelmas 2021
Accompanied by a steady 4-beat tap

Every culture ever known
Wrote down some poetry
The Sumerians, Greeks, Saxons, Tudors,
And now lucky for you lot, me.

So what is the function of verse?
It can teach, it is music, it’s art,
The feelings which all of us have had today
Are what poetry can impart.

For me poetry is emotive,
A pure concentration of thought.
A distilled opinion, sensation, a notion,
That in a web of language is caught.

Nicole wrote such beautiful verses,
So fluid and heartfelt and free.
I hope that my meter and rhyme is not staid,
And can match her in quality.

So good luck JCR, let’s have a good year,
Let’s be rational and calm and kind.
Let’s have open debate for the benefit of college,
AND LET ALL STUDENTS HERE SPEAK THEIR MIND.

Week 4 Poem

Week 4, Michaelmas 2021
C Min

Summer now is dead and gone

There’s stalks and soil where flowers shone

Our day and age is rolling on

And some day it will pass

C Min + A

The jay green leaves are sullen now

Sweet summer liquor turned to brown

The empty nest came tumbling down

All this will someday pass

F Min

The mornings now are blackbird night

And midday skywash marble white

Our evenings reading by lamplight

All these will someday pass

F Min inversion

Our books wear jackets against the chill

And huddle on the bookshelf sill

They watched as we all got ill

And they will someday pass

C Min

The Merton bells perch in their tower

They shiver every quarter hour

The metal cracks in the cold’s power

But this will someday pass

BRIDGE

F Min high

The meadow cows bray in reply

They breath steams in the Autumn sky

That breath short-lived as you and I

For this ALL will someday pass

Love song to 5th week

Week 6, Michaelmas 2021

Fifth week, O fifth week

Oh why are you here?

When we say that we hate you

Is it really not clear

That we hate you and when we say

Please don’t come back; don’t return

You are our least favourite part of the term

You’re an unwanted house guest

Who’s outstayed their stay

You’re the final stale biscuit

That no one’s thrown away

You’re a fart in spacesuit

A surprise problem sheet,

The hair in our food

You’re our roommate’s gross feet.

With your blue hair and blue eyes

Blue skin and blue teeth

You’re blue on the surface and blue underneath

And you make us blue too, you’re the week we all hate

But you make us so glad you’re just one week in eight

Coro di schiavi ebrei – Firey Dust

Week 8, Michaelmas 2021
Out of Egypt, out they fled, as had been God’s command.

They seized their wives and children. All they could they bore in hand.

Their call to flee, to fly, to flood, with Kemet’s roads their feet,

They heard it muttered at their chores, and dreamt it in their sleep.

The Pharos’ seat of marble made, sharp white bedecked with gold,

Opal gems, Saphire and pearl, sang, glittering, of old.

The courtiers, they who Moses warned, dressed in embroidered gowns,

Suddenly saw the unyoked men, surging from the town.

Their time had come, a cotton wave, swept desperate, feet alight,

The red and black sand filled the air, and dreadful was the sight.

And from on high, in robes of silk, the burnished olive King,

Amid the straw-made fans and men, heard slaves begin to sing:

We are the souls who Moses sought as brothers hand in hand,

The bread yet flat, we’ll seize our chance, born new from the sand,

At God’s command we flee, we see The Ozymandias,

You gilded snake, our promised land we’ll find through fire and dust.

On the horizon, dim they saw, a twisting column white,

Their leader, sceptre held aloft, bade them make for site.

Their beacon, in the aching sun, showed dusty, smokey white,

Divine forethought held straight their way: the pillar seemed fire by night.

That twisting column, like a dove, led them for forty days,

And all the while, in prayer to God, this song they sang in praise:

We are the souls who Moses sought, as brothers hand in hand,