Oh dude, new poems!
Four of them, to be precise.
They are all by a fellow called Dannie Abse, in the Welsh Retrospective compilation.
The first is called A Winter Visit, and, like Larkin's work, the tone is instantaneously gloomy. It is about a visit to his mother, in her later years. "Now she's ninety" gives this away fairly efficiently. He proceeds to describe how "frail" and "half dead" she is. The poem, I'd argue is about coming to terms with age, and its effects on younger family members. What Abse does also do is liken his mother to two birds; a flamingo, and a peacock. Both are large, showy birds, with the peacock being nearly literally all show. "usual peacocks do not screech" implies a subdued nature, a normally loud and vibrant bird has been silenced by the cold (which I can only assume is a metaphor for age). The flamingoes are "standing one legged, on ice, heads beneath wings". The ice is potentially thin, beneath which is a cold, and certain death. The single leg may be an indicator of the fragility of life, and the sheltered heads are showing that the birds (probably a metaphor for the people) are blind to the death that is a cracked ice sheet away (what Abse probably failed to realise is that this is how flamingoes sleep, and they do not possess the mass required to shatter ice simply by standing on it, but he shall be forgiven for this, as poems are rarely ornithologically accurate).
The song that goes best with this poem is Done Wrong, by Pretty Lights. It just fits.















The next poem is called Last Visit to 198 Cathedral Road, which is depressing from the first line. The poem is about going to his parent's house after his mother died, and seeing the world in what could be described as distraught disgust, like Gatsby seeing how hideous a rose is. Things that are normally bright and inviting become dark, disturbing and otherwise sinister. Light is normally cleansing, redeeming. In this poem it is "freakish", which probably fits in to how it allowed Abse a sense of perception on both a physical and a metaphoric level. It allowed him to perceive the world in the horrible way you see the world after somebody close dies, everything is irredeemably chaotic and vile; an abomination of existence. "So much dust" shows an uncaring nature, with lack of attention to detail (dead people aren't known for being particularly tidy). The "awakened empty fruit bowl" is described as "outraged". Empty referring to the lack of fruit, which, as far as I can tell, is a metaphor for life and living. Even cracks are described as "photophobic", meaning afraid of light.
What a dark poem!
The Soma remix of Sandworm, originally by Skope springs to mind when reading this (Olivia, if you are reading this, this drops like a bloody bomb)















The next poem, called The Malham Bird, thankfully is infinitely less dark. Sadly, I don't understand this one as much as I would deem useful. What I do gather, however is that it is about marriage, love and time. With the lead up to their marriage being described as "illicit", which probably means they "made out", or similar. The descent into grandchildren is also documented, with "forbidden fruit" being mentioned. There's not a whole lot that I can personally draw from this, what I can draw, I have issues conveying, so I do apologise for this.
Keep Close by Lemaitre seems to work with this
















This is equally hard for me to interpret. A Scene from Married Life seems to contain the arguments between a husband and a wife, and the husband running away for a limited time, and returning to his wife upon realising what he'd done. I'm 100% dead certain that this poem is a goldmine of metaphors, but it's lost on me, I don't understand this, as far as I'm aware marriage is a cooperation, not a warzone. If someone could explain this to me, that'd be great.

This next song has absolutely no significance to any of the poems here, but it makes for good revision music, so by all means give it a listen.
I was joking about the revision bit. This is just a good song (Olivia this also drops like I don't even know how to convey).