Daily Poetry Readings #292: I Wake and Feel... by Gerard Manley Hopkins read by Dr Iain McGilchrist

Part 292 of a daily series of readings of his favourite poetry by Dr Iain McGilchrist, author of The Master and His Emissary. Today's poem is 'I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day' by Gerard Manley Hopkins.

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~ 'I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day' by Gerard Manley Hopkins ~

I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.
What hours, O what black hours we have spent
This night! what sights you, heart, saw; ways you went!
And more must, in yet longer light's delay.
With witness I speak this. But where I say
Hours I mean years, mean life. And my lament
Is cries countless, cries like dead letters sent
To dearest him that lives alas! away.

I am gall, I am heartburn. God's most deep decree
Bitter would have me taste: my taste was me;
Bones built in me, flesh filled, blood brimmed the curse.
Selfyeast of spirit a dull dough sours. I see
The lost are like this, and their scourge to be
As I am mine, their sweating selves; but worse.

[lisarozzz]

Yowzinga I’m so sorry that his work is not studied. Selfyeast a dull dough sours, soooo amazingly creative and almost reminds me Shakespeare inventing words…

[cynthiaford]

my dreams, my works, must wait till after hell
BY GWENDOLYN BROOKS
I hold my honey and I store my bread
In little jars and cabinets of my will.
I label clearly, and each latch and lid
I bid, Be firm till I return from hell.
I am very hungry. I am incomplete.
And none can tell when I may dine again.
No man can give me any word but Wait,
The puny light. I keep eyes pointed in;
Hoping that, when the devil days of my hurt
Drag out to their last dregs and I resume
On such legs as are left me, in such heart
As I can manage, remember to go home,
My taste will not have turned insensitive
To honey and bread old purity could love.

Gwendolyn Brooks, “my dreams, my works, must wait till after hell” from Selected Poems. Copyright © 1963 by Gwendolyn Brooks. Reprinted with the permission of the Estate of Gwendolyn Brooks.
Source: Selected Poems (Harper & Row, 1963)