of notes from a pipe,

no proof, no footage of it –

but I did it,

Guildhall Square, noon,

in front of everyone.

There were walls, bells, passers-by;

then a rope, thrown, caught by the sky

and me, young, up and away,

goodbye.

Goodbye, goodbye.

Thin air. First try.

A crowd hushed, squinting eyes

at a full sun. There

on the stones

the slack weight of a rope

coiled in a crate, a braid

eighteen summers long,

and me

I’m long gone,

my one-off trick

unique, unequalled since.

And what would I tell them

given the chance?

It was painful; it took years.

I’m my own witness,

guardian of the fact

that I’m still here.

Colette Bryce

On the South Downs

Over the downs there were birds flying,

Far off glittered the sea,

And toward the north the weald of Sussex

Lay like a kingdom under me.

I was happier than the larks

That nest on the downs and sing to the sky –

Over the downs the birds flying

Were not so happy as I.

It was not you, though you were near,

Though you were good to hear and see,

It was not earth, it was not heaven,

It was myself that sang in me.

Sara Teasdale

‘It’s better with all the banners flying’ – Courage, Hope and Resilience

These are brave verses. Ella May Wiggins, an Appalachian millworker supporting her large family, organized against her exploitative employers using words as weapons in a struggle that cost her her life. As well as anger, there is astonishing joy and hope in her poetry. Here are gathered passionate words of activism, songs for suffragettes and crumbs of comfort for the disappointed.

War poems are not all by Tommies in the trenches. Thyrza Leyshon gives us Edith Sitwell, bejewelled and unflinching, declaiming poetry unconcernedly as the Blitz rages. Jan Dean imagines the perilous journey of Gladys Aylward, a missionary who led the orphans in her care to safety along mountain paths when Yangcheng in China was bombed in 1938. Daring and hope are vital ingredients when mixing up a new world, and these lines promise us that our courage will not fail.

‘Out of the darkness’

Out of the darkness

on a dark path,

I now set out.

Shine on me,

moon of the mountain edge.

Izumi Shikibu

Translated by Kenneth Rexroth

and Ikuko Atsumi

Miss Aylward’s Journey

Now that clouds have covered up the moon

the mountain’s black,

one hundred children huddle in the rocks

like sleeping sheep

and I’m their shepherd

on this long hard haul,

higher and higher by sharp crags,

creep-clinging

on the lips of deep ravines.

Escaping from the soldiers,

who have overrun Yangcheng,

now in this barren place

it seems to me

that we have leapt

from frying pan to fire.

I keep watch for wolves

And men with guns.

After twelve days walking

we reach the Yellow River.

There is no way to cross.

We kneel here

And pray for help.

We sing.