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Aqa Conflict Poems
Aqa Conflict Poems
Aqa Conflict Poems
GCSE
ENGLISH LITERATURE
(8702)
Past and present: poetry anthology
For examinations from 2017
Version 1.2
Lord Byron
Loves Philosophy
Robert Browning
Porphyrias Lover
Thomas Hardy
Neutral Tones
Maura Dooley
Charlotte Mew
Walking Away
Charles Causley
Eden Rock
Seamus Heaney
Follower
Simon Armitage
Owen Sheers
Winter Swans
Daljit Nagra
Singh Song!
Andrew Waterhouse
Climbing My Grandfather
Love's Philosophy
The fountains mingle with the river
And the rivers with the Ocean,
The winds of Heaven mix for ever
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single;
All things by a law divine
In one another's being mingle
Why not I with thine?
See the mountains kiss high Heaven,
And the waves clasp one another;
No sister-flower would be forgiven
If it disdain'd its brother:
And the sunlight clasps the earth,
And the moonbeams kiss the sea
What are all these kisses worth,
If thou kiss not me?
Porphyrias Lover
The rain set early in to-night,
The sullen wind was soon awake,
It tore the elm-tops down for spite,
and did its worst to vex the lake:
I listened with heart fit to break.
When glided in Porphyria; straight
She shut the cold out and the storm,
And kneeled and made the cheerless grate
Blaze up, and all the cottage warm;
Which done, she rose, and from her form
Withdrew the dripping cloak and shawl,
And laid her soiled gloves by, untied
Her hat and let the damp hair fall,
And, last, she sat down by my side
And called me. When no voice replied,
She put my arm about her waist,
And made her smooth white shoulder bare,
And all her yellow hair displaced,
And, stooping, made my cheek lie there,
And spread oer all her yellow hair,
Murmuring how she loved me she
Too weak, for all her hearts endeavour,
To set its struggling passion free
From pride, and vainer ties dissever,
And give herself to me for ever.
But passion sometimes would prevail,
Nor could tonights gay feast restrain
A sudden thought of one so pale
For love of her, and all in vain:
So, she was come through wind and rain.
Be sure I looked up at her eyes
Happy and proud; at last I knew
Porphyria worshipped me: surprise
Made my heart swell, and still it grew
While I debated what to do.
That moment she was mine, mine, fair,
Perfectly pure and good: I found
A thing to do, and all her hair
In one long yellow string I wound
Three times her little throat around,
And strangled her. No pain felt she;
I am quite sure she felt no pain.
As a shut bud that holds a bee,
I warily oped her lids: again
Laughed the blue eyes without a stain.
And I untightened next the tress
About her neck; her cheek once more
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Neutral Tones
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Walking Away
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Eden Rock
CHARLES CAUSLEY
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Follower
My father worked with a horse-plough,
His shoulders globed like a full sail strung
Between the shafts and the furrow.
The horse strained at his clicking tongue.
An expert. He would set the wing
And fit the bright steel-pointed sock.
The sod rolled over without breaking.
At the headrig, with a single pluck
Of reins, the sweating team turned round
And back into the land. His eye
Narrowed and angled at the ground,
Mapping the furrow exactly.
I stumbled in his hob-nailed wake,
Fell sometimes on the polished sod;
Sometimes he rode me on his back
Dipping and rising to his plod.
I wanted to grow up and plough,
To close one eye, stiffen my arm.
All I ever did was follow
In his broad shadow round the farm.
I was a nuisance, tripping, falling,
Yapping always. But today
It is my father who keeps stumbling
Behind me, and will not go away.
SEAMUS HEANEY
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SIMON ARMITAGE
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Winter Swans
The clouds had given their all two days of rain and then a break
in which we walked,
the waterlogged earth
gulping for breath at our feet
as we skirted the lake, silent and apart,
until the swans came and stopped us
with a show of tipping in unison.
As if rolling weights down their bodies to their heads
they halved themselves in the dark water,
icebergs of white feather, paused before returning again
like boats righting in rough weather.
'They mate for life' you said as they left,
porcelain over the stilling water. I didn't reply
but as we moved on through the afternoon light,
slow-stepping in the lake's shingle and sand,
I noticed our hands, that had, somehow,
swum the distance between us
and folded, one over the other,
like a pair of wings settling after flight.
OWEN SHEERS
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Singh Song!
I run just one ov my daddys shops
from 9 oclock to 9 oclock
and he vunt me not to hav a break
but ven nobody in, I do di lock
cos up di stairs is my newly bride
vee share in chapatti
vee share in di chutney
after vee hav made luv
like vee rowing through Putney
Ven I return vid my pinnie untied
di shoppers always point and cry:
Hey Singh, ver yoo bin?
Yor lemons are limes
yor bananas are plantain,
dis dirty little floor need a little bit of mop
in di worst Indian shop
on di whole Indian road
Above my head high heel tap di ground
as my vife on di web is playing wid di mouse
ven she netting two cat on her Sikh lover site
she book dem for di meat at di cheese ov her price
my bride
she effing at my mum
in all di colours of Punjabi
den stumble like a drunk
making fun at my daddy
my bride
tiny eyes ov a gun
and di tummy ov a teddy
my bride
she hav a red crew cut
and she wear a Tartan sari
a donkey jacket and some pumps
on di squeak ov di girls dat are pinching my sweeties
Ven I return from di tickle ov my bride
di shoppers always point and cry:
Hey Singh, ver yoo bin?
Di milk is out ov date
and di bread is alvays stale,
di tings yoo hav on offer yoo hav never got in stock
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DALJIT NAGRA
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Climbing My Grandfather
I decide to do it free, without a rope or net.
First, the old brogues, dusty and cracked;
an easy scramble onto his trousers,
pushing into the weave, trying to get a grip.
By the overhanging shirt I change
direction, traverse along his belt
to an earth-stained hand. The nails
are splintered and give good purchase,
the skin of his finger is smooth and thick
like warm ice. On his arm I discover
the glassy ridge of a scar, place my feet
gently in the old stitches and move on.
At his still firm shoulder, I rest for a while
in the shade, not looking down,
for climbing has its dangers, then pull
myself up the loose skin of his neck
to a smiling mouth to drink among teeth.
Refreshed, I cross the screed cheek,
to stare into his brown eyes, watch a pupil
slowly open and close. Then up over
the forehead, the wrinkles well-spaced
and easy, to his thick hair (soft and white
at this altitude), reaching for the summit,
where gasping for breath I can only lie
watching clouds and birds circle,
feeling his heat, knowing
the slow pulse of his good heart.
ANDREW WATERHOUSE
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Ozymandias
William Blake
London
William Wordsworth
Robert Browning
My Last Duchess
Wilfred Owen
Exposure
Seamus Heaney
Ted Hughes
Bayonet Charge
Simon Armitage
Remains
Jane Weir
Poppies
War Photographer
Imtiaz Dharker
Tissue
Carol Rumens
The migree
John Agard
Beatrice Garland
Kamikaze
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Ozymandias
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatterd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stampd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mockd them and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
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London
I wander through each chartered street,
Near where the chartered Thames does flow,
And mark in every face I meet
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.
In every cry of every man,
In every infants cry of fear,
In every voice, in every ban,
The mind-forged manacles I hear:
How the chimney-sweepers cry
Every blackning church appalls,
And the hapless soldiers sigh
Runs in blood down palace walls.
But most through midnight streets I hear
How the youthful harlots curse
Blasts the new-born infants tear,
And blights with plagues the marriage hearse.
WILLIAM BLAKE
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My Last Duchess
Ferrara
Thats my last Duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive. I call
That piece a wonder, now: Fr Pandolfs hands
Worked busily a day, and there she stands.
Willt please you sit and look at her? I said
Fr Pandolf by design, for never read
Strangers like you that pictured countenance,
The depth and passion of its earnest glance,
But to myself they turned (since none puts by
The curtain I have drawn for you, but I)
And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,
How such a glance came there; so, not the first
Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, twas not
Her husbands presence only, called that spot
Of joy into the Duchess cheek: perhaps
Fr Pandolf chanced to say Her mantle laps
Over my ladys wrist too much, or Paint
Must never hope to reproduce the faint
Half-flush that dies along her throat: such stuff
Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough
For calling up that spot of joy. She had
A heart how shall I say? too soon made glad,
Too easily impressed; she liked whateer
She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.
Sir, twas all one! My favour at her breast,
The dropping of the daylight in the West,
The bough of cherries some officious fool
Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule
She rode with round the terrace all and each
Would draw from her alike the approving speech,
Or blush, at least. She thanked men, good! but thanked
Somehow I know not how as if she ranked
My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name
With anybodys gift. Whod stoop to blame
This sort of trifling? Even had you skill
In speech (which I have not) to make your will
Quite clear to such an one, and say, Just this
Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss,
Or there exceed the mark and if she let
Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set
Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse,
Een then would be some stooping; and I choose
Never to stoop. Oh sir, she smiled, no doubt,
Wheneer I passed her; but who passed without
Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;
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ALFRED TENNYSON
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Exposure
Our brains ache, in the merciless iced east winds that knive
us ...
Wearied we keep awake because the night is silent ...
Low, drooping flares confuse our memory of the salient ...
Worried by silence, sentries whisper, curious, nervous,
But nothing happens.
Watching, we hear the mad gusts tugging on the wire,
Like twitching agonies of men among its brambles.
Northward, incessantly, the flickering gunnery rumbles,
Far off, like a dull rumour of some other war.
What are we doing here?
The poignant misery of dawn begins to grow ...
We only know war lasts, rain soaks, and clouds sag stormy.
Dawn massing in the east her melancholy army
Attacks once more in ranks on shivering ranks of grey,
But nothing happens.
Sudden successive flights of bullets streak the silence.
Less deadly than the air that shudders black with snow,
With sidelong flowing flakes that flock, pause, and renew,
We watch them wandering up and down the wind's
nonchalance,
But nothing happens.
Pale flakes with fingering stealth come feeling for our faces We cringe in holes, back on forgotten dreams, and stare,
snow-dazed,
Deep into grassier ditches. So we drowse, sun-dozed,
Littered with blossoms trickling where the blackbird fusses.
Is it that we are dying?
Slowly our ghosts drag home: glimpsing the sunk fires, glozed
With crusted dark-red jewels; crickets jingle there;
For hours the innocent mice rejoice: the house is theirs;
Shutters and doors, all closed: on us the doors are closed, We turn back to our dying.
Since we believe not otherwise can kind fires burn;
Now ever suns smile true on child, or field, or fruit.
For God's invincible spring our love is made afraid;
Therefore, not loath, we lie out here; therefore were born,
For love of God seems dying.
Tonight, His frost will fasten on this mud and us,
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WILFRED OWEN
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SEAMUS HEANEY
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Bayonet Charge
Suddenly he awoke and was running raw
In raw-seamed hot khaki, his sweat heavy,
Stumbling across a field of clods towards a green hedge
That dazzled with rifle fire, hearing
Bullets smacking the belly out of the air
He lugged a rifle numb as a smashed arm;
The patriotic tear that had brimmed in his eye
Sweating like molten iron from the centre of his chest,
In bewilderment then he almost stopped
In what cold clockwork of the stars and the nations
Was he the hand pointing that second? He was running
Like a man who has jumped up in the dark and runs
Listening between his footfalls for the reason
Of his still running, and his foot hung like
Statuary in mid-stride. Then the shot-slashed furrows
Threw up a yellow hare that rolled like a flame
And crawled in a threshing circle, its mouth wide
Open silent, its eyes standing out.
He plunged past with his bayonet toward the green hedge,
King, honour, human dignity, etcetera
Dropped like luxuries in a yelling alarm
To get out of that blue crackling air
His terrors touchy dynamite.
TED HUGHES
31
Remains
On another occasion, we get sent out
to tackle looters raiding a bank.
And one of them legs it up the road,
probably armed, possibly not.
Well myself and somebody else and somebody else
are all of the same mind,
so all three of us open fire.
Three of a kind all letting fly, and I swear
I see every round as it rips through his life
I see broad daylight on the other side.
So weve hit this looter a dozen times
and hes there on the ground, sort of inside out,
pain itself, the image of agony.
One of my mates goes by
and tosses his guts back into his body.
Then hes carted off in the back of a lorry.
End of story, except not really.
His blood-shadow stays on the street, and out on patrol
I walk right over it week after week.
Then Im home on leave. But I blink
and he bursts again through the doors of the bank.
Sleep, and hes probably armed, possibly not.
Dream, and hes torn apart by a dozen rounds.
And the drink and the drugs wont flush him out
hes here in my head when I close my eyes,
dug in behind enemy lines,
not left for dead in some distant, sun-stunned, sand-smothered land
or six-feet-under in desert sand,
but near to the knuckle, here and now,
his bloody life in my bloody hands.
SIMON ARMITAGE
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Poppies
Three days before Armistice Sunday
and poppies had already been placed
on individual war graves. Before you left,
I pinned one onto your lapel, crimped petals,
spasms of paper red, disrupting a blockade
of yellow bias binding around your blazer.
Sellotape bandaged around my hand,
I rounded up as many white cat hairs
as I could, smoothed down your shirts
upturned collar, steeled the softening
of my face. I wanted to graze my nose
across the tip of your nose, play at
being Eskimos like we did when
you were little. I resisted the impulse
to run my fingers through the gelled
blackthorns of your hair. All my words
flattened, rolled, turned into felt,
slowly melting. I was brave, as I walked
with you, to the front door, threw
it open, the world overflowing
like a treasure chest. A split second
and you were away, intoxicated.
After youd gone I went into your bedroom,
released a song bird from its cage.
Later a single dove flew from the pear tree,
and this is where it has led me,
skirting the church yard walls, my stomach busy
making tucks, darts, pleats, hat-less, without
a winter coat or reinforcements of scarf, gloves.
On reaching the top of the hill I traced
the inscriptions on the war memorial,
leaned against it like a wishbone.
The dove pulled freely against the sky,
an ornamental stitch. I listened, hoping to hear
your playground voice catching on the wind.
JANE WEIR
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War Photographer
In his darkroom he is finally alone
with spools of suffering set out in ordered rows.
The only light is red and softly glows,
as though this were a church and he
a priest preparing to intone a Mass.
Belfast. Beirut. Phnom Penh. All flesh is grass.
He has a job to do. Solutions slop in trays
beneath his hands, which did not tremble then
though seem to now. Rural England. Home again
to ordinary pain which simple weather can dispel,
to fields which don't explode beneath the feet
of running children in a nightmare heat.
Something is happening. A stranger's features
faintly start to twist before his eyes,
a half-formed ghost. He remembers the cries
of this man's wife, how he sought approval
without words to do what someone must
and how the blood stained into foreign dust.
A hundred agonies in black-and-white
from which his editor will pick out five or six
for Sunday's supplement. The reader's eyeballs prick
with tears between the bath and pre-lunch beers.
From the aeroplane he stares impassively at where
he earns his living and they do not care.
CAROL ANN DUFFY
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Tissue
Paper that lets the light
shine through, this
is what could alter things.
Paper thinned by age or touching,
the kind you find in well-used books,
the back of the Koran, where a hand
has written in the names and histories,
who was born to whom,
the height and weight, who
died where and how, on which sepia date,
pages smoothed and stroked and turned
transparent with attention.
If buildings were paper, I might
feel their drift, see how easily
they fall away on a sigh, a shift
in the direction of the wind.
Maps too. The sun shines through
their borderlines, the marks
that rivers make, roads,
railtracks, mountainfolds,
Fine slips from grocery shops
that say how much was sold
and what was paid by credit card
might fly our lives like paper kites.
An architect could use all this,
place layer over layer, luminous
script over numbers over line,
and never wish to build again with brick
or block, but let the daylight break
through capitals and monoliths,
through the shapes that pride can make,
find a way to trace a grand design
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The migree
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From Jamaica
she travel far
to the Crimean War
she volunteer to go
and even when de British said no
she still brave the Russian snow
a healing star
among the wounded
a yellow sunrise
to the dying
Dem tell me
Dem tell me wha dem want to tell me
But now I checking out me own history
I carving out me identity
JOHN AGARD
39
Kamikaze
Her father embarked at sunrise
with a flask of water, a samurai sword
in the cockpit, a shaven head
full of powerful incantations
and enough fuel for a one-way
journey into history
but half way there, she thought,
recounting it later to her children,
he must have looked far down
at the little fishing boats
strung out like bunting
on a green-blue translucent sea
and beneath them, arcing in swathes
like a huge flag waved first one way
then the other in a figure of eight,
the dark shoals of fishes
flashing silver as their bellies
swivelled towards the sun
and remembered how he
and his brothers waiting on the shore
built cairns of pearl-grey pebbles
to see whose withstood longest
the turbulent inrush of breakers
bringing their fathers boat safe
- yes, grandfathers boat safe
to the shore, salt-sodden, awash
with cloud-marked mackerel,
black crabs, feathery prawns,
the loose silver of whitebait and once
a tuna, the dark prince, muscular, dangerous.
And though he came back
my mother never spoke again
in his presence, nor did she meet his eyes
and the neighbours too, they treated him
as though he no longer existed,
only we children still chattered and laughed
till gradually we too learned
to be silent, to live as though
he had never returned, that this
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Acknowledgements
C Day Lewis Walking Away from The Gate and Other Poems by Cecil Day Lewis
reprinted by permission of Peters Fraser and Dunlop (www.petersfraserdunlop.com)
on behalf of the estate of Cecil Day Lewis.
Maura Dooley Letters From Yorkshire reprinted with permission of Bloodaxe Books,
on behalf of the author. www.bloodaxebooks.com.
Charles Causley Eden Rock from Collected Poems, Macmillan.
Seamus Heaney Follower from Opened Ground by permission of Faber and Faber
Ltd.
Simon Armitage Mother, any distance from A Book of Matches by permission of
Faber and Faber Ltd.
Carol Ann Duffy Before You Were Mine Copyright Carol Ann Duffy. Reproduced
by permission of Carol Ann Duffy c/o Rogers, Coleridge & White Ltd., 20 Powis
Mews, London W11 1JN.
Owen Sheers Winter Swans Copyright Owen Sheers 2005. Reproduced by
permission of the author c/o Rogers, Coleridge & White Ltd., 20 Powis Mews,
London W11 1JN.
Daljit Nagra Singh Song! from Look We Have Coming to Dover! by permission of
Faber and Faber Ltd.
Andrew Waterhouses Climbing My Grandfather is from his collection In (The Rialto,
2000).
Seamus Heaney Storm on the Island from Opened Ground by permission of Faber
and Faber Ltd.
Ted Hughes Bayonet Charge from Collected Poems by permission of Faber and
Faber Ltd.
Simon Armitage Remains from The Not Dead by permission of Pomona.
Jane Weir Poppies by permission of Templar Poetry Projects Ltd.
Carol Ann Duffy War Photographer Copyright Carol Ann Duffy. Reproduced by
permission of Carol Ann Duffy c/o Rogers, Coleridge & White Ltd., 20 Powis Mews,
London W11 1JN.
Imtiaz Dharker Tissue reprinted with permission of Bloodaxe Books, on behalf of
the author. www.bloodaxebooks.com.
Carol Rumens The migree from Thinking of Skins by permission of Carol Rumens.
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