Earworm poem

Ear worm is a strange phrase which I understand to mean a lyric or maybe a melody which you just can’t get out of your head… and yet you are usually desperate to do so! Referring back to my previous post, dreadful comic songs have a nasty way of lodging in your brain..,. ‘Get Outta My face’?

But there can also be more pleasant or intriguing earworm, or mindworms maybe. When I was at school, probably aged about thirteen or fourteen, we had amazing English teachers and we also had anthologies of poems. I owe so much to those teachers who I remember with such affection, Miss Palmer and Mrs Johnson in particular.

However… back to earworms. I remember it being a warm and lovely day and sunshine was streaming in through the windows; our school was beautifully designed and each class had a whole wall of windows so the classrooms were always bright and light. I can’t remember what we were supposed to be doing but I was leafing through the anthology and came across a most striking poem. It just leapt off the page and each time we had a poetry lesson I would look back to it if I had a moment.

I learnt it off by heart and over the years it would come back to me, but less and less of it until all I was left with was the opening line.

I saw a shot-down angel in the park,

At some point it began to bug me, I could sort of remember the gist of the poem as well as the actual words of the first line, but I had no idea of its title or the poet who wrote it. I began to scour the library and book shops, searching through collections of verse. I had it in my mind that the shot down angel was a plane so if it had been shot down it would have been during the war so I looked at poets who I knew were writing then. All to no avail.

This was before the internet but if I google it now, as I just have done, one of the first things which crops up is by… me! I had completely forgotten that I used to have a blog on Blogger… and there is this poem on my site! After me, there are many other sites where you can find not only the poem, but information about the poet. At the time there were a couple of programmes on BBC Radio 4, ‘Quote Unquote’ and ‘Poetry Please’ and I wrote to them with the single line I had… and I was rewarded! Success! Nigel Rees replied and I now have the poem, and a couple of other collections by… Charles Causley!

Unbeknownst to me, I actually visited his birthplace yesterday, for he was born in Launceston, Cornwall… how fitting that I should go there, what a shame I didn’t realise that it was the birth place of one of my favourite poets!

I saw a shot down angel

I saw a shot down angel in the park

His marble blood sluicing the dyke of death,

A sailing tree fired its brown sea-mark

Where he now wintered for his wounded breath.

I heard the bird-noise of his splintered wings

Sawing the steep sierra of the sky,

On his fixed brow the jewel of the Kings

Reeked the red morning with a staring eye.

I stretched my hand to hold him from the heat,

I fetched a cloth to bind him where he bled,

I brought a bowl to wash his golden feet,

I shone my shield to save him from the dead.

My angel spat my solace in my face

And fired my fingers with his burning shawl,

Crawling in blood and silver to a place

Where he could turn his torture to the wall.

Alone I wandered in the sneaking snow

The signature of murder on my day,

And from the gallows-tree, a careful crow

Hitched its appalling wings and flew away.

Charles Causley