The first poet I read with serious attention was Edgar Allan Poe. His morbid and nightmarish stories appealed strongly to me when I was younger. I had obtained what I thought was his complete works in one luxury volume (it turns out this wasn’t the case, though it was a hefty selection). That book included his short stories and his one novel, and then a section featuring most of his best poems. I read those poems because they were there. I might never have come to poetry at all if it hadn’t been for Poe. The most famous of his verses, ‘The Raven’ and ‘Annabel Lee’, impressed me. I revelled in the euphony of ‘A Dream Within a Dream’, ‘The City in the Sea’, ‘The Haunted Palace’ and many others. I learned ‘Eldorado’ by heart (easy) and tried to learn ‘The Conqueror Worm’ (difficult). But the Poe poem that affected me most strongly was ‘The Bells’. The lunatic music of that multistage work is extraordinary. Reading it, I felt I was a clapper in a giant bell, my head striking the sides in a complicated but precise rhythm. I have associated bells with poetry ever since. What follows are some of my own modest efforts to write poetry about various kinds of bells. Most of these verses are light-hearted, but one is a horror poem (not very scary).
BLUBELLS
A tea house
in a tree
is a tea tree house
and the kettle
on the stove
is full of nettles.
A kettle
full of nettles
is a stinger.
A ringer
of cow bells is
moostly a sinner;
a ringer of
bluebells never.
WHY DO COWS?
Why do
cows have bells?
It’s a
question
that still irks me.
Could
it be because
their horns don’t
work?
THE BELL
When the bell was damaged
in a thunderstorm
the inhabitants of the town
knew what to do
to repair it well: they knew
what to do to make
a new hell
for the outsider
with all his dangerous ideas.
He came to live among them
the previous year
and they tolerated his ways
for an eternity
that was in fact three months:
and for the next six
they grew sick
with cold tensions
and loathsome apprehensions.
In order to cancel his intrusion,
they chose a day
to fix the bell: dragged him
from his bed,
bound his limbs, strung him up:
a substitute clapper,
not quite dead,
inverted he swings,
sounding the hours with his head.
MISS CLAPPER
I can’t recall
if I ever knew
Miss Clapper at all
but well…
her name rings
a bell.
No, I don’t
think I know her
and I’m quite certain
she isn’t aware
of me: I am a curtain.
An artist drew me
last week:
tear me down to make
her a dress if
you truly wish to take
a peek at Miss Clapper:
she’s the bell
of the booming ball.
SLIPPERY HIPPIES
The hippies throng
when the bells ding dong
and they can’t all be wrong
if they sip from wells
that are full of eels,
those slippery hippies!
I THREW A BOOMERANG
I threw a boomerang
at a bell. The clang
it made was like the yell
of a deep-voiced
cyclops stuck in Hell.
It was just a game.
It rebounded very well,
that curvy stick, and
struck me on the forehead
quick, and I feel sick
but I’m not quite dead.
No one’s to blame.
That boom rang long
throughout my brain,
I might never be the same:
on second thoughts
I may be samer, only if
there’s nothing saner.
I threw a boomerang
at a belle. She threw
it back with deadly aim,
hairy arm very strong.
It’s wrong to boomeranger
orangutans in anger.
ASK NOT
Ask not
for whom the bell tolls
but what I can do
for my bell.
We choose to be bells
not because it’s easy
but because it’s hard.
Dong dong!
Whippersnapper clapper.
When eight bells toll
our role
becomes dismissal
of the rolls
we ate: their crumbs.
My thumbs are clappers
inside my mug.
I ring the coffee changes.
SOGGY DING DONG
There’s a bell in the well
and it rings under water
with a soggy ding dong
and I still
can never tell
if it sounds unwell
or better than it used to.
How it got there I don’t know,
unless some strong man with
a mighty throw
hurled it down long ago,
but I don’t really
think so: there are no people
who could climb the steeple
to steal the bell
from the lofty cathedral
without losing their grip
and slipping
onto the hard cobbles below.
We aren’t very agile
in these parts, it’s true.
We aren’t gibbons or lemurs
or squirrels like you
and your horrid hairy friends.
BELL PEPPERS
I tried ringing a bell pepper
in honour
of Edgar Allan Poe.
But it didn’t chime, it didn’t boom,
it didn’t echo
throughout the room.
It just made a damp sort of splat.
I know what I did wrong.
The pepper I chose was green
and simply couldn’t bong
like a brassy gong:
it wasn’t ripe enough for that.
It should have been red
like the cheeks on my head
after I realised my mistake.
Yes, I was embarrassed,
and now I feel quite harassed
by the opaque goblins
of the bell pepper universe.
*I am pleased to note that I have had other bell-themed poems published by Borderless Journal. See, for example, ‘The Clock Tower of Sir Ticktock Bongg’.
Rhys Hughes has lived in many countries. He graduated as an engineer but currently works as a tutor of mathematics. Since his first book was published in 1995 he has had fifty other books published and his work has been translated into ten languages.
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