Broken Places Read Online Free PDF Page A

carpeting and cupboards – they were inessentials – but with every ‘undesirable’ and ‘lame duck’ in the borough.
    ‘My own heart let me have more pity on; let
    Me live to my sad self hereafter kind,
    Charitable; not live this tormented mind….’
    He glanced around the circle of faces, trying to judge their reaction. It was definitely a risk engaging with a poet as difficult as Hopkins, when some of the group hadn’t opened a book since leaving school. But his own experience as an undereducated lad had taught him that, even if you didn’t grasp the meaning of the words, the spirit of a poem could still seep into your soul. He refused to accept that great literature should be the preserve of a small cultured elite, instead of open to all and sundry.
    ‘Well,’ he asked, once Alice had read the second verse, stumbling over the challenging last lines. Incredible that she was reading it at all, when, a month ago, she had sat in silence throughout the sessions, literally shaking with nerves. ‘What did you all think of that?’
    ‘Couldn’t understand a word!’ Graham protested, shaking his bald head.
    ‘Too downbeat for me,’ Marjorie put in. ‘We need cheering up, not made to feel worse still.’
    ‘You’ve missed the whole point,’ Barry countered. ‘The bloke who wrote that is trying to cheer himself up, deciding to be kinder to himself. There’s a lesson there for all of us.’
    ‘I agree,’ said Rita. ‘He’s saying we should have pity on ourselves, and I, for one, approve of that.’
    ‘But I don’t get the bit about thirst. What he’s on about?’
    Eric took the words apart and tried to fit them back together in a simpler, more immediate way. ‘The language is difficult – for me as much as you. I’m not always sure what it means myself, but that’s OK. We’re learning as we go along. Hopkins has been called “obscure”, so we shouldn’t expect to grasp it all immediately.’
    ‘So why choose an obscure poet?’ Graham demanded, rocking back on his chair.
    Eric took his time replying. He’d deliberately avoided self-help books, despite the fact that many of the members were suffering from depression and the like. So-called ‘prescription literature’ only told sufferers more about their pain, whereas poetry could transcend it; endow it with depth and meaning. He had proved that in his own case – although he could hardly explain in this particular setting that Gerard Manley Hopkins had helped him through his divorce. During those grim months, he had often lain sleepless , repeating, ‘O, what black hours we have spent this night … I am gall, I am heartburn’, and all the other desolate stuff he’d soon come to know by heart. To read of someone else’s anguish, depicted in astounding words, had been weirdly comforting; made him feel less isolated; less alone with grief.
    ‘Because Hopkins is deeply passionate,’ he replied, at last, to Graham, ‘and cares about the important things in life. And he’s a true original. His style is so strange, it shakes you up. And if you want to know why poetry rather than prose, well, sometimes just the rhyme and rhythm can induce a sense of calmness.’
    ‘Yes, I find poems helpful,’ Warren declared. ‘And I like the way they mean something they’re not saying.’
    An astute comment, Eric thought, from a guy who claimed never to have read anything except the backs of sauce bottles.
    ‘The first poem was easier, though,’ Marjorie observed. ‘The one that Graham read.’
    ‘ Pied Beauty ?
    ‘Yes, the words were really beautiful. In fact, I’d like to hear it again.’
    ‘Well, we do have time, before we break for our soup, if the rest of you don’t mind?’
    Several people nodded their agreement, although anorexic Lee looked highly nervous, as usual, at the mention of the soup. She especially hated the buttered rolls and, while the others were eating, sometimes felt compelled to leave the room.
    ‘Hannah, would you