Lauri+Lee

Hallie Angelo

(June 26, 1914 – May 13, 1997) Laurie Lee

Laurie Lee was born in 1914. Lee's family moved to the village of Slad in 1917. Soon after, Lee's father went to the first World War and never returned. Lee grew up with his loving Mother in Slad trying to keep their minds off the death of their husband/father. He found an outlet to this by writting poetry. He has written so much poetry that it has been published into sevral books. Some of which called, //Land at War// and //A rose for winter.// Lee past away in 1997. Here are two of his poems.

juice-green of July rain, the black polestar of flowers, the rind mapped with its crimson stain.
 * ||  || Behold the apples’ rounded worlds:
 * ||  || Behold the apples’ rounded worlds:

The russet, crab and cottage red burn to the sun’s hot brass, then drop like sweat from every branch and bubble in the grass.

They lie as wanton as they fall, and where they fall and break, the stallion clamps his crunching jaws, the starling stabs his beak.

In each plump gourd the cidery bite of boys’ teeth tears the skin; the waltzing wasp consumes his share, the bent worm enters in.

I, with as easy hunger, take entire my season’s dole; welcome the ripe, the sweet, the sour, the hollow and the whole. ||  ||   ||   || calls like a fainting bird across the fields to where her flock lies panting for her voice, their black horns buried deep in marigolds.
 * ||  || The girl's far treble, muted to the heat,

They climb awake, like drowsy butterflies, and press their red flanks through the tall branched grass, and as they go their wandering tongues embrace the vacant summer mirrored in their eyes.

Led to the limestone shadows of a barn they snuff their past embalmed in the hay, while her cool hand, cupped to the udder's fount, distils the brimming harvest of their day.

Look what a cloudy cream the earth gives out, fat juice of buttercups and meadow-rye; the girl dreams milk within her body's field and hears, far off, her muted children cry. ||  ||^   ||   ||   ||