Mine was a threeplank bed whereon I lay and cursed the wear… - Basil Bunting

" "
Mine was a threeplank bed whereon
I lay and cursed the weary sun.
They took away the prison clothes
and on the frosty nights I froze.
I had a Bible where I read
that Jesus came to raise the dead—
I kept myself from going mad
by singing an old bawdy ballad
and birds sang on my windowsill
and tortured me till I was ill

Basil Bunting

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About Basil Bunting

Basil Cheesman Bunting (March 3, 1900 – April 17, 1985) was a British modernist poet.

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Alternative Names: Basil Cheesman Bunting

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William Carlos Williams Gwendolyn Brooks Dylan Thomas Wallace Stevens Robert Graves

Additional quotes by Basil Bunting

Never explain- your reader is as smart as you. Your reader is not just any reader, but is the rare one with ears in his head.

He whom we anatomized
‘whose words we gathered as pleasant flowers
and thought on his wit and how neatly he described things’
speaks
to us, hatching marrow,
broody all night over the bones of a deadman.

The sea has no renewal, no forgetting,
no variety of death,
is silent with the silence of a single note.

Mine was a threeplank bed whereon I lay and cursed the weary sun. They took away the prison clothes and on the frosty nights I froze. I had a Bible w… - Basil Bunting

About Basil Bunting

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