'Sometimes'
By Sheenagh Pugh
Sometimes
things don’t go, after all,
from bad
to worse. Some years, muscadel
faces
down frost; green thrives; the crops don’t fail.
Sometimes
a man aims high, and all goes well.
A people
sometimes will step back from war,
elect an
honest man, decide they care
enough,
that they can’t leave some stranger poor.
Some men
become what they were born for.
Sometimes
our best intentions do not go
amiss;
sometimes we do as we meant to.
The sun
will sometimes melt a field of sorrow
that
seemed hard frozen; may it happen for you.
Sheenagh Pughon her poem;
“It was originally written about
a sportsman who had a drug problem and it expressed the hope that he might
eventually get over it - because things do go right sometimes, but not very
often... But it isn't anywhere near skilfull or subtle enough and I would
cheerfully disown it, if people didn't now and then write to me saying it had
helped them. By the way, you might also care to know that I originally wrote
"the sun will sometimes melt a field of snow" (the sportsman's drug
of choice was cocaine). But I mistyped "sorrow" for "snow"
and then decided I liked that better. I believe in letting the keyboard join in
the creative process now and then.
I think most people read it
wrong. When read carefully, it says sometimes things go right, but not that
often, and usually only when people make some kind of effort in that direction.
So it isn't blithely and unreasonably optimistic. But a lot of people read it
that way, which means I didn't write it well enough - the writer can always
make the readers see what he wants them to if he does the job right.
Also I know, because language is my job, that
I have written poems in which the use of language is simply a lot more
interesting and imaginative than it is there. So it bugs me now and then that
this is the only one a lot of people think I've ever written. Same as Jenny
Joseph is fed up of "Warning", which is really quite slight in
comparison with many of hers but again is the one she is known by. I'm not
letting "Sometimes" be printed any more except for some charitable
purposes and in particular I won't let it be used by exam boards, which should
make some of you happy!”