On the Ning Nang Nong

Golden Books

On The Ning Nang Nong 

On the Ning Nang Nong Where the cows go Bong!
And the monkeys all say Boo!
There's a Nong Nang Ning
Where the trees go Ping
And the tea pots Jibber Jabber Joo.
On the Nong Ning Nang
All the mice go Clang!
And you just can't catch 'em when they do!
So it's Ning Nang Nong!
Cows go Bong!
Nong Nang Ning!
Trees go Ping!
Nong Ning Nang!

The mice go Clang!
What a noisy place to belong,
Is the Ning Nang Ning Nang Nong!

        Spike Milligan

Being stuck in the house with your family for weeks on end does something to your brain.

Evening

Clifford Webb

Evening

From upland slopes I see the cows file by,

Lowing, great-chested, down the homeward trail,

By dusking fields and meadows shining pale

With moon-tipped dandelions. Flickering high,

A peevish night-hawk in the western sky

Beats up into the lucent solitudes,

Or drops with gliding wing. The stilly woods

Grow dark and deep, and gloom mysteriously.

Cool night winds creep, and whisper in mine ear.

The homely cricket gossips at my feet.

From far-off pools and wastes of reeds I hear,

Clear and soft-piped, the chanting frogs break sweet

In full Pandean chorus. One by one

Shine out the stars, and the great night comes on.

Archibald Lampman

“Meadows shining pale with moon-tipped dandelions.”

“The stilly woods grow dark and deep…”

 I have an image of a box being passed to me with this poem inside it, a gift I can enjoy over and over again. I put it in my pocket and carry it with me wherever I go, wherever life takes me. I don’t know Lampman, and he doesn’t know me, but we share this place, this moment - and it’s beautiful.

Fetching Cows

 Sir John Alfred Arnesby Brown, "Full Summer, Ludham, Norfolk"

Fetching Cows

The black one, last as usual swings her head

And coils a black tongue round a grass-tuft. I

Watch her soft weight come down, her split feet spread.

In front, the others swing and slouch; they roll

Their great Greek eyes and breathe out milky gusts

From muzzles black and shiny as wet coal.

The collie trots, bored, at my heels, then plops

Into the ditch. The sea makes a tired sound

That's always stopping though it never stops.

A haycart squats prickeared agains the sky.

Hay breath and milk breath. Far out in the West

The wrecked sun founders though its colours fly.

The collie's bored. There's nothing to control . . .

The black cow is two native carriers

Bringing its belly home, slung from a pole.

Norman McCaig

 

Some poems take you away for a moment, whisk you off to a different time or place. It’s like a holiday for the mind, a chance to escape your surroundings and be, well, anywhere else. That’s the magic of this poem.