How to Answer the Unseen Poetry Question (AQA GCSE English Literature)

November Night, Edinburgh

The night tinkles like ice in glasses. 

Leaves are glued to the pavement with frost. 

The brown air fumes at the shop windows, 

Tries the doors, and sidles past.

I gulp down winter raw. 

The heady Darkness swirls with tenements*. 

In a brown fuzz of cottonwool 

Lamps fade up crags, die into pits

Frost in my lungs is harsh as leaves 

Scraped up on paths. – I look up, there, 

A high roof sails, at the mast-head 

Fluttering a grey and ragged star.

The world’s a bear shrugged in his den. 

It’s snug and close in the snoring night. 

And outside like chrysanthemums* 

The fog unfolds its bitter scent.

*tenements: blocks of flats 

*chrysanthemums: a type of flower

Norman MacCaig

Shoulders 

A man crosses the street in rain, 

stepping gently, looking two times north and south, 

because his son is asleep on his shoulder. 

No car must splash him. 

No car drive too near to his shadow. 

This man carries the world’s most sensitive cargo 

but he’s not marked. 

Nowhere does his jacket say FRAGILE, 

HANDLE WITH CARE. 

His ear fills up with breathing. 

He hears the hum of a boy’s dream 

deep inside him. 

We’re not going to be able 

to live in this world 

if we’re not willing to do what he’s doing 

with one another. 

The road will only be wide. 

The rain will never stop falling.

 Naomi Shihab Nye

Choices 

I go to the mountain side 

of the house to cut saplings*, 

and clear a view to snow 

on the mountain. But when I look up, 

saw in hand, I see a nest clutched in 

the uppermost branches. 

I don’t cut that one. 

I don’t cut the others either. 

Suddenly, in every tree, 

an unseen nest 

where a mountain 

would be. 

*saplings: young trees

Tess Gallagher