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

The Richest Poor Man in the Valley

On the outside 

he seemed older than he was. 

His face was like a weather map 

full of bad weather 

while inside 

his heart was fat with sun.

With his two dogs 

he cleared a thin silver path 

across the Black Mountain. 

And when winter 

kicked in

they brought his sheep 

down from the top 

like sulky clouds.

Harry didn’t care for things 

that other people prize 

like money, houses, bank accounts 

and lies. 

He was living in a caravan 

until the day he died.

But at his funeral 

his friends’ tears 

fell like a thousand 

Diamonds.

Lindsay Macrae

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

In both ‘November Night, Edinburgh’ and ‘A London Thoroughfare. 2 A.M.’ the speakers describe attitudes towards the city at night. 

What are the similarities and/or differences between the methods the poets use to present these attitudes?

[8 marks]