Lifescapes, Page 5

  A nimble princess is

  Sewing music on the expectant air

  precisely drawing a thread

  of harmony through holes in the audience …

  Every ear will leave embroidered

  in the end,

  A good mantle of unfamiliar flowers

  unfold a coherent

  grace

  over translated London

  Forward to Index

  FAIR GAME

  (to Cat)

  Absorbing into my body a thing off a tree

  I am as much a predator as you who leave

  On the threshold of my advanced and intricate nest

  Another half-chewed bloody creature,

  Proof of your equality with me.

  In fact, superior -

  I cannot consume raw blood, bone, fur, feather;

  My meat is twice-killed with knife and fire,

  I share with your flying prey a taste and need

  For safety; the free gift; the sweet wet death-wish

  Bribing thieves to pass without violation

  And carry life for the tree.

  The vulnerable use me.

  You have the advantage, little beast, my solace.

  I am allowed to share your residence; I cannot choose

  To warm my lap with you, only accept

  Your own usage of me as a bed as I eat pears

  And remember, as we in fear have learned to remember,

  That your sire would have killed mine in the forest.

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  PARADOX

  The indolent boy

  dances into a battle of string

  because he cannot help

  being graceful

  with his wrist and nice knee-strength

  he tames the wild length

  and make tortuous knots tight

  with fingers of flying light

  The solid conflict

  defines his mortality.

  The dance? -

  It is a bewitching thing

  Forward to Index

  A PILGRIMAGE

  Forgive me my long absence.

  I have come back now in search of my past.

  I came through the wide sweep of timeless fields

  (Too late for the mid-honey small of barley ripening,

  The swathes are raped, and marched in stooks up the fields)

  To my love-town, working from the perimeter

  Into its heart. That beat more fitful now.

  The coffee is good, rich with the germ of memory;

  Giovanni swings his hips at a younger breed,

  However; the feverish songs are not the same,

  And they have all gone - impossible loves of mine.

  Gone to their private universe that runs

  Parallel with my own; but where? The past wove

  And forked in strands, leaving my own thread

  To mingle with fresh loops of itinerant colour.

  Alone I return, occasional pilgrim.

  Back to the loved meeting and parting place

  To test its memory of me.

  The plain,

  The sheep-fields, river and houses still

  Swim under the belly of the sky;

  Still blows the mad Midland wind.

  I hear the sea rise among the cabbages,

  The wheat seething with sand (that image still),

  The dull turmoil of wind around my ears.

  If it could blow time from the rain-red earth

  And bring back the ice-cream harvest, I

  Would forfeit a dozen later loves. But this

  Grey gale has no pity for dreams;

  It drives me from my sad and empty Mecca,

  No song scaling the active walls of wind

  That never kept me, once, from what I loved.

  Forward to Index

  LINEAGE

  On some long gone but so real Saxon's account, I'm here.

  You're here, Mother; a mad Irishman

  Wanting his oats one day did it, and set the precedent

  Like the dry little active Jew that started Dad ...

  Dust of so many bricks in a new building!

  Sweet Life - the grass smelt of worms, the long air

  Was amove with sun, and our birds' begetters sang

  When the thoughtless stroke fell (in so bland a season!)

  With the sun in the right place;

  The generations

  That rushed then to the stairs of immortal life!

  Oh, what a wonder.

  And so the increscent fugue followed and followed

  From the first love-music ever made,

  The first chord struck on that cello-creature

  That sent vibrations down the centuries

  Into the gay duet that we have played!

  - My little dear:

  On some long gone but so real Saxon's account, you're here.

  Forward to Index

  FOR KIPPER

  Kitten grew; flowered slow like a hot cinder

  In smoke and flame. Summer and she were born together.

  Perfect now, she teaches me to read behind her

  Pure eyes the mysteries of her race. Weather

  Excites her! Steeple-chasing the wind, she and I

  Risk body and soul to delight the appraising sky.

  Forward to Index

  THE NIGHT HUNTRESS

  In the tangled churchyard

  At the dead of night

  Creeping through the shadows

  Flattened out of sight

  Prowling like a lioness

  Mistress of the wilderness

  Slinks a scrap of furriness

  Muscles tense and tight

  Glowing through the darkness

  Emerald eyes alight

  Doggedly the kitten

  Keeps her prey in sight

  On small silken stealthy paws

  Noiseless nearer still she draws

  Pounces swift with needle claws

  But her moth takes flight

  Bounding through the grasses

  Arcing over roots

  Valiantly the kitten

  Dashes in pursuit

  Tiny grey thing in the night

  Silent shred of ghost in flight

  Teasing lilts from left to right

  Nimble as a flute

  Through the darkling shadows

  Under star-pricked skies

  Homeward pads the huntress

  Triumph in her eyes

  Moth has fluttered far away

  Into hiding for the day

  She has found another prey

  Mouse! A peerless prize

  Forward to Index

  HEARTSEASE

  Though Hearts-ease lasts until the autumn only,

  When the leaves fall,

  Heart’s ease stays with us throughout the year

  So that sweet memories we may recall

  Of the little wild pansy

  Beloved of all.

  (Lowfell, 1950, age 7. My very first poem.)

  Forward to Index

  FOR AN AUTUMN WEDDING

  All is prepared.

  The slow white wedding-march of clouds,

  Sweeping the late leaves with skirts of rain,

  Have spread you a bright carpet in celebration.

  See, as you come,

  Golden slippers of sun run in the woodland,

  Lighting candles amidst the vaulting shade

  To make you a church of many aisles and altars.

  Listen together;

  The wind’s fine fingers fly on the organ.

  There are bells in the birds’ full throats for you,

  The leaves fall to their own gentle music.

  Their light kiss

  Upon your hair is of life and death; they speak

  With the ancient forest voice whose wisdom flows

  In root and seed, fed by the grey rain.

  Listen, and learn;

  How th
e brown earth, laced with a veil of leaves,

  Makes many weddings; death is a season’s sleep,

  Life a recurring dream from that rich bed.

  You are consumed

  Like leaves, gold in your every changing season,

  Dancing through lives and deaths, an immortal vein

  Of past selves ripening in the dark

  To nurture spring.

  Forward to Index

  GIRLS WITH GOLDEN HAIR

  Girls with golden hair were

  Meant to stand in the flowing corn

  Slender as the wheatstalks

  They stand among

  Between earth and cloud

  Pale in the lissom wind their long

  Hair showered with finely

  Flying seed

  To walk in the ripened year

  Bearing golden before them a swelling

  Legacy of secret

  Eyes that saw them

  Forward to Index

  SPRING AGAIN

  Having done Spring to death - forever, I thought,

  Amen - it poked a mauve nose out of the grass at me,

  Winked a gold eye, and Became.

  With little eddies of lust awhirl in the March wind

  Around the knees, frisking fresh girls out walking

  Tip-toe, tongues out they and the sky still

  For a taste, for a thrill of snow; cool,

  Baby, can’t kick the habit!

  Will stick my nose soon into a bud of wet lilac

  (We’ll gather lilacs in the Spring again

  When your incessant runabout breaks down

  Or one of your old, old ladies, waltzing gaily

  Out of a doorful of roses,

  Trips you with a giggle and sprouting stick)

  Oh soon we’ll roll in faggots of crushed lavender,

  And go without umbrellas in the rain,

  Again!

  Forward to Index

  SPRING-CLEAN

  Spring wind. Fever wind. Wowy round the roof-tops.

  Wind.

  Blood coming up for the new year, for next year’s prelude of memories.

  As flames shake out fresh with a sound of handkerchiefs

  And trees bud birds to race the arriving sky.

  Weep over the leavings of last year,

  We’re done with pigeon-pie.

  This year cry sea-gull, and keep a nipped finger till next March.

  The sun starts now, practising for summer.

  Surprised by the end of winter, detergent comes with free daffodils,

  Opulent ladies begin playing at charities

  As February waltzes out in the girls’ Excuse-me

  And March comes in late, looking sheepish,

  With hocus-crocus of mad March babies and royal hair

  As Woolworth plies the primrose path to Mother’s day.

  Out in the blue air of Sundays, people whistle and wash-leather their cars

  With radios out on the pavement and soapy streams in the gutter

  Until ...

  Lo! More snow (everyone back inside:

  Shilling for the gas, homework over hot crumpets and butter)

  In March shivers, blowing like sand over the sea-slates

  Or winter shook the last crumbs out of his cold cloth

  For the visiting sun to peck at

  Come on, spring!

  Buck up, it’s nearly the silly season!

  The trees are all bark, the wind all sarcastic bite

  But the almond has pinkened ever since Valentine’s Day

  And it won’t be long before sun, wind and trees

  Make friends in a jolly rape of petals

  On weekend anniversaries

  Of so many,

  So enjoyably

  Lost virginities!

  But meantime it’s spring wind, chilly wind,

  Draught up the trouserlegs, scarves on rag-day

  Wind

  As the twigs chirrup with perhaps a little frost

  Teasing the sap under the tickle of lambing-time,

  And it’s a toss-up between

  Cold fingers, or resisting the pleasure

  Of smoking the kissing-season’s first fresh-air cigarette.

  Forward to Index

  THE BELOVED GARDENS)

  Amid the noise

  In millions, clangour of men

  Sweating for self-praise;

  In the misapprehension of iron, time-lapse, toil,

  Germ in the pantry and

  Universal hand;

  By greenless villa, lock and staring cell

  Earth’s plumage plucked,

  Muscle

  Treated and trussed,

  Fit flesh for biting;

  Amid new bulls without horn,

  Plant without sap or seed,

  Amid the un-flighted cranes

  Go they,

  The gardeners go

  Forth secretly to the beloved gardens.

  Among dog-daisies

  And wild rose,

  Treading over the long fought-for silence

  Of grass imperishable

  They give their good-days,

  They go forgotten ways,

  They bend, and disappear.

  They open the long-locked ear

  Of Time within;

  And all the ages gone when the sun shone

  Straight from eye to eye

  Subtly take possession of their mind.

  Bramble and woodbine,

  Spurge, owled oak, and willow

  Welcome homeward the slow dreamer, the old fellow.

  His one friend sits by him and sings.

  Mole, hole and hedgerow watch with a noonday eye

  For the unwanted things.

  Few come here to learn economy.

  He, root-bent, researching the earth,

  Tends to the only immortality.

  It will receive him;

  And shall give rebirth

  To dog-daisies,

  Bramble and woodbine,

  Spurge, owled oak, willow

  And wild rose,

  To moth, fireweed, nettle and nightingale

  Amid the noise.

  Forward to Index

  THE FIRST BULLFINCH

  Rose-breasted, bobbing bird on the pathway,

  Slate-blue back in the sun flashing steel,

  Picking and hopping,

  And stopping;

  White rump-splash bobbing,

  And robbing

  Small, hidden, crevice-grown weeds

  Of seeds -

  Where have you been?

  Why before have I never seen

  Handfuls of sky-blown rose-flame,

  Twig-bending plumply

  In the sun-flecked mazes -

  A steel-winged,

  Pink-puffed

  Thistle-tuft

  Like you?

  Forward to Index

  DISASTER

  Here are the people waiting

  Against the flowing sea

  Down the banks of shingle

  The sun is circled with fog

  We swim in the idle tide

  The children fidget and argue

  They balance along the ropes

  The ropes that loosed the lifeboat

  Washed away in the mist

  To the lonely mooing at sea

  The people read their papers

  They sleep in the Sunday sun

  A ship is lost in limbo

  The fog is heavy with souls

  Here are the people waiting

  On the blond and shimmering shingle

  A little too cold to swim

  In the blue and tinsel sea

  The women are thinking of lunch

  And the boat has not come back

  Forward to Index

  CONCEPTION

  I shall, calm-eyed,

  Shake out my blankets in the sun

  And sheets out like flags

  Until bearing.


  The many flowers

  Race to grow faster than my melon-

  Belly, round and ripe as a

  Pink cantaloupe.

  I shall

  Lily and Amaranth

  Plant among my hair and

  Golden feet.

  The thrush’s song

  Shall await my shout before

  Giving tongue to war

  Over the world’s edge.

  I shall give

  A new priest to the sea:

  Our kind is growing, who never

  Blaspheme her beauty.

  Our race,

  Gentle as wave or wind,

  Will help poor God to soothe

  The hot world.

  Forward to Index

  MAYTIME

  Maiden Kent in her first blush of blossom

  Led in the Maytime to an orchard bridal

  Uphill and downland black gorse put to the torch

  Takes the coin of the sun and scatters it

  In the path of wayfarers amid weddings

  Who weave among reed-beds bittern and weed

  To water-sheets

  In the deep woodland waits

  A reflected heaven

  All the trees breathing a blue gas

  Drift in a lake of altered consciousness

  And all the bells are birds

  Forward to Index

  OCTOBER 16th 1987

  The wind whines in the gratings. It is a mean cur

  Leaping and baying at the last of the trees.

  This night it pulls on a leash, still

  By some harsh hand held between towering seas

  And we pray again, as we prayed under a Scorpio Moon

  (Piteously, in vain) the tyrant fist

  Of air not follow its hound to scythe and flail

  In seven howling hours seven counties' forest.

  Felled trees flake into humus; rooftops wrenched

  Break into powder and shard, a thin seam

  Laid down, pointing the future's history.

  Will fear come up on the spade? Will their seers dream?

  Blood was not the storm's quarry but only our sleep,

  Only our sleep, Lord; an amazing Hand

  Held our houses safe from cedar and oak.

  Only a few died, leaving a shattered land