Numbers, no longer arithmetical,
Dance like lambs, fly like doves;
And silence falls at last, though silken branches
Gently heave in the near olive-yard
And vague cloud labours on.
Whose was the stroke of summer genius
Flung from a mountain fastness
Where the griffon-vulture soars
That let us read our shrouded future
As easily as a book of prayer
Spread open on the knee?
Beyond Giving
(1969)
PART I
SONG: TO A ROSE
Queen of Sharon in the valley,
Clasp my head your breasts between:
Darkly blind me to your beauty –
Rose renowned for blood-red berries
Ages earlier than for fragrant
Blossom and sweet hidden honey,
Save by studious bees.
SONG: DREAM WARNING
A lion in the path, a lion;
A jewelled serpent by the sun
Hatched in a desert silence
And stumbled on by chance;
A peacock crested with green fire,
His legs befouled in mire;
Not less, an enlacement of seven dreams
On a rainbow scale returning
To the drum that throbs against their melodies
Its dark insistent warning.
SONG: BEYOND GIVING
There is a giving beyond giving:
Yours to me
Who awoke last night, hours before the dawn,
Set free
By one intolerable lightning stroke
That ripped the sky
To understand what love withholds in love,
And why.
TRIAL OF INNOCENCE
Urged by your needs and my desire,
I first made you a woman; nor was either
Troubled by fear of hidden evil
Or of temporal circumstance;
For circumstances never alter cases
When lovers, hand in hand, face trial
Pleading uncircumstantial innocence.
POISONED DAY
The clouds dripped poisonous dew to spite
A day for weeks looked forward to. True love
Sickened that evening without remedy:
We neither quarrelled, kissed, nor said good-night
But fell asleep, our arms around each other,
And awoke to the gentle hiss of rain on grass
And thrushes calling that the worst was over.
SUPERSTITION
Forget the foolishness with which I vexed you:
Mine was a gun-shy superstition
Surviving from defeat in former loves
And banished when you stood staring aghast
At the replacement of your sturdy lover
By a disconsolate waif.
Blame the foul weather for my aching wounds,
Blame ugly history for my wild fears,
Nor ever turn from your own path; for still
Despite your fancies, your white silences,
Your disappearances, you remain bound
By this unshakeable trust I rest in you.
Go, because inner strength ordains your journey,
Making a necessary occasion seem
No more than incidental. Love go with you
In distillation of all past and future –
You, a clear torrent flooding the mill-race,
Forcing its mill to grind
A coarse grain into flour for angels’ bread.
IN THE NAME OF VIRTUE
In the name of Virtue, girl,
Why must you try so hard
In the hard name of Virtue?
Is not such trying, questioning?
Such questioning, doubting?
Such doubting, guessing?
Such guessing, not-knowing?
Such not-knowing, not-being?
Such not-being, death?
Can death be Virtue?
Virtue is from listening
To a private angel,
An angel overheard
When the little-finger twitches –
The bold little-finger
That refused education:
When the rest went to college
And philosophized on Virtue,
It neither went, nor tried.
Knowing becomes doing
When all we need to know
Is how to check our pendulum
And move the hands around
For a needed golden instant
Of the future or past –
Then start time up again
With a bold little-finger
In Virtue’s easy name.
WHAT WE DID NEXT
What we did next, neither of us remembers….
Still, the key turned, the wide bronze gate creaked open
And there before us in profuse detail
Spread Paradise: its lawns dappled with petals,
Pomegranate trees in quincunx, corn in stocks;
Plantations loud with birds, pools live with fish,
And unborn children blue as bonfire-smoke
Crouching entranced to see the grand serpent
Writhe in and out of long rock-corridors,
Rattling his coils of gold –
Or the jewelled toad from whose immense mouth
Burst out the four great rivers…. To be there
Was always to be there, without grief, always,
Superior to all chance, or change, or death….
What we did next, neither of us remembers.
COMPACT
My love for you, though true, wears the extravagance of centuries;
Your love for me is fragrant, simple and millennial.
Smiling without a word, you watch my extravagances pass;
To check them would be presumptuous and unmaidenly –
As it were using me like an ill-bred schoolboy.
Dear Live-apart, when I sit confused by the active spites
Tormenting me with too close sympathy for fools,
Too dark a rage against hidden plotters of evil,
Too sour a mind, or soused with sodden wool-bales –
I turn my eyes to the light smoke drifting from your fire.
Our settled plan has been: never to make plans –
The future, present and past being already settled
Beyond review or interpretative conjecture
By the first decision of truth that we clasped hands upon:
To conserve a purity of soul each for the other.
SONG: NEW YEAR KISSES
Every morning, every evening,
Kisses for my starving darling:
On her brow for close reflection,
On her eyes for patient watching,
On her ears for watchful listening,
On her palms for careful action,
On her toes for fiery dancing –
Kisses that outgo perfection –
On her nape for secrecy,
On her lips for poetry,
On her bosom bared for me
Kisses more than three times three.
SONG: THE CLOCKS OF TIME
The clocks of time divide us:
You sleep while I wake –
No need to think it monstrous
Though I remain uneasy,
Watchful, albeit drowsy,
Communing over wastes of sea
With you, my other me.
Too strict a concentration,
Each on an absent self,
Distracts our prosecution
Of what this love implies:
Genius, with its complexities
Of working backwards from the answer
To bring a problem near.
But when your image shortens
(My eyes thrown out of focus)
And fades in the far distance –
Your features indistinguishable,
Your gait and form unstable –
Time’s heart revives our closeness
Hand in hand, lip to lip.
GOLD CLOUD
Your gold cloud, towering far above me,
Through which I climb from darkness into sleep
Has the warmth of sun, rain’s morning freshness
And a scent either of wood-smoke or of jasmine;
Nor is the ascent steep.
Our creature, Time, bends readily as willow:
We plan our own births, that at least we know,
Whether in the lovely moment of death
Or when we first meet, here in Paradise,
As now, so years ago.
SONG: BASKET OF BLOSSOM
Jewels here lie heaped for you
Under jasmine, under lilac –
Leave them undisclosed awhile;
If the blossoms be short-lasting
Smile, but with your secret smile.
I have always from the first
Made my vow in honour’s name
Only thus to fetch you jewels,
SONG: WHEREVER WE MAY BE
Wherever we may be
There is mindlessness and mind,
There is lovelessness and love,
There is self, there is unself,
Within and without;
There is plus, there is minus;
There is empty, there is full;
There is God, the busy question
In denial of doubt.
There is mindlessness and mind,
There is deathlessness and death,
There is waking, there is sleeping,
There is false, there is true,
There is going, there is coming,
But upon the stroke of midnight
Wherever we may be,
There am I, there are you.
WHAT IS LOVE?
But what is love? Tell me, dear heart, I beg you.
Is it a reattainment of our centre,
A core of trustful innocence come home to?
Is it, perhaps, a first wild bout of being,
The taking of our own extreme measure
And for a few hours knowing everything?
Or what is love? Is it primeval vision
That stars our course with oracles of danger
And looks to death for timely intervention?
SONG: THE PROMISE
While you were promised to me
But still were not yet given,
There was this to be said:
Though wishes might be wishes,
A promise was a promise –
Like the shadow of a cedar,
Or the moon overhead,
Or the firmness of your fingers,
Or the print of your kisses,
Or your lightness of tread,
With not a doubt between us
Once bats began their circling
Among the palms and cedars
And it was time for bed.
SONG: YESTERDAY ONLY
Not today, not tomorrow,
Yesterday only:
A long-lasting yesterday
Devised by us to swallow
Today with tomorrow.
When was your poem hidden
Underneath my pillow,
When was your rose-bush planted
Underneath my window –
Yesterday only?
Green leaves, red roses,
Blazoned upon snow,
A long-lasting yesterday,
Today with tomorrow,
Always and only.
PART II
SEMI-DETACHED
Her inevitable complaint or accusation
Whatever the Major does or leaves undone,
Though, being a good wife, never before strangers,
Nor, being a good mother, ever before their child…
With no endearments except for cats and kittens
Or an occasional bird rescued from cats…
Well, as semi-detached neighbours, with party-walls
Not altogether sound-proof, we overhear
The rare explosion when he retaliates
In a sudden burst of anger, although perhaps
(We are pretty sure) apologizing later
And getting no forgiveness or reply.
He has his own resources – bees and gardening –
And, we conclude, is on the whole happy.
They never sleep together, as they once did
Five or six years ago, when they first arrived,
Or so we judge from washing on their line –
Those double sheets are now for guests only –
But welcome streams of visitors. How many
Suspect that the show put on by both of them,
Of perfect marital love, is apology
In sincere make-believe, for what still lacks?
If ever she falls ill, which seldom happens,
We know he nurses her indefatigably,
But this she greets, we know, with sour resentment,
Hating to catch herself at a disadvantage,
And crawls groaning downstairs to sink and oven.
If he falls ill she treats it as affront –
Except at the time of that car-accident
When he nearly died, and unmistakable grief
Shone from her eyes for almost a whole fortnight,
But then faded…
He receives regular airmail
In the same handwriting, with Austrian stamps.
Whoever sends it, obviously a woman,
Somehow they take no holidays whatsoever
But are good neighbours, always ready to lend
And seldom borrowing. Our child plays with theirs;
Yet we exchange no visits or confidences.
Only once I penetrated past their hall –
Which was when I fetched him in from the wrecked car
And alone knew who had caused the accident.
IAGO
Iago learned from that old witch, his mother,
How to do double murder
On man and woman fallen deep in love;
Lie first to her, then lie again to him,
Make each mistrustful of the honest other.
Guilt and suspicion wear the same sick face –
Two deaths will follow in a short space.
AGAINST WITCHCRAFT
No smile so innocent or angelic
As when she nestled to his wounded heart,
Where the slow poison worked within
And eggs of insane fever incubated…
Out, witch, out! Here are nine cloves of garlic
That grew repellent to the Moon’s pull;
Here too is every gift you ever gave him,
Wrapped in a silken cloth.
Your four-snake chariot awaits your parting
And here I plant my besom upside down.
TROUBLESOME FAME
To be born famous, as your father’s son,
Is a fate troublesome enough, unless
Like Philip’s Alexander of Macedon
You can out-do him by superb excess
Of greed and profligacy and wantonness.
To become famous as a wonder-child
Brings no less trouble, with whatever art
You toyed precociously, for Fame had smiled
Malevolence at your birth… Only Mozart
Played on, still smiling from his placid heart.
To become famous while a raw young man
And lead Fame by the nose, to a bitter end,
As Caesar’s nephew did, Octavian
Styling himself Augustus, is to pretend
Peace in the torments that such laurels lend.
To become famous in your middle years
For merit not unblessed by accident –
Encountering cat-calls, missiles, jeers and
sneers
From half your uncontrollable parliament –
Is no bad fate, to a good sportsman sent…
But Fame attendant on extreme old age
Falls best. What envious youth cares to compete
With a lean sage hauled painfully upstage,
Bowing, gasping, shuffling his frozen feet –
A ribboned hearse parked plainly down the street?
TOLLING BELL
‘But why so solemn when the bell tolled?’
‘Did you expect me to stand up and caper?’
‘Confess, what are you trying to hide from me?
Honor of death?’
‘That seventeenth-century
Skeletal effigy in the Church crypt?’
‘Or is it fear, perhaps, of a second childhood?
Of incurable sickness? Or of a strange someone
Seated in your own chair at your own table?
Or worse, of that chair gone?’
‘Why saddle me
With your own nightmares?’
‘Fear of the other world?’
‘Be your own age! What world exists but ours?’
‘Distaste for funerals?’
‘Isn’t it easier
To play the unweeping corpse than the pall-bearer?’
‘Why so mysterious?’
‘Why so persistent?’
‘I only asked why you had looked solemn
When the bell tolled.’
‘Angered, not solemn, angered
By all parochially enforced grief.
Death is a private, ungainsayable act.’
‘Privately, then, what does Death mean to you?’
‘Only love’s gentle sigh of consummation,
Which I have little fear of drawing too soon.’
BLANKET CHARGE
This fever doubtless comes in punishment
For crimes discovered by your own conscience:
You lie detained here on a blanket charge
And between blankets lodged.
So many tedious hours of light and dark
To weigh the incriminatory evidence –
With your head somewhat clearer by midday
Than at its midnight worst.
Ignorance of the Law is no defence
In any Court; but can you plead ‘not guilty
Of criminal intent’ without a lawyer
To rise on your behalf?