And me below, sharpening my quill again.
This body is now yours; therefore I own it.
Your body is now mine; therefore you own it.
As for our single heart, let it stay ours
Since neither may disown it
While still it flowers in the same dream of flowers.
THE CRAB-TREE
Because of love’s infallibility,
Because of love’s insistence –
And none can call us liars –
Spring heaps your lap with summer buds and flowers
And lights my mountain peaks with Beltane fires.
The sea spreads far below; its blue whale’s-back
Forcing no limit on us;
We watch the boats go by
Beyond rain-laden ranks of olive trees
And, rising, sail in convoy through clear sky.
Never, yet always. Having at last perfected
Utter togetherness
We meet nightly in dream
Where no voice interrupts our confidences
Under the crab-tree by the pebbled stream.
THREE LOCKED HOOPS
Yourself, myself and our togetherness
Lock like three hoops, exempt from time and space.
Let preachers preach of sovereign trinities,
Yet can such ancient parallels concern us
Unless they too spelt He and She and Oneness?
CLIFF AND WAVE
Since first you drew my irresistible wave
To break in foam on your immovable cliff,
We occupy the same station of being –
Not as in wedlock harboured close together,
But beyond reason, co-identical.
Now when our bodies hazard an encounter,
They dread to engage the fury of their senses,
And only in the brief dismay of parting
Will your cliff shiver or my wave falter.
PART II
THOSE BLIND FROM BIRTH
Those blind from birth ignore the false perspective
Of those who see. Their inward-gazing eyes
Broaden or narrow no right-angle;
Nor does a far-off mansion fade for them
To match-box size.
Those blind from birth live by their four sound senses.
Only a fool disguises voice and face
When visiting the blind. Smell, tread and hand-clasp
Announce just why, and in what mood, he visits
That all-observant place.
FOOLS
There is no fool like an old fool,
Yet fools of middling age
Can seldom teach themselves to reach
True folly’s final stage.
Their course of love mounts not above
Some five-and-forty years,
Though God gave men threescore and ten
To scald with foolish tears.
THE GATEWAY
After three years of constant courtship
Each owes the other more than can be paid
Short of a single bankruptcy.
Both falter
At the gateway of the garden; each advances
One foot across it, hating to forgo
The pangs of womanhood and manhood;
Both turn about, breathing love’s honest name,
Too strictly tied by bonds of miracle
And lasting magic to be easily lured
Into acceptance of concubinage:
Its deep defraudment of their regal selves.
ADVICE FROM A MOTHER
Be advised by me, darling:
If you hope to keep my love,
Do not marry that man!
I cannot be mistaken:
There is murder on his conscience
And fear in his heart.
I knew his grandparents:
The stock is good enough,
Clear of criminal taint.
And I find no vice in him,
Only a broken spirit
Which the years cannot heal;
And gather that, when younger,
He volunteered for service
With a secret police;
That one day he had orders
From a number and a letter
Which had to be obeyed,
And still cannot confess,
In fear for his own life,
Nor make reparation.
The dead in their bunkers
Call to him every night:
‘Come breakfast with us!’
No gentleness, no love,
Can cure a broken spirit;
I forbid you to try.
A REDUCED SENTENCE
They were confused at first, being well warned
That the Governor forbade, by a strict rule,
All conversation between long-term prisoners –
Except cell-mates (who were his own choice);
Also, in that mixed prison, the two sexes
Might catch no glimpse whatever of each other
Even at fire-drill, even at Church Service.
Yet soon – a most unusual case – this pair
Defied the spirit, although not the letter,
Of his harsh rules, using the fourth dimension
For passage through stone walls and cast-iron doors
As coolly as one strolls across Hyde Park:
Bringing each other presents, kisses, news.
By good behaviour they reduced their sentence
From life to a few years, then out they went
Through three-dimensional gates, gently embraced…
And walked away together, arm in arm….
But, home at last, halted abashed and shaking
Where the stairs mounted to a double bed.
THE GENTLEMAN
That he knows more of love than you, by far,
And suffers more, has long been his illusion.
His faults, he hopes, are few– maybe they are
With a life barred against common confusion;
But that he knows far less and suffers less,
Protected by his age, his reputation,
His gentlemanly sanctimoniousness,
Has blinded him to the dumb grief that lies
Warring with love of love in your young eyes.
COMPLAINT AND REPLY
I
After our death, when scholars try
To arrange our letters in due sequence,
No one will envy them their task,
You sign your name so lovingly
So sweetly and so neatly
That all must be confounded by
Your curious reluctance,
Throughout this correspondence,
To answer anything I ask
Though phrased with perfect prudence…
Why do you wear so blank a mask,
Why always baulk at a reply
Both in and out of sequence,
Yet sign your name so lovingly,
So sweetly and so neatly?
II
Oh, the dark future! I confess
Compassion for your scholars – yes.
Not being myself incorrigible,
Trying most gallantly, indeed,
To answer what I cannot read,
With half your words illegible
Or, at least, any scholar’s guess.
SONG: RECONCILIATION
The storm is done, the sun shines out,
The blackbird calls again
With bushes, trees and long hedgerows
Still twinkling bright with rain.
Sweet, since you now can trust your heart
As surely as I can,
Be still the sole woman I love
With me for your sole man.
For though we hurt each other once
In youthful blindness, yet
A man must learn how to forgive
What women soon forget.
KNOBS AND LEVERS
Before God died, sh
ot while running away,
He left mankind His massive hoards of gold:
Which the Devil presently appropriated
With the approval of all major trusts
As credit for inhumanizable
Master-machines and adequate spare-parts.
The Green-Sailed Vessel
Men, born no longer in God’s holy image,
Were graded as ancillary knobs or levers
With no Law to revere nor faith to cherish.
‘You are free, Citizens,’ old Satan crowed;
And all felicitated one another
As quit of patriarchal interference.
This page turns slowly: its last paragraph
Hints at a full-scale break-down implemented
By famine and disease. Nevertheless
The book itself runs on for five more chapters.
God died; clearly the Devil must have followed.
But was there not a Goddess too, God’s mother?
THE VIRUS
We can do little for these living dead
Unless to help them bury one another
By an escalation of intense noise
And the logic of computers.
They are, we recognize, past praying for –
Only among the moribund or dying
Is treatment practical.
Faithfully we experiment, assuming
That death is a still undetected virus
And most contagious where
Men eat, smoke, drink and sleep money:
Its monstrous and unconscionable source.
DRUID LOVE
No Druid can control a woman’s longing
Even while dismally foreboding
Death for her lover, anguish for herself
Because of bribes accepted, pledges broken,
Breaches hidden.
More than this, the Druid
May use no comminatory incantations
Against either the woman or her lover,
Nor ask what punishment she herself elects.
But if the woman be herself a Druid?
The case worsens: he must flee the land.
Hers is a violence unassessable
Save by herself – ultimate proof and fury
Of magic power, dispelling all restraint
That princely laws impose on those who love.
PROBLEMS OF GENDER
Circling the Sun, at a respectful distance,
Earth remains warmed, not roasted; but the Moon
Circling the Earth, at a disdainful distance,
Will drive men lunatic (should they defy her)
With seeds of wintry love, not sown for spite.
Mankind, so far, continues undecided
On the Sun’s gender – grammars disagree –
As on the Moon’s. Should Moon be god, or goddess:
Drawing the tide, shepherding flocks of stars
That never show themselves by broad daylight?
Thus curious problems of propriety
Challenge all ardent lovers of each sex:
Which circles which at a respectful distance,
Or which, instead, at a disdainful distance?
And who controls the regal powers of night?
CONFESS, MARPESSA
Confess, Marpessa, who is your new lover?
Could he be, perhaps, that skilful rough-sea diver
Plunging deep in the waves, curving far under
Yet surfacing at last with controlled breath?
Confess, Marpessa, who is your new lover?
Is he some ghoul, with naked greed of plunder
Urging his steed across the gulf of death,
A brood of dragons tangled close beneath?
Or could he be the fabulous Salamander,
Courting you with soft flame and gentle ember?
Confess, Marpessa, who is your new lover?
JUS PR1MAE NOCTIS
Love is a game for only two to play at,
Nor could she banish him from her soft bed
Even on her bridal night, jus primae noctis
Being irreversibly his. He took the wall-side
Long ago granted him. Her first-born son
Would claim his name, likeness and character.
Nor did we ask her why. The case was clear:
Even though that lover had been nine years dead
She could not banish him from her soft bed.
WORK DRAFTS
I am working at a poem, pray excuse me,
Which may take twenty drafts or more to write
Before tomorrow night,
But since no poem should be classed with prose,
I must not call it ‘work’, God knows –
Again, excuse me!
My poem (or non-poem) will come out
In the New Statesman first, no doubt,
And in hard covers gradually become
A handsome source of supplementary income,
Selected for Great Poems– watch the lists–
And by all subsequent anthologists.
Poems are not, we know, composed for money
And yet my work (or play)-drafts carefully
Hatched and cross-hatched by puzzling layers of ink
Are not the detritus that you might think:
They fetch from ten to fifty bucks apiece
In sale to Old Gold College Library
Where swans, however black, are never geese –
Excuse me and excuse me, pray excuse me!
From Poems 1970-1972
(1972)
HER BEAUTY
Let me put on record for posterity
The uniqueness of her beauty:
Her black eyes fixed unblinking on my own,
Cascading hair, high breasts, firm nose,
Soft mouth and dancer’s toes.
Which is, I grant, cautious concealment
Of a new Muse by the Immortals sent
For me to honour worthily–
Her eyes brimming with tears of more than love,
Her lips gentle, moving secretly–
And she is also the dark hidden bride
Whose beauty I invoke for lost sleep:
To last the whole night through without dreaming–
And summon her to grant me sleep again.
ALWAYS
Slowly stroking your fingers where they lie,
Slowly parting your hair to kiss your brow –
For this will last for always (as you sigh),
Whatever follows now.
Always and always – who dares disagree
That certainty hangs upon certainty?
Yet who ever encountered anywhere
So unendurably circumstanced a pair
Clasped heart to heart under a blossoming tree
With such untamable magic of despair,
Such childlike certainty?
DESERT FRINGE
When a live flower, a single name of names,
Thrusts with firm roots into your secret heart
Let it continue ineradicably
To scent the breeze not only on her name-day
But on your own: a hedge of roses fringing
Absolute desert strewn with ancient flints
And broken shards and shells of ostrich eggs –
Where no water is found, but only sand,
And yet one day, we swear, recoverable.
THE TITLE OF POET
Poets are guardians
Of a shadowy island
With granges and forests
Warmed by the Moon.
Come back, child, come back!
You have been far away,
Housed among phantoms,
Reserving silence.
Whoever loves a poet
Continues whole-hearted,
Her other loves or loyalties
Distinct and clear.
She is young, he is old
And endures for
her sake
Such fears of unease
As distance provokes.
Yet how can he warn her
What natural disasters
Will plague one who dares
To neglect her poet?…
For the title of poet
Comes only with death.
DEPTH OF LOVE
Since depth of love is never gauged
By proof of appetites assuaged,
Nor dare you set your body free
To take its passionate toll of me –
And with good reason –
What now remains for me to do
In proof of perfect love for you
But as I am continue,
The ecstatic bonds of monk or nun
Made odious by comparison?
BREAKFAST TABLE
Breakfast peremptorily closes
The reign of Night, her dream extravagances
Recalled for laughter only.
Yet here we sit at our own table,
Brooding apart on spells of midnight love
Long irreversible:
Spells that have locked our hearts together,
Never to falter, never again to stray
Into the fierce dichotomy of Day;
Night has a gentler laughter.
THE HALF-FINISHED LETTER
One day when I am written off as dead –
My works widely collected, rarely read
Unless as Literature (examiners
Asking each student which one he prefers
And how to classify it), my grey head
Slumped on the work-desk – they will find your name
On a half-finished letter, still the same
And in my characteristic characters:
That’s one thing will have obdurately lasted.
THE HAZEL GROVE
To be well loved,
Is it not to dare all,
Is it not to do all,
Is it not to know all?
To be deep in love?
A tall red sally
Had stood for seventy
Years by the pool
(And that was plenty)
Before I could shape
My harp from her poll.
Now seven hundred
Years will be numbered
In our hazel grove
Before this vibrant