God 193
The Goddess 55
Grasses 96
He arrives, and makes deliveries, after 3:00 138
He avoids the momentous rhythm 58
He licks the last chocolate ice cream 130
He ran the course and as he ran he grew 33
Her Pet 173
The Hug 157
I always hope to find you circling here 137
I am too young to grow a beard 94
I danced before the Lord, before the Ark 195
I leave you in your garden 25
I lie and live 162
I thought I was so tough 9
I wake up cold, I who 165
I walk the floor, read, watch a cop-show, drink 173
I was reading Auden – But I thought 186
I’ve had my eye on you 134
In front of me, the palings of a fence 88
In Santa Maria del Popolo 31
In these two separate rooms we sit 133
Incident on a Journey 10
Innocence 33
Interruption 142
Iron Landscapes (and the Statue of Liberty) 104
It could be, Christopher, from your leafed-in house 161
It has turned cold. I have been gathering wood 63
It mounts at sea, a concave wall 92
It was your birthday, we had drunk and dined 157
The J Car 175
Jack Straw sits 107
Jack Straw’s Castle 107
Jesus and his Mother 23
June 133
Lament 167
Last Days at Teddington 106
The Last Man 58
Last year I used to ride the j church Line 175
Lerici 8
The Man with Night Sweats 165
Memoirs of the World 63
Misanthropos 58
The Missing 177
Modes of Pleasure 35
Moly 86
Much later, in Jerusalem 195
My Mother’s Pride 183
My only son, more God’s than mine 23
My Sad Captains 43
Nasturtium 164
New face, strange face, for my unrest 35
Night Taxi 151
Nightmare of beasthood, snorting, how to wake 86
No trellises, no vines 104
Nobody home. Long threads of sunlight slant 80
Now as I watch the progress of the plague 177
The Old Woman 51
On the Move 15
One by one they appear in 43
One night I reached a cave: I slept, my head 10
Open city 151
Pierce Street 80
Reciting Adrienne Rich on Cole and Haight 158
Rites of Passage 85
San Francisco Streets 134
She dramatized herself 183
Shelley was drowned near here. Arms at his side 8
The Silver Age 20
Skateboard 160
Some things, by their affinity light’s token 98
Something approaches, about 51
Something is taking place 85
Spread beneath me it lies – lean upland 40
The Stealer 162
Street Song 94
Sunlight 98
Talbot Road 144
Tamer and Hawk 9
Terminal 172
The blue jay scuffling in the bushes follows 15
The causes are in Time; only their issue 22
The eight years difference in age seems now 172
The hands explore tentatively 42
The heroes paused upon the plain 36
The huge wound in my head began to heal 5
The present is a secure place to inhabit 73
The Schmidts obeyed, and marched on Poland 70
The snail pushes through a green 41
The sniff of the real, that’s 121
The traveler struggles through a wood. He is lost 190
The upper slopes are busy with the cricket 71
The windows wide through day and night 106
They lean against the cooling car, backs pressed 97
Though ready in my chair I do not write 142
Three 90
Through woods, Mme Une Telle, a trifle ill 18
To Donald Davie in Heaven 186
To Isherwood Dying 161
To Yvor Winters, 1955 25
Touch 56
Tow Head on his skateboard 160
Transients and Residents 137
Two minutes long it pitches through some bar 21
Vox Humana 27
Vulnerable because 188
Waiting for when the sun an hour or less 31
What made the place a landscape of despair 38
When eyeless fish meet her on 55
When in his twenties a poetry’s full strength 181
A Wood near Athens 190
The Wound 5
Yoko 123
You are already 56
Your cup of instant coffee by the bed 140
About the Author
Thom Gunn (1929–2004) published his first book of poems, Fighting Terms (1954), while he was still an undergraduate at Cambridge. That same year, he moved to California and stayed there for the rest of his life. He published nine books of poetry, including The Man with Night Sweats, which won the Forward Prize for Poetry in 1992, and Boss Cupid (2000). Gunn also published a Collected Poems (1994) and two collections of essays, The Occasions of Poetry (1982) and Shelf Life (1993). He was awarded many major prizes and fellowships from the Arts Council of Great Britain, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the MacArthur Foundation.
Clive Wilmer is the author of eight books of poetry, including New and Collected Poems (2012) and Urban Pastorals (2014). He has written extensively on Thom Gunn’s poetry and edited his first collection of essays, The Occasions of Poetry (1982). He is Emeritus Fellow in English at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge.
By the Same Author
FIGHTING TERMS
THE SENSE OF MOVEMENT
MY SAD CAPTAINS
POSITIVES
TOUCH
MOLY
JACK STRAW’S CASTLE
SELECTED POEMS 1950–1975
THE PASSAGES OF JOY
THE MAN WITH NIGHT SWEATS
COLLECTED POEMS
BOSS CUPID
essays
THE OCCASIONS OF POETRY
SHELF LIFE
Copyright
First published in 2017
by Faber & Faber Ltd
Bloomsbury House
74–77 Great Russell Street
London WC1B 3DA
This ebook edition first published in 2017
All rights reserved
© Thom Gunn 1954, 1957, 1961, 1965, 1967, 1971, 1976, 1982, 1992, 2000
Selection, Introduction and Notes © Clive Wilmer 2017
The right of Thom Gunn to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
The right of Clive Wilmer to be identified as editor of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly
ISBN 978–0–571–33006–5