Testament Read online

and milked with me

  And who was named

  Her name and my name, Silence,

  We one and many.

  We women weave still our intricate small spells,

  Those webs of time

  To catch the best of the world's uneasy beauty.

  The thread is hard

  And wonderful wild and delicate

  In our hands.

  There is You, though, with power to ease, always,

  To manipulate

  My each most dedicated tapestry.

  Your day dawns,

  Your shadow on the loom, and

  I can do nothing.

  I can no longer walk in the mind-forest I made

  And reach for her,

  My sister down every avenue waiting.

  Caught in my maze of

  Little grey rags when You with your laser-light

  Oh You with your great gold humming shield before you

  Fend them off in the dark undergrowth

  To cower

  Abject and unprotected, I gone from them.

  Forward to Index

  COME TO MY HILLS

  Come to my hills.

  Come with me in a dream;

  You'll not remember.

  My lonely power extends

  through every singing fibre of the wind.

  See, out of the mist

  swim mountains towards my fingers.

  Out of the shadow of clouds

  come lakes!

  Facing the vastness,

  watch me summon the wind.

  It will blow through your heart and mine

  till my eyes are seeing crystals

  and you are stilled by the springing ice in your blood.

  There is no horizon.

  To the white edge of time

  I have brought you

  to know what I know of the wide power

  that quickens the world.

  Take it, take it

  and keep it. The darkness comes

  softly between us from the forgotten valleys,

  bringing stars.

  There is no light anywhere;

  you will not remember.

  But here in the stillness of night

  you have known the power,

  you have lifted the wheel of heaven

  that lies in my arm;

  you have touched the skin of God,

  and looked at me.

  Long out of your dream,

  you shall look at me so again, one day, in a room;

  pause, sensing the reason ...

  ... and not remember.

  Forward to Index

  GOD-FEARING

  I saw the god in the mist that moved

  And in the ground I heard him.

  I felt his fear along my limbs,

  And in my womb I feared him.

  He showed me where his beauty was

  And where the truth lay sleeping

  Under a blighted tree. I wept,

  And all mankind was weeping.

  I wept for eyes that could not see

  because they sought a reason,

  And hands that murdered God - dead to

  Their terrible blind treason.

  The trees I love! The skies I love!

  I mourn for them and cry,

  For axe and flame are on the tree,

  And wreckage in the sky.

  And limbs are lost in ugliness,

  And passions lurk and fester.

  The night still flowers sweet for man -

  How long since he has blessed her!

  A red moon holds for him no fire,

  The earth shakes him no fear.

  Poor lovely stupid man, what wrath

  Can prove the god is near?

  Must stars claw out your eyes, and trees

  Bear down to bring you to your knees?

  Must grasses shrivel under rain,

  And lightning rot the standing grain,

  And worlds be hammered into dust,

  The victims of incurred disgust?

  My fear went into the mist that moved;

  The god was in my hearing.

  A tremor passed through the earth I loved

  And all mankind was fearing.

  Forward to Index

  ORPHEA

  I am Orphea.

  Creatures come to me.

  I sing, they come,

  I am their healing.

  I am mother of

  All the love-lorn,

  I am a tree

  For every bird.

  I am a rock

  For those who drown,

  I am the house

  Of all the homeless,

  I am the hand

  That feeds the hungry,

  I am the path

  The lost may follow,

  I am a fire

  To warm the lonely.

  But for Orphea

  Who is a haven?

  Who will comfort

  Orphea's hunger?

  The breast of a hill

  So dry and hard?

  Orphea roofless

  Who will shelter?

  The winter trees

  Or a draughty sky?

  Who will sing to her?

  Who loves Orphea?

  Only the sun

  Whose arms are generous,

  Never the moon,

  So cold and contrary.

  Orphea yearns,

  The moon disdains her.

  There is no cure

  For Orphea's sorrow.

  Who will comfort

  The lonely singer?

  Forward to Index

  THE LITTLE GODS LAUGH

  Man, you know, is no longer Man. I've seen

  Unlaboured efforts on the part of God

  To hold him up to ridicule. I wish He would

  Be wrathful - compassionate - something in between ...

  But not so rude.

  He falls away

  In vast dudgeon, whirled in a breath of stars.

  Exasperating little Man! You had your way;

  And may it do you good to appal Him grey

  At the godless genius of motor-cars!

  Abandoned to angels - Mercury and Michael,

  Lucifer who likes us - we carry on abusing

  The beauty we thought we could understand, foolishly choosing

  (Instead of leaping naked) a wonky cycle

  And hat-losing.

  How we amuse

  Our disconcerting audience, and grieve!

  They must be disappointed, but the means they use

  In making up for this are sheer abuse

  Of all a god is able to achieve;

  For why not work some sort of miracle?

  Why not make us perfect - just like that! -,

  Instead of watching all the nonsense, all the tat,

  Too destructive to be comical,

  Sprawl from the Challenger Deep to Ararat?

  Of course, they can.

  But these are not the gods to whom we pray

  If we are sufficiently perceptive as to plan

  Posthumous privilege. Oh, He began

  When we first let Him down to wander away

  And left us to the lesser deities

  Who, I am much afraid, have little mercy

  Now that God has turned His back on us, so tersely

  Non-committal - "That's the way it is.

  So, let them curse me!" …

  Truth-and-Beauty

  Finding failure bitter and more alone,

  Alone with a Mistake among the stars. "Oh shoot me

  Happy with if any perfect one!

  In self-extinction, what an end of duty!

  Magnificent! I am Creation's quick,

  And nothing now is perfect save My being;

  Deleting that, nothing perfection, and therefore (agreeing

  That ultimate pure perfection is what I seek)

  Perfection - Nothing."

  The little gods laugh
.

  They pick up their lightnings, greased in a flash, and hurled

  Through Immortality (unwounded as a loch

  Showered with pine-pins at the brink) to scoff

  Omnipotence stripped of self-rule and runaway world.

  Forward to Index

  RING-PASS-NOT

  No greater darkness is there known

  Than when the Old Malefic One

  Intrudes upon the Over-Sun,

  Between the soul and Heaven's throne.

  Yet every soul on circling Earth

  Is core and crown of radiant Light

  And all are glorious in the Night

  To bring divinity to birth.

  For under Saturn's murmuring ring

  The little will for right or wrong

  May listen for a mightier song

  And join itself to Everything ...

  Caught in a leaden chord of Time,

  If it is silent, patient, still

  The soul will pulse to its Father's Will,

  A twin to Love and Joy sublime.

  Without the ancient Dweller there

  No little Sun with feet of flame

  Could play the holy hero's game

  With ladders of the Reaper's hair.

  Over the wall of dark and death

  We climb (or else die whimpering there)

  - And find it a triumphant stair

  To Lightning and the Holy Breath.

  O Sun of Suns, O Mystery,

  You wait for us beyond the wheel,

  Spinning our reason to conceal

  Your hands upon our history.

  O Mind of Minds, our journey's end,

  Your wisdom set the Ring-Pass-Not

  Where men become the Fools of God

  Or of the self. Here waits our Friend.

  Forward to Index

  PORTA COELI

  1.

  I looked on Jupiter by night

  Too large, a red and dusky light

  Which in a spasm spread the sky

  To blind, engulf and terrify.

  2.

  I stand with others in a room;

  Out of the window all is still.

  Nothing but water meeting sky.

  My Master calls beyond the sill.

  3.

  We gather in a holy place

  To pray. I see my Lady's face

  And figure stream with sparkling light

  And I am lifted to the height

  Of floating incense through Her grace

  Higher than prayer. All who see

  Wonder, and wait for prophecy.

  4.

  We reap the whirlwind. Houses fall.

  Amid the gale, my Lord I call -

  "This is your house, and we are yours!

  Stilled instantly, the storm withdraws.

  5.

  Men sit or stand, await the Word.

  "You must seek out your chosen Lord,

  You are the one to forge the bond

  Till He embraces you beyond.

  Yours are the words, the striving love

  Requited in the realms above."

  Forward to Index

  THE HEALER

  Candles do flare, my friend;

  The dark responds

  To the mind's fingering.

  Even the fear you feel

  Is very real,

  Alone, and walking

  Motionless up a dream of stairs

  Leading to pain and sorrow where she lies

  Too close to her forebears.

  The night may come to your call;

  One flame may form

  A spire, and a woman live.

  If you are wise, however, you will give

  All thanks to God you did not lose yourself.

  Forward to Index

  SHE WHO HAS COME THROUGH

  To be a light to lighten the Gentiles

  He set you in the midst of speaking women -

  Women who sleeping speak,

  Who are waged by war -

  And the glory of His people Israel

  Is your keepsake

  As an old god marches through Faversham

  In his sleep, in his sleep,

  And they turn where his head turns

  From fire and cloud,

  Bespoke women who turn to the old stones -

  Blind pumice, circle of basalt -

  Unable to watch you rise

  In full Sun.

  Forward to Index

  THE SILVER LINING

  “There is a silver lining to each cloud...”

  I heard you whispering the words aloud

  As you lay dying. By the hospice bed


  A cup of sterile water; overhead


  The drip that gave you some relief from pain -


  Until the crisis took your breath again.

  You smiled at me, and looked toward the door;

  The strangest look I’d never seen before.

  A light was in your face and hollowed eyes,

  One faint gasp ... of joy? Or of surprise?

  One frail hand was raised a little, then

  Let fall on the pristine sheet again.

  “Please don’t go!” I took your slender fingers.

  “Nothing is worse than a life that lingers

  Once the call of Paradise has come,”

  You whispered. “Everything I am is numb

  Except my Self, my mind; it longs to fly

  And watch this worn-out woman’s body die.”

  I said, “I shall be with you to the end

  And pray to God that you are right, dear friend.”

  You stared at me at last, your eyes were shining.

  “This is the fleeting cloud with the silver lining,

  The dark nimbus of your misery.

  Be happy! With my death my love is free

  And every grateful thought of you a kiss

  That you will feel; an unimagined bliss,

  An understanding never fully known

  To you before, a truth you will be shown.

  “The point of life is ultimately found

  Only in giving the body to the ground,

  The spirit going home. I leave behind

  The Earth’s great school for the growing mind,

  The whole rich curriculum of life -

  Children, mother, lover, sister, wife,

  Work, worries, friendship, some success...

  Please be happy for my happiness!”

  And in that moment you were gone. I saw

  Nothing rise, or leave ... but where before

  Vividly there was you, only a shape

  Remained, witness to your Great Escape.

  I touched your cooling hand, I felt your brow -

  Nothing here to animate them now.

  Where was the childhood friend so dear to me?

  Surely more than a fragile memory?

  Nurses bustled round the curtained bed.

  Kindly, “You’ll need a cup of tea,” they said.

  “Come back up here in fifteen minutes, then

  You can be quiet with your friend again.”

  I did; I did. And briefly was allowed

  One precious, holy moment; for my cloud

  Was torn apart - the ward, the world was shining

  With everlasting life, the silver lining.

  Forward to Index

  1The Entertainer

  (A Double Acrostic)

  The Entertainer

  His life on the line

  Enters his prison.

  Ecce Houdini ...

  Nail-biting drama

  Tears at his contract;

  End of career?

  Royal theatre ...

  Taking his moment

  Anchored in iron

  In that display case;

  No hope of rescue.

  Exit. The last breath

  Rises triumphant.

  Forward to Index

  GOD KNOWS ABOUT ANEMONES

>   God knows about anemones,

  He knows about the winkle,

  He knows about the night, and why

  The constellations twinkle.

  He knows about the mother moon

  Who lullabies the river

  And rocks the cradle of the deep

  Asleep in sheets of silver.

  He knows where all the starry dust

  In dusky earth is hidden,

  And why the tiny turtle seeks

  The sea unseen, unbidden.

  He knows about volcanoes, and

  The sparrow in the gutter

  He even knows why Frances felt

  The urge to make some butter!

  Forward to Index

  HE MAKETH ME TO LIE DOWN

  IN GREEN PASTURES ...

  Some thing is sheep-dogging me.

  It drives me over the field of my desires

  Crouching patch-eyed at the boundary,

  A swift snarl plugging each gap in the wires.

  Every circle I make toward the outer sky

  After the worn ground, is nipped back

  In a belly-streak, determined I shall die

  Of circumscription; not for any lack

  Of tears for what I might be, me and my brethren -

  We have huddled askance and shot star-like apart

  To confuse and out-flank our enemy; but whether in

  Sheer stupidity or lack of heart

  We fail, and are whipped in by a whistle, who knows.

  We stare silly at the same trough and the same tree

  In the same chewed patch where nothing new grows,

  Consoling ourselves with familiarity.

  We know the way so well. We have, amid usual mayhem,

  Rutted here, hating our poor fellows;

  The hound’s eye rolls reflected in each of them.

  Our only heaven is one clump of willows

  Under an April rainbow - as I mate

  In the dog-watch the unsuspected eye

  Snapping each vain attempt to procreate

  A vision of free hills and a different sky ...

  I would stand outside the fence, you see. I would lean there,

  Once out, not escape. I would not like to strand

  My old company, but show them the fresh air

  And all the patterns vanishing from my hand.

  Forward to Index

  HYMN

  Let there be love for every living form,