Lifescapes Read online

  Come, shelter by me, and

  In warm double darkness

  I'll stroke all your fears away under my hand.

  O love, oh dear love, alone in the gaslight,

  Lonely and longing I sing of you softly.

  Forward to Index

  IT IS UTTERLY FINISHED

  And I can do nothing for you

  But weep your tears,

  Darken your fears,

  And kiss your dry cheek

  For all the terrible years

  Of which you speak.

  I am so weak,

  And you so calm, in grief.

  I cannot reassure you

  Or give relief.

  Our lives are brief

  Enough, and may well end

  Here, at the death of love.

  You may depend

  On your dearest friend

  To bear the weight of your pain;

  Do as you intend.

  Empty your brain

  Of music, drain

  Your body of hope and sorrow;

  The memories that remain

  Will cloud tomorrow,

  And I shall go

  Uneasy to bed again.

  Forward to Index

  JOURNEY TO THE CENTRE OF THE EARTH

  There is no getting through this wall of diamond ice,

  There is no getting through.

  There is no way to the centre of your world;

  There is no way by the bright pole turned towards me.

  A quick sun shakes out spring;

  Unease and the wind close over the snows again.

  Each crevice I want to explore is deep.

  But I am the coward, now, and keep

  My foot on the firm frost; I fear to be lost.

  If my voice had power against the wind

  (That blows me toward the sea) I would sow words

  In the pitiless ice, watch them snap

  Or sink under the snow.

  And in that warmer place I could rest and think

  In the bleak glitter of stars.

  But that is no way.

  The wind blows me seaward

  Away from the seismic crust of musical ice

  (Abandon its siren song)

  Where my compass skips like an idiot

  In the bright sleet from my eyes.

  There is no getting through.

  Hand over hand, into the throat of night

  I would go down,

  But who knows what stricture of rock would crack my veins

  (And a slow weep of blood complete its journey)

  What dank breath exhale me,

  Or tonguing jealous flame leap from below,

  Grappling with my fire?

  It might thaw

  The white rock and splinter the stars;

  While these eyes run resinous into your past

  And stick blind.

  If it were glass

  Between me and the mouth of darkness, a swift blow

  Would end all circumspection.

  I could look through, and touch,

  Without tempting the malice of thin chasms.

  My grief stares back from mirrors a mile deep,

  My lips freeze against the ungiving ground,

  The wind, the wind ...

  Flying forever seaward calls me away

  From the place where tears gel

  And hair is a crisp horizon beyond the face;

  There is no way through.

  I must turn back to the yielding sea,

  Or stay, and stiffen into a sad flag

  Saluting failure, for others to find with sorrow.

  Forward to Index

  THE SILENCE

  Out there a bell rings, over the car park ... Please,

  Where are you going?

  No answer.

  Ring ... ring ...

  The huts listen, deserted.

  What will you do there?

  Ring ... ring ...

  Ringing, ringing,

  no answer.

  The boy with the face of a nun

  sits at the table.

  His eyes sloping. The white alp of his back.

  His even limbs kept never to run.

  He goes with a down-gaze,

  a cool martyrdom.

  Somewhere, a bell rings.

  Time, child, for communion.

  Come out of the walled garden,

  Unlocked;

  there is bread, and wine, and soup, and laughter, and love!

  in the world outside the garden;

  Out there the sun shines -

  - and I!

  The sun and the moon in the afternoon,

  and the danger of dusk in a stumble field,

  and a body like ice-cream.

  And a wind loose in the hair;

  and the creeping together of flame in the straw in prayer,

  In prayer ...

  A star falls,

  the sky falls;

  Time floats far and wide ...

  Now.

  Softly the bells begin to ring; my hands are untied ...

  I speak to you.

  Softly the bells start ringing out of my soul.

  Softly the bells start ringing out of my soul!

  - Too late. I hear a door close in the cloister.

  No answer. Again. Mad God! There is no answer!

  Only the tired sound of the fire dying,

  and the dark peewit's dream crying.

  My words and my despair

  spilt among cold ashes of his hair.

  With the night flapping battily about my head

  I'll dig my half-memories a death-bed.

  The stars float up in my soup ...

  O, years later!

  … Out there a bell rings ...

  In here is a tumble of joy on the floor, in the air,

  in your skyey hair, oh beautiful boy!

  Over the tables!

  … up and down in my soup ...

  Over and over, scatter of roses, flutter

  of hands, of wings, of songs,

  of laughter, and silence; the heart bubbles on -

  the ringing, the silence ... the silence ...

  … Again, the silence.

  Out there a bell rings. No answer. A troop

  of stars drift in my soup.

  Forward to Index

  JANET AND JOE

  1(a young actor deserts his childhood sweetheart)

  Dear God! Not this raw cry of No! ...

  The door shuts out her ugly misery.

  Janet must have her Joe.

  It’s like denying Christ. He walked out,

  Her tears in his hair,

  Utterly cold,

  Undoing her sobbing hands from him,

  While we and the walls listened to screams of Please,

  Joe! Please! Please! out in the hall.

  ... By the fire her wine-cup left, half-drained

  Once tasting of honey.

  We heard the shutting door.

  She fell into the room, a terrible, crazed thing

  Dragging its hurt heart like a dead child,

  Gasping, fighting the sweet party guitars,

  Swaying amid a wilderness of faces;

  Then sank in a corner to mourn among her hair.

  In the kitchen now my eyes spring tears,

  All my blood in prayer;

  Raging, grappling with the ungenerous light,

  Pulling the power down,

  Pleading and swearing -

  Out of the kitchen light

  Into my tears,

  Into my wet hands,

  Into the wine-mess;

  Till it had to come, the crisis, the last cry

  To Him to know

  Janet must have her Joe -

  Janet, silent, dying among her friends,

  Not with us, staring away from the fire, out of her hair

  As whisper by whisper what once was a party

  Ends.

  Wha
t happened, Joe?

  Here’s something of yours...

  You look so pale now; looking grey, Joe.

  Does the stench of a dead rose revolt you?

  Her heart was a rose.

  Her heart was this dead rose, Joe.

  You robbed her of her tiny share of sun

  In case she cast a shadow on your high summer;

  But the heat’s on, Joe. And when in regret you turn,

  All you will find is dust and shrivelled petals.

  Forward to Index

  SONNET

  I am your champion! In the lists of love

  It will be your favour that I wear!

  With fire and pride I will throw down the glove

  For your honour! Dearest, I will dare

  To wrestle with the angels for the key

  Of Heaven if they will not let you in,

  Throw them down to Hell, and I shall be

  Your guardian seraph, O my sovereign.

  I would have you throned where the lark sings

  In the blue room of the sky for love of you.

  I'll milk the breast of the moon to bathe your limbs

  Before you sleep the quiet darkness through,

  And with the impulsive sun, O grant me this! -

  To wake you from your slumber with a kiss.

  Forward to Index

  SUNDANCE

  Give me a rough ring, with flowers round,

  Let the sweetness grow on hard ground.

  Fill the ring with gentle secret songs,

  And draw those to whom my heart belongs.

  He with slow forget-me-nots for eyes

  In which his loose hair like a sunbeam lies.

  Let him come.

  He whose laughter bursts with glorious light

  Upon the sun, and makes holy the night.

  Let him come.

  And he whose lonely daemon is the dark

  Pride and brutal melody of the lark.

  Let him come.

  Ringing them round with gentle secret songs

  I greet those to whom my heart belongs.

  One will bring soft, living things to me

  And fill my eyes with sky and the far sea.

  One will stroke my limbs to trembling gold,

  And give me the hand of God to hold.

  One offers witch-wines to drink deep,

  And act at last the fantasies of sleep.

  Ringed round with gentle secret songs

  I join those to whom my heart belongs.

  To the first I give my golden limbs,

  But he cannot learn my sun-hymns.

  To the second one I speak the charm

  Of darkness - but his light will come to harm.

  And to the third I offer gentle things;

  But he will bruise paws and tender wings.

  So, in the wisdom of my secret songs

  I share with those to whom my heart belongs

  Three-thirds my kingdom.

  One shall have my lands of wind and tree,

  Of thoughts ranging free in the flight of stars.

  One I bless with the sun and the moon in me,

  The tread of angels lightly in golden grass.

  And one must take this struggling rhapsody -

  The night-wings beating behind bars.

  Into my ring drawn and gently bound

  With secret songs, the three healers are found.

  Forward to Index

  HOMES & DELIGHTS

  A WALK TO THE SEA

  The ship sailing above the town affects me

  In a strange way; balanced upon roofs

  It glides, too large, a curiosity

  On the broad flank of a blue hill of sea

  Opposite my hill, and me.

  On the edge of England all perspectives suffer

  This sea-change. The mapped line dissolves

  Under the moon's wash; England’s lover

  Must swear allegiance to many drowned miles

  Or forfeit a whole isle’s

  Sea-fingered wealth back to the covetous sea

  And the undiscovered graves. But chiefly time

  Can twist its meaning amid the uncertainty

  Of a half-land where nothing is still, yet seems

  A thunderous reef of dreams

  Mounted in air - visible on the wind

  To visitors trapped there and becoming time

  As all dawns of the earth and dark-finned

  Lives of things rise from cell to cell

  With the ancient sea-smell.

  People have come, and left part of themselves

  To the mist and breeze, retracing the buried prints

  Unthinking of their old sea-selves

  In a pilgrimage whose human purpose none

  Can fathom. And I am one,

  Standing between the country and the sea,

  Seeking to grasp in my need and love of the place

  Above all things a sense of history,

  And why, with the waters calling, I now stand

  On these last inches of land.

  Forward to Index

  AGAIN THERE

  (Remembering Blenheim)

  O yes a cup of trees

  a bowl of grass

  outdistancing my running

  wide arms

  yes please o again

  With dew in my toes

  and a silver spoon overhead

  Forward to Index

  CERTAIN PARTS OF THE SEA

  Like my fish I like to run in a bright shoal,

  Need to feel the frost of salt on my skin

  From time to time;

  Behind the sky I want a cradle of wet weed

  And great spaces. Only me and the moon

  Is what I like.

  And in my life, all that I touch and like is mine;

  And so my house it is, the open wind,

  And many hands,

  Rocks, and fields of bright hair, and one bird

  Are mine. Even the sun, and certain parts

  Of the sea are mine.

  What I desire and all I have are my dominion:

  These with lovers unknown of windy moon

  And sand I share

  And fish that run in a shoal to know the sea - the far

  Away things that I love and want are still

  Mine, and await me.

  Forward to Index

  HERE WE ARE

  Dear house.

  “Home is here” you said, “if you will wait.”

  And here we are, a year gone; our own gate,

  Some flowers,

  Nine windows,

  The right number of walls, half a roof

  To keep our treasure safe whenever the rough

  Weather blows.

  Outside,

  Beyond our bottom fence the wheat moves

  Like quicksand; a mile away the hooves

  Of the tide

  Race

  From sky to shore; out on the marsh, under

  A wheeling ceiling of birds, rain and thunder

  Embrace

  The flowing

  Dykes, home of the eels and leaping pike.

  And here on the land all the things we like

  Are growing.

  So may

  We, so happy to find this kingdom meant

  For us to people with our love, consent

  To stay.

  Forward to Index

  SHORE, MORNING

  Slim spars, shingle,

  Sea.

  Morning mist, seagulls. A sun-ribbon.

  Me.

  And a ship glides like a thought in the air

  Towards that glittering angel,

  Golden peace.

  Dream, gliding away.

  A dog call;

  Crows in the mist, seaward sliding.

  One mast pricks the sea’s heavy silk,

  Slack weight

  Unrolling into the morning.

  Boats light up with the sun -
>
  Scarlet and yellow hulls, blue and emerald

  Dream of sisters

  Slipping in and out of the sun’s net beyond the world

  Like phantom mackerel,

  Silver scales sent dancing up to the feet

  Of the sleeping town,

  My town,

  My circling arm,

  My sea-reflecting eye -

  Boats, sky,

  No passer-by.

  My morning.

  Forward to Index

  WAITING FOR HIM TO COME HOME

  Darkness.

  Her mouth is dry.

  Every faint sound in the night she hears,

  Every distant whisper of wheels, one man walking

  Miles away on a road without a name.

  Her fingers scramble among the matches

  To find solace in smoke.

  Her throat is dry.

  Darkness.

  Out by the gate

  She stood, bones slowly chilling, for five

  Minutes, or ten, maybe more after the train

  The last train to run, had rumbled away

  Rattling crockery in the kitchen

  And all the lights in the station

  Yard went out.

  Darkness.

  The house is clean,

  All the tiny, careful things that pleased him

  Done, and ready for welcome; small son

  Put to bed with a promise, Dad will come

  And see you later on and kiss you

  Goodnight, wearing his funny

  Policeman’s hat.

  Darkness.

  The friendly flickering

  Chatter of television clicks to silence.

  The cats have fled noiseless into the moonlight

  Among the hedgehogs and the milk-bottles.

  Fires are out, the chicken-house door

  Is jammed hard down

  Against the fox.

  Darkness.

  Her eyes are dry.

  To deaden the ache of fear he taught her reason,

  Hard for a woman, a slow pill to swallow

  When all is done for a tired man to sleep -

  Milk boiled, bed warm -

  This night empty of him.

  Her heart is dry.

  Forward to Index

  CONCERTO IN D

  (Ida Haendel playing Brahms)