Exequies, Transfigurations, Mythologies, Autobiographies, Urban Landscapes

EXEQUIES (IX)

ASUMMER GAME

When age and cold have made us lame Our hearts are full of lost green May For cricket is a summer game

The days grow long and boys disdain To think upon that far off day When age and cold have made us lame

In summer we can take a plane To some warm climate where they play For cricket is a summer game

Knowing at last they must refrain Joining our alien display When age and cold have made us lame

The shadows lengthen in the lane The flannels pressed and put away For cricket is a summer game

Another sport! Another’s fame! We’ll strike the stumps at close of play When age and cold have made us lame For cricket is a summer game

EXEQUIES (X) GALATÉE

In this Monody, written on the second anniversary of the invasion of Czechoslovakia, the Author bewails the six French Sailors, unfortunately killed when the submarine Galatée was rammed by the South African submarine, Maria von Reubek, sold by the French only a short time previously. And by occasion foretells the ruin of the South African, the Czechoslovakian, the Greek, and all other unjust and corrupt governments then in their heights, the return of countries to their rightful rule, and expresses the hope that France and the other affluent Powers will cease dealing in weapons of war and take up again their Grand Destiny.

Galatea loved Acis well but the elephants and bears of Polyphemus were tempting to one so young, and when Polyphemus’ enormous eye glittered on the lovers it was too late. The body of Acis, that had become part of Galatea’s, lay crushed beneath the rock. Symoethis mourned. But the tears of Galatea would mingle with the river that Acis was to become. Odysseus already drew near the triumphant Polyphemus. Brontes, Steropes, Acamas, Pyracmon, were all to pass away. And the Cabeiri, Hephaestus’ true heirs, would mine their own land at last.

ENVOI

NEREUS

My daughter. The tide is rising. I am old. Acis flows already to my bosom. Return again to me, swimming in the billows of your lost love. Rush back into my arms.

EXEQUIES (XI)

FOR JOCHEN RINDT

The debris on the Monza track is not where I see him; he is not on the winner’s rostrum, garlanded, drinking champagne: For me his twenty-eight years flash into an instant, and he runs for the waiting helicopter, a race just won, ahead of him the bright, triumphant future.

TRANSFIGURATIONS (VII)

SILENCE

There is a silence, sometimes in art, sometimes in life, that is not of this world: The silence of Pontormo’s Virgin as the angel whispers its unbelievable message; the moment of silence after the flood before the final transcending of Götterdämmerung; the silence after the last chord of Mahler’s ninth before the first tentative clap, the unfinished, releasing arpeggio; the silence in the B minor Mass after the Crucifixus, when Bach holds us in the depth of oblivion, bringing us face to face with death, until the first joyful Et Resurrexit; the terrible silence of Michelangelo’s Last Judgement, the unheard blast of the grave male trumpets, heralding Christ, beyond human hearing.

MYTHOLOGIES (VI)

SILENUS BOUND

My wisdom is great - being born, not from sperm Like a mere mortal, but from the blood of my father’s groin.

Tell me, then, all that you know.

I know

You are worried. That the flute, cut from the reeds Of a lost love, gives you no more comfort. That the pine you dally under gives you no more shade. That the memory of a night, the moon silver On your white fleece as you rutted, gives you no more pleasure Leaves only a bad taste in the mouth.

They said you were wise. You shall not be freed Until I obtain some satisfaction Other than this facile moralising. Drunken lout!

I can only reveal to you the past, and prophesy The future. I may be a drunken lout: Otherwise I should not be bound fast, Telling you the things you would rather not hear. But I speak truly. I have told you of the past. As for the future. There is none. For you Or for me.

Pah!

The Great God Pan is dead. I must die with you. They will think of us In later times, if at all, as figures on vases, In marble; figments of historical imagination.

We are needed no longer. The lovely boys who frolicked At your rites, the nymphs yielding up their maidenhood, The satyrs who caroused and drank with me, Grow tired of their constant indulgence; long for A chaste white environment. A new God Waits to be worshipped.

Usurp Aphrodite. Artemis can never

The new God is both Artemis and Aphrodite. His time is come. Our votaries desert the Phallus. They will follow A God who offers His Flesh and His Blood. For them the highest joy will be death. We will be remembered as a dream of their childhood To be thought of pleasurably at times; mostly Ignored. Release me now. I can do no more.

I cannot let you go. You are tied Forever to my canvas. You grin out at me, Irresponsible, drunken, laughing at the future And at me

Peter Paul Rubens.

MYTHOLOGIES (VII) NARCISSUS DYING

The ribs beneath the flesh show not at all Except when breath is taken; then they line The chest with ripples of mortality. The skeleton is coy under the skin Boxing the lungs and heart. I cannot breathe. The crab and lobster shell is to the point, Being not so swathed in comfortable meat That we would think a soul must live therein.

EXEQUIES (XII)

THE DEATH OF CHARLES DE GAULLE

Anything other than silence Seems an impertinence.

EXEQUIES (XIII) - ARTISTS (ii)

THE DEATH OF YUKIO MISHIMA

I

My heart became earth. In my belly my bowels coiled Like the casts of worms. Natsumi would understand My responsibility:

Now when no rain comes Bringing deep things to the air My sword gives release.

II

In the silence at The far end of the beach I Cross the bridge to a Small wooded island apart. Oriental trees grow there.

A pagoda stands Like porcelain in the sun. I walk through the grass.

AUTOBIOGRAPHIES (VI)

Just as the summer wearies of its breath, The hot wild breath that adolescence brings, There is no spring that does not end in death.

Incipient insentience at birth Wearies the child from its first whimperings, Just as the summer wearies of its breath.

The schoolgirl, laughing, hears amid her mirth The secret blood’s incessant whisperings; There is no spring that does not end in death.

The schoolboy, rigid, feels in the spurting forth Of warm wet semen, potencies declinings, Just as the summer wearies of its breath.

Even the hero, victory in his mouth, Tastes ‘mid its sweetness other bitter things There is no spring that does not end in death.

A graveyard substance creeps up from the earth, Infecting each moment with its questionings: Just as the summer wearies of its breath, Is there no spring that does not end in death?

TRANSFIGURATIONS (VIII)

ST. JOSEPH’S SONG

Now it is past. They are both asleep. All the visitors have left. Awake, I am alone. When she told me I thought she had been unchaste. Even when I understood It was hard to accept. Now, suddenly it is easy. My flesh has fallen asleep. When she languished Virgin on the straw And I held God In my arms, Tiny, in need of protection, I was satisfied To live, imparting My finite knowledge To the Infinite.

AUTOBIOGRAPHIES (VII) THE DOPPLER EFFECT

A quasar pulses red at the plane’s tail; together they move slowly across the night sky.

I am still; the centre. Horizontally the plane’s fixed course unwinds, barring disaster.

We travel together as gravity’s skin bag of air holds us to the earth.

The plane recedes from view. The dull engine hum falls in pitch: a shift towards the red.

I step out into space. The earth is distant as any star, flashing in the blackness.

I cannot judge distances. Injustices advance and recede, turning as slowly as planets.

It is the year’s last day and it is dark. Nothing comes. I move outward like a star.

On each point of light, far, uncounted, a Floristan succumbs to a Pizarro.

There is no trumpet call. All three are slaughtered. Pizarro rules like a secular god.

Nations recede, advance, moving as slowly as injustice. So many. I had not thought life had repressed so many.

Released from jail in their mid-fifties harder than the quick kind shots

of Murat’s cavalry on Príncipe Pío; impossible to paint their slow decline;

or the exile in Cuba of those who limp to death, far from their belovéd Quebec.

Heroic songs are born of tanks in the street, of sudden, bloody wars; not the tedious aftermath,

the grinding of the years, the systematic repression of half a continent, half

a planet, half a star. Space is cold. The lights are distant. Everything is so far.

Impossible to detect any motion. Yet the universe is silently expanding.

Motionless together, we are moving towards something on our capsule of earth,

this insignificant terminal brightness. I gaze into dark; find a point of light.

The earth? A star? Or something else? It does not matter. All that does matter:

its motion relative to mine. Newton hands me his fire-born prism.

Herschel and Ritter lean at my shoulder. My pulse beats faster.

The hum in my ears changes its pitch. Does it rise or fall?

Colours burst from the prism across my face: the Doppler shift

from violet to red? or from red to violet? I cannot tell.

The spectrum blurs. Recession or approach? Does it move, or do I?

The equation, n = n (1 + v over c), should work, but it doesn’t.

The distance of the star is paramount. If too near, or far, or if I, in my haste,

storm it with a charge, or back away too soon, too late, taking up sword

or pen, in artificial fury of the brain too long delayed, then everything would be lost.

It is cold. I close my eyes. Black yields to violet, indigo, blue,

green, yellow, orange, red morning. Overhead the stars are gone.

The planes that cross their horizontal course are black against the sun.

The quasar’s lost, its spectral lines displaced towards the red.

EXEQUIES (XIV)

THE FEAST OF THE CIRCUMCISION

The Jordan crossed, with Joshua they knew The sharp flint’s mutilating womb of pain Having known freedom and desert. Averting Their eyes, the looming stones of Gilgal grew

Phallus-like, tumescent. An icy dew Beaded their bodies. Foreskin gone, obscene, Their gear lay open to the sky, drenched in Non-menstrual blood. This God, cruel and new

To them, man-cruel, wanting their private flesh, Entered their souls like iron: Was the rock Where tender Ishmael’s puberty still cries;

Sanctioned young Shechem’s heavy wounded cock, Made of his weakness sudden, violent death; Carried the Christ Child to be circumcised.

TRANSFIGURATIONS (IX) LIPATTI PLAYING SCHUMANN

1

Gentle, caring Schumann, Affected by everything that happened in the world, Letting it all find an outlet in music Still rejecting the madness, Pencil strapped to his lead hand, Writing, speaking, communicating, affirming The whole of his life in abstract sounds As his mind altered perspective, Flog durch die stillen Lande, Als flöge sie nach Haus.

2

Es war, als hätt’ der Himmel Die Erde still geküßt, It was as if, knowing He would have small use for the gifts of age, He determined to waste no time on inessentials; Needing only a childlike translucency That would not get in the way; Letting his great hands speak For the useless ruined ones; Relying on the clarity of his soul.

3

They were both, perhaps, children Who have never tired, as we tire, Watching the skin of soap, Held intact between circling thumb And forefinger, shimmer, grow With their breath, detach itself And float outward from their dying hands, Perfect, indescribable, unbroken.

TRANSFIGURATIONS (X)

GOLGOTHATRIPTYCH

(I)

CHRIST ON THE CROSS

Woman, why dost thou trouble me? My time is not yet come.

Entering the Temple alone in His eyesight, I could not take you there; adolescent in your hands, I could not take you; where loneliness and hunger made mad the wilderness with promise was I without you; at Siloam where the blind man saw all that sparkling water; e’en to the garden where blood-prophets oozed, must I be alone; to be alone, now: In your eyesight bare as birth, stretched open, mutilated unto death without you: To be with you in sleep; with you in death: With you always, in your blood, unseen.

GOLGOTHATRIPTYCH

(II)

THE OTHER THIEF (ANTI-CHRIST) ON THE CROSS

Woman, why didst thou trouble me into life? Alone have I lived.

You shrivelled at my belly, became scab, scar-tissue, sunk out of sight. Miracles became disasters; prayers ended taut between my hips, spattering the wilderness of promise. Still was I blind; blind as a worm in the warm dark earth. Gethsemane became like a whore: Our blood mingled in an ecstasy of agony on the cross; glorifying my naked flesh. But death was all: Nothing to see there comprehensible, communicable, noteworthy. I returned with bloody hands and feet to watch my dreaming saints bleed death for me.

GOLGOTHATRIPTYCH

(III)

THE GOOD THIEF (BAUDELAIRE) ON THE CROSS

Woman, why do I trouble you? Your soul magnifies the Lord.

Yet do I journey through the cords of earth, smelling of blood and dark, between positive and negative, rising and falling, promising the wilderness my flesh, as the blood drains: And I am blind, seeing water in my eyes. The garden must not pass from me: I will go there without you; feel the hurt of my life pulled out; the blood, the nakedness, the sharp point of death. Then, if all seems meaningless, or if I can divine no meaning, still shall I return, through grey shapes, blood on my pen.

AUTOBIOGRAPHIES (VIII)

GANYMEDE HOROSCOPE

They are sleeping now but woke to see God grip the earth in His claw, like an Eagle: They are sleeping now -

I prayed that I, separated, would be with them always, held by some umbilical gravity; I prayed that I

could enter eternity; float in Magritte moonlight, green Nolde sea; that Ynold’s tearful regret could enter eternity

lighthearted, complete. (The earth sucks the moon through the Praesepe cluster: opposing, are the Crab and Goat lighthearted?) Complete

harmony of form, possible kinetically or on canvas, is more a microcosm of the harmony of form

implicit in earth and moon as testicles: one sterile, eroded; the other circling green and new implicit in earth and moon

a holding and a letting go: travelling between; carrying “affection” to the new green a holding and a letting go.

The final movement tells us “what we are”: the apple in God’s claw predicts the paradise of the final movement.

EXEQUIES (XV)

He wept. His life was a feast where Sesame and Lilies grew. Then

Beauty laughed in his face; spat out despair’s voltage regulator.

Discharged from the institution, his days

followed one another snail-like as he crept to his grave.

TRANSFIGURATIONS (XI)

MAHLER’S FIRST SYMPHONY

The strident tones that tumble from the lips of distant trumpeters, the four trombones standing at the back in the last few bars, express in a harsh age what Mozart achieved with a simple modulation, Bach by a major scale. Nobody deserves the praise or blame for this but time: Mode become key become tone-row become chance. Boulez is a great composer now: The dice once thrown may chance eternity.

AUTOBIOGRAPHIES (IX)

PASADENA

Sunk in his chair he is solid as bronze or marble. The rococo pastoral scene, worked on the antimacassar behind his head, is tasteless, mass-produced; an image of Arcadia duplicated on the other chair and three times on the couch. They are all there in the living room where, at fifteen I, unbuttoned, swung from the door like a monkey; my boy’s chest darkening with adolescent hair. Exhausted on the couch, my head thrown back against the eighteenth-century antimacassar, I look across at my father, his crumpled suit, his hawk-like face, his indescribableness that is soon to pass into history, hardly noticing the crude embroidery that will take the place of his head.

AUTOBIOGRAPHIES (X)

SELF-PORTRAITAT THIRTY-THREE

Conceding the time now past for a tragically

early death, resigned that, at thirty-three,

the blood-drops coughed up on the white pillow,

the purple angel’s crystal tears falling over Grodek,

the final quarrel with God in a tavern brawl,

the death by water out of Livorno with no guitar, Ariel’s

strident emotional angst, are not for me:

of crucifying age, I gladly would spread out my arms,

climb up onto a tree; yet God seems to have let

this cup pass from me: marking time

until my death in some puny war of liberation,

or until the epic promised for my blind old age,

I find I still can emit a drop of crystal

lubrication at the mere mention of sex -

just like an adolescent.

EXEQUIES (XVI)

TERMINAL SUMMER

So red the berries are Growing in secret Darkly hidden Among the greenness

Clustered in blood drops Atop their stalks starkly Overripe soft fleshy Clay worms of sculpture

Always there waiting As the dying August Blossoms and berries Its wild menopause

Under the hedgerows Through criss-cross branches Glinting evilly Red in the blackness

Sprouted nocturnally Night-growths like cancers Blighting the day-time Flesh of eternity.

EXEQUIES (XVII) - ARTISTS (iii)

The hero lay dead. Still almost a boy, his hair, blood-matted, was carelessly blown across his white forehead; even a mother’s fussing care could not have kept it in place. Back at the hotel his bride was inconsolable. Desperately I sought some words of comfort, the futility of all words henceforth accepted, as the decay of his hard bright flesh in death had to be accepted. The words I sought were Rilke’s - from the Elegies yet I could not remember where, and turned the pages as she wept silently. The tenth seemed likely; but no, the line evaded me, as the meaning of his death seemed to evade me. The fourth, the ninth both failed to elicit the longed for passage. I all but lost heart.

Word had arrived, the ferry must depart; was steaming at the jetty with one place left for the heart-broken girl still sitting opposite me in the twilight room, - faded, a daguerreotype seeking some word, some gesture of farewell before her departure for the mainland. They could wait no longer, yet she seemed unwilling to go, seeking my face above the book, her eyes full of dumb sorrow. Suddenly the words were before my eyes, black on the white page; as if I had made them myself, out of her unbearable grief. Of course - the sixth I should have known. She, turning at the door with a gesture both hopeful and despairing, pale in the twilight, unfinished - Edith Harms in water-colour and pencil - and I, book in hand, saying: «Wunderlich nah ist der Held doch den jugendlich Toten.» as if I had found the key to creation;

and she, her face lit as if by sunbeams, rushed back and kissed me lightly on the cheek, in token of thanksgiving for my words, my attempt at comfort: Lighthearted, almost gay, she left me in the quiet darkened room alone, almost as if the Spanish Influenza that had killed her and would kill him three days later was a benediction.

- A DREAM OF EGON SCHIELE -

EXEQUIES (XVIII)

The tracks of our ancestors pass quite close to the glowing air terminal;

In their unseen footprints we tread the path of our own stratification.

Setting out, the sun cast giant megalithic shadows ahead of them;

In the lengthening rock-like totems they witnessed the death of their bodies;

Huddled together coldly cradled in snow they shivered to standing stones:

A warm walled society’s sacrificial victims to its unknown gods.

URBAN LANDSCAPES (IV)

Gatwick airport glows at night like a bee-hive; its bright golden facade promises honey.

In Farringdon Road I laid my head on a concrete pillow my back turned to the world, My mouth full of dirt.

Across the railway track, in the distance, Wren’s dome lifts its head amid encroaching glass conformity.

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth and form rose out of chaos.

Two policeman stand with me in the doorway; their hands on my legs and body are efficient but are not kind.

Driving home to London from Chichester, the approaching trees emerging out of blackness in the undipped headlights, knowing at last what Eliot really meant, my hands seemed to belong to some desperate terminal patient, longed to wrench the wheel from the skillful reasonable hands, to smash the car against the bland kind beckoning trees.

Home to me now is cessation of feeling; to have done with shivering, with despairing, with sheer endlessness; not to need, or want, or desire; only to cease.

There was a day when the sun shone, when the sky was blue: then a wind, carrying clouds, ruffled the empty grass slope to a different colour; in the moving shadows at my feet lay a drowned fledgling, bony and fragile, its feathers still wet with the night’s rain.

Gatwick airport at night grows bright as a bee-hive Tonight fog has shut it down.

EXEQUIES (XIX)

OLYMPISCHETOTEN

Stepping out of the helicopters into the Munich dark, the steel of their weapons was already moving in their bodies, the trembling in their stomachs being cast in smooth bronze. When the first bullets thudded home a marvellous alchemy congealed their blood in the ecstasy of pure action. No longer merely human, they froze into the various postures of violent death: hand-grenade pitched, machine-gun sputtering, standing, fallen, kneeling, prone, each moved into position for the final work of art. Grouped together, the hopeless gestures of eternity became sculptured metal, the smooth limbs bronze under folds of bronze cloth, the first metallic leaves of autumn blowing around them in the dark Munich night.

TRANSFIGURATIONS (XII)

ALITTLE BIRTHDAY CAROL

For my Mother

(The last syllable of each alternate line is accented as in some mediaeval lyrics.)

I sing of a Lady Who brought to me Arms overflowing The bright red berry

In her demeanour I sensed the mystery Of the gift she had given Most lovingly

Clasped in her arms Like a new-born baby Red blood lay scattered In the greenery

All joy and suff’ring Accepted freely Each berry offered its Eternity

Well I remember That lovely Lady Of her gift precious May I be worthy

3 - I - 1972

AUTOBIOGRAPHIES (XI)

IN MY HEARING .....

They sleep soundly tonight: Those whom I love. The fire is lit. The flame, windless, scarcely moves. There is no dread in the angel of death who hovers always outside, just beyond the walls, unseen, unseeable There is no fear in the wind of his wings that is still as the hurricane's eye, or breath that ceases in darkness. Tomorrow his fingers may reach in to us, already perhaps he is drawing them away, or is resting his narrow hand on my shoulder, as if to remind me of something I had almost forgotten.

I HAVE NOT FORGOTTEN.

Nor shall I forget.

But

(whether his eventual separation be an instant’s or eternity’s)

tonight

they sleep soundly: Those whom I love. The fire is lit. The flame, windless, barely breathes.

TRANSFIGURATIONS (XIII)

he would not raise his eyes or lift his head it gave her a surprise his mother said

he would not learn when he was sent to school the teacher said that he was just a fool

he would not stand upon his wedding night his pants around his ankles looked a sight

a helicopter moved across the sky it was the last day of his last July

he stood in Regent’s Park in the bright sun he was alone in spite of everyone

the constable who found him lying there said only the wind was moving his dead hair

pathologists who opened up his chest said they could not determine cause of death

morticians tried to make his face look nice his wife and mother glanced at him just twice

the worms that crawled into his balls to breed swallowed the junks of dead white useless seed

gorged on his flesh between his ribs white bars they carried him piece by piece back to the stars

URBAN LANDSCAPES (V)

The Reverend Albert Winnington Feels in himself unease; The children from the council flats Play about his knees.

A sudden shift in time brings back The village where he grew, The sweet-shop, school, the church and hall, Were everything he knew.

His father and his grandfather Both ordained C. of E., From his first conscious thoughts there seemed But one thing he could be.

A life of rural rhythms, birth and christening, Marriage, death, To know the children as young men, To comfort their last breath.

But not these children playing here, His charges now, his flock, Their faces hard and grimy as The high-rise council block

They come from, faces scarcely known Brush past him, do not turn To smile at him or shrink from him Or even to discern

The look of anguish on his face: His life has come to this. A little girl, her pants pulled down, Squats by a bin to piss.

Where is the simple joy he knew When, eager after school, He found a nest with three smooth eggs, Speckled and eternal.

Where is the grace of village life? Where are the souls to save? These children here will never know His God, from birth to grave.

What is the use? Why carry on? A little boy has found His god; both hands in pockets Slowly, slowly move it around.

In nature, only in nature, There his comfort, his solace lies. Not in these children, concrete-faced, But God, beyond the skies!

The Reverent Albert Winnington Looks reverently up, Where, silhouetted on the roof, Two pigeons coo and fuck.

AUTOBIOGRAPHIES (XII)

DREAM-SONNET

If the dreamer wakes before the dream is finished, Must Arthur Rimbaud crouch by the laburnum tree, Must Egon Schiele wank, with no controlling hand Compelling him to view that awful nakedness.

If the dreamer stirs, erect, the dream half-finished, Must Parliament remain in session, waiting, and Must I leave the Christmas party, reluctantly, To loiter outside appalled by the sudden emptiness.

But if the dreamer dreams the dream-poem finished, My father shall not tarry long in Purgatory, Nor Tony bleed, eternally distressed;

Jesus shall pluck the nails out, step down jauntily, To find in the shattered chaos of His hand The world He created out of a bloody sea.

EXEQUIES (XX)

DEATH OFANAVIATOR II

flying low midway on his last journey london was like a toy-town he had known once · as a child · where he could play unending games · where the streets and shops were all his own

the fields of love and fame stretched out below him the glory of the world could still be his only the tears he felt stinging his eye-balls told him his life had ended up like this

sliding down the silver snake of river as he had done in dice-games as a child he would not throw again nor seek a ladder the downward urge itself had become mild

the things he’d wanted most had never happened he felt · before the obliterating green the scalding liquid · thinking it was petrol not him · boy-scared · waking from a bad dream

i did not mean to write a poem about him he was proud and vain · perhaps not very bright but choosing his death he chose me out to see it flashing an instant on the darker night

URBAN LANDSCAPES (VI)

AN IRISH BUILDING LABOURER FORESEES THE COMPLETION OF THE NATIONALTHEATRE

god its lovely lying here in the sun high in the scaffolding my shirt under my head watching my chest rising and falling turning brown the coiled black hairs frizzled like electric wires

fuck the national theatre fuck their culture i’ll never walk inside the bloody place i do the work i’m paid for as for the rest i take my tea-breaks snooze read the newspaper

they don’t know what it’s like down there below lying up here staring at the blue sky fuck the foreman’s calling coming burt i walk towards him pulling on my t-shirt

cement and glass and bricks is all i know the audience who crowd this bloody place will never think of me hurry up there joe only their culture and their arty plays

but now i know when they applaud each night i’ll still be up here shirtless stretched out alone permanent as bricks or stones lying dozing bronze as a bloody statue in the sun

TRANSFIGURATIONS (XIV)

For my Brother

The eagle spreads his wings, it is September, The cloud-banks threaten, just before disappearing, See how the sun catches his sudden splendour.

A creature of the air who can remember Only the blue of summer dawns unending, The eagle spreads his wings, it is September.

Though earth-bound, time-bound, I can still engender That golden bird, that wing, that flash of wing, How the sunlight catches its sudden splendour:

A prophet bird unwilling to surrender Eternity, still higher skyward flying, The eagle spreads his wings. It is September,

Your birthday and your fortieth September, The years like birds are fluttering and turning, How in the sun they catch a sudden splendour.

Although this poem can not hold back December, I know in eternal sunlight we are dancing, The eagle spreads his wings, it is September, Look! The sun catches a sudden splendour.

5 - IX - 1973

MYTHOLOGIES (VIII)

PROMETHEUS

(BRÂNCUȘI)

Feeling no longer the beak of the dark vulture he rests

His body not now part of him the chains and nails bit into a heap of cold stones

Polished by years of the nights his bronze head answered the sun’s questionings

High in the mountains his gift no more a burden featureless

he sleeps

MYTHOLOGIES (IX)

OEDIPUS’DREAM

No, Oedipus did not gouge out his eyes Because of the plague visited on Thebes. His motivation was left unsaid in The stately Sophoclean rhetoric. When he touched the dead flesh of Jocasta A dream sprang suddenly into his mind; A dream not dreamed since his adolescence But for one time he could not quite recall: Immense red waters, silent, still and bare; Naked, he plunges dolphin-like therein. Above a low red sun catches fire. A solitary bird cries out for night. Under him his hard blind phallus searches The red depth with its bloody sightless eye.

AUTOBIOGRAPHIES (XIII)

“What shall we do with the rest of the day?” knowing the day has got away descending into night; “I could write a sonnet that will hold back time.” knowing the sun has passed the line of the horizon, that midnight is hurrying on up the side of the globe, will still creep towards the omega of sleep as we sit in the fading twilight. It is dark. “The light,” I say, “is dazzling.” as you switch on. But already we are gone.

AUTOBIOGRAPHIES (XIV)

Look, my friend, this suffering never ends: The foetus feels it, swimming in the womb Like some aquatic reptile, lungs hard stone, Its cry a silent wound that never mends.

Listen! The school-boy feels it. Even friends Grow up or die or simply let him down. People depart too soon or stay too long. Life is a desert. Nothing ever ends.

Yet breath ends. Life ends. Even suffering? But in the sleep of death what dreams may come? Is the rest silence? Oh, my friend, the one

Hope that is left us! Shall we, in dying, At long last find, that, even if Divine, Jesus is neither gentle, meek, nor kind?

EXEQUIES (XXI) POMEGRANATES (i)

Miraculous inside the hard red skin a universe of liquid gems wait a crystalline pink jungle safe from the desert, gathering in secret its precious burden an oasis of sweet water drops all occult within the stiff, unpromising gourd. Picture the first man to have tasted one parched, dry, dusty, wary, placing a single seed between his parted lips, feeling the honied sap burst on his palate surely to him then the sweetness trickling down his throat must have seemed like a gift, a benediction. (ii)

In the darkness, strange to me then, a double-headed flame

rose heavenward, twin-voiced, its mouths full of blood.

= Our hearts never beat to their manhood

dreaming of a heroism unattainable

in peaceful death. Schoolboys and friends we trod the path of our strange unexpected martyrdom scarcely glancing over our shoulder at the already alien

winter street.

Daylight lay ahead in the furnace we moved through painlessly. Hard and red as dry pomegranates we split open to reveal the host of pink seeds bursting on the palate like God’s blood.

Hell

and Purgatory behind us

we moved up the familiar hill leaving only

two carcasses of roasted meat - the flesh and offal

of a scant lifetime and a sweet

liquid taste on the lips of those

who had loved us and who remember =

Their voices

sank into silence amid the flame and I moved on

through the lifting darkness towards the

distant

flickering light where Ulysses’ wandering tongue of fire would tell me of his death.

MYTHOLOGIES (X) MAHLER 7 1973 (New Year’s Eve)

Another year is gone. Evil smiles in the moonlight We laugh at the sun. Consciousness now encompasses Rembrandt and Brâncuşi Callas and The Farm We move across the darkened lake Towards an unknown island, peaceful and grim; The ferryman accepts our coins and Gauntly silent, hovers at the prow: But no oar plashes in the water Disturbing the summer’s end With inspiration, drawn God-like From the surrounding gloom.

AUTOBIOGRAPHIES (XV)

one thing only can abort a true poem only one thing

but

if I cry out or scream people will think me mad or worse: God may ignore me

(has already shown signs of it)

His celestial newspaper over breakfast reading

averting His eyes deliberately

from the

tiny naked human being untidy with sin

trying to conjure up desperately

(where

his pen-point meets the page)

words

that may eventually appear in that celestial newspaper

AUTOBIOGRAPHIES (XVI)

Already I am alien to what I was a week ago.

If I am silent it will not leave me.

The street outside is empty. Dead trains rattle by.

The wolves keep out of sight just beyond our vision.

Here is peace and calm. In me, near me, around me.

If I am silent it will not leave me.

You are all with me: Will never leave me.

The wolves keep out of sight just beyond our vision.

They are sleeping upstairs. He is quietly breathing.

If I am silent it will not leave me.

Awake! Movement - speech and laughter. Stillness is death.

Disturbed, a bird sings in the coming night.

The wolves keep out of sight just beyond our vision.

MYTHOLOGIES (XI)

THE DEATH OFACETONE

The junks of flesh torn from his consciousness Were stag-meat, he a stag to his great hounds. Was he a stag? Seeing her nakedness Did branching antlers grow, hooves paw the ground?

Did she, while bathing in the pureness Of her chaste glade, distracted, look around To see those huge eyes, hard with lustfulness, Peer from between leaves? Did she understand

The nature of the anger she felt grow, Watching those sleek brown loins, that rising flesh? Did he feel stirring in his tasselled pouch

Seeds of that dog-death? Blood was in his mouth. Did he, the game in his last instant, know This as the only satisfying chase?

EXEQUIES (XXII) DEATH OFANAVIATOR I

Alone In the middle of the Atlantic, His twenty-five years of memories Kept him alive; The sun on the sea below Became the twinkling lights Of an hundred small towns; His plane another plane, Heavy with air-mail.

The Flying Fool Lucky Lindy

He was a boy In the house at nightfall; The funeral Of his grandfather’s arm A ritual solemn as flying; Or else stretched naked On a rock by the river, Drying in the sun, around him All that sparkling water. The Flying Fool Lucky Lindy

The hero Who landed in Paris, Who fretted for his plane As the crowd carried him Shoulder-high, who strode Like a giant across the earth, meeting The Prince of Wales, smiling, laconic, Was still that boy In his cockpit over the Atlantic. The Flying Fool Lucky Lindy

It saved him, That timeless journey, That isolated moment In the middle of his first fifty years; The whole of his lifetime Contained in those thirty-three hours: When they took his baby, Nothing could console him But that memory of sun on the ocean. The Flying Fool Lucky Lindy

The years, Following like bitter fruit, Turned to ashes in his mouth; The world That he had once held in his hand, Grew larger, more distant, remote; Disgruntled, he grew further into himself, His business and his America: His flesh became heavy and sad. The Flying Fool Lucky Lindy

The cancer, When it came at last, surprised him; He, having felt it grow for forty-two years, Wondered why it had taken so long: Dying, he realised with a pang of joy That he could still fly, High above the Atlantic, alone; ‘The Spirit of St. Louis’ silver, Catching the sun.

The Flying Fool Lucky Lindy

His obituary Appeared in all the newspapers: His burial was a family affair, Isolated from the world As when he bid his mother farewell Without journalists or photographers, Not knowing if he would see her again, Intimate and lonely, as the burial Of his grandfather’s arm had been. The Flying Fool Lucky Lindy

AUTOBIOGRAPHIES (XVII)

SONNET

Lost in the taxi-cab’s relentless light Your suitcase stood beside you on the floor We waited, looking in, holding the door, Holding the moment always in our sight:

Holding your eyes, unnaturally bright, Holding your farewell smile, your wave, much more Than ever runs from pen-tip - then the roar Of the engine as you vanished in the night.

The rain was spitting out of the black sky As if to mock our hope, negate our faith. I did not even need to question why

The heart stops, for a moment, between breath As if to intimate a last goodbye And every parting is a little death.

EXEQUIES (XXIII) - CINEMA (i)

THE SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE

For Victor Erice

It came to her first in the bright, flickering movements on the cinema screen. She sat in the darkness, watching the innocent she had been play with the monster. Back home, the ceaseless activity of the familiar hive could not make her forget. Her family, loving, intimate, seemed as indifferent and uncaring as the bees. She knew that she must seek It out, track It down, face It, alone, unaided. At school she reassembled her fear, gave It eyes, repeated the words of her own death. Perhaps It lay in the water at the bottom of the well, or in the deserted old house. She knew It had been there, saw the mark of Its coming, sensed its invisible presence. She saw It everywhere, in familiar household symbols, in the poisonous mushrooms that her father pointed out. Her elder sister, recognising in her the child she had killed in herself, feigned death. She, deceived and hurt, withdrew deeper into her obsession, let it grow in the dying flames of the bonfire. Waking in the night, she crept silently through the moonlit landscape, willing It to come. It came on the train she had heard approaching, ear pressed to the railway-track. Or rather, she thought It came, and faced It gladly, bringing food and clothing, coming to terms with It at last. Or rather, thinking she had come to terms with It, she relaxed, became vulnerable, unprotected. Smiling at breakfast, her fear overcome, she realised her mistake in the tinkling music of the watch. It could not bleed or die, and yet blood was on the stones and on her fingers. It returned then, nourished by abeyance, gigantic, redoubled in intensity. She did not run away but ran towards It, bending to touch It, closing her eyes, willing It to come. And so It came to her at last, in the night, by the silent river, as It had come at first in the darkened cinema. Approaching stiffly, sitting beside her, reaching out, touching her face.

They found her in the morning and brought her home, back to all the familiar things of her childhood. But she was a stranger there now, in the hive made unfamiliar with who knows what saddened fear. Her sister, frightened and alone, hid from It beneath the friendly warm bedclothes. Her father, exhausted by It, fell asleep, escaping to where It could not reach him. Her mother, lost in her own grim sorrows, watched over the household, a sleepless sentinel. While she, getting up and going to the moonlit window, standing, peering out into the night, Heard It approach and closed her eyes, accepting Its permanence at last,

Stronger than any partisan embrace.

MYTHOLOGIES (XII)

ARIADNE ON NAXOS

And what if the god had not come? If the heavens were empty? Would she Made half-mad by loneliness plunge To her death in the empty sea?

Would she feel in her hand once again The trembling of the red string But see from the labyrinth emerge A victorious bull-headed thing?

The god when he came did he find Her dreaming a creature of foam A chariot horses gone mad?

Did he rescue her knowing she had Not escaped but was always alone On the Naxos of her own mind?

AUTOBIOGRAPHIES (XVIII) TRIPLE SESTINA

After the birth they let the father in. He, waiting in the kitchen, heard her cry And longed to be with her. The midwife came And saw him brooding by the fireplace And said: It’s alright. You’ve a lovely son. His heavy farm-boots sounded in the room.

At first he could not see in the bedroom. The blinds were drawn. The sunlight filtered in Dimly. Then, in the gloom, he saw his son Nestled against the mother, his first cry Stopped by the flow of warm milk. The whole place Looked like the scene to which the Magi came.

And, crossing, he too like a pilgrim came, Hushed by the holy silence of the room, By the miracle of birth. The very place Where, just before Christmas, he had entered in Gently and deeply, hearing his wife cry, Had, by September, blossomed with his son:

The autumn birth, unnoticed, of a son. He next day early to the village came Riding, went to the bar, and heard himself cry: Drinks all round! Feeling his joy at last had room To manifest itself. He could fill in The formal details later: Sex and place

Of birth. By afternoon he found the place And registered the birthday of his son. A clerk was there to help fill the form in. Night had already fallen when he came Riding back homeward, picturing the room, The bed, his wife; hearing the baby’s cry.

The room, the bed, his wife, the baby’s cry Were all as he had left them; the whole place Would always be the same: Entering the room That first time, for the first glimpse of his son, Had fixed itself forever: So he came (A fly caught in that amber moment) in.

The hospital where she was lying-in Was new and sterile. No upsetting cry Could penetrate the walls. Her husband came But she was still unconscious. In this place, So unfamiliar, shall, he thought, my son First see the world. He sat in the waiting room.

At last they called him to the private room. His and the nurse’s footsteps echoed in The empty corridor. His new-born son Would be there in the mother’s arms; his cry Would break the awful silence of the place. The nurse held the door open and he came

Silently to the bedside. With him came A host of old ghosts crowding through the room, Making familiar now the alien place. First came his father, stalking proudly in, Seeing the bedroom, hearing the baby’s cry, Caught in that moment with his new-born son,

Seeing that son, now adult, with his son Forming another amber bead. Next came The rows of forebears, drawn there by the cry Across the centuries. (No sound-proof room Against immortal ears.) They, filing in, Stood in their serried ranks around the place,

Each in the way that, in a different place, They had once stood, seeing a new-born son. Lastly, almost diffidently, came in A strange parade of phantoms. As they came Each seemed the same. And yet? Into the room First crept a school-boy, drawn there by the cry;

Then a young soldier, hearing the last cry Of some dead comrade; then, taking his place, A banker; then a broker; till the room Encompassed his every age. Seeing their son Asleep now, they grew fainter and became One with the father, looked out from within.

We sat in the taxi, were not going in. Then in the dark we heard her muffled cry. We ran through the shattered silence. As we came Into the unlit hall we knew the place Had suddenly grown different. O my son! Our mother stood there in the empty room.

And that was it. She, in the empty room, Was not alone. We sensed it, coming in. She stood there, crying, whispering: My son! My daughter! Holy Mary, hear my cry! Mother of God, please help us. And the place, Our home till then, was strange. And so we came

Into the bedroom, and our childhood came Silently with us into that silent room, Not knowing it would never leave the place But, looking upon the bed, would die therein. Seeing him dead I did not even cry: I am his son, his son, his son, his son

And he is dead forever: Was a son Hushed and respectful when the doctor came And told us what we knew. I did not cry, But stood dry-eyed within my father’s room, Wondering what to do, how to fill in The days, now the world had ended in this place.

Daddy, you were a world. This is no place To end a journey. Once you were a son, Born to a farming father, grew up in A rural Scotland, left for the city, came Through a bloody war, to end up in this room Alone, no father to hear your last cry.

Daddy, I am alone. To you I cry Knowing you cannot hear. I know this place Was once your home, is now an empty room. The universe is empty. If your son Cried like a baby, would you come. I came; My unborn son still struggling within.

Trapped in my loins I hear my forebears cry: Each of us came, thinking this was the place ... You and your son shall die in an empty room.

AUTOBIOGRAPHIES (XIX) THE BALLAD OF THE GOLDEN YOUTH

A golden youth who promised well Set out one day at dawn alone, Seeking a wild romantic world That does not exist.

Now it is over The golden youth sang

Standing on a sunny hill He viewed the unlimited horizon, The prospect already circumscribed By his two cupped hands. Now it is over The golden youth sang

Dreaming in a field alone At nightfall, drowsy eyelids dropped Over endless possibilities Shrunken into one.

Now it is over The golden youth sang

Darkness closing in around The blue flame of his melancholy, His young soul could not comprehend Unimagined blackened wood. Now it is over The golden youth sang

Lost amid young flesh and stars, His semen leapt beyond the bounds Of space, the grass-stalks at his loins Sufficient stimulation.

Now it is over The golden youth sang

Singing his heart out into the wind, Emptying his lungs, not noticing how The wind blew back into his mouth His windy poetic claptrap. Now it is over The golden youth sang

Naked, garden-bound, untried, He lay in the grass, all unaware Of the stealthy, bearded, greying old Codger, who, bending over him, (Now it is over The golden youth sang)

Blindfolds his eyes, binds up his soul, Filches his wild romantic dreams, Clutches at his exhausted loins, Blows out the match, takes up his pen. Now it is over The old codger said

EXEQUIES (XXIV) SCORE FELL

(For David Hill, 15, and Colin Pace, 19.)

The two young men, they are dead, they are dead! They are frozen in the snow! They went for a walk and are dead, and are dead! Let them go! Let them go!

Did they doze off eventually, thinking to wake? Or did they know they would die? Did they feel themselves slip away, feel their hearts break, Staring up at the frozen sky?

Did the men who discovered them feel ‘neath their hand The unwrinkled, unwearied flesh Become cold as marble eternally, and An image they later would cherish?

Did the public who heard of the deaths see them go As two young men dead ere their prime; Or see the two lads huddled close in the snow, Side by side for the very last time?

Did the parents who watched the two bodies brought home See the limbs they had nurtured and loved Smooth in death, icy, cold; bring the snowy death in To the warm hearth to lodge there, unmoved?

No, the two of them came forth to climb up Score Fell; From Barrow they came all alone: And though Colin kept pace with his David, the hill Was too strong, and they died turned to stone.

TRANSFIGURATIONS (XV) MAHLER’S 3rd SYMPHONY

(PROGRAMME NOTES)

Insentience. Unborn creation. And then the Call. The struggle. The struggle against primordial lethargy. The struggle for Being. I

Oh to have been on earth for that first summer. The first summer of creation. How the sun must have shone. How the young world, steaming and fresh, must have glittered and shone in the bright morning air. Oh to have seen the struggle, alive with light, like the wrestling of two boys, naked, in a sun-drenched glade at midday. Oh to have seen it.

Thinking the summer must last forever.

Then the ancient longing for nothingness again. The downward drag into oblivion again.

Permanent

but for

the Call.

II

The flowers are gracefully dancing The meadow is crimson and gold The shadows of clouds are advancing The banners of earth are unfurled

There is only spring and the present There is only colour and light Yesterday was but an instant Tomorrow there shall be no night.

III

The animals know nothing of their death. They gallop and rut and play in the fields of Now. The past and the future are other fields where Other animals gallop and rut and play. They can be nothing but themselves. Then, suddenly, in an instant of silence, The sad, small voice of humanity comes to them Like a sentimental tune blown across the fields, Containing all of the sorrows of the past, All the foreknowledge of an imminent mortality, And they can not but stop and listen As if given, in the distant blowing of the horn, A fugitive glimpse of an evolutionary awareness As yet unknown to them, but felt in the sunlight. They talk quietly among themselves As the music fades, questioning the unanswerable silence, Then hush again, straining to catch The dying melancholy notes Which, once heard, it seems, cannot be lived without. Then the presence of man is gone. The music fades out Completely, and they, being animals, aware only Of the eternal Now, return to their state of Animal forgetfulness. Unaware of their death, They gallop and rut and play in the fields of Now.

IV

Oh Man! Take heed! Listen to the voice of unfathomable Midnight! «I slept. I slept. From unfathomed dreams I have awoken. The world is unfathomable, More unfathomable than the daytime knows. Sorrow is unfathomable, Ecstasy more unfathomable than any sorrows of the heart. Sorrow tells us that we must die. But all ecstasy lives in eternity, Lives in unfathomed, unfathomable eternity.»

The morning bells

Were chiming V

Seemed to say: Then sung the three angels a sweet sweet song, With joy and salvation through Heaven it rang. Exalting, they shouted, they carolled with joy, That Peter at last from his sin was free.

And there the Lord Jesus at table He sat, With His twelve disciples at supper were at. Then spake the Lord Jesus: «Why standest you here, And weep when I look at you? What do you fear?»

«And should I not then weep, my good God, my Lord, I have broken Your commandments, ignored Your word, I have transgressed, now I must weep bitterly. Ah come, spread Your pity and love over me.» «If you have broken my commandments, my Word, Then fall on your knees and pray to your God. Love none but God, forever, always, So you will at last earn the Heavenly joys.» The Heavenly joys, a blessed city of friends, The Heavenly joys, no beginnings or ends, The Heavenly joys at last Peter attains, As all can, through Jesus, such blessedness gain. So the morning bells Chiming Seemed to say bim-bam

bim-bam

bim-bam bim-bam

bim-bam

bim-bam

bim-bam bim-bam

mmm-mmm-mmm-mmmmm

Father, look on these My wounds Let not one creature be lost. VI

So spoke the voice of Love Speaking with the voice of Beethoven’s last great work Its pulse the pulse of the universe. Then, emerging from the timeless sound, A new voice Rising The voice of Faith Of certainty Then the ancient longing for nothingness again. The strange glamour of non-being. And then the Call all over again Father look on these, My wounds ..... Send me Your faith

Insentience calls Primordial lethargy The downward drag of oblivion Constant recurring lure of non-being

A thread of sound Fluting out of the darkness Emerging from unborn creation The thread of Faith NO

Swelling, growing, greater than any ancient agony Telling me

Father, look at these My wounds -

The voice of Faith

Creature Let not one

Of Belief

Be lost.

MYTHOLOGIES (XIII) DER DOPPELGÄNGER

The Ship of State is lost at sea, There are no oars, the sails are furled, There is no Captain on the bridge; We drift, shall we sail off the world.

Below the shadowy water-line A remora is holding fast The tattered flag of our country Droops in defeat atop the mast.

The wind has dropped, the clouded sky Is threatening, but we cannot feel: Like zombies we are galvanised; We hoist the ropes, tie down the wheel.

The Master of the Universe Seems to have put his books away The stars are shrunken on our face To tiny drops of salt sea-spray.

We toil on deck to no avail, Exhausted in our cabins we Lie on the bunks still smelling of The sailors whom we never see:

The sheets are sticky with their sweat, Our spunk is crusting on their thighs, Their pricks erect inside our pants, Our eyelids open on their eyes.

We know that they must take our place On deck, while sleeping fitfully We dream of them at work, until We do not know if they are we:

If it is them that strain and sweat, If bunk-bound we toss, can never rest We feel their breath rasp in our lungs, They feel our hearts beat in their chest.

One day we shall meet. I shall wake At midnight, naked, I shall rise, Creep from the cabin, mount the steps, Climb to the deck, see strange night skies,

See constellations I have known Only in dreams, see naked men Toiling with ropes and sails, and see Amid the moon-drenched bodies one

Whose blood is coursing through my veins, Whose waking dreams disturb my nights, Toiling I straighten up to see The alien, too familiar sight

Approaching, straightening, touching, we Stand chest to chest, feel genitals Brush one another, feel our bellies Breathing as one, amid the sails

And coiling ropes we separate, Like two wings of a butterfly, Imprinted with the same pattern Of breast and navel, nipple, thigh,

But now my blood is on his palms, And now my side is wounded quite, Our ship can never reach the land, Is lost forever in the night.

URBAN LANDSCAPES (VII)

MOTORWAY

The motorway in starry drops of amber beads the urban night

Charters the mental rosary of secular pellucid light.

EXEQUIES (XXV)

EPITAPH FOR NIGEL PRICE

(Sunday 2nd May 1976)

To Nigel Price, the first born and the last to die of the Price sixtuplets.

I

Poor little Nigel Price Lived out his week of life In the pale budding spring Saw death as a greening God rest his soul in Christ

II

Poor little Nigel Price Kept his tenuous hold on life As the others let go Would not give in and so God rest his soul in Christ

III

Poor little Nigel Price Could not resign his life Till his soul had grown A match for our own God rest his soul in Christ

IV

Poor little Nigel Price Had to use up a life In 7 days and 2 hours (Would his fate were ours) God rest his soul in Christ

EXEQUIES (XXVI) - CINEMA (ii)

THROUGHAGLASS DARKLY

God was, she said, like a black spider, living in a crack in the wall. When they came, in the helicopter, to take her away, it was like a scene from a film. The Celestial Editor has, however, removed the sentimental climax: I do not talk to my father; we sit sullen and silent, studiously avoiding each other’s eyes. Shame precludes any intimacies Walking on my hands, my belly bare, my sweater round my chest, seems an unthinkable obscenity. After the final frame, alone, I jerk off, silent, intent; thinking of her warm body as it sucked in the fleshy pink tube that did not seem to belong to me. Will I die, an old man, still remembering myself and my sister alone in that deserted boat? Will she end her days with God still scrambling up her skirt, under her skirt, finding the crack, violating her with spidery intensity? When I washed myself under the garden tap, crouching in the darkness, trying to get her blood off my shirttails, pulling my foreskin back under the cold water, I thought that I saw, in the cracked plaster where the water-pipe enters the wall, a dark shape peer at me for an instant and disappear, scurrying away between the flaking plaster into the impenetrable darkness of its home; A dead ladybird was at my feet, almost an empty shell, sucked of all its vital juices.

Now I will sit in the empty house, with my father and her husband, each of us in his own way, so to speak, jerking off, thinking of her, waiting, not for the glimpse through the crack but for the final visitation: For then we shall meet Him face to face, know Him at last, see Him as He really is: Black and pitiless and deadly.

MYTHOLOGIES (XIV)

THE RETURN OF ODYSSEUS

The guests had departed. Now they were alone. Earlier he had been one of the crowd, Unnoticed; till familiar eyes allowed That sudden recognition of him young.

The guests had departed. All except for one Who had not been a guest at all. The loud Suitors were silenced. Ten years she had vowed Her love for this one man. Now he had come.

She loved him still. The husband she had known Was there, as gentle, in his loving touch. Yet somehow he was different. Circe's magic

Works in subtle ways. Long custom had grown Between them. Suddenly their love was tragic As an ancient play. He had seen too much.

EXEQUIES (XXVII)

And he went down onto the beach, digging between the rocks with a stick, occasionally bending to examine an empty shell; And the tide was rising slowly, slowly rising, growing muffled behind him, cutting off his escape route, eating into the sand; And he did not look around, did not turn, intent on the business at hand, intent on the minute examination of the left-over life of the strewn ebb-tide, Intent on the former homes of the dead molluscs, the husks of extinct sea-creatures, the dried pieces of seaweed, the skeletons of indecipherable fish; And the flood-tide grew loud in his ears, pounding on the beach, frothing over pitted sand, precipitating the hasty withdrawal of long, glistening worms; But the blood pounding in his mind was only the remembrance of the pounding sea, was only a shell held to his ear, carrying him back into the past, into history; And then the boys appeared, playing in the distance, bounding over the beach like dogs at play, barking like dogs in their ecstasy, intense as children at nightfall, playing, waiting to be called by invisible parents; And his eyes followed them, followed the long loops of their sudden runs, followed the long tracks of their prints crossing and recrossing, dissolving on the wet foreshore; And his heart followed them, followed their somersaults, followed their spontaneous adolescent antics, followed the sudden resting of their bodies on the sand; And his mind followed them, followed the sublime spontaneousness of their actions, followed the darting joy of their suddenness, the unfettered freedom of their Now; And the flood-tide pounded on the beach, unnoticed, the narrow pathway of sand all but covered by the rising sea; And still he did not turn, did not see the only artery of escape slowly closing, silted up by the eroding waters; And they did not see it, intent, laughing, free, themselves, as he had been himself and free, before the tide had gone out, before he had been left stranded, with all the debris, alone; And he was not alone now, standing, solemn, watchful, a piece of driftwood in his hand, carving light undecipherable hieroglyphics on the wet sand at his feet; And he was not alone, watching the boys, his mind joined them, wrestled, rolled, played, a formal counterpart to their ragged romping, a droning bass-note to the bubbling figuration of their dance; And the tide rose, pounding. And he knew that the theories he had formulated all his life were as nothing compared to this celestial liberation, this dream on the beach in the early morning; And the tide rose; And he was not alone; And the sound of the pounding waves grew louder in his mind;

And he turned, seeing himself stranded by the incoming tide, seeing the boys still playing, unaware; And he called to them, warning them to get out, calling over the roaring pounding of the waters in his ears; But they did not seem to hear, still intent on their play, still rolling and wrestling, the wet seaweed sticking to their torn, ruffled clothes; And he called again, more urgent, his voice carried away by the rising wind, he called and they could not hear; And he was glad; And then they stopped their play, and came, and stood before him, solemn, silent; And they looked at one another, and they turned their heads, and their eyes met his in the early morning light; And the tide rose Pounding

The tide, receding, leaves behind the debris of a thousand lives The cigarette-butts, paper cups, orange peels, condoms The garbage of a slowly dying planet Together with the husks of extinct sea-creatures, the dried pieces of seaweed, the skeletons of indecipherable fish, the shells of long-dead molluscs And, early on Saturday morning, the 19th of February, 1977, The drowned bodies of two boys: James Tovey and Mark Leighton, both fifteen, who had taken a ferry to the Isle of Wight and, while beachcombing, had been caught by the incoming tide And, stranded on the white sheets of the bed, the former home of the Right Honourable Member of Parliament for Grimsby and Foreign Secretary, Mr. Anthony Crosland Lies, like an empty shell, hollowed of political thought Still sounding faintly of the sea.

TRANSFIGURATIONS (XV)

POLYNEICES UNBURIED

For my Sister

Unburied on the battlefield I lay. The siege was over. Dust was in my mouth. Thebes, that was mine now, tasted of the earth. My victory was bitter as decay.

We played our parts like actors in a play But, with a scene to go, had lost our breath. My mother and my brother cold as death. Only my sister still had lines to say

But would not play her part. She would not weep. She would not scrape the earth around my head. She would not join us in our dreamless sleep.

She would not mourn over her recent dead. But, laughing like a Phoenix in the sun, She touched with flame our hearts. We had begun.

8 - V - 1977