Care is our reading of that glow
Which to repay is wise:
Who will not yet his distance know
For his own folly fries.
IN THE LION HOUSE
That chance what traveller would not bless
In midday glare to see
Lion and tawny lioness
At lust beneath a tree?
Here, superannuated bones
Of leathery bull or horse,
An ailing panther’s muffled moans
And Monday’s dismal course –
Who would not turn his head aside
From this connubial show
Of Felis Leo and his bride,
Half-hearted, smug and slow?
AN APPEAL
Though I may seem a fool with money, Lord,
To spend and lend more than I can afford,
Why should my creditors and debtors scoff
When tearfully I urge them to pair off,
Yet booze together at one bar; and why
Should all sport newer coats and hats than I?
A GHOST FROM ARAKAN
He was not killed. The dream surprise
Sets tears of joy pricking your eyes.
So cheated, you awake:
A castigation to accept
After twelve years in which you’ve kept
Dry-eyed, for honour’s sake.
His ghost, be sure, is watching here
To count each liberated tear
And smile a crooked smile:
Still proud, still only twenty-four,
Stranded in his green jungle-war
That’s lasted all this while.
1960s–1970s
ROBIN AND MARIAN
He has one bowstring, and from the quiver takes
An only shaft. Should Robin miss his aim
He cannot care whether that bowstring breaks,
Being then undone and Sherwood put to shame.
Smile, Marian, smile: resolve all doubt,
Speed Robin’s goosequill to the clout.
NEVER YET
For History’s disagreeable sake
I could review the year and make
A long list of your cruelties
As they appear in the world’s eyes
(And even, maybe, in your own),
Until it shamed me to have grown,
By culling so much strength therefrom,
The sagest fool in Christendom.
But what would the world think if I
Declared your love for me a lie,
Courting renown in my old age
As Christendom’s least foolish sage?
Or if in anger, close to hate,
Your truth you dared repudiate –
A truth long fastened with a fine
Unbreakable red thread of mine –
And called what seemed a final curse
Upon the tottering universe?
Nothing can change us; you know this.
The never-yet of our first kiss
Prognosticated such intense
Perfection of coincidence.
TANKA
Apricot petals on the dark pool fallen
Tassel both flanks of a broken cane:
Our Poet Emperor himself extols them
In five brief lines confounding
All foolish commentary.
HOUSE ON FIRE
The crowd’s heart is in the right place:
Everyone secretly backs a fire
Against massed murderous jets of water
Trained on a burning house by the city’s hoses –
While he still swears it cannot spread to his.
THE LILAC FROCK
How I saw her last, let me tell you. I heard screams
In a dream, four times repeated. It was Grimaut Castle.
She wore a lilac frock, her diamond ring,
Gold beads and the dove brooch.
‘Escape!’ she whispered.
‘Emilio’s mad again.’
He came from behind her
Flourishing a sharp Mexican machete.
Nonchalantly, I turned my back on him
And asked her: ‘Could a young witch, taking the veil,
Count on the Mother Superior’s connivance
If she kept a toad-familiar in her cell?’
She faltered: ‘Yesterday I tried to join you –
But seeing a mist of sorrow cloud his eyes
How could I desert him? He had a painful boil.
I decided to eat beans with Emilio
Rather than suffer happiness with you…
So keep my paint box and my paint brushes,
I shall never have occasion to use them now:
Women born under Cancer lead hard lives.’
Sun blotted out sun, dogs howled, and a silver coffin
Went sailing past over the woods and hedges
With a dead girl inside. The man who saw it
Pointed in which direction the coffin flew,
Should I ever be drawn to pilgrimage.
DEPARTURE
With a hatchet, a clasp-knife and a bag of nails
He walked out boldly to meet the rising sun.
His step was resolute and his hair white.
Granted, death was lurking under that roof
And his funeral planned, down to the last speech.
But why not face it honourably, in comfort?
Neighbours looked glum, grandchildren whimpered.
‘He has no right to leave us,’ everyone said,
‘He belongs here, our most familiar landmark.’
Visitors had flocked from a great distance
To inspect the forge and watch him tirelessly
Beating red-hot iron on his anvil.
It was hoped to keep it up, when he had died,
As a museum, with a small entrance fee,
And the grave, of course, would be refreshed with flowers.
Why did he defy them? And yet his bearing
Suggested no defiance – on the contrary,
He wore an innocent and engaging smile.
‘I have given your own town back to you,’
Said he, ‘though I had not thought myself the thief,
And with no choice but to start work elsewhere.’
NORTH SIDE
On the north side of every tree
Snow clings and moss thrives;
The Sun himself can never see
So much of women’s lives;
But we who in this knowledge steer
Through pathless woods find the way clear.
A-
va Gardner brought me á
One winged angel yesterday
To kneel beside me when I pray
And guide me through the U.S.A. –
With one wing she won’t fly away
Thank you, dearest Ava!
SONG: JOHN TRUELOVE
The surnames from our parents had
Are seldom a close fit:
There’s Matthew Good who’s truly bad,
And Dicky Dull’s a wit.
There’s Colonel Staid who’s far from staid,
There’s glum old Farmer Bright
And Parson Bold who’s much afraid
Of burglars in the night.
So though my name be John Truelove,
Take warning, maidens all,
I shall keep true to none of you
Unless the worst befall.
REQUIREMENTS FOR A POEM†
Terse, Magyar, proud, all on its own,
Competing with itself alone,
Guiltless of greed
And winged by its own need.
THE ATOM
Within each atom lurks a sun,
Which if its host releases,
Opening a foolish mouth for fun,
The world must fly in pieces.
THE CUPID
A cupid with a crooked face
Peered into Laura’s jewel-case:
‘Emerald, diamond, ruby, moonstone,
Jacinth, agate, pearl, cornelian,
Red and black garnet, sapphire, beryl,
Topaz, amethyst and opal,
Pure rock-crystal.’
‘These are hers, Cupid, for instruction
In love’s variety, to have and hold.
No common glass intrudes among them
And all are set in gold.’
‘But if she fails you?’ asks the mannerless cupid.
‘Will she return them? Will she sell them?
Will they be mine when sold?’
Dear God, how stupid can a cupid be,
Asking such mercenary questions of me?
OLIVES OF MARCH
Olives of March are large and blue, but few,
Peering like sapphires from the thick grass,
Yet none has ever known them to take root.
Pallas Athene sent an owl to wrench
A grey-green sprig from the sole Nubian stock:
Grafting it on an ancient oleaster
At her Acropolis, for distribution
Of olive-grafts by the Archimorius
To every city of Greece. Who dares neglect
An olive harvest must incur despair,
Starvation, haplessness and rootlessness.
THE UNDYING WORM
‘The damned in their long drop from Earth to Hell,
Meaning no fewer than ten thousand miles
At headlong speed – Hell may be nowhere
Yet friction of the fall causes rope-burns –
Take only a few hours,’ our verger smiles.
Return by Act of Mercy takes far longer
And though an angel’s kiss is often praised
As balm for penitents, you may be sure
That those red scars will glow again in sullen
Resentment of their cure.
The damned are rendered down eventually
To clinker or a fine white ash. Yet what
Of throats from which no cry of guilt is wrenched?
Can it be there that the worm dieth not
And the fire is not quenched?
SONG: THOUGH TIME CONCEALS MUCH
Though time conceals much,
Though distance alters much,
Neither will ever part me
From you, or you from me,
However far we be.
So let your dreaming body
Naked, proud and lovely –
There is no other such,
So wholesome or so holy –
Accept my dream touch.
One kiss from you will surely
Amend and restore me
To what I still can be –
Though distance alters much,
Though time conceals much.
ALWAYS AND FOR EVER
Come, share this love again
Without question or pain,
Not only for a while
With quick hug and sweet smile
But always and for ever
In unabated fever
Without guess, without guile.
ACROSS THE GULF (1992)
THE SNAPPED ROPE†
When the rope snaps, when the long story’s done
Not for you only but for everyone,
These praises will continue fresh and true
As ever, cruelly though the Goddess tricked you,
And lovers (it may be) will bless you for
Your blindness, grieved that you could praise no more.
THE GOLDSMITHS†
And yet the incommunicable sea
Proves less mysterious to you and me
Than how, through dream, we run together nightly
And hammer out gold cups in a dancing fury
Patterned with birds of prey, with tangled trees,
Lions, acanthus, wild anemones;
And that these cups are master-works is proved
By the deep furrows on our foreheads grooved;
And to sip wine from them is to be drunk
With powers of destiny, this mad world shrunk
To bean or walnut size, its ages flown
To enlarge the love-hour that remains our own.
ADAM IN HELL†
From the pit of Hell a whisper of pure love
Rises through crooked smoking crannies
To the lawns of Paradise.
Adam lies fettered by his basalt pillar:
A lodestone of male honour,
A moral for the damned.
So proud a lover, suffering no woman
To endure the torments that are his:
It was not Eve who sinned but the bright Serpent
Conspiring against man –
Tomorrow she will bruise her enemy’s head
And raise up Adam from the loveless dead.
THE CARDS ARE WILD†
Tell me, how do you see me? Ring the changes
On father, lover, brother, friend and child –
A hand is dealt you, but the cards are wild.
You spoil me with a doubled span of years;
Having already overspent my due
Should I, or should I not, be grateful to you?
This cruel world grows crueller day by day,
And you more silent, more withdrawn and wise.
I watch its torments mirrored in your eyes –
Sweetheart, what must I say?
With you still here I dare not move away.
UNLESS†
Ink, pen, a random sheet of writing paper,
A falling inescapably in love
With you who long since fell in love with me…
But where is the poem, where my moving hand?
And if I am flung full length on a bed of thorns
How can I hope to retrieve lost memory,
Lost pride and lost motion,
Unless, defying the curse long laid upon me,
You prove the unmatchable courage of your kind?
THE POISED PENT†
Love, to be sure, endures for ever,
Scorning the hour
That ends untimely in a hurried kiss
And a breach of power.
Must I then sit here still, my pen poised
As though in disgrace,
Plotting to draw strength from the single grief
That we still dare face?
Or must I set my song of gratitude
In a minor key,
To confess that you and I compound a truth
That is yet to be?
[FRAGMENT]†
A smoothly rolling distant sea,
A broad well-laden olive tree,
A summer sky, gulls wheeling by
With raucous noise, and here sit I
For seven years, not yet set free.
[HOW IS IT A MAN DIES?]†
How is it a man dies
Before his natural death?
He dies from telling lies
To those who trusted him.
He dies from telling lies –
With closed ears and shut eyes.
Or what prolongs men’s lives
Beyond their natural death?
It is their truth survives
Treading remembered streets
Rallying frightened hearts
In hordes of fugitives.
GREEN FLASH†
Watch now for a green flash, for the last moment
When the Sun plunges into sea;
And breathe no wish (most wishes are of weakness)
When green, Love’s own heraldic tincture,
Leads in the mystagogues of Mother Night:
Owls, planets, dark oracular dreams.
Nightfall is not mere failure of daylight.
PEISINOˆ
So too the Siren
Under her newly rounded moon
Metamorphoses naked men
To narwhale or to dolphin:
Fodder for
long Leviathan
Or for his children
Deep in the caves of Ocean.
ACROSS THE GULF†
Beggars had starved at Dives’ door
But Lazarus his friend
Watched him lose hope, belayed a rope
And flung him the loose end,
Sighing: ‘Poor sinner, born to be
Proud, loveless, rich and Sadducee!’
TO HIS TEMPERATE MISTRESS†
You could not hope to love me more,
Nor could I hope to love you less,
Both having often found before
That I was cursed with such excess,
Even the cuckold’s tragic part
Would never satisfy my heart.
FOOT-HOLDER-ROYAL†
As Court foot-holder to the Queen of Fishes
I claim prescriptive right
To press the royal instep when she wishes
And count her toes all night.
Some find me too assiduous in my task.
That is for her to say; they need but ask.
THE PRESSURE GAUGE†
Quoth the King of Poland
To his gipsy Roland:
‘Wretch, go fetch my idle pages –
Ask them where my pressure-gauge is!’
Hurrah, hurrah, hurrah!
‘Sire,’ replied the gipsy,
‘Thou art wondrous tipsy,
In these Polish Middle Ages
No one’s heard of pressure-gauges –’
Hurrah, hurrah, hurrah!
Acknowledgements
The editors wish to thank the following individuals and institutions for enabling us to examine materials, and for permission to quote from them: the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University; the Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection, New York Public Library, Astor, Lennox and Tilden Foundations; the Bodleian Library, Oxford; the Poetry/Rare Books Collection, University Libraries, State University of New York at Buffalo; Ms Lorna Knight, Curator of Manuscripts, and the Carl A. Kroch Library, Cornell University; Mr George Newkey-Burden, and the staff of the Daily Telegraph Library; Mr Michael Meredith, Curator, and the College Library, Eton College; the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin; Ms Lori N. Curtis, Associate Curator of Special Collections, and the McFarlin Library, University of Tulsa, Oklahoma; Ms Shelley Cox, Rare Books Librarian, and the Morris Library, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale; Mr D.M. Bownes, Assistant Curator, Royal Welch Fusiliers Regimental Museum, Caernarvon; the St John’s College Robert Graves Trust, Oxford; the National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh; Mr Christopher G. Fetter, Special Collections Librarian, and the University Library, University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada; Mr William S. Reese, and Mr Terry Halliday, Literary Manager, William Reese Company, New Haven, Connecticut. Special thanks are due to the Curator of the Poetry/Rare Books Collection, SUNY at Buffalo, Professor Robert J. Bertholf, for his aid and encouragement, and to Dr Michael Basinski, Assistant Curator.