Suppose the bird ruffled below your pines
This fine wet shining evening, he sings suppose
Familiarly strange. A note it is that knows
Its variations mean just what they are
Supposed to mean: this one, suppose, the hedge,
That one the compost heap, and this the patch
Your mower cut last spring and made his thatch.
Then each, then each, he sings, and each suppose
Indifferently the same must represent
Its time, its place, some shady happening,
Sunny accomplishment, or just a thing
Unnamed suppose. He seems a clownish bird,
Not sad, not happy that the sun declines
His best inflexion for the voiceless pines,
But sings supposing out what life he knows
Below your pines, the ruffled bird suppose.
Dear X, expatriate,
I write this afternoon
Settled above the Gulf
Right to the sun.
Summer spreadeagles
Seagulls and swimmers,
Clippers, clay cliffs,
Cordage and cutters.
‘Write of yourself’ you say
And I do, am not
Those thoughts you knew me by
But today’s heat,
Tomorrow’s wind,
Sailboat and swimmer;
Am this impermanent
Persistent summer.
A deckchair of words at home
Is what I mean –
Yours to arrange if you can,
But if you fail, not mine.
Under my eaves untiring all the spring day
Two sparrows have worked with stalks the mowers leave
While I have sat regretting your going away.
All day they’ve ferried straw and sticks to weave
A wall against the changing moods of air,
And may have worked into that old design
A thread of cloth you wore, a strand of hair,
Since all who make are passionate for line,
Proportion, strength, and take what’s near, and serves.
All day I’ve sat remembering your face,
And watched the sallow stalks, woven in curves
By a blind process, achieve a natural grace.
The nails of rain are driven, the clouds cross;
The soil that fed is fed by its own loss.
The hill he eyed now closes like an eye
Under the damp grey pupil of the sky.
The life he listened for stops in his ears;
The bone-tree, fallen, sheds the guilt it wears.
This landscape mourns and makes him as he falls
Unfailing, planted in the flesh of hills.
Tom and La Rue
An image in the vice of abstract thought
Hardens: moonscape maybe, or moonlit valley
Where scattered anchor-stones like cattle lie
In granite pastures. An age of ice has caught
The shape of things – column and channel, dry
Arena, foothills lifting into ranges:
Nothing is made, nothing erodes or changes.
Slow stars trail – northward is it? – in the sky.
My steps ring out on their appointed stones.
Absurd the noisy consequence of acts
Where nothing loves, where light or shade exacts
Only its dues – no more.
An image hardens.
Not warm Venusian rain nor the spears of Mars
Will quicken buds among these silent scars.
I choose the close perspective of her face
Between her hands, whose tears most tax my verse.
That mask is some exact account of loss
I guess at only, know by what is worse –
Time and the grass grow long.
Passion she had not guessed and resolution
War in the air around her. In each glass
The nobler disciplines surprise themselves.
Smallest events repeat all things must pass –
Time and the grass grow long.
The city slides away beyond her sill:
Useless to say that there her loss is housed
Synonymous behind a thousand eyes.
What pain has written seems uniquely phrased –
Time and the grass grow long.
Brassbound Fijians blow up the band rotunda!
Look! Paw-paw Cheeks puffs round two hemispheres,
Constable Drum squares up to beat them flat,
And pom! this plot’s the world. What earthy tones!
That marble lady under the palms and fig-trees
Says it’s all Greek to her. Oaks know they’re English.
Flame-beaks just gape. Naturally they’re excited.
‘Small world!’ That’s small talk here (boom! boom!) ‘SMALL WORLD!’
Who turned the phrase? Maybe our foundling fathers.
They blocked out space in beds; they never dreamed
This bland conundrum in their seedling order.
Small so you’ve got to shout! Some subtle bloom
Might work it out if he knew the b flat scale.
Tourists, gulls, the whole lot up from the quays
Screech and take shots. (That’s one in your God’s eye view!)
There’s Dr Treadmeasure (pom!) come to pass
A bandy sentence on our history.
Time’s short. He can’t see Clio for the trees,
For grass, for looking. Can’t hear her for the brass.
Time briefed, space blocked, a world in one puffed round
From pine to palm to (pom!) What a performance!
Let’s hear it in Verse, or see it an acre in Paint.
Boil up the blood, summon the Muse of Conundra,
Cut your talk down to the quick … for all you’re worth …
Hard as you like … till you burst. That’s it! Together,
pom! pom! pom! pom! pom!
High Noon by the clock, the stage strewn with bodies,
Pigeons, marbles. One bright brass blast sets up
Clamour of hands, grey wings, pale faces asking
‘What was it? Did something fall? Will the boards hold?’
Whatever it means, it’s here. Make room! Keep time!
The bent world’s end or just beginning, blares!