First Notebook

Airport Poem: Ethics of Survival

The century roar is a desert carrying

too much away; the plane skids off

with an easy hopeless departure.

The music, that it should

leave, is far down

in the mind

just as if the years were part of the

same sound, prolonged into the latent

action of the heart.

That is more: there

affection will shoot it up

like a crazed pilot. The desert

is a social and undedicated expanse, since

what else there is counts as merest propaganda.

The heart is a changed

petromorph, making

pressure a social

intelligence: essential news

or present fact

over the whole distance back

and further, away.

Or could be thus, as water

is the first social fluency

in any desert: the cistern

comes later and is an inducement of false power.

Which makes the thinning sorrow of flight

the last disjunction, of the heart: that

news is the person, and love

the shape of his compulsion

in the musical phrase,

nearly but not

yet back, into

the remotest

past.

Of which the heart is capable and will journey

over any desert and through the air, making

the turn and stop undreamed of:

love is, always, the

flight back

to where

we are.

A Figure of Mercy, of Speech

On the hilt of fortune: so that he

asks the time and it’s grey, with

almost solemn insistence. Yes it is, so

that perhaps only the smell of resin

holds him to a single

hopefulness. She knows

that, there is an oblique

incitement, between them.

The branches dissolve upwards, into slivers

of the horizon: for each, the fear of this, or too

far into the side. The rift that she loves

to play, as forward, the sound of his breathing kind.

In the light, that each

might, running from both

in reach to the distance

that is unspoken, in the eye

where love is, and the sound of water, euterpe

shall it be called. They will play over

the slip, making the flesh and nails on the

handsome fingers, to the action of the light,

will play the open palm

hoping to keep to it, the fearful

exaction of love: in grey light

and hope in columns, by the river side.

The Stranger, Instantly

The tie only: how I want so much

to allow for it, the wish to know

where, in that face

which is an absent

match, to the spirit.

So that a restless time

prevails; my spine arches

with the wish that’s here

as itself a note a sign

of who they are.

And are, sitting in all the hours

of love I must translate, out

back to the place

where I feel it, as a local thing

and want now

to allow for:

to manage between the hands and hope

of the voice, that’s it, there must be

a voice here also, lent

to but not taken—

since even from the edge the resting

waiting inshore is

travel as knowing, the quick

placement of love as

trust: at the source.

And so here, it is the others I most

take to, like stones

in the mist, in

the voice.

Living in History

Walk by the shore, it is

a cool image, of water

a bearing into certain

distinctions, as

the stretch, out there

the temple of which way

he goes; and cannot shake

the haze, from

a list of small

flames.

He wants

only the patient ebb, as

following the shore: that’s

not honest, but where

his foot prints and

marks his track

in the fact of

the evening

the path where he grabs at

motion, like a moist plant

or the worth, of

hearing the tide come in.

Walk on it, being a line, of rest

and distinction, a hope now lived up

to, a coast in awkward

singular desires

thigh-bone of the

world

On the Anvil

Finely, brush the

sound from your

eyes: it rests

in the hollow

as looking in

the shops at both

reflections, in

the glass

how

to move and the

sun slanting over

the streets: shielded

from the market

in the public

domain, as

taking the pace

of movement

in the hollow

furnished with that

tacit gleam, the

cavernous heart

The Holy City

Come up to it, as you stand there

that the wind is quite warm on the sides

of the face. That it is so, felt

as a matter of practice, or

not to agree. And the span,

to walk over the rough grass—all of this

is that we do, quite within acceptance

and not to press

the warm alarm

but a light

surface, a day

lifted from high

thick roots, upwards.

Where we go is a loved side of the temple,

a place for repose, a concrete path.

There’s no mystic moment involved: just

that we are

is how, each

severally, we’re

carried into

the wind which makes no decision and is

a tide, not taken. I saw it

and love is

when, how &

because we

do: you

could call it Ierusalem or feel it

as you walk, even quite jauntily, over the grass.

How It’s Done

Always who turns is more than

the same, being in desire the pivot

of what he would most want: or

in point of fact, they say,

driving through the

early morning, to go to it.

And this is true, therefore, in such sense

as the light will allow. We take leave

of it, in the prospect of being allowed, on

as the rocks are, the folds

let into the saddle, cut down

to any hope, acquired.

All the rage of the heart reaches this lifted

point, then: a fashion of spirit, a made thing.

For this there is no name but the event,

of its leaving. There is no

lattice, we don’t sit by

the traffic lights bathing

the soul in the links of time. The place

rises, as a point of change. There are

rocks and trees as part of it, none in

forms of evidence. Within

limits this arena is

where each one is allowed

to be: the movement to be found, in the

distance is the sound that I too hope for,

here at the rock point, of the world.

If There Is a Stationmaster at Stamford S.D. Hardly So

A matter of certain

essential oils

volatile

in the prolonged evening

nor would he allow

as the light stemmed

back

boarded up in the face of

that the line ran swiftly

and skimming the

crests only

into the hills of Vietnam

With so little water

the land creates a curved &

muted extension

the whole power is

just that, fantasy of control

the dispersion, in such

level sky

of each pulse the sliding

fade-through of hills

“a noble evasion of privacy”

This is parkland for

watered souls, the final

policeman’s dream

that the quanta of wish

and desire, too, can be marched

off to some goal so distant

where in the hermitage

of our last days the

handcuffs would seem

an entirely proper

abstraction:

the dry and

arid gentleness, to the eye

with its own confidence

in the deep wells

of the spirit

All no more than

a land in drift

curled over and dry, but

buried way under the ice

and as spillway for these

glacial waters the

scented air

runs easily into the

night and while

the public hope is as

always the

darkened ward

the icecap will

never melt

again why

should it

In the Long Run, to be Stranded

Finally it’s trade that the deep changes

work with, so that the lives are heavier,

less to be moved from or blunted. The city

is the language of transfer

to the human account. Here

the phrases shift, the years

are an acquiescence.

This isn’t a wild comment: there’s no

good in the brittle effort, to snap the pace

into some more sudden glitter of light:

hold to this city or the slightly pale

walking, to a set rhythm of

the very slight hopefulness. That

is less than patience, it’s time or more clearly

the sequence of years; a thickening in the words

as the coins themselves wear thin and could

almost balance on the quick

ideal edge. The stirring is so

slight, the talk so stunned, the

city warm in the air, it is a

too steady shift and life as

it’s called is age and the merest impulse,

called the city and the deep

blunting damage of hope.

That’s where it is, now

as the place to be left and the last

change still in return: down there

in the snow, too, the loyal city of man.

The Western Gate

Too far up, into the sky, so that

the hills slip with the wash of

the quick brightness. What could the weather

shift, by those changes of place?

Manganese on the brow;

the rich ore, clouds over

the stars, coming inshore—

all the power of our sentiment, what we

do feel, wanting the inclusion, the shade.

Watch any road as it lies on the

seam of the earth, with that partly

turning & falling metaphysic:

we believe it even despite

the engineers. The power

is the wish to move, to recognise a

concealed flame in the evening

or dawn or whatever. The gleam

is history, desire for a night sky

during the day too, since

the stars circle the hills &

our motives without reproach.

The formal circuit is inclusion. The line runs

inflected but the shapes are blue & shining.

It is the orbit, tides, the fluctual spread,

we shiver with reason and with love:

the hills are omens, & the

weather how long, with

the stars, we can wait.

Or, it rains and the camber of the road

slips into it too—it’s all there, as

the brickwork or hope for advice.

Write a letter, walk across the wet pavement,

the lines are taut with

strain, maybe they’ll

snap soon. The explosion

is for all of us and I dedicate the results

to the fish of the sea and the purity of

language: the truth is sadder but who

would ask me to hope only for that?

Lashed to the Mast

9th Nov 65:

Thus you have everything, at this

moment, that I could ever

command or (the quaint word)

dispose; rising now

in the east or wherever

damn well else

it’s yours but the old

weather must be (must still

be watched, thunder

is a natural phenomenon

the entire sequence

is holy, inviting, no

sympathy: who should dare

let that out, towards

what there is

anyway

love the set, tight, the life

the land lie & fall, between

also the teeth, love the

forgetfulness of man which

is our prime notion of praise

the whole need is a due thing

a light, I say this in

danger aboard our dauncing boat

hope is a stern purpose &

no play save the final lightness

the needful things are a sacral

convergence, the grove on

a hill we know too much of—

this with no name & place

is us / you, I, the whole other

image of man

Fri 13

no one thing

to say, leaving

nothing but

all that smell of

the sea

(private

& the gulls, squawking

in the knowledge

of time, of nothing

at all, here

on the rim.

Viz, the shelf out

as a pillar to fortune

the shoals a

quick draw

or longer, which is

a width to be gauged

by the most

specific &

hopeful

eye

Break It

And again it finishes, as we should

say it’s over, some completeness numbs me

with the final touch

we are sealed, thus

and why it should be so, well, that’s life

not well, you see you see or we

do, we touch that, and

it’s the last time or

thing or some edge. Like cliffs, the de-

parture is overwhelming as a casual

thread, leading into this, that, the

gray darkness.

Call it evening the days

are no shorter but ah how they do

foreclose, that the tide turns and

the wick burns and curls and all

the acrid wavering of language, so full

of convenient turns of extinction. Phrase

falls, we call it an ancient city, as

we look down from

the heights, hugging

the only mountain for many miles.

Blessed, as we leave: that we do, how

we do what there is these are

the one thing:

where are you I drift into what it

should be or have you do you have, would

you. Would you. Life is a gay bargain.

How could I say, where you are among

the mountains of the city in their midst.

Turn to the east, the west, the torque

at the waist running round

the ribs, and

settling there. The end of that is a

sorry thing, how much more

beautiful is the city than

the abrupt cliffs, the

end, of that?

Against Hurt

Endowed with so much

suffering, they should be / and that

they are so—the pain in the head

which applies to me

and the clouds low over

the horizon: soon it

will be dark

We love the brief night, for its

quick passing, the relative ease as

we slide into comfort and

the trees grow and

grow. I can hear

every smallest growth

the expanse is grinding with it,

out on the flats beyond, down by

the sodium street-lights, in the head:

pain, the hurt to these who are all

companions. Serenity

is their slender means.

There is not much time

left. I love them all, severally and in

the largest honour that there is.

Now and with the least hurt, this

is for you.

Moon Poem

The night is already quiet and I am

bound in the rise and fall: learning

to wish always for more. This is the

means, the extension to keep very steady

so that the culmination

will be silent too and flow

with no trace of devoutness.

Since I must hold to the gradual in

this, as no revolution but a slow change

like the image of snow. The challenge is

not a moral excitement, but the expanse,

the continuing patience

dilating into forms so

much more than compact.

I would probably not even choose to inhabit the

wish as delay: it really is dark and the knowledge

of the unseen is a warmth which spreads into

the level ceremony of diffusion. The quiet

suggests that the act taken

extends so much further, there

is this insurgence of form:

we are more pliant than the mercantile notion

of choice will determine—we go in this way

on and on and the unceasing image of hope

is our place in the world. We live there and now

at night I recognise the signs

of this, the calm is a

modesty about conduct in

the most ethical sense. We disperse into the ether

as waves, we slant down into a precluded notion

of choice which becomes the unlearned habit of

wish: where we live, as we more often are than

we know. If we expand

into this wide personal vacancy

we could become the extent

of all the wishes that are now too far beyond

us. A community of wish, as the steppe

on which the extension would sprinkle out

the ethic density, the compact modern home.

The consequence of this

pastoral desire is prolonged

as our condition, but

I know there is more than the mere wish to

wander at large, since the wish itself diffuses

beyond this and will never end: these are songs

in the night under no affliction, knowing that

the wish is gift to the

spirit, is where we may

dwell as we would

go over and over within the life of the heart

and the grace which is open to both east and west.

These are psalms for the harp and the shining

stone: the negligence and still passion of night.

Love in the Air

We are easily disloyal, again, and the light

touch is so quickly for us, it does permit

what each one would give in the royal

use of that term. Given, settled and

broken, under the day’s sun: that’s the pur-

pose of the gleam from my eyes, cloud from

the base of the spine. Whose silent

watching was all spent, all foregone—

the silver and wastage could have told you

and allowed the touch to pass. Over the

brow, over the lifting feature of how

slant in the night.

That’s how we

are disloyal, without constancy to the little

play and hurt in the soul. Being less than

strict in our gaze; the day flickers and

thins and contracts, oh yes and thus does

get smaller, and smaller: the northern

winter is an age for us and the owl of

my right hand is ready for flight. I have

already seen its beating search in the sky,

hateful, I will not look. By our lights

we stand to the sudden pleasure of how

the colour is skimmed to the world, and our

life does lie as a fallen and slanted thing.

If he gives, the even tenor of his open

hands, this is display, the way and through

to a life of soft invasion. Is constancy

such a disloyal thing. With the hurt wish

torn by sentiment and how very gross our

threshold for pain has become. And the

green tufted sight that we pass, to and

from, trees or the grass and so much, still

permitted by how much we ask.

I ask

for all of it, being

ready to break

every constant thing.

We are bound and

we break, we let loose

what we nakedly hold

thus, he turns

she watches, the

hills slip, time

changes hands.

I ask for it all, and the press is the sea

running back up all the conduits, each

door fronting on to the street. What you can

afford is nothing: the sediment on which we stand

was too much, and unasked for. Who is the

light linked to the forearm, in which play

and raised, up off the ground. I carry you for-

ward, the motion is not constant but may

in this once have been so, loyalty is

regret spread into time, the hurt of how

steadily and where

it goes. She feels

the glimpse over

the skin. She is

honest: she loves

the steady

fear. The

durable fire.

And what you own, in this erotic furtherance,

is nothing to do with response or that

times do change: the matter is not to go

across, ever, making the royal deceit de nos jours.

As each one slips and descends, you could call

it coming down to the streets and the seedy

broken outskirts

of the town.

Bronze : Fish

We are at the edge of all that and

can reach back to another

matter, only it’s not back but

down rather, or in some involved

sense of further off. The virtues

of prudence, the rich arable soil:

but why should ever the whole

mercantile harvest run to form

again? The social cohesion

of towns is our newer ligature,

and the binding, you must see, is

the rule for connection, where we

are licensed to expect. That’s

the human city, & we are

now at the edge of it. Which way

are we facing. Burn the great sphere:

count them, days of the week.

For a Quiet Day

There are some men that focus

on the true intentness, as I know

and wouldn’t argue with: it is

violent, the harp—I will not do it

though, and the time is

so gentle, in the shadow

that any youth might

sleep. But I will

not do it, with the gilded harp

and of all things, its pedals, for

the nice touch. As the curves too

are sometimes gentle, where we shall be

in the succession of

light, hope, the

evening

distracts: and it is always too

fine, too hopeless and will not let

the gentle course—by the chance

rise of a voice.

And if the intentness

is the more true, then

I want the gentler

course, where

the evening is more of what we are:

or the day as well—moist, casual,

broken by inflictions of touch. This

is the resting-place, out in the street.

That we are so, and

for the other thing

I will not do it, will

not; this is a quiet day.

Just So

How long they ask, we ask, it

is the question. So much time to

travel or stop and yet the heart

is so slow & reluctant

leave it, that’s one

way—there, on the

ground: I love you

so, here but how long again, the

history of what we allow, are per-

mitted to have. A life for this

branch, dividing in the headlights

waiting, the beam in

prism, play or the sound

in a great arc for the

world, it is an open fire, a hearth

stone for the condition of trust.

Don’t ever wait for that. Twist it

out, in ply and then run, for

the door: we must

have the divine sense,

of entrance. The way

in as what it is, not which then, or

how long as the question. Such things

are, the world is that fire, it burns

along all the horizons. It is

the heart, where we

are. I love you, so

much. As this, as

this, which is for even more than I

could tell. The night flickers and

the day comes; has, will come. That’s

the question, the mark strapped to

the hands; not the

eyes. Trust them, the

fire of the mind, lust

of the pure citizen, on every path

of the earth. The soil, tarmac, grass,

remorse, the sea, love in the air

we breathe. Fire on the hearth. The life

in what I now have

and listen to, just so

long, as we are.

Mouth Open

To set a name to it, hold them

down and ask merely

are they shouting, with both feet

planted and leaning towards me

the note forming no con-

sequence, they gulp the

landscape before them

Alert, to the name of an occasion

which is theirs as I take

it from them, the offered gift

met by the purest sound

I cannot hold this

it is a name: shouting

or leaning, on the single

earth which is below them, each one

From End to End

Length is now quite another thing; that is,

waiting or coming right up slap into the sun,

spreading into the land to cross, the smell of

diesel oil on the road. The friends there are,

as if residing in what instantly goes with it,

as if longer than the infinite desire, longer

and across into some other thing. Keeping

the line, running back up into the mountains,

denied. And so, in the actual moment dis-

honest, actually refusing the breakage, and

your instinct for the whole purpose

again shows

how gently it is all broken

and how lightly, as you

would say, to come in.

All the milky quartz of that sky, pink and

retained, into the sun. See such a thing climb

out of the haze, making the bridge straight

down into the face—which way, this way,

length beyond this, crossed. The dawn thing

suddenly isn’t tenuous, and the reach back to

the strand is now some odd kind of debris:

how strange to

say this, which abandons of

course all the joy of not

quite going, so far.

I would not have recognised it if the sun

hadn’t unexpectedly snapped the usual ride,

and with you a real ironist, your length

run off out into some other place. Not the

mountains, nothing to do with the sacred child.

The continued quality I know is turned down,

pointed into the earth: love is a tremor, in

this respect, this for the world without length.

Desire is the turn to a virtue, of extent

without length. How

I feel is still along this path,

down the cancelled line and

even in the dawn

as almost a last evening, coming back the

day before. Where they all live, and to say

such a thing is as you say it, promptly no

clouds but the sun. How else, in the face

of so much prudence, as the total staff of life;

as the friends, glittering (who would ever have

been ready for that? The sun, the red

shift; your hair

is at the moment copper, a

bronze mark, and the absurd

gift is just some

allowance, a generous move. How would that

ever have been so, the length taken down and

my nervous rental displayed. Not just holding

or drawing the part. You are too ready, since I

know you still want what we’ve now lost, into

the sun. Without either, the mark of our light

and the shade as you walk without touching

the ground. Lost it, by our joint throw,

and the pleasure, the breakage is no longer, no

more length in which we quickly say

good-bye, each to each at the meridian. As now

each to each good-bye I love you so.

The Wound, Day and Night

Age by default: in some way this must

be solved. The covenants that bind

into the rock, each to the other

are for this, for the argon dating

by song as echo of the world.

O it runs sweetly by, and prints over

the heart; I am supremely happy,

the whole order set in this, the

proper guise, of a song. You can hear

the strains from so far off: withdrawn

from every haunted place

in its graveness, the responsive

shift into the millions of years.

I am born back there, the plaintive chanting

under the Atlantic and the unison of forms.

It may all flow again if we suppress the

breaks, as I long to do,

at the far end of that distance

and tidings of the land;

if we dissolve the bars to it and let run

the hopes, that preserve the holy fruit on the tree,

casting the moist honey, curing the poppy of sleep.

“And in variety of aspects

the sum remains the same,

one family”—

that it be too much with us, again as

beyond that enfeebled history: that we be

born at long last into the image of love

The Glacial Question, Unsolved

In the matter of ice, the invasions

were partial, so that the frost

was a beautiful head

the sky cloudy

and the day packed into the crystal

as the thrust slowed and we come to

a stand, along the coast of Norfolk.

That is a relative point, and since

the relation was part to part, the

gliding was cursive; a retreat, followed

by advance, right to north London. The

moraine runs axial to the Finchley Road

including hippopotamus, which isn’t a

joke any more than the present fringe

of intellectual habit. They did live as

the evidence is ready, for the successive

drift.

Hunstanton to Wells is the clear

margin, from which hills rise into

the “interior”; the stages broken through

by the lobe bent south-west into the Wash

and that sudden warmth which took

birch trees up into Scotland. As

the 50° isotherm retreats there is

that secular weather laid down in pollen

and the separable advances on Cromer (easterly)

and on Gipping (mostly to the south).

The striations are part of the heart’s

desire, the parkland of what is coast

inwards from which, rather than the reverse.

And as the caps melted, the eustatic rise

in the sea-level curls round the clay, the

basal rise, what we hope to call “land”.

And the curving spine of the cretaceous

ridge, masked as it is by the drift, is

wedged up to the thrust: the ice fronting

the earlier marine, so that the sentiment

of “cliffs” is the weathered stump of a feeling

into the worst climate of all.

Or if that’s

too violent, then it’s the closest balance that

holds the tilt: land/sea to icecap from

parkland, not more than 2°–3° F. The

oscillation must have been so delicate, almost

each contour on the rock spine is a weather

limit

the ice smoothing the humps off,

filling the hollows with sandy clay

as the litter of “surface”. As the roads

run dripping across this, the rhythm

is the declension of history, the facts

in succession, they are succession, and

the limits are not time but ridges

and thermal delays, plus or minus whatever

carbon dates we have.

We are rocked

in this hollow, in the ladle by which

the sky, less cloudy now, rests on our

foreheads. Our climate is maritime, and

“it is questionable whether there has yet been

sufficient change in the marine faunas

to justify a claim that

the Pleistocene Epoch itself

has come to an end.” We live in that

question, it is a condition of fact: as we

move it adjusts the horizon: belts of forest,

the Chilterns, up into the Wolds of Yorkshire.

The falling movement, the light cloud

blowing in from the ice of Norfolk

thrust. As the dew recedes from the grass

towards noon the line of recession

slips back. We know where the north

is, the ice is an evening whiteness.

We know this, we are what it leaves:

the Pleistocene is our current sense, and

what in sentiment we are, we

are, the coast, a line or sequence, the

cut back down, to the shore.

References

Ordnance Survey Limestone Map, Sheets 1 and 2 (1955 edition), with Explanatory Text (1957)

K.W. Butzer, Environment and Archaeology; An Introduction to Pleistocene Geography (London, 1965), especially chapters 18, 21, 22, 28

W.B.R. King, “The Pleistocene Epoch in England,” Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc., CXI (1955), 187–208

R.P. Suggate and R.G. West, “On the Extent of the Last Glaciation in Eastern England,” Proc. Roy. Soc. B, 150 (1959), 263–283

G. Manley, “The Range of Variation of the British Climate,” Geogr. Journ., CXVII (1951), 43–65

R.G. West and J.J. Donner, “The Glaciations of East Anglia and
the East Midlands: a differentiation based on stone-orientation measurements of the tills,” Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc., CXII (1956), 69–87

Charm Against Too Many Apples

Still there is much to be done, on the

way into the city, and the sky as yet

only partly written over; we take all

our time and the road is lined with apple trees.

That’s where we go, then, and if this sounds

too obviously prolonged, remember that

the ice was our prime matter. Flame is only

just invisible in sunlight

and the smoke goes

wavering into the atmosphere with all the

uncertainty of numbers. And so we can’t

continue with things like this, we can’t simply

go on. In this way through the forest, we

lose too much and too quickly: we have

too much to lose. How can anyone hope,

to accomplish what he wants so much not

finally to part with. We even pick up

the fallen fruit on the road

frightened by the

layout of so much fallen, the chances we know

strewn on the warm gravel. Knowing that

warmth is not a permanence, ah we count

on what is still to be done and the keen

little joys of leaves & fruit still hanging up

on their trees.

Whereas I wish that it would

all drop, or hang in some other way suspended;

that we should not be so bribed, by incom-

pletion. The ransom is never worth it and

we never get it anyway. No one can eat so

many apples, or remember so much ice. I

wish instead that the whole federate agency

would turn out into and across the land.

With any circling motion it could be so easily

for them, theirs as a form of knowledge, and we

would rest in it: the knowledge that nothing

remains to be done. What we bring off is

ours by a slip of excitement: the sky is our eternal

city and the whole beautiful & luminous trance

of it is the smoke spreading

across into the upper air.

First Notes on Daylight

Patience is truly my device, as we wait

for the past to happen, which is to come into

the open. As I expect it to, daily & the ques-

tion is really what size we’re in, how much of

it is the measure, at one time. Patience is

the sum of my inertia, by which the base-line

lays itself out to the touch

like the flower in

heaven, each pebble

graded in ochre. How

to extend, anyway to decline the rhetoric

of occasion, by which the sequence back

from some end is clearly predictive. We

owe that in theory to the history of person

as an entire condition of landscape—that

kind of extension, for a start. The open

fields we cross, we carry ourselves by ritual

observance, even sleeping in the library.

The laggard, that is,

whose patience

is the protective

shield, of the true

limit to size.

“The ceremonial use of the things described”,

the cˇinar trees or the white-metal mirror, forms

of patience, oh yes, and each time I even

move, the strophic muscular pattern is use, in

no other sense. The common world, how far we

go, the practical limits of daylight. And as I

even think of the base-line the vibration is

strong, the whole sequence of person as his

own history is no more than ceremonial,

the concentration

of intersect: dis-

covery back to

the way over, the

entire crossing an open fabric, which we wear

stand on or carry in the hand. That this could

really be so & of use is my present politics,

burning like smoke, before the setting of fire.

Frost and Snow, Falling

That is, a quality of man and his becoming,

beautiful, or the decoration of some light and

fixed decision, no less fluent than the river

which guards its name. The preservative

of advice, keeping to some kind of order,

within the divine family of ends. The snow

level is where it fell and the limit thus

of a long cadence, the steppe whitening

in the distance and the winter climate.

The fall of snow, as of man in the ice block

and its great cracking roar, is a courtesy;

we don’t require the black spiral, being gentle

and of our own kind. We run deeper, cancel

the flood, take to the road or what was before

known as champaign. We stand off the shore

even when turning to our best and most serious

portions of time. I judge that, as a snow level

but equally in seasonal pasture, pleasure or

as the rival comes, with clay on his shoes.

How far have you come and how long was your

journey? Such persons are hungry; the rival

ventures his life in deep water, the reddish gold

glints in the shadows of our lustful solitude.

So that when the snow falls again the earth

becomes lighter and lighter. The surface con-

spires with us, we are its first-born. Even

in this modern age we leave tracks, as we

go. And as we go, walk, stride or climb

out of it, we leave that behind, our own

level contemplation of the world. The monk

Dicuil records that at the summer solstice

in Iceland a man could see right through the

night, as of course he could. That too is a

quality, some generous lightness which we

give to the rival when he comes in. The tracks

are beaten off, all the other things underground.

On 9th May 1247 they set out on the return

journey. “We travelled throughout the winter, often

sleeping in the desert on the snow except when

we were able to clear a place with our feet.

When there were no trees but only open country

we found ourselves many a time completely

covered with snow driven by the wind.” That

sounds to me a rare privilege, watching

the descent down over the rim. Each man

has his own corner, that question which

he turns. It’s his nature, the quality he

extends into the world, just as his stature is

his “royal dignity”. And yet Gregory did not

believe in the pilgrimage of place: Jerusalem,

he says, is too full of rapine and lust to be

a direction of the spirit. The rest is some kind

of flame, the pilgrim is again quality, and

his extension is the way he goes across the crust

that will bear him. The wanderer with his

thick staff: who cares whether he’s an illiterate

scrounger—he is our only rival. Without this

the divine family is a simple mockery, the

whole pleistocene exchange will come to

melt like the snow, driven into the ground.

For This, For This

The next stave we come to is the mansion

or house, wondering about the roof and the

set, as it were, back into the silence which

is the social division, split into quietness.

Why are we so tensed as we prepare to make

some side step, into the house and thus, you

would say, out of the world. Off the planet

even, while the amber glow of Mercury shines

from the flashing shield? Oh no it’s not this,

any more than we deny the sound its direction,

choosing to “hear” the splinter and splash

of some ordinary thing.

I will not listen, or claim

to, that ignoble worship of

the wrong road. They are

too clean, always, they

fall in part to part, this knife

will go straight into

the fire if that’s the heart.

And þerto when þou seest þat alle soche werkes in þeire

use mow be boþe good & iuel, I preie þee leue hem boþe,

for þat is þe most ese for þee for to doo if þou wilt

be meek.

Watch the colour run up the blade; watch the

house held off, we live so much in this way.

How does he know when to “speak his mind”

and come back in through some pattern of

misery? Buying his way in through this price

making the doorway, and now even current coin

is frozen in the banks; some weird puritan

stringency that believes cold to be bracing.

All the quick motions

as we nip upstairs, turn

to steps we take: leading

to the moral exits

which we see enjoined. Some idea of

completeness; protection

is wretched and what we pay for.

And leue þe corious beholdyng & seching in þi wittes to

loke wheþer is betir.

Yet some soft stirring to speak is in the air,

the casual motion flirts with us. We are

less sombre now, slipping out at the door

and into some silent affair through which

we hear everything. All of that, without

name, not with regret, as a musical turn.

The importance is complete, the sequence

is urban, needful; she comes like some

obvious choice, picking her way. I see

this, you see the world in her wide sails,

the knife is not playful

or an agent of just

device. It comes from

the kitchen, I’m not

going to tell you that; you know

how outside the door too

we are ready in one.

Bot do þou þus: sette þe tone on þe to honde and þe toþer

on þe toþer, and chese þee a þing þe whiche is hid bitwix

hem, þe whiche þing when it is had, Ȝeueþ þee leue, in

fredom of spirite, to beginne and to seese in holding any

of þe oþer at þin owne ful list, wiþouten any blame.

In Cimmerian Darkness

When the faint star does take

us into the deeper parts

of the night there is

that sudden dip

and we swing across into

some other version of this

present age, where any curving

trust is set into

the nature of man, the green raw and fabulous

love of it, where every star that shines,

as he said, exists

in love, the brother

dipping into the equal limit,

help as the ready art, condition of the

normal

since no more simple

presence will fade, as the dawn does, over

water, the colonies of feeling like stacks

of banknotes waiting to be counted.

Anyone waits, the brother is a section of

the waiting art, whereby and

through which agency the whole

cosmic vibrations disport their limbs, their

hopes, the distant repose.

We dip into the ready world

which waits for us: the

name of it is our brother and we must pro-

tect what we want of it,

as we need more than I personally

can ever admit. Or now do so

admit, the title to this going into the sky

is the trust of the lighted brother in the

first sense, the standard.

Stand there, I implore you, the trust is an agency

of surrender, I give it all up, the star

is yielded. No part of this dipping

coil shall be withheld; no

light further than the figure of some complete

fortune, making and made weak

by affection and the promise of it.

Led to the star, trusting to rotten planks,

the equal limit, we must have it, I ask only

in sequence, in this parity of

art ready with its own motion. It swings out

and we are quickly cruel, the brother reforms

his wish to roam the streets, he

should refuse as much as he can.

Nor is the divine in any sense

full, the vacancy stretches away

to the standard out on the plain; the cups

of our radio telescopes stand openly

braced to catch the recoil. Focus, the

hearth is again warm, again the human patch

waits, glows in the slight wind.

And we are ready for this, the array is there in

the figure we name brother, the

fortune we wish for, devoutly, as the dip

turns us to the face we have

so long ignored; so fervently refused.

Song in Sight of the World

In sight of the world they are

heavy with this, the sea

thrown up, the shore and all

the lamps out on the road—

but where are they, will

they go to: why do

not love and instruction

come swiftly to the places

where they stand? Who are the muses

in this windblown instalment—as

if there is much uncertainty

about that. We are a land

hammered by restraint, into

a too cycladic past. It is

the battle of Maldon binds

our feet: we tread

only with that weight & the empire

of love, in the mist. The name of this

land, unknown, is that. Heavy with sweat

we long for the green hills, pleasant with

waters running to the sea

but no greater love. The politics

of this will bear inspection. They are

the loss of our each motion, to history.

Which is where the several lost stand

at their various distance from the shore

on gneiss or the bones of a chemical plan

for the world’s end. This is it, Thule,

the glyptic note that we carry

with every unacted desire felt

in the continent of Europe. Lot’s

wife, the foreshore of the world.

And the weight? Still with us, the hold

is a knowing one. The night is beautiful

with stars: we do not consider the end

which is a myth so powerful, as to throw

flames down every railway line

from London to the furthest tip

cape and foreland left by the axe.

Apollo it is that I love, that

shall be swallowed by the great wolf and be

reborn as a butterfly in the hair of a goddess.

We are poor in this, but I love

and will persist in it, the equity

of longing. The same is not true

but desired: I desire it and shall

encircle the need with bands of iron,

this is the wedge of my great hope.

All the shores are a single peak. All the

sea a great road, the shore a land in

the mist. The tears of the world are spread

over it, and into the night you can hear

how the trees burn with foreknowledge.

As before, I am the great lover

and do honour to Don Juan, & sharpen

his knife on the flat of my foot.

The forest, of stars. The roads, some grey

people walking towards the restaurant.

The headlights, as a lantern; now they are

in the restaurant. See, we shall eat them.

The light will do all this, to

love is the last resort, you

must know, I will tell

you, this, love, is

the world.

Quality in that Case as Pressure

Presence in this condition is quality

which can be transformed & is subject

even to paroxysm—but it is not

lapse: that is the chief point. As I

move with my weight there is collusion,

with the sight of how we would rise

or fall or on the level. How much we

see is how far we desire change, which

is transformation from the ridge and fore-

land inverted—with all the clouds

over the shore.

The sun lies on the

matching of the ridge, &

passing is what you

cannot have, it is

the force, where

else to see

how in, this

is, the oblique

turned into a great torque which is

pleasure as a name for each part:

no nearer than

the ridge, or side

slope end time so

much but not how

much. My own satisfaction in this

mild weather is violent; I am moved

by the condition of knowledge, as the

dispersion of form. Even, tenuous, gorged

in the transgressions of folding

the orogeny of passion the

invasion of ancient

seas

the neutral

condition of

that

the heart/heartland, prize

of the person who can be

seen to stumble & who falls with joy, unhurt.

Or who hurries, on some pavement, the

sublate crystal locked for each step.

They aim their faces but also bear them

and have cloth next to most of their skin.

They are the children of proof.

The proof is a feature, how the

spine is set. The invasion

of fluid, where the

action of money

is at least tem-

porarily displaced.

By seepage or transgression, the mineral salts

“found their way” into the Zechstein Sea. The

reciprocation of fault and inversion,

poverty the condition, of which I am so clearly

guilty I can touch the pleasure involved.

For such guilt is the agency of ethical fact:

we feel shame at the mild weather too and

when the National Plan settles comfortably

like a Grail in some sculpted precinct

I am transported

with angelic

nonchalance.

The quantities of demand are the measure

of want—of lack or even (as we are told)

sheer grinding starvation. How much to

eat is the city in ethical frenzy

the allowances set against

tax the deductions in respect

of unearned income

the wholly sensuous & mercantile matter

of count. As I move through the bright

bones of their hands & faces

shattered by the exact

brimming of love &

pleasure, the force

is a condition

released in the

presence

that

this is the chosen remnant, of a plan

now turned on its axis, east-west into the

wind. I am bound to it, by an aggressive

honour, and

in this the peace of the city does now reside.

Oil

In the year; intact in the cycle of days

passing over him like the damp air

he is back on the first level,

some floating completeness

has assailed him. He

is perfect. In the sight of his eye the

wind dripping with rain

has come so far, round over the crests

and fields, the cornea moist the

lymph draining and curled

down to rest. This level sequence of history

is his total and our total

also, is

the certain angular sustenance

of the world. So I walk over the

top of the steady and beating level of his

eye; he has so much to bestow, he is

generous. What he has is our

shout, the sound of the pathway, going down into

the breathing touch of the air, the rain

which soaks into our clothes. At last

we are wet,

wet through with what we have

in his eye, in our time, in the ribs in-

flated with it, the

last few days of the year

Shadow Songs

The glorious dead, walking

barefoot on the earth.

Treat them with all you

have: on the black marble

and let Nightingale come

down from the hills.

Only the procession is halted

as this spills down into

the current of the river:

their glorious death, if

such on earth were found.

And if the dead know this,

coming down into the dark, why should

they be stopped? We are too gentle

for the blind to see or be heard.

All the force of the spirit lies open

in the day, praise in the clock face

or age: the years, with their most

lovely harm. Leading the gentle

out into the wilds, you know they

are children, the blind ones, and

the dead know this, too.

Concerning Quality, Again

So that I could mark it; the continuance of

quality could in some way be that, the time

of accord. For us, as beneath the falling water

we draw breath,

look at the sky.

Talking to the man hitching a lift back

from the hospital, I was incautious in sympathy:

will she be back soon I was wishing to

encourage his will to suppose. I can hardly

expect her back he said and the water

fell again, there was this sheet, as the time

lag yawned, and quality

became the name you have,

like some anthem to the absent forces of nature.

Ethnic loyalty, breathe as you like we in fact

draw it out differently, our breath is gas

in the mind. That awful image of choking.

We have no mark for our dependence, I would

not want to add a little red spot to the wrist of

the man in the newsreel, the car passing the lights.

I draw blood whenever I open my stupid mouth,

and the mark is on my hand, I

can hardly even feel the brass wire

nailed down into the head.

Paranoid, like the influencing machines; but who

they are, while their needs shine out like flares,

that quality is their presence outward to the night

sky: they do ask for that casual aid. The re-

cognition is accident, is an intolerable fall like

water. We whizz on towards the blatant home

and the armies of open practice. His affairs are

electric; they cancel the quality of the air;

the names are a blankness as

there are no marks but the wounds.

Even the accord, the current back (for him as for

me outward) has an electric tangent. He could

have flown off just there as he was. Simply

moved sideways, in his sitting posture, across the

next hedge and into a field I know but could

not recognise. The mark is Abel’s price, the

breath is blood in the ears as I even dare to think

of those instruments. The sky is out there with

the quality of its pathic glow, there is a bright

thread of colour across the dashboard; the accord

is that cheap and we live

with sounds in the ear

which we shall never know.

On the Matter of Thermal Packing

In the days of time now what I have

is the meltwater constantly round my feet

and ankles. There the ice is glory to the

past and the eloquence, the gentility of

the world’s being; I have known this

as a competence for so long that the

start is buried in light

usual as the warm grass and shrubbery

which should have been ancestral

or still but was, then, bound like crystal

into the last war. There was a low

drywall, formal steps

down I now see to the frozen water, with

whitened streaks and bands in it;

the same which, in New England, caused

a total passion for skating, and how still

it all was

the gentility of a shell, so

fragile, so beautifully

shallow in the past; I

hardly remember

the case hardened

but brittle

constant to the eighteenth century or the

strictly English localism of moral candour,

disposed in the copses of those fields

which bespoke easily that same vague lightness,

that any motion could be so much

borne over the

top, skimming

not knowing the flicker

that joins

I too

never knew who had lived there. It was then

a school of sorts, we were out of the bombs

I now do, I think, know that. But the flow

so eloquently stopped, walking by the Golden

Fleece and the bus time-table

(“It is difficult

to say pre-

cisely what

constitutes

a habitable

country”—A

Theory of the Earth

the days a nuclear part

gently holding the skull or

head, the skin porous to the

eloquence of

where this was so far! so ice-encased like

resin that whiteness seemed no more, than

cloudy at that time. The water-pattern is

highly asymmetric, bonding hardly as proof

against wealth, stability, the much-loved ice.

Which I did love, if

light in the field

was frozen

by wire

ploughed up, I

did not know, that

was the gentle

reach of ignorance

the waves, the

ice

the forms frozen in familiar remoteness—

they were then, and are closer now, as

they melt and rush into the spill-

ways: “one critical axis of the crystal

structure of ice remains dominant after

the melt”—believe that?

or live there, they would say in

the shade I am now competent

for, the shell still furled but

some nuclear stream

melted from it.

The air plays

on its crown, the

prince of life

or its

patent, its

price. The absent

sun (on the

trees of the field) now does strike

so gently

on the whitened and uneven ice

sweet day so calm

the glitter is the war now released,

I hear the guns for the first time

Or maybe think so; the eloquence of melt

is however upon me, the path become a

stream, and I lay that down

trusting the ice to withstand the heat; with

that warmth / ah some modest & gentle

competence a man could live

with so little

more.

Price Tag Song

OK and relevant to the

cosmos, scarce of

air said

aunt Theoria, the scar

city is not for

resale or photograph

ic repro

duct

ion I mean at

least you can’t look all

the time out

of sight or mind the

choice is

sheer care

less debauchery I count, as

three two one &

scarce

the part healed city

where we start

led in

sects live

The Common Gain, Reverted

The street is a void in the sequence of man,

as he sleeps by its side, in rows that house

his dreams. Where he lives, which is the

light from windows, all the Victorian grandeur

of steam from a kitchen range. The street

is a void, its surface slips, shines and is

marked with nameless thoughts. If we could

level down into the street! Run across by

the morning traffic, spread like shadows, the

commingling of thoughts with the defeat we

cannot love

Those who walk heavily

carry their needs, or lack

of them, by keeping their

eyes directed at the ground

before their feet. They are

said to trudge when in fact their empty thoughts

unroll like a crimson carpet before their

gentle & delicate pace. In any street the pattern

of inheritance is laid down, the truth is for our

time in cats-eyes, white markings, gravel

left from the last fall of snow. We proceed

down it in dreams, from house to house which

spill nothing on to the track, only light on the

edge of the garden. The way is of course speech

and a tectonic emplacement, as gradient it

moves easily, like a void

It is now at this

time the one presence

of fact, our maze

through which we

tread the shadow or

at mid-day pace

level beneath our own. And in whichever form

we are possessed the surface is sleep again and

we should be thankful. By whatever movement,

I share the anonymous gift, the connivance

in where to go as what I now find myself

to have in the hand. The nomad is perfect

but the pure motion which has no track is

utterly lost; even the Esquimaux look for sled

markings, though on meeting they may not speak.

The street that is the

sequence of man

is the light of his

most familiar need,

to love without being stopped for some im-

mediate bargain, to be warm and tired

without some impossible flame in the heart.

As I walked up the hill this evening and felt

the rise bend up gently against me I knew

that the void was gripped with concentration.

Not mine indeed but the sequence of fact,

the lives spread out, it is a very wild and

distant resort that keeps a man, wandering

at night, more or less in his place.

Aristeas, in Seven Years

Gathering the heat to himself, in one thermic

hazard, he took himself out: to catch up with

the tree, the river, the forms of alien vantage

1 and hence the first way

by theft into the upper world—“a

natural development from the mixed

economy in the drier or bleaker

regions, where more movement was

necessary”—and thus the

floodloam, the deposit, borrowed for

the removal. Call it inland, his

nose filled with steam & his brief cries.

Aristeas took up it

seems with the

singular as the larch

tree, the

Greek sufficient

for that. From Marmora

And sprang with that double twist into the

middle world and thence took flight over the

Scythian hordes and to the Hyperborean,

touch of the north wind

carrying with him Apollo. Song

his transport but this divine

insistence the pastural clan:

sheep, elk, the wild deer. In each case

the presence in embryo, god of the shep-

herd and fixed in the movement of flock.

Wrung over the real tracts. If he was

frozen like the felted eagle of Pazyryk,

he too had the impossible lower twist,

the spring into the middle, the air.

From here comes

the north wind, the

remote animal

gold—how did

he, do we, know

or trust, this?

Following the raven and

sniffing hemp as the

other air, it was

himself as the singular that he knew and

could outlast in the long walk by the

underground sea. Where he was as

the singular

location so completely portable

that with the merest black

wings he could survey the

stones and rills in their

complete mountain courses,

2 in name the displacement

Scythic.

And his songs were invocations in no frenzy

of spirit, but clear and spirituous tones from the

pure base of his mind; he heard the small

currents in the air & they were truly his aid.

In breath he could speak out into the northern

air and the phrasing curved from his mouth

and nose, into the cold mountain levels. It

was the professed Apollo, free of the festive line,

powdered with light snow.

And looking down, then, it is no outlay

to be seen in

the forests, or

scattered rising

of ground. No

cheap cigarettes nothing

with the god in this

climate is free of duty

moss, wormwood as the cold

star, the dwarf Siberian pine

as from the morainal deposits

of the last deglaciation.

Down there instead the long flowing hair,

of great herds of sheep and cattle, the

drivers of these, their feet more richly

thickened in use than

any slant of their

mongoloid face or

long, ruched garments.

With his staff, the larch-pole, that again the

singular and one axis of the errant world.

Prior to the pattern of settlement then, which

is the passing flocks fixed into wherever

they happened to stop,

the spirit demanded the orphic metaphor

3 as fact

that they did migrate and the spirit excursion

was no more than the need and will of the

flesh. The term, as has been pointed out,

is bone, the

flesh burned or rotted off but the

branch calcined like what

it was: like that: as itself

the skeleton of the possible

in a heap and covered with

stones or a barrow.

Leaving the flesh vacant then, in a fuller’s shop,

Aristeas removed himself for seven years

into the steppes, preparing his skeleton and the

song of his departure, his flesh anyway touched

by the in-

vading Cimmerian

twilight: “ruinous”

as the old woman’s

prophecy.

And who he was took the

collection of seven

years to thin out, to the

fume laid across where

he went, direction north,

4 no longer settled

but settled now into length; he wore that

as risk. The garment of birds’ feathers,

while he watched the crows fighting the

owls with the curling tongues

of flame proper to the Altaic

hillside, as he was himself

more than this. The

spread is more, the

vantage is singular

as the clan is without centre.

Each where as

the extent of day deter-

mines, where the

sky holds (the brightness

dependent on that).

And Apollo is in any case seasonal, the

divine “used only of a particular god,

never as a general term.” The Hyper-

borean paradise was likewise no general

term but the mythic duration of

spirit into the bone

laid out in patterns

on the ground

“the skulls are sent on hunting

journeys, the foot-prints alongside;

that towards which they journey

they turn them towards, so that

they will follow behind.”

From the fuller’s shop as from

the camp of the seal hunter,

5 some part of the bone must be twisted

& must twist, as the stages of Cimmerian

wandering, viz:

1. 1800–13th Century B.C., north

of the Caucasus, then

2. 13th–8th Centuries, invaded

by the Scythians and deflected

southwards & to the west. And

3. after that, once more displaced

(8th Century to maybe 500 B.C.),

the invasion of Asia Minor,

“ruinous”, as any settled and complaisant fixture

on the shoreline would regard the movement of

pressure irreducible by trade or bribery. Hence

the need to catch up, as a response to cheap money

and how all that huddle could

be drawn out

into the tenuous upper

reach, the fine chatter

of small birds under the

head of the sky

(sub divo columine)

on the western slope of the Urals and the scatter

of lightning, now out of doors & into

the eagle span,

6 the true condition of bone

which is no more singular or settled or the

entitled guardian even, but the land of the

dead. Why are they lost, why do they

always wander, as if seeking

their end and drawing after them

the trail and fume of burning hemp?

Or they are not lost but

passing: “If thoughtless abandonment

to the moment were really a blessing, I

had actually been in ‘the Land of the

Blessed’.”

But it was not blessing, rather a fact so

hard-won that only the twist in middle

air would do it anyway, so even he be wise

or with any recourse to the darkness of

his tent. The sequence of issue is no

more than this,

Apollo’s price, staff

leaning into the

ground and out

through the smoke-hole.

It is the spirit which dies

as the figure of change, which

is the myth and fact of extent,

which thus does start from

Marmora, or Aklavik, right

out of the air.

No one harms these people: they

are sacred and have no

weapons. They sit or pass, in

the form of divine song,

they are free in the apt form of

displacement. They change

their shape, being of the essence as

a figure of extent. Which

for the power in rhyme

7 is gold, in this northern clime

which the Greeks so held to themselves and

which in the steppe was no more

than the royal figment.

This movement was of

course cruel beyond belief, as this

was the risk Aristeas took

with him. The conquests were for the motive of

sway, involving massive slaughter as the

obverse politics of claim. That is, slaves and

animals, life and not value: “the western Sar-

matian tribes lived side by side not in a loose

tribal configuration, but had been welded

into an organised imperium

under the leadership of one

royal tribe.” Royalty

as plural. Hence the calendar as taking of

life, which left gold as the side-issue, pure

figure.

Guarded by the griffins, which lived close to the

mines, the gold reposed as the divine brilliance,

petrology of the sea air, so far from the shore.

The beasts dug the metal out with

their eagle beaks, rending in the

cruel frost of that earth, and

yet they were the guardians, the figure of flight

and heat and the northern twist of the axis.

His name Aristeas, absent for

these seven years: we should

pay them or steal, it is no