Collected Poems 1931-74 (32 page)

Everywhere
revisited
is
only

Half
of
the
real
story,
for
death
is
free.

The
naked
runners
braked
by
the
soft
sea,

A
naked
silence
going
on
a
spree.

Spread
it
like
butter
over
he
and
she.

Whole
winters
long
my
ape
and
I

Winnowed
and
mused,
discussed
as
best
we
could,

The
fake
images,
the
true-to-what
effect

To
distil
the
great
elixir
of
the
elect,

Sorting
the
perfect
from
the
merely
good.

And
when
at
last
it
died,
without
presumption,

I
wept,
but
gave
it
the
extreme
Umption.

This
is
my
choice
now,
music
and
tobacco,

As
happy
on
my
hilltop
I
review

The
vistas
of
a
world
it
never
knew,

To
which
my
Umption
is
the
only
clue.

Always
at
midnight
when
I
hear
the
chimes,

I
tell
myself
while
pouring
out
a
drink,

Things
are
less
complicated
than
you
think.

Dreams,
therefore
crimes,
honey,

Dreams,
therefore
crimes.

1973/
1972
 

First draw the formal circle O

Of the whole oblong mind, as in the snake

Where mouth and anus meet to complete it.

              The onus

              The harness

Of the heartwhole whose cool apples conspire

Against the serpent like all perverse fruit;

Which identify with sin but remain innocent.

              The tree of good and oval

              Soft branch of all renewal

Where the sincere milk of the whole word

First set the gnostic grimly dreaming

To furnish an alphabet of pure dissent,

              Dark night of the Whole

              Convincing to the finite mole.

Warp and woof like magnets coming together

In silence thumbless as a pendulum.

It could be accident. Believe what you prefer.

No advice worth giving is worth taking.

1973/
1973

Some withering papers lie,

The bloody spoor of some great

Animal anxiety of a poem he wounded

And followed up in fear, holding his breath.

The blood was everywhere, the yellowing inks

Of old manuscripts reproached.

In stark terror that loaded pen was ready,

With the safety catch turned off,

Only the target lacked,

Crouching somewhere in its own blood.

Some hideous animal without a name.

To be called man, but with such a rotten aim!

1973/
1973

Colours have no memory, friend,

And can therefore prophesy,

Turn whiter than tea-roses can

With whom to exchange addresses

In far away cities for a good-luck goodbye.

Time slips her moorings soon, and the

Surf-gathering boom of candles can retrace

To the whisper of canvas on the sky

A tiller's lug, jerked like some big dog,

The muscle-softening farewell embrace.

Survivals and calamities supported

In thoughts now, no more in words,

Out there on the flailing waters of everness,

The flora of tumultuous oceans around me,

And for company archaic folding birds.

I will seek out now

All the arts of silence and of anger

For many such Aprils have come and gone.

The lines of your palm are always changing

As you move from the unknown to the known.

So often the bountiful hemlock beckoned me,

I guess it would undeceive,

Ransacked the secret childhood of the race,

To pinpoint the groups of fearfulness

And pardon the terrors it could not reprieve.

The dangerous years approach, friend.

You will be lucky to come through whole.

This speck of lead, a word, fired into the mind

Will in its queer way change it

While never seeking to argue or console.

One thing about death—it isn't far to fall,

Its brightness disfigures every silence,

Its reflections splashed about like in spoons

Gives a reassurance to the dusty kiss of stars,

The cold procession of worn-out harvest moons.

1973/
19
73

Vagina Dentata I love you so,

You are wide as my dreams are long,

Like the kipling hiss of the cobra,

Or the screams of Fay Wray in King Kong.

Vestal of fire lethargic

Whose seminal doctrines extract

The rivets from Caliban's backbone

To leave him less fiction than fact.

Aphrodite Urania we need you

To lighten the people's path,

By the marvellous insights of Crippen

Or the Brides in the Bath.

O precious pudendum of seeming,

We come from the Gullible Isles,

Where the cannibal complexes frolic

And the Mona Lisa smiles.

1973/
1973

Hatch me a gorilla's egg

And catch me in the offing,

Buckle me to a wedding ring

And make me die of laughing.

Rock me in the XVI psalm

And fill my bowels with honey,

Up in the trees I'll find a mate,

If not for love, then money.

1973/
1973

Somewhere in all this grace and favour green

Autumnal in the public gardens,

Sunk on benches between all ages

Under the braying foliage mimeographed

Like the Lord's Prayer for a computer

In this fate-forgiven corner of reflection

The genetic twilight of a race evolves:

Dreaming in codes, you only think you think.

Sweet rainwashed cobbles of old towns

A moving spur on sundials recording.

The roll of drums buried in the soil,

Somewhere a pair of fine eyes looking out

Under a magnificent forehead, but so full

Of an immense and complicated mistrust

Of human ways: very reasonable indeed

I should say, very reasonable indeed.

Our glances lie unfermented among statues.

A hunchback pokes a dead swan with a stick

While children buzz and cannot fathom.

Then, tied as if to a buoy far out at sea

An emancipated municipal orchestra makes

Some shallow confidences to the prams.

This very spot where the writings of solitaries

Limp off, take passage for foreign lands,

Falter to an end, there being nothing left

With which to compare them,

Never looking back. Well then, goodbye.

1973/
1973

Far away once, in Avignon, the Grey Penitents

Set up their chapter on a drear canal

For podgy minds to bleed with happiness

Upon the waters of a supposed redemption

Under the orders of twelve concise pigs,

Revealed their goodness like smooth-feathered men.

They tried like later you and me

To find one beauty without sophistry.

                          Alas!

I lit a candle for you once

But it was slow to the last match;

The tiny wick, like loving, wouldn't catch.

Nature's lay penitent, I taught thee to fuck;

But winter came and we were out of luck.

‘When the pupil is ready the master always appears,

But sometimes after 9 lifetimes of a thousand years.'

Pale students of the Quite Alone

Whose dreams cut to the very bone

Add or subtract the kisses of the mind,

They will not catch, the engine will not fire,

A vestal love no destiny could bind.

Now on the far side of Europe

We suddenly meet far from that faltering candle,

Not guilty like the penitents of laic misdemeanours,

Wishing never to have been born, all that stuff.

And knowing quite well that even without you

I can easily go on breathing.

But why you come back I cannot fathom.

It reminds me of something I once achieved

To love someone at the speed of thought.

Walking the loops of the companionable Liffey

It came to me to think that over these actual

Waters no shadows lie between there and here,

Thou and I, you and myself, the far and the near.

Nor is the remedial therapy of an embrace the answer.

Dark plaintiff of the courtly love how wisely

Your reason has subdued the heart's long pace:

And tomorrow we'll be gone to leave no trace.

Perhaps the primal illness which is loneliness

Can't be countered by a stupid candle

Burning however rosy in the flesh

Of a writer's concise and loving wish.

Would you have supposed, with night

Coming on over the thorn-curdled hills

And the snowy dales, that after this long

Discouragement about you I got kind of severed

Even from poetry, and for so many years?

How foolish to make no distinction between the two of you;

The penitents must have documented so much

That ordinary lovers spurn, but to their cost.

A farthing dip is all it costs to formulate

A wish that burns a dogged lifetime through.

1973/
1973