February forty times has arrowed towards spring,
None left behind,
Swirling fish that never vanish,
Colourless or rainbow
Twisting after strange journeys,
Paralyzing vast aquariums.
February is the tunnel’s end
A zodiac into soaking loam
When I watch the stars
To say a loud goodbye of welcome to.
* * *
Mimosa’s dead stench follows like a shadow
Never consumed by the sun
Or swilled by rain,
Rots like memories that went with it.
* * *
Be free, and endure happiness –
Summer like a dream from the grave
Rebuilds the heart.
Winter will bring an elegiac falling of the snow
And nurse the purest blossoms –
And green-eyed August
Spread the odour of a wheatfield’s death.
Choices bite however the performance.
Scattered seed can bring up crops and flowers
To rub out happiness or suffering.
* * *
Midnight comes at any hour.
Eagles out of sunlight bring it,
Shadows on the fields.
The sun throws broken eagles
Back against the stars.
The moon eats and grows fat.
The curtain opens to an empty sky.
LOVERS SLEEP
Flesh to flesh: there are two hearts between us
Mine on one side, yours on the other
Through which all thoughts must pass
Mine intercepting those from you
Yours beating strongly (I feel it doing so)
Taking my thoughts into the labyrinth of yours
From sleep of me to sleep of you
Till flesh and heart join in the deepest cave.
THE WEIGHT OF SUMMER
Summer’s iron is on the trees
A new weight to bear
Leap-year sap rising through lead
Forcing flower to give fruit
Green flame shifting up iron trunks
To poke out buds.
Leaves hang all summer
Shaken by rain and wind
Shrived by a little heat:
Such yearly swing must wear them
To a death so flat by autumn
That blood draws back
And lets the leaves go.
Trees suffer in frost and snow:
Force-fed by soil, drained by age
They brood and bide their time.
How many summers can they take such weight?
How long is life, how rich the earth,
How weak the heart?
ROSE
A rose about to open
Thinks air and sun
Can turn it into
Something it is not already.
The pink slit of life shows
Between tight green blades –
Hasn’t it seen enough
Without wanting everything?
Behind its packed unopened petals
Are roses still to flower
And blossoms not yet dropped;
Outside, those same are tempting it,
Scorched and shrivelled on the grass.
Rose about to open, why do you do it?
What force pushes
So subtly that it does not feel?
What beckoning power beyond
Draws it with perfume sweeter than
The one that will be made?
They promise nothing but the last decay:
The will to come or stay is not their own.
CREATION
God did not write.
He spoke.
He made.
His jackknife had a superblade –
He sliced the earth
And carved the water,
Made man and woman
By an act of slaughter.
He scattered polished diamonds
In the sky like dust
And gave the world a push to set it spinning.
What super-Deity got him beginning
Whispered in his ear on how to do it
Gave hints on what was to be done?
Don’t ask.
In his mouth he felt the sun
Spat it out because it burned;
From between his toes — the moon –
He could not walk so kicked it free.
His work was finished.
He put a river round his neck,
And vanished.
SIGNAL BOX
Level-crossing signal box
With three and a half hours between trains.
Bells stopped, gates shut and blocking the line:
Levers taller than himself palisade the moon,
He on the safer side.
Elbows space aside and tunnels
The last green spitter of sparks
Up the stars and soaking turf towards London,
Whispers along, snarling, a retreating song,
Signals on gauges like slicked hair downarrowed:
Line clear for the next open crossing.
Guard in waistcoat and jacket
(Good to children who just want to see)
Iron dragons slip through his fingers a hundred times a day
Responsibility too great to feel power,
Warning others down the line of its approach,
He sits by teaflask and prepares a book,
Needs an opium-portion to become
Captain of a rusting steamer
Crawling the coastal buffs of Patagonia,
Or Nemo in his flying boat
Lording at the Pole or South Sea hideout.
A good tale every night is better
That the telly or a homely bed.
Trains growl on steel snakes
Straight and sleeping close,
Locomotive kings of the dawn
Behind signals from another cured of sleep:
Wide gates open for the first black arrow
A circle in its packed and moving forehead,
As he closes his book
And lets the day pour through.
BARBARIANS
Walls he sat by had fallen long ago:
The city smoked after capture and rapine,
No brick left upon another.
These barbarians — this boy
Sitting on the littered scrub –
Belonged to a Scythian family
Who found the city as if following
A far-back shutter-flash,
Crazed with hope after a famished trudge
Over steppe whose herbs
Scorched by the haze of the sun
Pulled horses’ ribs so far in
They were almost dead.
By tale and memory this Scythian offshoot
Saw a glittering metropolis,
People and laden horses queueing to get out.