Had it been pierced by a snake?
Clipped by a wind-thrown tree
Cut by scorpion, bird or pruning hook?
Or was it a festering frog-cancer
That gathered and burst after a life
Of statue-cunning,
Too much patience before
Each silent nerve-leap
Onto a dreamy insect?
I hoped the magic water
Would seal its wound
Stitch back outflowing life.
It swam deep under,
Air bubbles snapping
Like fleas abandoning a mouse,
Messages from its stopped body
Breaking at trees and sky.
It was a leaf suspended
Four legs and green spade-head,
Flayed rushblades clear
Above the indeterminate green
Basin of the pool;
Calmed between earth and air
Dying in its native water
From my allowing a leap
Into the safety of its death
When it wanted peace
And a long quiet end
Lasting a lifetime.
It hung in the float-still water,
Next day gone:
Mud-guns exploded
By assaulting minnow-snouts.
From nightcaves underwater
Daylight filters like a ghost
To scare marauding goldfish
Chewing mosquito eggs –
And to illuminate
A hundred minnows savaging my spit.
FRIEND DIED
Tears stop, and suffering
Goes the next level down,
Deeper when tears won’t start.
Pain outlives, the hollow soul burns
Till cured by nothing less
Than the same death for me.
You are world-finished
Blacked out, sea-driven
Beyond soil and nowhere,
Empty caves filled
By your heavy death-weighing:
The sea and moon fought
And their vicious clamour killed
The survivor who is empty
And the winner who is dead.
GUIDE TO THE TIFLIS RAILWAY
The witnessed scenery changes
To sunbaked cliffs and spun dry trees:
Parched and monotonous hill country.
No one has the will to stop the train,
Though all can now observe what’s to be seen:
A priest embalming a dissected brain.
Hardly visible from the railway
A deep ravine throws out its endless bile.
We cross the river, and notice to the left
Various vertical caves in Gothic style
Which afforded refuge to the Christians,
Sparse and lean (a rouble to the guide)
Against the Mongols and the Persians
Who swam the Caspian like cats against no tide;
Who one time sent three gifts from Samarkand
Of frugal sunlight to an ancient feast:
Now reaping a reward with scarlet swords
From the full belly of the fecund East.
Our train proceeds, unfolds an arrowmark of bones,
The valley widens, easy to foretell
That crossing the military road we soon
Reach the city and look up the best hotel.
from Love in the Environs of Voronezh and Other Poems and Storm and Other Poems, 1968 and 1974
BABY
A small man formed
One hour after forging into light,
Body-brain wrapped and blue eyes
Open to noise of rook and cuckoo
To stalk a rabbit in the meadow
Read a book, nothing less than
Blank before sudden turns
To evergreen or glint of water.
Hirsute and stern on bleak arrival
He lay down after a toiler’s day
Face to say: All right.
You gave me life, but death also.
Forehead creased on future worry
When hacking obstacles,
Indenting map-hair on moving palm
To say it doesn’t matter, go to sleep.
Struck a lifeline horoscope
Of luck, speedkid, handy with women –
Which years will balance
In give, take or ruination,
Seeing all but never everything.
Sleep beyond the iced bite of the moon,
Being what you are this moment
Free with innocence but lacking milk
Soon to become all you do not feel,
Advancing against
The normal hazarding inroads
That spin life into havoc:
Power to dissect visions
Like the yolk and mucus of an egg,
And build up certain freedoms from the moon.
TREE
A broad and solid oak exploded
Split by mystery and shock
Broken like bread
Like a flower shaken.
Acorn guts dropped out:
A dead gorilla unlocked from breeding trees,
Acorns with death in their baby eyes.
A hang-armed scarecrow in the wind:
What hit it? Got into it? Struck
So quietly between dawn and daylight?
With a dying grin and wooden wink
A lost interior cell relinquished its ghost:
In full spleen and abundant acorn
A horn of lightning gored it to the quick.
Trees move on Fenland
Uprooting men and houses on a march
To reach their enemy the sea.
Silent at the smell of watersalt
Treelines advance. The sea lies low,
Snake-noise riding on unruffled surf
While all trees wither and retreat.
Out of farm range or cottage eyes trees make war
Green heads, close as if to kiss
Roots to rip at quickening wood of tree-hearts
And tree-lungs, sap-running wood-flesh
Hurled at the moon, breaking oak
Like the dismemberment of ships,
At the truce of dawn wind trumpeting.
Sedate, dispassionate and beautiful
They know about panic and life and patience
Grow by guile into night’s
Companions and day’s evil
Setting landmarks and boundaries
That fight the worms.
Trees love, love love, love Death
Love a windscorched earth and copper sky
Love the burns of ice and fire
When lightning as a last hope is called in.
Boats on land they loathe the sea
And wait with all arms spread to catch the moon:
Pull back my skin and there is bark
Peel off my bark and there is skin:
I am a tree whose roots destroy me.