Collected Poems Page 4
She went out in the early afternoon to fetch a child from.
I pulled up from a pillow damp with heat
And saw her kissing hers, her legs were folded
Far away from mine. A pillow! It seemed
She couldn’t love the empty air.
Perhaps, we thought, a child had come to grief
In some room in the old house we kept,
And listened if the noises came from some especial room,
And then we’d take the boards up and discover
A pile of dusty bones like charcoal twigs and give
The tiny-sounding ghost a proper resting-place
So that it need not wander in the empty air.
No blood-stained attic harboured the floating sounds,
We found they came in rooms that we’d warmed with our life.
We traced the voice and found where it mostly came
From just underneath both our skins, and not only
In the night-time either, but at the height of noon
And when we sat at meals alone. Plainly, this is how we found
That love pines loudly to go out to where
It need not spend itself on fancy and the empty air.
MEMORIAL7
(David Redgrove: 28th December 1937–24th December 1957)
Two photographs stand on the dresser
Joined up the spine. Put away
They fold until they kiss each other,
But put out, they look across the room.
My brother and myself. He is flushed and pouting
With heart, and standing square,
I, already white-browed and balding,
Float there, it seems, and look away.
You could look at us and say I was the one of air,
And he the brother of earth
Who, in Christmas-time, fell to his death.
Fancy, yes; but if you’d seen him in his life
There’d be his bright blond hair, and that flush,
And the mouth always slightly open, and the strength
Of body: those muscles! swelled up with the hard hand-springs at night
Certainly, but strong. I, on the other hand
Was remote, cross, and disengaged, a proper
Bastard to my brother, who enjoyed things,
Until he was able to defend himself. It’s June;
Everything’s come out in flush and white,
In ruff and sun, and tall green shoots
Hard with their sap. He’s ashes
Like this cigarette I smoke into grey dryness.
I notice outside my window a tree of blossom,
Cherries, I think, one branch bending heavy
Into the grey road to its no advantage.
The hard stone scrapes the petals off,
And the dust enters the flower into its peak.
It is so heavy with flowers it bruises itself:
It has tripped, you might say, and fallen,
Cannot get up, so heavy with dust.
The air plays with it, and plays small-chess with the dust.
THE ARCHAEOLOGIST
So I take one of those thin plates
And fit it to a knuckled other,
Carefully, for it trembles on the edge of powder,
Restore the jaw and find the fangs their mates.
The thorny tree of which this is the gourd,
Outlasting centuries of grit and water,
Re-engineered by me, stands over there,
Stocky, peeling, crouched and dangling-pawed.
I roll the warm wax within my palm
And to the bone slowly mould a face
Of the jutting-jawed, hang-browed race;
On the brute strength I try to build up a calm,
For it is a woman, by the broad hips;
I give her a smooth skin, and make the mouth mild:
It is aeons since she saw her child
Spinning thin winds of gossamer from his lips.
THE PLAY
(A Buffo Dialogue for reading aloud: Two Old Gentlemen)
A: I don’t want to play
B: But we want you
A: I don’t want to play
B: You must play too
A: I’m not going to play for you
You play too rough, I’m not tough enough
B: (A red silk mantel with fur below)
A: I’d rather not
B: Why is that so?
A: I need something to do
But I’m not a fool
I don’t want to play
No, not today
No, not with you
B: But there’s this fur: these red silk gowns
The hat, the beard, and the buskins
A: Will I have a wig: will I have a wig?
B: Oh yes, that too: oh yes, that too
A: And a pink silk handkerchief with thin green squares
To flourish in their faces and clean me ears
B: That too oh dear me yes: you must have that too
A: And pantaloons with cherry-bobbled tops
A big fat pipe and a frilly stock
B: Yes of course you can have that too
You can have these decorations put on you
A: What do I do?
B: You have to die.
A: I have to die?
No, really, surely, that’s not a fact.
Do I die too soon or in a late act?
B: In the last act.
A: Is that a fact?
B: You have to die; for most of the play
You just stand around making puffing noises
Waddle on, get lost, or out of the way.
A: Until the last act.
B: Yes, and then in a loud voice
You have to die in a loud voice
Gigantic enough to deafen us
Terrific enough to panic the audience
And bob them and sway them like the cherries dance
A: O that’s all right that’s all right
B: I want to hear your soul race
In the forefront of that voice
I want it to start with a physical push
And end with a seagulled hush
On the shore of that land where your forefathers are
And I want the whole company to weep when they hear
A: I can do that I can do that;
How do I die then, now tell me that.
B: With a sword, a height,
A mad dog’s bite,
Poison, razor,
And you choke on a fruit.
A: That will make a noise, a noise
To bring the house down
B: It’ll bring the house down
And that’ll kill you too
And you’ll shout at that
A: Then there’ll be a fire and a rushing wind
B: And that’ll kill you too
And you’ll shout at that
A: Then the gas-mains will explode
B: And that’ll shout you wide
And the winds will come again half-solid with snow
And the firemen’ll be unable to get anywhere near you
For you’ll burn in the winds and shout with the snow
With the gilt and the gore and the toppling gods
And the plush and the pipes and the pattering plaster
And the fire and the wind and the wind and the fire
All shouting
All shouting
And the greasy smoke rising higher and higher
And the arch will crash and kill you again
And hard fire will come and kill you again
And the wind sneaping round half-solid with snow
And the firemen trying to grab at you
No one could suffer as hard as you do
No one could last as long as you will
No one could shout as you would
And the voice and the voice
And the voice and the voice
What do you say, eigh? what do you say
?
A: When can I start: give me my part.
B: Here is your part
A: Is that my part? now watch my art
As I die as I scream as I die for my art.
WITHOUT EYES
Today, to begin with, she will do without eyes.
Staring at the speckled ruby eyelids make of the sunny window
Now she tries the world with her eyelids closed;
Pulls the length of her body out of the rasp of sheets
Into her self-made night-time; delicately shuffles her way along the hairy carpet
To the cool rim she traces round with a finger.
Heaves the heavy bulging of the water-jug, tilts
And lets it grow lighter,
The tinkling in the bowl wax to a deep water-sound.
Sluices her bunched face with close hands, finds natural grease,
With clinking nails scrabbles for the body of the sprawling soap,
Rubs up the fine jumping lather that grips like a mask, floods it off,
Solving the dingy tallow.
Bloods and plumps her cheeks in the springy towel, a rolling variable darkness
Dimpling the feminine fat-pockets under the deep coombs of bone
And the firm sheathed jellies above that make silent lightning in their bulbs.
Moves to her clothes – a carpet-edge snatches her toe
Plucking the tacks sharply like flower-stalks from the boards but
Leaves her smirking in darkness. Dresses:
Cupped hands grip. The bridge chafes quickly over the thighs
And closes on the saddled groin,
Her silk dress thunders over her head and on to the flounced opening
Into quiet
And her eyes clip open on the ardent oblivion of her resolution and
The streets and clouds from her high window, swimming and dazzled, rush in.
PICKING MUSHROOMS
A: What are you doing?
B: The usual; it’s the season; picking mushrooms.
A: Boletus omelette and tummyache this year?
B: Or young white puffball, grilled in butter.
A: Let’s see what you’ve got. Yes, I thought so: boleti.
B: It’s a hell of a mess; this one is broken
And this and this; they’re more brittle than usual;
And stubbier too; you can’t see where they are;
I’m too late on the scene; the caps are sticky;
They get leaf-clotted; like tar and feathers;
You have to hunt them like birds and creep up softly
Not clump hamfooted and squash them down –
Look at your footprints
A: Whoops – I’m sorry.
B: I coveted that clump for my moss-lined basket.
A: Here’s one!
B: Lawyer’s wig – it drools to an ink.
A: What’s that white one, through the trees,
By the big tree, on the leaf-drift?
B: Lepiota! The parasol mushroom –
Shoots three feet up on a warm wet night,
Tabbed with shaggy leather-coloured scales;
They wash off in a torrent of rain;
It stands in the rain like a tiny ghost
Quite white, arms outstretched;
But those are seldom the best.
They’re slightly luminous too.
This is a fine one, just three feet high!
If it gets any bigger it’s riddled with worms.
Wonderful with cheese in a casserole.
Right sir, I’ll have you!
A: Great flabby thing with no roots at all;
It overflows your basket; the cap’s cracked across.
Will it last home?
B: Young and fresh it keeps two days.
Tomorrow and Sunday: good as a roast.
Those shallow roots you despise so much
Run back to where I was stooping
Only ankle-deep in leaves, trifling for boleti.
That fuzz, white threads in the stem-crater
Feeds deep in the leaf-mush and wraps tree-roots,
Rests on rocks, riddles the sub-soil.
This is the sex, the parasol,
Just like your own, it has deep roots,
And makes as much seed. Billions of beings
Fly from the cap and may take root
Or again may not. You can’t stop them breeding;
Burn down the forest: spores would rise up
And flurry for miles on the first gust of hot air.
A: Give me your stick. Crisp on top,
Sour underneath; they go a long way, like spider-web;
No rustling down here; it thicks up like fog;
Steams a bit too, from the tamped-down layers;
Soaked paper, stuck matwise;
Legs, angled breastplates, eliding from light, glimpsed;
Ringed, pointed, greasy and quick;
Thin red wands, ragged with limbs;
Slithering flow; adorable creatures!
Whew! what a smell; you shouldn’t jump like that—
Only a click-back skipping; if you want to be
A mighty fungus-hunter … don’t look like that
B: Put it back quick. There’s a baby there.
A: God no. Stay here, I’ll get a doctor—
No, police. Put back the flap. Don’t stir;
Don’t stir it about… I’ll be back.
B: Was it the woman or the man
Chose the tenderest, deepest, most shaded from wind
‘Lie still here’ until I arrived
Licking my chops, eyes licking the ground.
What tiny ribs. A hairpin of a jaw.
Soft in the leaves, shrunk to the bones,
Itch of the wet and leaf-stench sent
The small ghost out for another body,
A monstrous sex which I would have nibbled
For my palate’s sake, with red wine and pepper.
‘Lie here baby’ but he wouldn’t stay still:
The bad baby signed to my friend through the trees.
They’ll be punished, and I am sick to my stomach;
Sick of abounding life and a flowing palate;
The red beetle kneels, and gobbles my progeny.
III
THE NATURE OF COLD WEATHER
(1961)
FOR NO GOOD REASON
I walk on the waste-ground for no good reason
Except that fallen stones and cracks
Bulging with weed suit my mood
Which is gloomy, irascible, selfish, among the split timbers
Of somebody’s home, and the bleached rags of wallpaper.
My trouser-legs pied with water-drops,
I knock a sparkling rain from hemlock-polls,
I crash a puddle up my shin,
Brush a nettle across my hand,
And swear – then sweat from what I said:
Indeed, the sun withdraws as if I stung.
Indeed, she withdrew as if I stung,
And I walk up and down among these canted beams, bricks and scraps,
Bitten walls and weed-stuffed gaps
Looking as it would feel now, if I walked back,
Across the carpets of my home, my own home.
GHOSTS
The terrace is said to be haunted.
By whom or what nobody knows; someone
Put away under the vines behind dusty glass
And rusty hinges staining the white-framed door
Like a nosebleed, locked; or a death in the pond
In three feet of water, a courageous breath?
It’s haunted anyway, so nobody mends it
And the paving lies loose for the ants to crawl through
Weaving and clutching like animated thorns.
We walk on to it,
Like the bold lovers we are, ten years of marriage,
Tempting the ghosts out with our high spirits,
Footsteps doubled by the silence
…
… and start up like ghosts ourselves
Flawed lank and drawn in the greenhouse glass:
She turns from that, and I sit down,
She tosses the dust with the toe of a shoe,
Sits on the pond’s parapet and takes a swift look
At her shaking face in the clogged water,
Weeds in her hair; rises quickly and looks at me.
I shrug, and turn my palms out, begin
To feel the damp in my bones as I lever up
And step toward her with my hints of wrinkles,
Crows-feet and shadows. We leave arm in arm
Not a word said. The terrace is haunted,
Like many places with rough mirrors now,
By estrangement, if the daylight’s strong.
THE STRONGHOLD
We had a fine place to come –
Into the keep of the old oak,
The frill of leaves to challenge through,
The tower-room in the old trunk,
The knot-holes, loops and battlements,
And the chinks wedged open with sunlight,
The fine soft shavings of decay
To putter in, run through our toes.
We were the breathing of the wood,
Its tender core, the faces, watchers, guardians,
Bare and bony-cold in winter,
Warm and odorous in summer
And in the autumn rustling in our leaves.
That is all gone now; by haunting
I learn that oak-tree strongholds are out of fashion
And I grow too big to squeeze inside:
The shadow of my head cuts off the light
And I peer into unrelieved and cramping gloom.
The sun breaks in hiding darting shadows outside
And smooth children’s faces form among the rough tree-barks.
MISTS
They do not need the moon for ghostliness
These mists jostling the boles,
These boy-wraiths and ogre-fumes
That hollow to a breasting walk;
They are harmless enough in all conscience,
Wetting eyelashes and growing moulds,
And do not speak at all, unless their walking flood
Is a kind of languid speech. Like ghosts
Dawn filches them for dews.
They wink at me from grasses pushed aside
And impart a high polish to my shoes
That dry in dullness, milky, sloven leather,
From walking in ghostways where tall mists grope.
TWO POEMS
I SPRING