Poems

Now in this autumn of repose
When Nature draws her breath
Afore the fall of winter’s leaden weight,
And the shadow of the Friend hangs close,
When furtive breezes stir the papers on my desk
And the ivy at my open casement licks,
It is my pleasure to step abroad
Amid the richly tinted world
Of golden lights and blushes deep,
And fall amidst
The cornflake crispness of yellow leaves,
Curled conch-like,
Chrysalid graveyard racked by autumn’s freshsome gusts
That swoop like carrion among the hollows,
To waltz and whirl the scabrous skins
Of new-shed trees, mournful marionettes
That jig and jerk on withered wire,
Or tremble with the fretful flutter
Of a broken wing.
Even now, my love, the ivy flames,
Like unto the blood-red flares that streak the sky
At eventide,
When birds wing silent to southern lands
And clip the edge of night,
And the cries of children echo far away
In the ringing silence of the ashen dusk.
’Rapt in my ’loneness,
I tread the wanderer’s unended quest
Through russet realms,
Silent witness to the year’s long breathing out,
Footfalls muffled in seas of burnished tears
Wept in expiation of some unspoken deed,
Settling like the dust of Time…
A calendar’s crumpled sheets scattered in the wind;
There is forgiveness
In the falling of a leaf.
Oh Nature!
With what infernal beauty dost thou grace the ageing year!
What rest the heart, what sweetness breathe
’Pon souls who more clamorous times
Hath known!
And oft I gaze ’pon silvered hair and faces etched,
In whom the flame of youth is long
Burnt dim,
And see in them a deeper glow,
Like unto lanterns softly raying the night;
Youth’s sharp angles smoothed away
Like pebbles rolled long upon the bed
Of some swift stream;
Love claims the space desire hath fled
And peace fills up the mansions of the soul.
Then take me, dark angel,
For I hath lived
And filled my saddlebags with spices rich.
Now in this time of rain,
With kindly fingers draw close my lids
And clasp me to thy satin robe
That I may quit this shattered bowl
And walk in beauty
In the forest of the soul.

Black are my lover’s eyes,
As wells of ink,
And black her hair,
So lustrous
That, startled in a sunbeam,
It flashes iridescent as a crow’s wing
That beats the murd’rous air.
Black ravening whore
That scours the field grim
Through mist and marsh,
And plucks the sightless eyes
From sightless men,
I would make a fine meal, my sweet,
For you to peck at.
And in your passion
I am but carrion for your clever mouth
And quick, sharp fingers that rake and rack.
Ah, my love,
The morning dew sits like a pearl on your black wing,
Black as the coal in the hills of Merthyr,
Black as the mines where the miners toil
And black as the hearts of the men that send them down,
And I would drink the dew from thee
And give up my life in thy feathered bed.
Is that a skein of blood upon thy ruby lips?
Then thou hast drunk me dry
And ere the dawn delights the day,
I die.

When we are no longer crazy diamonds, you and I,
What are we?
When we no longer fall carelessly among leaves,
Nor gladden at the lengthening of the day;
When the race is run,
When the metal wheel grinds in the rut of life,
And the mercury no longer breaks the glass
With passion o’erspilled,
What are we?
When our skin no longer thrills and burns to another’s touch,
When we no longer tumble into bed
Drunk with the laughter of wine,
Turning in our sleep to seek our lover’s mouth,
What becomes us?

What becomes us
When the cataract of age dulls the once bright eye,
And the world is warped through the misted glass
Of a broken window?
When the skin sags and the hair turns grey,
And the risen year is an enemy held at the door;
When image invades the house of fun,
And dignity is but a wreck to which we cling
As all around us sinks,
What hope is left for you and I, my love?
Live life and live it well!
For those who set aside the morrow, die today.

I have forgotten
The warm wetness of a woman’s kiss,
The pleasures of lips that yield
Like soft wax upon parchment,
A pas-de-deux of tongues that flicker and dart
Like asps,
The sensual mouth an undine’s cave
Wherein fragile fingered anemones probe
And twine.

Are they all passed,
These pleasures of a wilder youth?
Ne’er more to brush a burning cheek
’Gainst the downy softness of a woman’s skin?
To glide glistening ’tween sappy thighs
And breathe the secret incense
Of hips heavy with the oils of love?
To fall ’mong breasts that pout
And press;
To tumble on furs in firelight
And gasp and cry in the
Foetal dark?

To be touched – just once,
Be gripped in love;
To be licked, bitten, kissed, caressed,
Drunk, sucked dry and bloodied lie;
Bound in the withies of a woman’s hair,
Beswept by tresses dark and soft
That trail like moss ’bove tremoring skin,
And hips that silent row the sheets
And brazen limbs that know no sin.

Gone now…
An old man locked in his cage of years,
Powdered with the dust of frozen stars,
All his knowing a white sound
That forbids sleep;
A mad king mouldering
In a castle of dust,
Joints that crack like frail buckram,
And skin yellowed
Like pages carelessly exposed to light.
’Twas not always so. Once these livid arms were angel’s wings That knew the spires of Heaven… A bright-feathered firebird, Incendiary in the sun’s light, And from these haggard loins Promethean seed sprayed forth To paint the vault With stars. Such was I in youth, And so in birth; Tell me, pray, What lights the soul When human love hath run to earth?

I met a man
Huddled in the Christmas snow,
In worn-out coat and cap to catch the coins
Of passers-by who paid no heed,
Nor desired to know,
The fate of this poor man
But chattered on at speed.

And something of his features made me stop
For sure I knew him
From many years ago,
Though his cheeks were hollow
And stubble decked his chin
And eyes that shone had lost their glow.

I proffered him a coin,
A shiny golden coin,
Which in his cap I laid,
But he stopped me, saying,
“Your coin I’ll trade
For a minute of your time.
I was not always thus.
Hear me out and you will see.”
And he lowered his eyes and said,
“I think this winter will be the death of me.”
“Strange,” he said, “there was a time
I stood so tall,
Had pride in my spine back then,
Kept me straight,
Never thought I’d have a fall,
Until that night and late,
I took my wife and daughters four
And lost them all on the M62
By Saddleworth Moor.”
“I’d had a jar afore I left,
Small one mind, took the wheel,
Took it careful like I should.
One by one they fell asleep,
Never thought they’d sleep for good,
The bleak and barren moor,
Fog descending like a pall,
And me the last awake,
The night, the music and
The long dark road ahead,
And heavy rain withal,
Should have stopped to take a break.
Lulls the senses see, the endless miles, the monotony,
And all about, that dark and lonely peak,
Fills a man with dread,
Who could have known within an hour
My wife and daughters dead?”
Then a tear rolled down his cheek.
“I killed them all,” he said,
“I killed them all.”
“Now I see their faces in the rain,
Among the crowds that stop and stare
At windows brightly lit,
Or in dead of night
When papers flit along the street
As alone I sit,
And then it comes:
The anguish, torment and the pain.
And every time I see them there,
Though I close my eyes in vain,
They call my name through the sleet
And give me that accusing look
And tell me we will meet.”

“Poor wretch,” said I,
“But sure I know you from a happier time.
Yet still you live though prosper not.”
“Sir, I live,” he said, “That no man can deny.
And folk will say I’m in my prime.
But of my soul?
My soul’s been dead a year and more.
It died in that car on the M62
By Saddleworth Moor.”

I’m a solitary man.
The comforts of love have I known,
Kindness given and kindness shown,
With wise men and philosophers I have talked,
And with Jesus walked
Along the dusty mile,
Done good where I pass,
Earned applause from some
And others none,
But it don’t bother me what I can’t control,
I look after my own and do what I can,
I’m a solitary man.

The wild road have I trod,
Seen cruelty by Man no man should see,
Kicked my heels in southern ports,
In sultry bars knocked back shorts,
Walked the lights on Broadway,
In Vegas played my chips,
But the city’s too dirty for long to stay,
So I took my burden and walked away,
The problems of the world ain’t my own,
I take my pleasure where I can,
I’m a solitary man.

The boards of life I’ve played,
Visited amusements,
And sights I’ve seen them all,
Taken my turn on the merry-go-round
And found no peace withal,
The consolements of women
Picked up for a night
Left me feeling empty
And afforded no delight;
And at length I said ‘let it be’,
And left it all behind,
All the empty horses and all the straw men,
The ambitious and the blind,
The politician with the dazzling smile,
His glittering wife
And the whole darn world of human strife;
Now I hold my life in my hand
And somewhere there’s a plan,
I’m a solitary man.

And always I return to the solitary life,
Watch the settling of the dust of time,
The stars wheel and suns burn
And frost coat my leathers in icy rime,
A pack, a knife and a ten dollar bill
And the call of birdsong on evenings still,
A water bottle, a campfire and sleeping on hay,
Jumping the carriage
’Twixt night and day;
In the fight with death, life will always lose
But while I live, this life I’ll choose.
I’m a solitary man.

Did I ever say you are a goddess?
No?
I must have told you as many times
As there are leaves in a book.
The sun arcs around the window,
Falling into bright sequestered blotches,
Making of our plainly-papered walls
A canvas for Renoir,
And yet your light is bright and unchanging
As though you inhabit your own sun,
And you blaze from room to room,
Subtly stirring the air as you pass.
Nor have you seasons,
But in you are spring, summer, autumn, winter,
All combined, merged and melded
In one temperate clime.

And yet (the question torments me),
What manner of goddess be thee,
That you appeared in my life like a poem,
Unbidden from some unconscious pool?
Not the dread Magna Mater,
In whose honour eunuch priests
Tore themselves with rusted knife,
Nor wild, bloody Artemis
Before whose altar the flower of Spartan youth were flayed.
A goddess of love? Ah yes,
And without compare,
As though your very nature impels you
To that high station.
Gentle Aphrodite,
A goddess of shells and the wide roiling sea,
You rise from out the froth and foam
That crashes upon some Cypriot shore,
(Annoying cherubs buzzing about your head
Unfurling scrolls extolling your divine virtues),
Or walking barefoot upon the wave-washed sands
Of white-painted Crete.
I lay my head between your conch-like folds
And imagine I can hear the somnolent stirring
Of the salt sea
Booming in your womb.
Even Botticelli could not do you justice,
And there was a man who could paint a goddess!

But surely you belong not to Olympian mount
Nor wine-dark sea
But to skin and blood,
Whose being pulses deep in cathedrals of bone,
As though you had descended to the earth
From some empyrean realm,
And assumed the guise of woman,
Whose small intimacies
Wrapped in the fondness of years
Punctuate the exquisite sentences of life.
A goddess who sips of sweet red wine,
Drawn from deep vats,
Fixing me with the steady eye of a huntress
Over the rim of your glass,
A lustrous Diana of the Woods,
Dark and dangerous by moonlight.
A goddess of cheap paperbacks
Devoured on lazy Sunday afternoons
In the dappled light of cherry,
Mingled with heady scent of cyclamen,
Or perched upon a cushion in some picture window,
Wrapped in a sunbeam
Picking out the warm chestnut reds and browns
Of your beautiful hair,
Mellow like the burnished wood of a violin
Whorled and streaked in autumn hues.

Spooned in companionable silence
In the flickering nimbus of a dying candle,
I brush your pale cheek,
Warm and peach-like in the summer night,
After the last bird has sung,
And experience divinity
In the most transient of things.
This old bald pate grows
Balder and patier,
And old white legs thin with age
Like the broken pillars of ruinéd Rome,
And yet mortality’s cold hand,
Stems not the course of love,
But rather in its shadow do we love more.
For even gods must stoop to love,
And in loving, accept mortality’s fatal dart;
Their tattered rags cannot hold back the cold
Of a dying sun.
And in silent hour at fall of dusk,
As sleep skulks about my eyes,
I hold you tight and softly sing,
Bright goddess of my bed,
Of the joy your life has given me;
Better to love and die
Than immortal be.

I have felt the benediction
Of sun breaking through rain,
Its beams dissolving the darkness
And bleak sheets of pain,
Banishing the scowling coverlids of cloud
And malevolence of thunder
Peeling and loud,
To curtain the hills in fulgent drapes
That pattern the fields
In scintillant shapes,
Lighting grass and meadow in lustrous greens,
And picking out the broom
That sports its yellow sprays
In the evanescence of blue skies
And cloudless days,
While, clustered in the copse
That nestles on the Downs,
The slanting sun endows
The mossy bark of oaks
In richly tinted browns,
And the dreamy wafting
Of somnolent breeze
Turns to diamonds the drops that cling
To spindly branches of stooped old trees.
I have felt the kiss of warmth
Upon my face,
Breathed the sweetness of grass,
And my soul sings out
To the sun’s embrace,
For even as rain soaks
And winter numbs,
No matter how dark the day,
Redemption always comes.

Thus passes the glory of the world
In the dying of the day.
Petroleum sun drops like a burning plane,
Quenched in the sea
That forgives all things,
Self-immolating bark of Ra,
Bale-eyed, bleeding into crevasses of cloud,
Flaying red the penitent sky at eventide.

Old man dying alone
In gloomy garret, groaning,
Ground to dust by mill of age,
Old crooked body, medalled with moles,
Paper skin inked with scripture of toil and pain,
Passion play written in verses of vein.
Gravity wins as he knew it would,
As it always does.
Who shall mourn such one
Betrayed by lie of life,
Who slips like a shadow unremarked,
Known only to the cockroach and the rat?
Who shall sing the dirge of one
Sieved through the mesh of reckoning?
The last song played on the radio,
The last scotch sipped,
The book put down
And the light put out,
Old white head laid to rest
On dirty pillow,
And eternity of silence.
Who marks his passing?
The cryptic Christ looks dolefully down,
Yellowed, frozen in wood,
The Virgin’s tears dried to salt;
Even God has run off with the money.
The light that sneaks across the wall
Like a moving finger
Never finds him.
Companioned only by time and memory,
Wound in unholy shroud of sheet,
Banished to the fire from pious eyes,
That in no cathedral shall rest,
Thus passes his glory from the world
At the dying of the day.

Far away,
The clock tower chimes the vespers hour,
The nightingale sings the nocturne
And starlings wheel above the pier.

When I was young and my life new spun
My years stretched ahead to the rising sun,
And now the sand is nearly run,
Taking back the years is an uphill climb,
And I wonder what became of all that time.
Square of shoulder and lank of limb,
I smoked behind bike sheds and hallways dim,
Lounged on the porch in the southern heat,
Ripped blue jeans and looking cool
Were all that mattered to this holy fool.
Wouldn’t beg apology from no man,
No Sir!
Folk gave me crap, I told them straight,
Didn’t know how to communicate,
The feelings I had, I couldn’t get out,
I wasn’t ready for that first date,
I’m a rose that bloomed late.
Alone and dreaming out of school,
I gazed at my reflection in a pool,
Kicked a ball about the yard,
The while men hammered and sang,
Forged the mighty engines of the world
In din and clang,
And writers wrote in artful word
But their words I neither saw nor heard,
I played the clown for others’ mirth,
Mistook attention for respect,
Indifferent to my worth,
Gave my gold out in the street,
And laid my life at others’ feet,
The dead end jobs they came and went
Money earned and money spent,
But still I walked the old familiar track
As I grew older day by day,
And never saw the broad and tree-lined way.
Now in the autumn of my age,
I’m a calmer man and wise as sage,
Childish things I’ve put away,
The insecurity and the rage,
My voice is mellow as the mellowest smoke
And I stand taller than the tallest oak,
My roots run down into the earth
And I weather the storm ’cause I know my worth.
The path I walk is the path I chose
I’m a late blooming rose.

Lovers kiss in orchards,
Lovers smooch on trains,
Lovers press in sunny streets
And doorways when it rains.

Lovers read poems
To while away the hours,
Lovers part with angry words
And make it up with flowers.

Lovers are tortured,
Lovers are slain,
Lovers feel anguish,
Lovers feel pain.

Lovers go to war
To fight to be free,
Lovers die in battle,
Lovers drown at sea.

Lovers are beaten,
Lovers sleep in chains,
Lovers die in death camps,
Lovers die in flames.

Lovers who have loved for life
Are from their lovers torn,
Lovers who say goodnight
May never see the morn.

Lovers die of sorrow,
Lovers go insane,
But lovers keep on loving
Through the storm and rain.

The storm that blows the rose
Bends not my heart
For my heart bends but to thee,
And the sun that melts the storm
Is like the love you give to me.

The clouds that race the sky
Chase not my love
For my love doth cleave to thee,
And the sun that fills my house with light
Is like the smile you give to me.

The wind that shakes the trees
Stirs not my soul
For my soul stirs but for thee,
And the summer airs that stroke the leaves
Are like the words you speak to me.

The waves that toss the ship
Tip not my course
For my course is set to thee,
Thou art my port and guiding star
Whose arms do shelter me.

The rain that rends the rye
Rends not my heart
For my heart cannot be rent,
Like a diamond is my heart
And in thy hand it rests content.

Nor storm nor wind nor rain
My love shall wash away
But every morn I wake with thee,
Sweet lover of my life,
Sunshine warms my day.