The Hare
The way it leapt along
As if the ground was several miles below
As if it grasped the air in every paw
Arrowing its way across the forest floor?
Towards is over the melting snow.
My horse was fast and strong
But at this creatures sudden flight
It stopped and swayed and pawed the slippy track
And showed its teeth and stepped back
Slid and recovered itself in its great fright.
There is nothing wrong
Still I turn the horse into a cloud of our breath.
I will not pass through its little prints
I cannot cross this line: and since
I cannot, there may be hope yet.
Dawn Chorus
Every morning since the time changed
I have woken to the dawn chorus
And even before it sounded, I dreamed of it
Loud, unbelievably loud, shameless, raucous
And once I rose and twitched the curtains apart
Expecting the birds to be pressing in fright
Against the pane like passengers
But the garden was empty and it was night
Not a slither of light at the horizon
Still the birds were bawling through the mists
Terrible, invisible
A million small evangelists
How they sing: as if each had pecked up a smoldering coal
Their throats singed and swollen with song
In dissonance as befits the dark world
Where only travelers and the sleepless belong
Commonplace
We went shopping. He pushed the trolley
And people we knew saw us and smiled.
That afternoon he worked, walked with me,
Played a few tunes on the piano, admired
A thriving plant, warm against the house,
A postcard, the grate’s neat fire.
And then bed, earlier than he was used to go.
And once he called me and asked if I was there.
So I went up, undressed and unpinned my hair
And lay beside him in his own halo.
Nothing. Then later a movement in the air
And from a deep scared dream I woke,
He sighed quietly, touched me and spoke
Of his love. And then he was no longer there.
Ten Moons
And then came the ten moons
Full in the sun’s glare, and the seraphim,
And it was light all night in the orchards
And on the plains and even in the towns
And mankind rejoiced, because it was now the case
That the wrecking and equivocating could carry on
The pale night long. Mankind rejoiced
And went forth to those places twelve hours of light
Had not made it worth the while to despoil
And gamboled collectively on the cliff tops
And regarded the night-broiling of the sea
Hitherto forbidden, but now opened in festival.
Half the world’s time unpeeled and exposed
So fruit might ripen faster and trees flourish higher
And forced photosynthesis green all the land.
Then night ramblers, night-sun-worshippers,
Night-motorists fanned out and made the most
Of spectral light, which bleached out stars and even
The cozy old moon herself, who had
Once held a sickle broadside to the sun, and now
Was a hollow daytime shadow.
Only a few old believers slept
Hand in hand, shoulder to breast,
As if their lives depended on it, knowing yet
That the morning would bring nothing
Because the day knew no beginning
And had no end.
Asylum
for Marina
You say the old masters never got it wrong,
But when Goya painted the death of the imagination
It was a lost dog against a usurious yellow sky
And the dog, a hapless creature who had drawn itself
Ten miles on two legs, stared in amazement
To see the man who once fed him from his plate
Reduced to this.
So I felt this week, the vile soil and everything upon it—
The beggar guest kicked from the table
Before his own dog, and even the honest unpicking
Of art performed nightly and in seclusion.
Like any Penelope my armor is resignation
Although I thought I would lift the bow myself
And draw.
By the morning he is gone
And what to make of this?
The prostitutes hang from a beam like mice
The suitors are piled unburied in the yard.
And some say that it is now much better
And others, that it is worse.
So order was restored
I stared in amazement
•
Perhaps Akhmatova was right
When she wrote who knows what shit
What tip, what pile of waste
Brings forth the tender verse
Like hogweed, like the fat hen under the fence
Like the unbearable present tense
Who knows what ill, what strife
What crude shack of a life
And how it twists sweetly about the broken sill:
Pressingness, another word for honeysuckle
But housewives? Has poetry
Ever deepened in the pail
Was it ever found in the sink, under the table
Did it rise in the oven, quietly able
To outhowl the hoover?
Does it press more than the children’s supper
The sudden sleepless wail?
Did it ever?
It lives. It takes seed
Like the most unforgiving weed
Grows wilder as the child grows older
And spits on dreams, did I say
How it thrives in the ashen family nest
Or how iambs are measured best
Where it hurts:
With the heel of an iron
On the reluctant breast
Of a shirt?
Apart from Love
Apart from love there is a long corridor
Lit by bulbs on a wire and echoing
Stretching miles between the wings.
Women in heels, men in cardigans
With papers, files and forms to sign
Clattering back and forth between the
Wings. Apart from love there is
A sign, several signs in fact
Around the doors and so they knock
And move inside and out, holding
Bills and cheques and forms to sign
Apart from love there is a voice
Saying where are you, what do you
Want, what is your heart’s desire?
Between the wings and lit by bulbs
There is a long corridor and it is
Apart from love and still the men
And women are a part of it with
Bills and forms and files to sign
And saying to each other what
Is your heart? What is your hope?
And where do you think you are?
You are apart from love. Picking
Up the phone between the wings
Shouting for the men in cardigans
The women in heels and moving
Inside and out, picking up
Up the phone saying where you are
And what do you want in the long
Long corridor that is apart from
Love. Apart from love. There is a
A long corridor between the wings
Where is your heart’s desire.
