A S J Tessimond
To Be Blind
Is it sounds converging, Sounds nearing, Infringement, impingement, Impact, contact With surfaces of the sounds Or surfaces without the sounds: Diagrams, skeletal, strange? Is it winds curling round invisible corners? Polyphony of perfumes? Antennae
Polyphony In A Cathedral
Music curls In the stone shells Of the arches, and rings Their stone bells. Music lips Each cold groove Of parabolas’ laced Warp and woof, And lingers round nodes Of the ribbed roof Chords
Symphony In Red
Within the church The solemn priests advance, And the sunlight, stained by the heavy windows, Dyes a yet richer red the scarlet banners And the scarlet robes of the young boys that bear them,
Bells, Pool And Sleep
Bells overbrim with sound And spread from cupolas Out through the shaking air Endless unbreaking circles Cool and clear as water. A stone dropped in the water Opens the lips of the pool And
Unlyric Love Song
It is time to give that-of-myself which I could not at first: To offer you now at last my least and my worst: Minor, absurd preserves, The shell’s end-curves, A document kept at the
Nursery Rhyme For A Twenty-First Birthday
You cannot see the walls that divide your hand From his or hers or mine when you think you touch it. You cannot see the walls because they are glass, And glass is nothing
Black Morning Lovesong
In love’s dances, in love’s dances One retreats and one advances, One grows warmer and one colder, One more hesitant, one bolder. One gives what the other needed Once, or will need, now unheeded.
Seaport
Green sea-tarnished copper And sea-tarnished gold Of cupolas. Sea-runnelled streets Channelled by salt air That wears the white stone. The sunlight-filled cistern Of a dry-dock. Square shadows. Sun-slatted smoke above meticulous stooping of cranes.
The Children Look At The Parents
We being so hidden from those who Have quietly borne and fed us, How can we answer civilly Their innocent invitations? How can we say “we see you As but-for-God’s-grace-ourselves, as Our caricatures (we
The Man In The Bowler Hat
I am the unnoticed, the unnoticable man: The man who sat on your right in the morning train: The man who looked through like a windowpane: The man who was the colour of the
Discovery
When you are slightly drunk Things are so close, so friendly. The road asks to be walked upon, The road rewards you for walking With firm upward contact answering your downward contact Like the
Houses
People who are afraid of themselves Multiply themselves into families And so divide themselves And so become less afraid. People who might have to go out Into clanging strangers’ laughter, Crowd under roofs, make
Flight Of Stairs
Stairs fly as straight as hawks; Or else in spirals, curve out of curve, pausing At a ledge to poise their wings before relaunching. Stairs sway at the height of their flight Like a
Attack On The Ad-Man
This trumpeter of nothingness, employed To keep our reason dull and null and void. This man of wind and froth and flux will sell The wares of any who reward him well. Praising whatever
Betrayal
If a man says half himself in the light, adroit Way a tune shakes into equilibrium, Or approximates to a note that never comes: Says half himself in the way two pencil-lines Flow to
Music
This shape without space, This pattern without stuff, This stream without dimension Surrounds us, flows through us, But leaves no mark. This message without meaning, These tears without eyes This laughter without lips Speaks
Night Piece
Climb, claim your shelf-room, far Packed from inquisitive moon And cold contagious stars. Lean out, but look no longer, No further, than to stir Night with extended finger. Now fill the box with light,
Meeting
Dogs take new friends abruptly and by smell, Cats’ meetings are neat, tactual, caressive. Monkeys exchange their fleas before they speak. Snakes, no doubt, coil by coil reach mutual knowledge. We then, at first
Cats
Cats no less liquid than their shadows Offer no angles to the wind. They slip, diminished, neat through loopholes Less than themselves; will not be pinned To rules or routes for journeys; counter Attack
Black On Black
Serrations of chimneys Stone-black perforate Velvet-black dark. A tree coils in core of darkness. My swinging Hands Incise the night. A man slips into a doorway, Black hole in blackness, and drowns there. A
Empty Room
The clock disserts on punctuation, syntax. The clock’s voice, thin and dry, asserts, repeats. The clock insists: a lecturer demonstrating, Loudly, with finger raised, when the class has gone. But time flows through the
June Sick Room
The birds’ shrill fluting Beats on the pink blind, Pierces the pink blind At whose edge fumble the sun’s Fingers till one obtrudes And stirs the thick motes. The room is a close box
Cocoon For A Skeleton
Clothes: to compose The furtive, lone Pillar of bone To some repose. To let hands shirk Utterance behind A pocket’s blind Deceptive smirk. To mask, belie The undue haste Of breast for breast Or
One Almost Might
Wouldn’t you say, Wouldn’t you say: one day, With a little more time or a little more patience, one might Disentangle for separate, deliberate, slow delight One of the moment’s hundred strands, unfray Beginnings
Day Dream
One day people will touch and talk perhaps Easily, And loving be natural as breathing and warm as Sunlight, And people will untie themselves, as string is unknotted, Unfold and yawn and stretch and
Last Word To Childhood
Ice-cold fear has slowly decreased As my bones have grown, my height increased. Though I shiver in snow of dreams, I shall never Freeze again in a noonday terror. I shall never break, my
The British
We are a people living in shells and moving Crablike; reticent, awkward, deeply suspicious; Watching the world from a corner of half-closed eyelids, Afraid lest someone show that he hates or loves us, Afraid
Birch Tree
The birch tree in winter Leaning over the secret pool Is Narcissus in love With the slight white branches, The slim trunk, In the dark glass; But, Spring coming on, Is afraid, And scarfs
Chaplin
The sun, a heavy spider, spins in the thirsty sky. The wind hides under cactus leaves, in doorway corners. Only the wry Small shadow accompanies Hamlet-Petrouchka’s march – the slight Wry sniggering shadow in
Quickstep
Acknowledge the drum’s whisper. Yield to its velvet Nudge. Cut a slow air- Curve. Then dip (hip to hip): Sway, swing, pedantically Poise. Now recover, Converting the coda To prelude of sway-swing- Recover. Acknowledge
Not Love Perhaps
This is not Love, perhaps, Love that lays down its life, That many waters cannot quench, Nor the floods drown, But something written in lighter ink, Said in a lower tone, something, perhaps, especially
Earthfast
Architects plant their imagination, weld their poems on rock, Clamp them to the skidding rim of the world and anchor them down to its core; Leave more than the painter’s or poet’s snail-bright trail
Sea
1 (Windless Summer) Between the glass panes of the sea are pressed Patterns of fronds, and the bronze tracks of fishes. 2 (Winter) Foam-ropes lasso the seal-black shiny rocks, Noosing, slipping and noosing again
Cinema Screen
Light’s patterns freeze: Frost on our faces. Light’s pollen sifts Through the lids of our eyes… Light sinks and rusts In water; is broken By glass… rests On deserted dust. Light lies like torn
Epilogue
“Why can’t you say what you mean straight out in prose?” Well, say it yourself: then say “It’s that, but more, Or less perhaps, or not that way, or not That after all.” The
Epitaph On A Disturber Of His Times
We expected the violin’s finger on the upturned nerve; Its importunate cry, too laxly curved: And you drew us an oboe-outline, clean and acute; Unadorned statement, accurately carved. We expected the screen, the background
Any Man Speaks
I, after difficult entry through my mother’s blood And stumbling childhood (hitting my head against the world); I, intricate, easily unshipped, untracked, unaligned; Cut off in my communications; stammering; speaking A dialect shared by
Never
Suddenly, desperately I thought, “No, never In millions of minutes Can I for one second Calm-leaving my own self Like clothes on a chair-back And quietly opening The door of one house (No, not
Wet City Night
Light drunkenly reels into shadow; Blurs, slurs uneasily; Slides off the eyeballs: The segments shatter. Tree-branches cut arc-light in ragged Fluttering wet strips. The cup of the sky-sign is filled too full; It slushes
Tube Station
The tube lift mounts, sap in a stem, And blossoms its load, a black, untidy rose. The fountain of the escalator curls at the crest, breaks and scatters A winnow of men, a sickle
Don Juan
Under the lips and limbs, the embraces, faces, Under the sharp circumference, the brightness, Under the fence of shadows, Is something I am seeking; Under the faces a face, Under the new an old
Epitaph For Our Children
Blame us for these who were cradled and rocked in our chaos; Watching our sidelong watching, fearing our fear; Playing their blind-man’s-bluff in our gutted mansions, Their follow-my-leader on a stair that ended in