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