MCMXIV
Those long uneven lines Standing as patiently As if they were stretched outside The Oval or Villa Park, The crowns of hats, the sun On moustached archaic faces Grinning as if it were all
If Hands Could Free You, Heart
If hands could free you, heart, Where would you fly? Far, beyond every part Of earth this running sky Makes desolate? Would you cross City and hill and sea, If hands could set you
The Little Lives Of Earth And Form
The little lives of earth and form, Of finding food, and keeping warm, Are not like ours, and yet A kinship lingers nonetheless: We hanker for the homeliness Of den, and hole, and set.
Mother, Summer, I
My mother, who hates thunder storms, Holds up each summer day and shakes It out suspiciously, lest swarms Of grape-dark clouds are lurking there; But when the August weather breaks And rains begin, and
This Be The Verse
They fuck you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do. They fill you with the faults they had And add some extra, just for you. But they were
Best Society
When I was a child, I thought, Casually, that solitude Never needed to be sought. Something everybody had, Like nakedness, it lay at hand, Not specially right or specially wrong, A plentiful and obvious
The Spirit Wooed
Once I believed in you, And then you came, Unquestionably new, as fame Had said you were. But that was long ago. You launched no argument, Yet I obeyed, Straightaway, the instrument you played
Solar
Suspended lion face Spilling at the centre Of an unfurnished sky How still you stand, And how unaided Single stalkless flower You pour unrecompensed. The eye sees you Simplified by distance Into an origin,
High Windows
When I see a couple of kids And guess he’s fucking her and she’s Taking pills or wearing a diaphragm, I know this is paradise Everyone old has dreamed of all their lives Bonds
The Trees
The trees are coming into leaf Like something almost being said; The recent buds relax and spread, Their greenness is a kind of grief. Is it that they are born again And we grow
I Remember, I Remember
Coming up England by a different line For once, early in the cold new year, We stopped, and, watching men with number plates Sprint down the platform to familiar gates, ‘Why, Coventry!’ I exclaimed.
Love, We Must Part Now
Love, we must part now: do not let it be Calamitious and bitter. In the past There has been too much moonlight and self-pity: Let us have done with it: for now at last
Cut Grass
Cut grass lies frail: Brief is the breath Mown stalks exhale. Long, long the death It dies in the white hours Of young-leafed June With chestnut flowers, With hedges snowlike strewn, White lilac bowed,
Arrival
Morning, a glass door, flashes Gold names off the new city, Whose white shelves and domes travel The slow sky all day. I land to stay here; And the windows flock open And the
Maturity
A stationary sense… as, I suppose, I shall have, till my single body grows Inaccurate, tired; Then I shall start to feel the backward pull Take over, sickening and masterful – Some say, desired.