Poems - LifeScapes

Clouds On The Horizon

The clouds on the horizon

Are the spirits of the Bison

And they bellow in the thunder

With a fury at the plunder

Of the masters of the plains.

(Oh the pitiful remains!)

The clouds on the horizon

Are the spirits of the Bison.

In the glory of the lightning

Is the beautiful and frightening

Accusation of their eyes.

(Oh the sorrow of the skies!)

The clouds on the horizon

Are the spirits of the Bison;

They are crowding, they are coming,

And the Warriors are drumming

And the people of the gun

Haven’t anywhere to run.

From horizon to horizon

Sweeps the triumph of the Bison,

He has put his mighty shoulder

To the cataract and boulder;

Men will answer for their greed

In the heavenly stampede.

The clouds on the horizon

Are the spirits of the Bison.

They will spare all those who love them,

Passing harmlessly above them -

But the Cities of the Plain

Have to learn it all again.

Wail for sons and weep for daughters

Taken by the scouring waters;

Rage at industry and spire

Lost to earthquake, wind and fire.

Ah, the spirits of the Bison

Are the clouds on your horizon...

__________________________

THE SILVER LINING

“... a silver lining to every cloud.”

I heard you say the words aloud

As you lay dying. By the bed

A cup of water; overhead

The drip that gave relief from pain -

Until the crisis came again.

You smiled, and looked toward the door;

A look I’d never seen before.

A light was in your face and eyes,

One faint gasp ... of joy? Surprise?

One hand raised a little, then

Let fall on the sheet again.

“Please don’t go!” I took your fingers.

“Nothing worse than life that lingers

Once the call of Heaven has come,”

You whispered.”Everything is numb

Except my mind; it longs to fly

And watch this worn-out body die.”

“I shall be with you to the end

And pray that you are right, dear friend.”

You stared at me, your eyes were shining.

“This is the cloud with the silver lining,

The dark mist of your tears; you see

That with my death my love is free

And every thought of you a kiss

That you will feel; an utter bliss,

An understanding never known

Before, a truth you will be shown.

The point of life is only found

In giving the body to the ground

And going home. I leave behind

A great school for the growing mind,

The whole curriculum of life -

Children, mother, lover, wife,

Work, worries, some success...

Be glad for my happiness!”

And then you were gone. I saw

Nothing leave ... but where before

There had been you, only a shape

Remained; you had made your escape.

I touched your hand, I felt your brow -

Nothing to animate them now.

Where was the friend so dear to me?

Surely more than a memory?

Nurses bustled round the bed.

“You’ll need a cup of tea,” they said.

“Come back in fifteen minutes, then

You can sit with your friend again.”

I did; I did. And was allowed

One precious moment; for my cloud

Broke open - the ward, the world was shining

With promised life, the silver lining.

HEROES

We are the Heroes

All we need to do

Is fly straight perish in fire

Paradise waiting

Islands and cities

Full of mistaken people

Chosen for Heaven

            *

One man with a gun

And a beautiful bomb smiles at

His own Jihad

Glorious weather

To start a war by shedding

The blood of children

             *

Souls of the broken

Stare at the tears and courage

Uncomprehending

No happier day

To pack a rucksack and break

The heart of London

              *

Deep in shattered dreams

New shoes kick the enemy

Old men are weeping

A perfect weekend

For boys in the hood to run

Looting and burning

             *

Not the rescuers

Dying to save a stranger

Nor the blind climber

Not the lovely boy

He and the bomb dismantled

Nor burning daughters

Not the Red Arrow

Who wrenched his plummeting plane

Away from houses

Not aching nurses

Mothers of empty children

Nor weeping Jesus

God in our pocket

We are the right men always

We are the Heroes

             *

TAO

One wild horse,

One tame.

One with plaited hair,

One with free mane.

Born of the one Sire,

Foaled of the one Dam,

She is the wild one,

The tame I am.

One dark horse,

One pale,

One trim in ribbon,

One with flying tail.

Caught of the same rope,

Locked in the one stall,

Her ear flattens -

Mine pricks to the Call.

One high horse,

One low,

One for gentle duty,

One for rodeo.

Fired with the same Blood,

Breathing the one Breath,

Twinned in the old shafts,    

Love races Death.

One dark curve,

One bright,

One with a dark eye,

One with white.

Poles of the One Love,

Halves of the One Whole.

Locked in a single Light,

Shines home the Soul.

******************************

THEY WHO KISS MIND

to whom I do belong
to My
to My Self alone

My is a wide net cast
between time
hither and past

Self a sense of eye
watching
in privacy

the blue nerve seen
through wax
is ice-keen

of uncommon kind
are they
who kiss mind

risk discovery in
having
Angels’ skin

the people of Light
cohere
behind my sight

we are the white-gold
aëreën
We are very old


* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

BEYOND THE PLOUGHLAND

A cat - asleep? Or dead? - in a bank of grass.
And a bicycle. Dead?
To me who think I live these things are dead.
I pass them,
The huge present; the infinitesimal past.
What do they do there?

Beyond the ploughland lies the blue light.

I will dig coins for myself as I cross the earth.

As my clothes fall off me and die like leaves in autumn
And new grass grows out of the approaching land to clothe me.
Sometimes I am naked.

And I can only watch where the blue horizon hangs
And wait for the wind to finish mating me,
Then bend with my nickel spoon again to turn the earth.

For glimpses of what? Hope?
Splinters of somebody’s past, my future?
The years turn in their sleep and mutter their dreams
Out of the sleeping corn,
And another gold grain sticks in my hand.

The wind sings
You are alone and I run around you
Playing at journeys while you stand and think
And stoop, and yawn, and think, and frown in the furrows.
You never look up at me when you rise;
Your eyes light through me as if - am I there,
dancing before you toward the horizon? -

Where the blue light drips.

The sun curries favour with the wind
And I work alone
Planting love, pricking myself,
And my blood drops somebody’s impulse into the soil.

One day
I shall be riding the dark back of the sea
At the edge of the end of it all -        
The inachievable future the great present.
And the blue light will smoke over these lifting waves
To take me into its dream with All the forgotten
Whose thoughts lie unburied, on the ploughland
Where the wind stands

Wondering

Why we left them there


* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

RED FEATHERS

When you last let in the morning frost
To scatter crumbs upon your window-sill,
Shook the bread-board clear over the garden
And watched the wild wings beating down for breakfast,
did you think then? - birds have died for you
So you can have red feathers on your hat.
A cock bled all his gallantry for you -
His love flown to your head.
Put out more bread.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

REFUGEE

Today I knitted myself a hat
In red and green, for the holly season -
And pulled it on, and dreaming sat
In the firelight - when for God’s own reason
A shiver of ice along the bone,
The shock of snow below the skin,
Confused my soul with a soul alone
In her fear. The air, and her shawl, were thin;
She strove barefoot on the mountain
With child and cart and dying man.
No songs, no feasts, no star, no inn
As winter comes to Kurdestan.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

TEMPLES

The children of the Lord are laughing in the smoke
The children of Life have many beautiful drums
Listen oh listen the lovely lilt of the jungle
Is the new prayer my body is a palm accept my
Hands libation of dance of orient air
I am in silk or leather, I am of thy
Caste, I am of the new
Creed (that is as old as Jesus and as full of death,
O children) We, out of the common chalice
Of our humanity, out of our treasure trove
(That is as old as Adam, and as indocile,
O children’s children) pour we our hair
The children of the Lord are dancing in the smoke
The children of Love with an open passport to Karma
Hand the serpent an apple with a gentle smile
And cast aside the garments given them to wear
For that I have no sin, for I am like a rose
That freely gives its seed to a beautiful stranger
And is unblamed, my buds open
Men may kiss my breast (where milk will come,
But not, O child, as manna) lovely girls
May rouse and soothe and curl my flowering fire
In sisterhood (and they will build the cities of the plain
Our children, to be again consumed) Ah good
Youth, give us your baptism; there is a new River,
O, it is roseate, for it is full of life  ~
Remember the many
Martyrs
Remember the pink sweet stream of Perfume River
Drifting out of the anguish of Hué
(The children of the Lord were laughing in the smoke,
The children of death had many beautiful drums
Listen oh listen
The lovely lilt of the jungle
My body was a felled palm)
The sacred mushroom has become the Cross
Eat Me  ~
I will deliver you from the falling skies;
The children of the Lord shall fertilise the smoke,
The children of time shall have devoured Chronos


* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

WHICH WAY, AND FOR HOW LONG?

Weird life.
All that time, that rolls
Before and around me like an irregular sea.
A pulse of the world s breath beats like a hill;
Miles of time
To move in the mind of the tortoise,
Spacious years
For living and dying
The day-dance of may-flies over the water.

I have borrowed the slow heart-beat
That shortens the day
And swallowed time in a step too vast
To heed the scurry of rabbit-paths in the thickets.
I have ticked an hour into more aeons of time
Than can be counted or conceived by men
Stripped of empathy and
Armed with stones.

The ant burns away a long life, And the tree, In the onward rush of seasons.

Trees grow no taller than I;
They watch my life as I would watch an ant.
My day is a second in time   Their day is eternity
To a may-fly.

So what of my strange metabolism
Flung between the particle and the cosmos?
To what end my journeys, lonely as love,
To the last forts of reason?
Which way,
Through lands of a million clocks that tell no more
Than a dandelion puffed away in the wind?

 * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

THE DIVIDERS

Before I could lie in your arms, they came to the door
And stood outside, trying to come in.
One pale woman, one pale man,
And a child, hovering.
The silent burglars were knocking at our door.
The nasty beggars pushing to come in.

Before I could be sure we were together
The grey people were walking in our hall
With empty, insolent eyes and an air of propriety
Touching our things.
The grey people decaying in our hall,
Invading us with gaunt and alien faces.

Before we could warm the rooms with the lovely, long-
Awaited intertwining of divided limbs
They started pulling the hour apart
Pain by pain;
Making sure a cold breath breathed in every corner,
Taking away my safety and your joy.

And went away when they thought they had done,
Leaving us empty, bewildered, trying in vain
To escape the gaping horror of their faces.
The Dividers came.
Yet we triumphed - yet, oh my love, we won!
Alone, afraid, we clung together like children.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

RETURN

Beyond the plain of Lethe lie the Hell-hills smoking sulphur under Tartarus.

Save I,
who would stand and watch that prussian sky with a gale blowing?
See the ramparts rise against the dark, the long-lost battlements of aged gold
that crown the godless hills.
                    Their sunlessness.

What can I tell, my friend, of Lethe's river?
A dry plain, and a corridor of wind
that blows against me till the mind is numb, the senses gone,
and another withered leaf is set to dance against the wall where Agamemnon danced.

Behind me the last live angel has halted in the cloud and I go on,
aware of his white eye watching the dark dervish in my hair
and my light dwindling far across the plain.

Eurydice is walking back for Orpheus -
and will the old tale serve her true?

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

BIRTH-CELL

The obscene night is passing at last in a cry of gulls
And dog-sounds; one moth has found its way in here
To flap and flutter the airs hopped by a yearning fly
Minute by minute, all evening, last evening,
Loving its own dry image. Dun-coloured days have played
Their light-flung freak phantasms along my walls,
Across the counterpane in pageants; we are well-acquainted
With these mote-multitudes, the goblin-grins, dramas
Caught in the plaster, with the grey window drawing forth
The sad little fleet of ghosts above the door.
                                   High summer
Was, when I left the embrace of God's air; now
By an open window, I and the morning meet, surprised
At the wild fresh tangle of autumn under the walls
And the imminence of new life borne on the breath
Of many such silver dawns. A grey day beckons;
Soon I may go forth in the weary relief of rain.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

TEMPLES

The children of the Lord are laughing in the smoke
The children of Life have many beautiful drums
Listen oh listen the lovely lilt of the jungle
Is the new prayer my body is a palm accept my
Hands libation of dance of orient air
I am in silk or leather, I am of thy
Caste, I am of the new
Creed (that is as old as Jesus and as full of death,
O children) We, out of the common chalice
Of our humanity, out of our treasure trove
(That is as old as Adam, and as indocile,
O children's children) pour we our hair
The children of the Lord are dancing in the smoke
The children of Love with an open passport to Karma
Hand the serpent an apple with a gentle smile
And cast aside the garments given them to wear
For that I have no sin, for I am like a rose
That freely gives its seed to a beautiful stranger
And is unblamed, my buds open
Men may kiss my breast (where milk will come,
But not, O child, as manna) lovely girls
May rouse and soothe and curl my flowering fire
In sisterhood (and they will build the cities of the plain
Our children, to be again consumed) Ah good
Youth, give us your baptism; there is a new River,
O, it is roseate, for it is full of life  ~
Remember the many
Martyrs
Remember the pink sweet stream of Perfume River
Drifting out of the anguish of Hué
(The children of the Lord were laughing in the smoke,
The children of death had many beautiful drums
Listen oh listen
The lovely lilt of the jungle
My body was a felled palm)
The sacred mushroom has become the Cross
Eat Me  ~
I will deliver you from the falling skies;
The children of the Lord shall fertilise the smoke,
The children of time shall have devoured Chronos

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

THE PASSERS-BY

Men of the same race
Pass before me like angels.
I sing to them with my eyes, yet they never hear,
They wander by,
And I sing so loud in my head!

Beings that glow and sing,
Who move in Love and I love them,
Gentle girls and slender beautiful boys
Wandering by
With thoughts that run on the wind.

Here in my song now
Is my joy; is hair that is soft
As sun and sparrows, leaves in a cool wind.
Wandering free,
Do their eyes sing me my song?
                               
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

AH GOD! THE YOUTHS ...

Ah God! The youths, with their pure dirt kisses
and their hair full of the south wind
- there goes Jeff in his creaking jacket,
there goes bandy-legged Jeff.

With their eyes full of the dark sparkle of speed,
with their buck eyes full of the slanting sun,
with their fresh and lazy eyes;
All Mine.

Ah God! The youths ... with their lithe and common grace.
Watching the white slide of shirt over the shoulderblade,
over the clean skin touch,
I see Johnny in his new shape.

Hallo, who's this jaunty little biscuit?
Johnny, cocksure, comes swaggering, sauntering home
- lazy young shaver.

There goes Jeff in his natty jacket
after the Hot Stuff -
the bird, the ring, the reefers, one rough night;
one bitter pill, ten quid - and
the ring comes off.

- the b...s will sting you, honey,
and buzz off to break more flowers
for green money.

Ah God! The youths.
On the coffee-spill tables,
flexible as foxes,
hard as cash.

Some have lovely necks, king hair
and fluid limbs.
Tony here is the little big shot,
keen as a bullet.
If there's a fast one he can pull,
he'll pull it.
And Bob will grin like a fox.
His room back home is littered with books
and socks.
He'll pass three out of eight
and get a job on the docks.

The beautiful youths
with their open eyes full of the sky
swing with the wind from south to west
and some will swing.
Two truths
are told, and "Shame!" they laugh,
and die.

The flag they fight for is ton-up on their back;
the flag they wave, the Union I'm-all-right-Jack.

The hard youths, hard nuts, no sooner sweeten
but the summer worm's inside.

... must have their pride ...
The bitter-sweet, lovely boy-fruit
unfallen;
golden plums!
Gather them now, before they fall - and eat them whole.

Ah God! The youths, with their pure dirt kisses,
and their need for Love's hand soon around their heart.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *