Collected Poems, page 23
Haworth
I’m here now where you were.
The summer grass under my palms is your hair.
Your taste is the living air.
I lie on my back. Two juggling butterflies are your smile.
The heathery breath of the moor’s simply your smell.
Your name sounds on the coded voice of the bell.
I’ll go nowhere you’ve not.
The bleached dip in a creature’s bone’s your throat.
That high lark, whatever it was you thought.
And this ridged stone your hand in mine,
and the curve of the turning earth your spine,
and the swooning bees besotted with flowers your tune.
I get up and walk. The dozing hillside is your dreaming head.
The cobblestones are every word you said.
The grave I kneel beside, only your bed.
Hour
Love’s time’s beggar, but even a single hour,
bright as a dropped coin, makes love rich.
We find an hour together, spend it not on flowers
or wine, but the whole of the summer sky and a grass ditch.
For thousands of seconds we kiss; your hair
like treasure on the ground; the Midas light
turning your limbs to gold. Time slows, for here
we are millionaires, backhanding the night
so nothing dark will end our shining hour,
no jewel hold a candle to the cuckoo spit
hung from the blade of grass at your ear,
no chandelier or spotlight see you better lit
than here. Now. Time hates love, wants love poor,
but love spins gold, gold, gold from straw.
Swing
Someone had looped a rope over a branch
and made a rough swing for the birch tree
next to the river. We passed it, walking and walking
into our new love; soft, unbearable dawns of desire
where mist was the water’s slipping veil, or foam
boasted and frothed like champagne at the river’s bend.
You asked me if I was sure, as a line of Canada geese
crowded the other bank, happy as wedding guests. Yes,
sure as the vision that flares in my head, away from you now,
of the moment you climbed on the swing, and swung out
into the silver air, the endless affirmative blue,
like something from heaven on earth, from paradise.
Rain
Not so hot as this for a hundred years.
You were where I was going. I was in tears.
I surrendered my heart to the judgement of my peers.
A century’s heat in the garden, fierce as love.
You returned on the day that I had to leave.
I mimed the full, rich, busy life I had to live.
Hotter than hell. I burned for you day and night;
got bits of your body wrong, bits of it right,
in the huge mouth of the dark, in the bite of the light.
I planted a rose, burnt orange, the colour of flame,
gave it the last of the water, gave it your name.
It flared back at the sun in a perfect rhyme.
Then the rain came, like stammered kisses at first
on the back of my neck. I unfurled my fist
for the rain to caress with its lips. I turned up my face,
and water flooded my mouth, baptised my head,
and the rainclouds gathered like midnight overhead,
and the rain came down like a lover comes to a bed.
Absence
Then the birds stitching the dawn with their song
have patterned your name.
Then the green bowl of the garden filling with
light is your gaze.
Then the lawn lengthening and warming itself
is your skin.
Then a cloud disclosing itself overhead
is your opening hand.
Then the first seven bells from the church
pine on the air.
Then the sun’s soft bite on my face
is your mouth.
Then a bee in a rose is your fingertip
touching me here.
Then the trees bending and meshing their leaves
are what we would do.
Then my steps to the river are text to a prayer
printing the ground.
Then the river searching its bank for your shape
is desire.
Then a fish nuzzling the water’s throat
has a lover’s ease.
Then a shawl of sunlight dropped in the grass
is a garment discarded.
Then a sudden scatter of summer rain
is your tongue.
Then a butterfly paused on a trembling
leaf is your breath.
Then the gauzy mist relaxed on the ground
is your pose.
Then the fruit from the cherry tree falling on grass
is your kiss, your kiss.
Then the day’s hours are theatres of air
where I watch you entranced.
Then the sun’s light going down from the sky
is the length of your back.
Then the evening bells over the rooftops are
lovers’ vows.
Then the river staring up, lovesick for the moon,
is my long night.
Then the stars between us are love
urging its light.
If I Was Dead
If I was dead,
and my bones adrift
like dropped oars
in the deep, turning earth;
or drowned,
and my skull
a listening shell
on the dark ocean bed;
if I was dead,
and my heart
soft mulch
for a red, red rose;
or burned,
and my body
a fistful of grit, thrown
in the face of the wind;
if I was dead,
and my eyes,
blind at the roots of flowers,
wept into nothing,
I swear your love
would raise me
out of my grave,
in my flesh and blood,
like Lazarus;
hungry for this,
and this, and this,
your living kiss.
World
On the other side of the world,
you pass the moon to me,
like a loving cup,
or a quaich.
I roll you the sun.
I go to bed,
as you’re getting up
on the other side of the world.
You have scattered the stars
towards me here, like seeds
in the earth.
All through the night,
I have sent you
bunches, bouquets, of cloud
to the other side of the world;
so my love will be shade
where you are,
and yours,
as I turn in my sleep,
the bud of a star.
Hand
Away from you, I hold hands with the air,
your imagined, untouchable hand. Not there,
your fingers braid with mine as I walk.
Far away in my heart, you start to talk.
I squeeze the air, kicking the auburn leaves,
everything suddenly gold. I half believe
your hand is holding mine, the way
it would if you were here. What do you say
in my heart? I bend my head to listen, then feel
your hand reach out and stroke my hair, as real
as the wind caressing the fretful trees above.
Now I can hear you clearly, speaking of love.
Rapture
Thought of by you all day, I think of you.
The birds sing in the shelter of a tree.
Above the prayer of rain, unacred blue,
not paradise, goes nowhere endlessly.
How does it happen that our lives can drift
far from our selves, while we stay trapped in time,
queuing for death? It seems nothing will shift
the pattern of our days, alter the rhyme
we make with loss to assonance with bliss.
Then love comes, like a sudden flight of birds
from earth to heaven after rain. Your kiss,
recalled, unstrings, like pearls, this chain of words.
Huge skies connect us, joining here to there.
Desire and passion on the thinking air.
Elegy
Who’ll know then, when they walk by the grave
where your bones will be brittle things – this bone here
that swoops away from your throat, and this,
which perfectly fits the scoop of my palm, and these
which I count with my lips, and your skull,
which blooms on the pillow now, and your fingers,
beautiful in their little rings – that love, which wanders history,
singled you out in your time?
Love loved you best; lit you
with a flame, like talent, under your skin; let you
move through your days and nights, blessed in your flesh,
blood, hair, as though they were lovely garments
you wore to pleasure the air. Who’ll guess, if they read
your stone, or press their thumbs to the scars
of your dates, that were I alive, I would lie on the grass
above your bones till I mirrored your pose, your infinite grace?
Row
But when we rowed,
the room swayed and sank down on its knees,
the air hurt and purpled like a bruise,
the sun banged the gate in the sky and fled.
But when we rowed,
the trees wept and threw away their leaves,
the day ripped the hours from our lives,
the sheets and pillows shredded themselves on the bed.
But when we rowed,
our mouths knew no kiss, no kiss, no kiss,
our hearts were jagged stones in our fists,
the garden sprouted bones, grown from the dead.
But when we rowed,
your face blanked like a page erased of words,
my hands squeezed themselves, burned like verbs,
love turned, and ran, and cowered in our heads.
Cuba
No getting up from the bed in this grand hotel
and getting dressed, like a work of art
rubbing itself out. No lifting the red rose
from the room service tray when you leave,
as though you might walk to the lip of a grave
and toss it down. No glass of champagne, left
to go flat in the glow of a bedside lamp,
the frantic bubbles swimming for the light. No white towel,
strewn, like a shroud, on the bathroom floor.
No brief steam on the mirror there for a finger
to smudge in a heart, an arrow, a name. No soft soap
rubbed between four hands. No flannel. No future plans.
No black cab, sad hearse, on the rank. No queue there.
No getting away from this. No goodnight kiss. No Cuba.
Tea
I like pouring your tea, lifting
the heavy pot, and tipping it up,
so the fragrant liquid steams in your china cup.
Or when you’re away, or at work,
I like to think of your cupped hands as you sip,
as you sip, of the faint half-smile of your lips.
I like the questions – sugar? milk? –
and the answers I don’t know by heart, yet,
for I see your soul in your eyes, and I forget.
Jasmine, Gunpowder, Assam, Earl Grey, Ceylon,
I love tea’s names. Which tea would you like? I say,
but it’s any tea, for you, please, any time of day,
as the women harvest the slopes,
for the sweetest leaves, on Mount Wu-Yi,
and I am your lover, smitten, straining your tea.
Betrothal
I will be yours, be yours.
I’ll walk on the moors
with my spade.
Make me your bride.
I will be brave, be brave.
I’ll dig my own grave
and lie down.
Make me your own.
I will be good, be good.
I’ll sleep in my blankets of mud
till you kneel above.
Make me your love.
I’ll stay forever, forever.
I’ll wade in the river,
wearing my gown of stone.
Make me the one.
I will obey, obey.
I’ll float far away,
gargling my vows.
Make me your spouse.
I will say yes, say yes.
I’ll sprawl in my dress
on my watery bed.
Make me be wed.
I’ll wear your ring, your ring.
I’ll dance and I’ll sing
in the flames.
Make me your name.
I’ll feel desire, desire.
I’ll bloom in the fire.
I’ll blush like a baby.
Make me your lady.
I’ll say I do, I do.
I’ll be ash in a jar, for you
to scatter my life.
Make me your wife.
Bridgewater Hall
Again, the endless northern rain between us
like a veil. Tonight, I know exactly where you are,
which row, which seat. I stand at my back door.
The light pollution blindfolds every star.
I hold my hand out to the rain, simply to feel it, wet
and literal. It spills and tumbles in my palm,
a broken rosary. Devotion to you lets me see
the concert hall, lit up, the other side of town,
then see you leave there, one of hundreds in the dark,
your black umbrella raised. If rain were words, could talk,
somehow, against your skin, I’d say look up, let it utter
on your face. Now hear my love for you. Now walk.
The Lovers
Pity the lovers,
who climb to the high room,
where the bed,
and the gentle lamps wait,
and disembark from their lives.
The deep waves of the night
lap at the window.
Time slips away
like land from a ship.
The moon, their own death,
follows them, cold,
cold in their blankets.
Pity the lovers, homeless,
with no country to sail to.
Fall
Short days. The leaves are falling
to the deadline of the ground, gold
as the pages of myth. I feel the cold earth
fall away from the sun, the light’s heart harden.
I fall too, as if from the glinting plane overhead,
backwards, through fierce blue, though I only lie
in your arms, on our coats, the last hour of autumn,
grasping a fistful of yellowing grass as you move in me,
fall and fall and fall towards you, your passionate gravity.
Ship
In the end,
it was nothing more
than the toy boat of a boy
on the local park’s lake,
where I walked with you.
But I knelt down
to watch it arrive,
its white sail shy
with amber light,
the late sun
bronzing the wave
that lifted it up,
my ship coming in
with its cargo of joy.
Love
Love is talent, the world love’s metaphor.
Aflame, October’s leaves adore the wind,
its urgent breath, whirl to their own death.
Not here, you’re everywhere.
The evening sky
worships the ground, bears down, the land
yearns back in darkening hills. The night
is empathy, stars in its eyes for tears. Not here,
you’re where I stand, hearing the sea, crazy
for the shore, seeing the moon ache and fret
for the earth. When morning comes, the sun, ardent,
covers the trees in gold, you walk
towards me,
out of the season, out of the light love reasons.
Give
Give me, you said, on our very first night,
the forest. I rose from the bed and went out,
and when I returned, you listened, enthralled,
to the shadowy story I told.
Give me the river,
you asked the next night, then I’ll love you forever.
I slipped from your arms and was gone,
and when I came back, you listened, at dawn,
to the glittering story I told.
Give me, you said, the gold
from the sun. A third time, I got up and dressed,
and when I came home, you sprawled on my breast
for the dazzling story I told.
Give me
the hedgerows, give me the fields.
I slid from the warmth of our sheets,
and when I returned, to kiss you from sleep,
you stirred at the story I told.
Give me the silvery cold
of the moon. I pulled on my boots and my coat,
but when I came back, moonlight on your throat
outshone the pale story I told.
Give me, you howled,
on our sixth night together, the wind in the trees.
You turned to the wall as I left,
and when I came home, I saw you were deaf
to the blustering story I told.
Give me the sky, all the space
it can hold. I left you, the last night we loved,
and when I returned, you were gone with the gold,
and the silver, the river, the forest, the fields,
and this is the story I’ve told.
