not who we are! . .
The whipcord frenzy curls, he slouches where his brow
Works like the rivals’ failed.
Of six young men he flew to breakfast as,
Only the magpie, rapist, stayed
For dinner, and the rapist died, so that
Not the magpie but the cat
Vigil upon the magpie stalks, sulky parade,
Great tail switching like jazz.
Frightened, dying to fly, pied and obscene,
He blinks his own fantastic watch
For the indolent Spring of what he was before;
A stipple of sunlight, clouded o’er,
Remorse a scribble on the magic tablet which
A schoolboy thumb jerks clean.
Heat lightning straddles the horizon dusk
Above the yews: the fresh wind blows:
He flicks a station on by the throne-side . .
Out in the wide world, Kitty —wide
Night— far across the sea . . Some guardian accent grows
Below the soft voice, brusque:
‘You are: not what you wished but what you were,
The decades’ vise your gavel brands,
You glare the god who gobbled his own fruit,
He who stood mute, lucid and mute,
Under peine forte et dure to will his bloody lands,
Then whirled down without heir.’
The end of which he will not know. Undried,
A prune-skin helpless on his roof.
His skin gleams in the lamplight dull as gold
And old gold clusters like mould
Stifling about his blood, time’s helm to build him proof.
Thump the oak, and preside!
An ingrown terrible smile unflowers, a sigh
Blurs, the axle turns, unmanned.
Habited now forever with his weight
Well-housed, he rolls in the twilight
Unrecognizable against the world’s rim, and
A bird whistles nearby.
Whisked off, a voice, fainter, faint, a guise,
A gleam, pin of a, a. Nothing.
—One look round last, like rats, before we leave.
A famous house. Now the men arrive:
Horror, they swing their cold bright mallets, they’re breaking
Him up before my eyes!
Wicked vistas! The wolves mourn for our crime
Out past the grey wall. On to our home,
Whereby the barley may seed and resume.
Mutter of thrust stones palls this room,
The crash of mallets. He is going where I come.
Barefoot soul fringed with rime.
A Winter-Piece to a Friend Away
Your letter came.—Glutted the earth & cold
With rains long heavy, follows intense frost;
Snow howls and hides the world
We workt awhile to build; all the roads are lost;
Icy spiculae float, filling strange air;
No voice goes far; one is alone whirling since where,
And when was it one crossed?
You have been there.
I too the breaking blizzard’s eddies bore
One year, another year: tempted to drop
At my own feet forlorn
Under the warm fall, frantic more to chop
Wide with the gale until my thought ran numb
Clenching the blue skin tight against what white spikes come
And the sick brain estop.
Your pendulum
Mine, not stilled wholly, has been sorry for,
Weeps from, and would instruct . . Unless I lied
What word steadies that cord?
Glade grove & ghyll of antique childhood glide
Off; from our grown grief, weathers that appal,
The massive sorrow of the mental hospital,
Friends & our good friends hide.
They came to call.
Hardly theirs, movement when the tempest gains,
Loose heart convulses. Their hearts bend off dry,
Their fruit dangles and fades.
—Solicitudes of the orchard heart, comply
A little with my longing, a little sing
Our sorrow among steel & glass, our stiffening,
That hers may modify:
O trembling Spring.—
Immortal risks our sort run, to a house
Reported in a wood . . mould upon bread
And brain, breath giving out,
From farms we go by, barking, and shaken head,
The shrunk pears hang, Hölderlin’s weathercock
Rattles to tireless wind, the fireless landscape
The whipcord frenzy curls, he slouches where his brow
Works like the rivals’ failed.
Of six young men he flew to breakfast as,
Only the magpie, rapist, stayed
For dinner, and the rapist died, so that
Not the magpie but the cat
Vigil upon the magpie stalks, sulky parade,
Great tail switching like jazz.
Frightened, dying to fly, pied and obscene,
He blinks his own fantastic watch
For the indolent Spring of what he was before;
A stipple of sunlight, clouded o’er,
Remorse a scribble on the magic tablet which
A schoolboy thumb jerks clean.
Heat lightning straddles the horizon dusk
Above the yews: the fresh wind blows:
He flicks a station on by the throne-side . .
Out in the wide world, Kitty —wide
Night— far across the sea . . Some guardian accent grows
Below the soft voice, brusque:
‘You are: not what you wished but what you were,
The decades’ vise your gavel brands,
You glare the god who gobbled his own fruit,
He who stood mute, lucid and mute,
Under peine forte et dure to will his bloody lands,
Then whirled down without heir.’
The end of which he will not know. Undried,
A prune-skin helpless on his roof.
His skin gleams in the lamplight dull as gold
And old gold clusters like mould
Stifling about his blood, time’s helm to build him proof.
Thump the oak, and preside!
An ingrown terrible smile unflowers, a sigh
Blurs, the axle turns, unmanned.
Habited now forever with his weight
Well-housed, he rolls in the twilight
Unrecognizable against the world’s rim, and
A bird whistles nearby.
Whisked off, a voice, fainter, faint, a guise,
A gleam, pin of a, a. Nothing.
—One look round last, like rats, before we leave.
A famous house. Now the men arrive:
Horror, they swing their cold bright mallets, they’re breaking
Him up before my eyes!
Wicked vistas! The wolves mourn for our crime
Out past the grey wall. On to our home,
Whereby the barley may seed and resume.
Mutter of thrust stones palls this room,
The crash of mallets. He is going where I come.
Barefoot soul fringed with rime.
A Winter-Piece to a Friend Away
Your letter came.—Glutted the earth & cold
With rains long heavy, follows intense frost;
Snow howls and hides the world
We workt awhile to build; all the roads are lost;
Icy spiculae float, filling strange air;
No voice goes far; one is alone whirling since where,
And when was it one crossed?
You have been there.
I too the breaking blizzard’s eddies bore
One year, another year: tempted to drop
At my own feet forlorn
Under the warm fall, frantic more to chop
Wide with the gale until my thought ran numb
Clenching the blue skin tight against what white spikes come
And the sick brain estop.
Your pendulum
Mine, not stilled wholly, has been sorry for,
Weeps from, and would instruct . . Unless I lied
What word steadies that cord?
Glade grove & ghyll of antique childhood glide
Off; from our grown grief, weathers that appal,
The massive sorrow of the mental hospital,
Friends & our good friends hide.
They came to call.
Hardly theirs, movement when the tempest gains,
Loose heart convulses. Their hearts bend off dry,
Their fruit dangles and fades.
—Solicitudes of the orchard heart, comply
A little with my longing, a little sing
Our sorrow among steel & glass, our stiffening,
That hers may modify:
O trembling Spring.—
Immortal risks our sort run, to a house
Reported in a wood . . mould upon bread
And brain, breath giving out,
From farms we go by, barking, and shaken head,
The shrunk pears hang, Hölderlin’s weathercock
Rattles to tireless wind, the fireless landscape
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