It was a slim blue book, a pittance of acutely sounded words, dropped from a shelf and fell upon the floor, rustling its pages from the full extension to the readers’ counter; and I felt its unmistakable attraction touched in late October of last year; and thought : “This poet who has chanced his world and been ignored, beckons and shields himself from vivisection by an absent readership but I shall tie the broken, knot and mend, stamping today the slip with lustrous ink.”

She stole upon me as the curved light of the evening
mounted the ladder of the stars. Thigh-white and small
as re-pressed flowers her ******* upon my arms became a
silent impulse and the impetus that strove between
the crushed grass and the risen stem, tight like the angle
of a kestrel’s wing; and unaccentuated by the glitter
of the sun, her night was an unfolding and reprieve of
warmth hastened no less by the peculiar reticence of
paler stars, hung like a cross from the white throat
of cloud awaiting the kaleidoscopic brightness of
confetti, and the marriage bells.

Infrequent vagrant though I am,
to hear the great frosts peal out noisily beneath my heels,
to see the slim hares coast away,
the bronze soils sealed by ice and scattered liberally
with scentless droppings,
brings me to the wonder of it.

I walk through winter’s paces:
bare fields, snapped stalks, rain-lines
smouldering beneath occasional sun,
and beauties multiply.
Where strong dusks pressed the daylight down
we stood…perhaps apart…like compasses.

It is towards a slow keeping-together of themes
from a missal-thrush memory
that words keen and are made.
                                                   The place matters little:
a furrow of ponds, a wet landscape
curved like a dish, the brittle stare and awkward movement
of spread-eagling duck on a cup of ice –
                                                            what do these matter? unless
the memory keels to the retina a shape of things to come,
teases and minnows them down to a flashing fin
in a chamber of shapeless streams, in a chamber
of crosses and thrushes.

…clinks in glasses
chilling the lips
unless a sudden contact
is avoided.

…is frigidity –
a grain of water
gleaned by the sun
is preferable.

…lingers slowly
dissipating.
Give me streams
as quick as bullets.

…chills a
red Dubonnet
till the wine
upends the sun’s intensity.

…sways
every eye
towards the skater’s
own uncalculated mastery.

…partners
the gritty frost
that folds the pebbles
in a skein of light.

Ice is the groin’s negation.
Ice is the temperance of nations.

Published in OUTPOSTS PUBLICATIONS 1974 (NO LEEWAY)

Infrequent vagrant though I am,
to hear the great frosts peal out noisily beneath my heels,
to see the slim hares coast away,
the bronze soils sealed by ice and scattered liberally
with scentless droppings,
brings me to the wonder of it.

I walk through winter’s paces:
bare fields, snapped stalks, rain-lines
smouldering beneath occasional sun,
and beauties multiply.
Where strong dusks pressed the daylight down
we stood…perhaps apart…like compasses.

It is towards a slow keeping-together of themes
from a missal-thrush memory
that words keen and are made.
                                                   The place matters little:
a furrow of ponds, a wet landscape
curved like a dish, the brittle stare and awkward movement
of spread-eagling duck on a cup of ice –
                                                            what do these matter? unless
the memory keels to the retina a shape of things to come,
teases and minnows them down to a flashing fin
in a chamber of shapeless streams, in a chamber
of crosses and thrushes.