NO THROUGH ROAD

Dying lasts – but living does not last.

The journey’s destination is soon clear

in the skin’s thinning and the greyed-out hair.

If we knew when we embarked

how quickly it would all be past –

would we set out? Death lasts,

but living does not last.

Dying is not a shadow, not a crow

circling, doesn’t stand in doorways

hooded and scythed. Its messages

are filled in against your name, like this,

and handed to you when you get your bones.

The waning powers, the sagging breasts suggest

death lasts, but living does not last.

Death abides elsewhere, an untold land -

yet every word that country speaks

is rooted in us as a royal command.

Death comes to us with empty hands,

and says: 'It is time for us to go.

Your years and days and hours are all gone past.

May you last longer than mere dying lasts'.

THE BUTTERFLY MAN

once you drove me to the train station,
but the car fell in a ditch, on the way.
it had to be hauled out by a tractor.
i don't know why you swerved,
but then - what butterfly flies straight?

i could always make out
the invisible scallop shell, the staff -
but it's your giggle i remember best.
you laughed, perhaps, because
as soon as truth stood to attention,
you were waiting for the pratfall?

i remember you doing
an enormous jigsaw:
butterflies in a thousand pieces!
those messenger-companions
who taught you every hither and thither turn
of the air-labyrinth.  a fine, erratic art.

your kindness saw me through many
tempests.  a Prospero yourself,
you were no stranger to self-sown whirlwinds.
i sent you poems: scorched birds
who'd come through the fire, and
generously you replied,
singling out phrases which pleased you -
giving me something back.

that's what you did well: you gave back...
and now the measure of that giving
is that this path is all done.
it's time to try out the air beyond the edge,
open your dappled wings and float.

"Not fare well,
But fare forward, voyager!"


(for Stanley, who died on 17th March 2013)

MORNING MIST

beyond its milky rim the field is dissolved.
a woodpecker's muffled yaffle
protests the silence which beads trunks and twigs.

this mute envelope
is winter's most delicate caress:
it makes everything into an absence.

it drains the colour, heft and tussle
of world: it denies world, world is not,
world was a failing work it has painted out.

a water-colourist
could not better its subtle splay of tones,
nor a poet be as deft at getting lost.

THE SEED IN THE GOURD

the one who waits in the desert                      
empty of pleasure                                    
and the memory of pleasure                            
calls on the spinner                                  
of the whirling thread                                
to heed her hollowness  

***                            
                                                 
turning to the place of beginnings          
in a wind-driven voice of red sand                    
she cries out -                                      
                                                     
i am far from myself                        
i am empty of all that i was                          
i am poured out, wasted                              
and dried to a stain                                  
                                                     
i am wasteground                            
an abandoned well                                    
cradle of scum and biting flies                      
i am the shed skin of the snake                      
the spat-out bones of the mouse                      
                                                     
i have dried myself to a gourd                        
i have shrivelled up with long waiting                
                                                     
hear me, thunder-voice                      
startler                                              
hear me, breaker of gourds                            
undoer of constraints                                
                                                     
unwind my burying clothes                  
unmake me into wholeness

***

turning to the place of adjustment          
in a wind-driven voice of red sand                    
she cries out -                                      
                                           
you widener, you awakener!                  
too well i have composed myself                      
too tightly i have become                            
this vessel that contains                            

you who gather up                                    
the fragments of being                                
and unbeing                                          
like fishbones after a feast                          
                                                     
open me and pour out the silence            
which knocks at my walls

***

turning to the place of kindling            
in a wind-driven voice of red sand                    
she cries out -                                      
                                                     
hear me, ardent unbeliever                  
hear me, stirrer into confusion                      
                                                     
i wait with the stones and bones                      
thrown down in disorder                              
                                                     
i know nothing that shall be                
i understand nothing that was                        
i weave nothing, i knot nothing                      
i close no doors                                      
                                                     
i have emptied myself                      
of all but emptiness                                  
                                                     
you widener, you awakener                  
you breather of gold into the dark                    
with the stars spinning in your fist                  
hear me -                                              
                                                     
my fire is gone out                        
i am ash and cold wood                                
i am blackened stone                                  
i am the dark stain beneath the sacrifice            
                                                     
restore to me pleasure                                
and the memory of pleasure

***

turning to the place of conclusion          
in a wind-driven voice of red sand                    
she cries out -                                      
                                         
my river is dried up                        
i gnaw at my banks no longer                          
i yearn for the lost distances                        
to be restored                                        
i yearn for the salt                                  
of remembering                                        

broaden my going                                      
eater of the path                                    
devourer of the pattern                              
hear me                                              
                                                     
i have drawn myself up together            
in one place                                          
i have guarded one seed                              
in my hollowness                                      
                                                     
shadow between the stars                    
rain on me                                            
rain on your daughter of red sand                    
and long waiting                                      
                                                     
thunder-voice                              
startler, spill your wise rain                        
and moisten me into renewal                          

joiner of the end and the beginning        
eater of time                                        
devourer of names                                    
hear my wind-driven voice                            
of red sand
                                           
hear the green cry                                    
of the seed in the gourd                              
                       
***
                   
standing where all is combined              
the one who has come to the centre                    
calls on the spinner                                  
of the whirling thread                                
to heed her hollowness

MAGNOLIA TREE

on its single leg
the magnolia tree
curtsies to the glancing of wings
as a bird flies through

for TED HUGHES

today, holding your death’s

small hand, black-nailed

inside your much larger hand

leading it here, you

lay down with it

under the black

and somewhere behind the dance

you’d carried your death a long time

and each day

more of it grew large and less of you

until the coat you’d shaped so well, fell in

with no one to hold the sleeves out straight

it buckled and sank

and lay in its last strong pose

mouth empty, eyes turned inside out

then death stood carefully up

stood looking down at you

stood off a little way

and understood

its joggling bones would now go coatless

its name, even, would be spoken unclothed

death – as stark as that

so, cautiously

trying it out, death walked off

walked away, naked, left you there

in the hollow behind the words

quietly folded

under the black, and somewhere

behind the dance

 (28 October 1998)

THREE HAIKU

on frosted grass: the 
Brueghel birds
pecking up every seed, every seed



pusscat yawns, licks paw,
circles damp paw on face;
suddenly looks at me



dusk settles like an old cat: 
spreads its apron of fur;
folds its soft paws