Another pull on the oars

The evening breeze

and then
the reeds rustle.

The snake swims 

in the skin

of the water

It vanishes into the reeds.

I face away

from the place

That is always before me.

New Year at Rodmell

The sponge behind my forehead

Is pale and dry and rather dim

Like a bloody sun in a fog

Exasperated unhappy struggling

Worked over with heat and yaps of dogs

Unlike the parson astride his saddle

Or the cold dishonest footman

With clear hard picture of human life

Where the whole world falls into shape.

Poem for Jean Cocteau

"It started at Stravinsky's Le Sacre

With five she-devils of terrible aspect;

I determined then I should come to the arts

As a monk goes to monastic orders.

"It was then I believe

I became possessed

By some ferocious inner thing;

A thing that has remained unknown to me.

"Was that fierce thing an inner being

Or an unknown form of memory?

What was that thing? Ideas came

And I hurried myself to write them down.

"The mathematical calculation

The language

The content

The apparent simplicity -

"All were there to serve that thing

Which was a thing

With a subtle and secret mechanism.

"How came those words

To send those poems

Into the sky?

"That inner thing,

What is it?"

Tomorrow's News

shooting sprees

and bitter tribal fighting

the disappeared held captive

in underground jails

yesterday with modest splendour

they killed another man they didn't know

and only one voice

that of the eldest there

was raised in protest

on the mudflats of an estuary

in a blinding rainstorm

a ragged man in shackles

was tried and shot in secret

by the moral guardians of a state

in failing health

and dying of complications

its land reduced to smoking ruins

firemen played their hoses on the people

the spin of the story was ringing in their ears

another shot dead

in the back of a car

the remote village

in the mountains

an old man hanging from a tree

when dusk fell

the scene took on an air of beauty

of spiritual renewal

an occasion touched with magic

tomorrow's news

the official statistics

the death toll of bigotry

The Nomadic Traveller

journeys on with his son

and objects found on the road

are making the journey too

an album of drawings

a portable ancestral altar

a tree without roots

Old Fox

Old fox,

hard as nails,

thin,

arthritic,

rheumatic,

septic eruptions

on cold feet,

watery nose,

and sorry bag of effluvium

and entrails,

up for the erectile,

and somewhere to go.

Lakeside path,

snowdrop,

primrose,

daffodil,

an early bee,

an ermine's fur

turning brown,

an effusive gushing

of butterflies, gold-

finches, flycatchers,

two seasons

in equilibrium.

The rest is fusion.