In The Poetry

The Moment

The moment when, after many years
of hard work and a long voyage
you stand in the centre of your room,
house, half-acre, square mile, island, country,
knowing at last how you got there,
and say, I own this,

is the same moment the trees unloose
their soft arms from around you,
the birds take back their language,
the cliffs fissure and collapse,
the [...]

Benediction

Thanks to the ear
that someone may hear

Thanks to seeing
that someone may see

Thanks to feeling
that someone may feel

Thanks to touch
that one may be touched

Thanks to flowering of white moon
and spreading shawl of black night
holding villages and cities together

One called ‘Big Wind’ – a grisly(?) one this, getting into the corn(?) routines at the moment in spite of all my… This appeared in a magazine with just ‘Big Wind’ and then the typographer put in almost equally big words ‘Theodore Roethke’ not ‘by Theo…’ (laughter).

The Big Wind

Where were the greenhouses going,
Lunging into [...]

Burnham-Overy-Staithe is a little coastal village in North Norfolk – my grandparents lived there and I returned to live in another of the Burnhams.

Dusk, Burnham-Overy-Staithe

The blue hour ends, this world
floats on a great stillness.

I only guess where marsh
finishes and sky begins,

each grows out of the other.
In the creek a slip

of water gleams. Rowboats
bob and swing [...]

This is a love poem based on a very well-loved love poem by the Urdu poet Faiz Ahmood Faiz, and I’ve taken his first line for my title.

Don’t Ask me. Love, for that First Love
after Faiz Ahmed Faiz

Don’t think I haven’t changed. Who said
absence makes the heart grow fonder?
Though I watch the sunset redden
every day, [...]

The Waking

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, [...]

You Were Wearing Blue

the explosions are nearer this evening
the last train leaves for the south
at six tomorrow
the announcements will be in a different language

i chew the end of a match
the tips of my finger and thumb are sticky

i will wait at the station and you
will send a note, i
will read it
it [...]

‘I built myself a house of wood…’

I built myself a house of wood
Where once an apple orchard stood.
On stormy nights I lay in bed
While rafters moaned above my head.

They wept aloud for limbs long lost,
For buds pinched out by early frost,
For wicker baskets piled with fruit,
For phantom branch and withered root.

I caulked the roof and [...]

This poem is a commission. It was commissioned by the Tate Gallery in connection with a competition they were running – I was one of the judges – and the subject had to be either a particular painting or work of art in the Tate or the gallery itself in general. And they asked the [...]

Rosaceous Wonders

Tread the cottage grapes to wine,
ascend the cellar stair,
Sit down with me tonight and dine,
there is a purpose here.

I knew you in the days before
we had our stab at being wise.
The rain falls on the roof, the floor
comes as no surprise.

Tell me, did you learn a thing
or two, or did the blood
Prohibit consubstantial learning,
a [...]