Poems for a Summer Day
The situation with which conscious life finds itself coping is so unlikely that, with perhaps some exceptions, no explanations can be ruled out.
Cherie
Across the seas to a southern isle
I sailed long ago, once on a while.
There I found me a maiden bright and fair
And I played with the coils of her gleaming hair.
The Gardener
On her favourite pony,
As white as the snow,
The princess so beautiful
Rides down the green row.
The Rulers
It would be laughable
if it were not so serious.
It would be serious
if it were not so laughable.
Walk to a River
At first a pale yellow light – yellow with a rosy gauze-like quality about it, filtered and timeless in its guarded ambiguity; but suddenly, overwhelmingly, merging into…
Storm in the Night
We had no wish for the storm in the night,
For the weary cold of the morning light
On the helpless ruin which proves its might
But wait and watch now the work is done…
The Little Mermaid
She sits alone in her dreaming
As lost as the lonely sea
She lives in the past and the future
And in worlds that are never to be
Fault from the Air
The sunset fades to nothingness
Beyond the Golden Gate.
San Andreas points his dagger;
The wheeling world must wait.
Black Lace
If I were to recognise her now
it could only be by a glimpse of
black fish-net lace stockings
between knee-length black skirt
Dinner in Soho
Fortunate steak on the plate
here before me,
Fortunate beast
at the end of your day.
Tal Blata, Malta
Why does not the bugle sound?
And where
The lookout on the fortress wall,
The sentry at the gate?
Ekofisk from the Air
Gold flare in the night sky,
Gold fire swirling free,
Phoenix of west Europe’s future
Rising flaming from the sea;
Calypso and Odysseus
He came from the sea
And went back to the sea.
For seven slow years
I gave him all my love
Oh Fir Tree
Oh sad fir tree, oh sad fir tree,
How loyal thy dull needles!
They cling to thee the summer through,
In winter, spring and autumn too.
Yacht Approaching the Coast
Lost nameless men haste on forever –
Blood red ship and wind filled sail
Swift bearing on that coast unknown
Misty in its twilight veil.
No Tengo Mas
‘I have nothing more to give you’,
Silver nights and golden days
Drifted past.
Glowing sunlight, silken shadows…
Gold Bars
At times the gold bars ripple
Aimless on the sand,
Where the sunlight streams
Through the dancing waves
Caverns on an Island
What’s in them?
They are empty;
But dark briarthorn tangles round them.
Winding are the caverns..
This is Mucked-Up That
This pig only lived through my wish
To have mucked-up pig on my plate;
I apologise to him all the same
For his rather regrettable state.
My Sunflower
I slaughtered her, my sunflower.
I could probably not have done so
Had she been wired to an
electroencephalograph,
Aurora
A smile here more, a smile here less,
And phantom worlds are lost in night,
Phantom eyes fade from the light
As the glittering dancers pass.
Dandelion
A wandering fairy made her
Of rain and sun and soil
And gave her the promise of lovetime
In the spring,
Cabbage White
Creep and eat
Across the leaves
And plan
Your plan without a word.
The Outer Barrier
Blue is the theme here,
Blue wall fading in the distance.
Coral stems thrusting to the sunlight,
From blueness into gold,
Butterfly Leaving
Why do you exhaust yourself, butterfly,
Beating into the winds from the sea?
These are the South East Trades you know;
They like to blow at twenty knots.
Apple
Come
Apple
Crisp as an Autumn day
Firm red-streaked greenness
Contingency
Are you half-bird or half a monster,
Half insect of half questing man?
Just now, who cares?
Keep wriggling fast;
Night Butterfly
Fluttering stardust brushed me
As she faltered in her flight,
And the touch of her wings
Was lightning in the dusk …
Refurbished Mansion
Sunlight
On bright carpets walls and ceilings
Nothing except emptiness
And eight rightangular corners watching
Peat Smoke
The smoke from the peat will drift
In the mists of morning,
And the tides of time will roll
Round the heather hills,
The Nile
Somebody splashed all his coloured paints
To make dawn in the desert sky,
Then he poured them into the race of time
But forgot to mention why.
Die Einsame
why do you look away?
Today and yesterday,
tomorrow too,
Peach Pip
Peach pip, you’re about to visit
Worlds of which you never dreamed.
I’m about to throw you forthwith
In the rolling ocean deeps
Holothurian
You seem to be
Remote,
Enshrouded in a yielding crust
South Pacific
But neutral to all thought,
The tilting sky leans too and fro,
Whilst the long rollers surge past
Halley's Comet
Darkly hopeless out of sight;
Waiting,
Turning,
Devotion
Watch Halley’s Comet come and go
So many times,
So many times …
Dover
Was once grey guns in concrete vaults recoiling,
Was once long ruby flashes through the trees,
Was cold contempt.
The Sistine Chapel
This Numen who creates Himself
In one giant puff,
(And that light touch if so you will),
Sand
I wrote one name in sand …
Then one name more.
Hot sand.
Yanomamo
Shamen tell me of your peoples,
Dwellers in the jungle glades.
Tell me now or tell me never,
‘Ere they creep into the shades.
The Pink Flag
The people’s flag is sort of pink,
But tinged with blue to help us think
We know what we are up to in
This jungle infested with spin.
An Coleg Aberystwyth
Some boast their classic stream
Where nymphs and dryads dream
Their buildings touched by time
‘till old and grey.