The billowing flotilla
Sails the mediterranean blue.
Flying-fish larks
Flutter in its wake –
Flickering specks of praise
That ornament arpeggios
In the pacific height.
Far away, the green, green isle of trees
And the haze-lapped strand
Of the distant hills.
Write them again
Those dreadful stones.
Curse from the night
Primordial bane
Whose spell intones
An endless blight.
Break them again
Those baleful stones
Let there be light.
1. The Pit
When I think of slavery,
(So soon à la mode)
I see how short the road
From culture to obscenity;
How elegant the veil
That drapes the tale
Of white sub-bestiality.
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2. Will You?
The shame and grief that scab our bloody past
Demand from you yet more than we have taken –
From furnaces of hell, refined and cast
In gold,
A greatness that our evil left unshaken.
Racists make white a dirty word.
Philip Larkin, A.E. Houseman
Neither could kick death – no more than I can.
All soaring to the sun
Clawed back by daemons of the soul
Its holy rays my rack
My darkened heart my dole.
All love is a journey
Through the marches of desire, affection and friendship
To the none-too-distant heartland of lonliness.
Fortunately,
When we get there,
Though we have arrived home,
We can take long vacations in the charabanc
Of memory and make-believe,
Revisiting the marches.
I must stay on my knees
Wedge open the door
Though the wind seems always to be chill.
Through what crevice
In the wall of the night
Will that alien light shine?
Or is it all around
Shuttered by the mystery of being
That mere knowledge
Has yet to break through?
Only on my knees
Shall I weather the plague of winds
That will engulf me then.
From two worlds
We happen on the same crux.
By chance we choose the same road
Independently.
Casually abreast
We see and hear
Many things that others miss
Incandescent with life.
We have become used
To the sound of each other’s feet.
I have learned
The language of your silence
The line of your hair
And the whisper
Of your uneven pulse –
The sound of my life’s life.
I know you
When you are but a dot in the distance
A movement in a crowd
A phrase in a hubbub.
But you – your gaze
Is more often forwards
Your eyes sleep beyond my horizon
In a land where I may not come.
Soon we shall reach
The next crossroads
And you will choose again
Independently.
For the Incas
Gold became commonplace.
Then they saw silver
And silver is exquisite.
Naturally,
They traded gold
For silver.