Next morning I went up into the room. Snowdrops

And candles soothed the bedside; I saw him

For the first time in six weeks. Paler now,

Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple,

He lay in the four-foot box as in his cot.

No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.

A four-foot box, a foot for every year.

The Diviner

Cut from the green hedge a forked hazel stick

That he held tight by the arms of the V:

Circling the terrain, hunting the pluck

Of water, nervous, but professionally

Unfussed. The pluck came sharp as a sting.

The rod jerked with precise convulsions,

Spring water suddenly broadcasting

Through a green hazel its secret stations.

The bystanders would ask to have a try.

He handed them the rod without a word.

It lay dead in their grasp till, nonchalantly,

He gripped expectant wrists. The hazel stirred.

Twice Shy

Her scarf à la Bardot,

In suede flats for the walk,

She came with me one evening

For air and friendly talk.

We crossed the quiet river,

Took the embankment walk.

Traffic holding its breath,

Sky a tense diaphragm:

Dusk hung like a backcloth

That shook where a swan swam,

Tremulous as a hawk

Hanging deadly, calm.

A vacuum of need

Collapsed each hunting heart

But tremulously we held

As hawk and prey apart,

Preserved classic decorum,

Deployed our talk with art.

Our juvenilia

Had taught us both to wait,

Not to publish feeling

And regret it all too late –

Mushroom loves already

Had puffed and burst in hate.

So, chary and excited

As a thrush linked on a hawk,

We thrilled to the March twilight

With nervous childish talk:

Still waters running deep

Along the embankment walk.

Scaffolding

Masons, when they start upon a building,

Are careful to test out the scaffolding;

Make sure that planks won’t slip at busy points,

Secure all ladders, tighten bolted joints.

And yet all this comes down when the job’s done,

Showing off walls of sure and solid stone.

So if, my dear, there sometimes seem to be

Old bridges breaking between you and me,

Never fear. We may let the scaffolds fall,

Confident that we have built our wall.

Personal Helicon

for Michael Longley

As a child, they could not keep me from wells

And old pumps with buckets and windlasses.

I loved the dark drop, the trapped sky, the smells

Of waterweed, fungus and dank moss.

One, in a brickyard, with a rotted board top.

I savoured the rich crash when a bucket

Plummeted down at the end of a rope.

So deep you saw no reflection in it.

A shallow one under a dry stone ditch

Fructified like any aquarium.

When you dragged out long roots from the soft mulch

A white face hovered over the bottom.