P. L.

October 1965.

I

All catches alight

(To Bruce Montgomery)

All catches alight

At the spread of spring:

Birds crazed with flight

Branches that fling

Leaves up to the light—

Every one thing,

Shape, colour and voice,

Cries out, Rejoice!

A drum taps: a wintry drum.

Gull, grass and girl

In air, earth and bed

Join the long whirl

Of all the resurrected,

Gather up and hurl

Far out beyond the dead

What life they can control—

All runs back to the whole.

A drum taps: a wintry drum.

What beasts now hesitate

Clothed in cloudless air,

In whom desire stands straight?

What ploughman halts his pair

To kick a broken plate

Or coin turned up by the share?

What lovers worry much

That a ghost bids them touch?

A drum taps: a wintry drum.

Let the wheel spin out,

Till all created things

With shout and answering shout

Cast off rememberings;

Let it all come about

Till centuries of springs

And all their buried men

Stand on the earth again.

A drum taps: a wintry drum.

II

This was your place of birth

This was your place of birth, this daytime palace,

This miracle of glass, whose every hall

The light as music fills, and on your face

Shines petal-soft; sunbeams are prodigal

To show you pausing at a picture’s edge

To puzzle out the name, or with a hand

Resting a second on a random page—

The clouds cast moving shadows on the land.

Are you prepared for what the night will bring?

The stranger who will never show his face,

But asks admittance; will you greet your doom

As final; set him loaves and wine; knowing

The game is finished when he plays his ace,

And overturn the table and go into the next room?

III

The moon is full tonight

The moon is full tonight

And hurts the eyes,

It is so definite and bright.

What if it has drawn up

All quietness and certitude of worth

Wherewith to fill its cup,

Or mint a second moon, a paradise?—

For they are gone from earth.

IV

Dawn

To wake, and hear a cock

Out of the distance crying,

To pull the curtains back

And see the clouds flying—

How strange it is

For the heart to be loveless, and as cold as these.

V

Conscript

(for James Ballard Sutton)

The ego’s county he inherited

From those who tended it like farmers; had

All knowledge that the study merited,

The requisite contempt of good and bad;

But one Spring day his land was violated;

A bunch of horsemen curtly asked his name,

Their leader in a different dialect stated

A war was on for which he was to blame,

And he must help them. The assent he gave

Was founded on desire for self-effacement

In order not to lose his birthright; brave,

For nothing would be easier than replacement,

Which would not give him time to follow further

The details of his own defeat and murder.