One morning was awake, in Cornwall, by the estuary,
In the tangy pearl-light, tangy tin-light,
And the stones were awake, these ounce-chips,
Had begun to think, in the place they came out of.
Tissues of the earth, in their proper place,
Quartz tinged with the rose, the deep quick,
Scrap of tissue of the slow heart of the earth,
Throbbing the light I look at it with,
Pumps slowly, most slowly, the deep organ of the earth;
And galena too, snow-silvery, its chipped sample
Shines like sun on peaks, it plays and thinks with the mineral light,
It sends back its good conclusions, it is exposed,
It sends back the light silked and silvered,
And talc, and kaolin, why they are purged, laundered,
As I see the white sand of some seamless beaches here
Is laundered and purged like the whole world’s mud
Quite cleansed to its very crystal; talc a white matt,
Kaolin, the white wife of Cornwall
Glistening with inclusions, clearly its conclusions
Considered and laid down, the stone-look
Of its thoughts and opinions of flowers
And turf riding and seeding above it in the wind,
Thoughts gathered for millennia as they blossomed in millions
Above its then kaolin-station within the moor,
The place of foaming white streams and smoking blanched mountains.
Asbestos had found this bright morning
Its linear plan of fibres, its simple style,
Lay there, declaring, like the others;
Granite, the great rock, the rock of rocks,
At home now, flecked green, heavily contented in its box,
Riding with me high above its general body,
The great massif, while its fellows, the hills of it
Rise high around us; nor was lava silent
Now it remembered by glistening in this light
Boiling, and was swart with great content
Having seen God walking over the burning marl, having seen
A Someone thrusting his finger into the mountainside
To make it boil – here is the issue of this divine intrusion,
I am the issue of this divine intrusion,
My heart beats deep and fast, my teeth
Glisten over the swiftness of my breath,
My thoughts hurry like lightning, my voice
Is a squeak buried among the rending of mountains,
I am a mist passing through the crevices of these great seniors
Enclosed by me in a box, now free of the light, conversing
Of all the issue this homecoming has awakened in the stone mind
The mines like frozen bolts of black lightning deep in the land
Saying, and the edge of their imaginings cuts across my mind:
We are where we were taken from, and so we show ourselves
Ringing with changes and calls of fellowship
That call to us ton to ounce across Cornish valleys.
The valleys throng with the ghosts of stone so I may scarcely pass,
Their loving might crush, they cry out at their clumsiness,
Move away, death-dealing hardnesses, in love.
The house is full of a sound of running water,
The night is a black honey, crystals wink at the brim,
A wind blows through the clock, the black mud outside
Lies curled up in haunches like a sleeping cat.
SHADOW-SILK
Rapid brothy whispers in the bed.
It was like silk splitting in me.
The house is full of the sound of running water.
A wind blows through the clock.
It is like a frail leaf-skeleton
Shivering in a casket.
We are heels over ears in love.
The window-frame blackens.
Below, the trees flood darkly,
The wind butts in the curtain
A doddering forehead.
We have a one candle.
Your hair is like a weir,
Or fields of posture,
In terrace upon terrace
Rising forest murmur,
And across the garden
Frothily flows the ghost.
The night is black honey,
Presses hard on the glass.
A sudden set! The stars are out.
This is too much; adventuring nectars
Wink with packed crystals
That hang depth upon depth
Age clotting the frame.
I must close this picture-book.
I must wade through these shadows.
Black springs from the corners
Brim the quartz-crystals
Engorge the ewers
Flood from the cupboards
Soaking the dresses
Pile under the bed
In black satin cushions.
That candle is unsnuffable!
We are afloat!
But the ring on your finger
Spins without stirring,
I pad through the undertow
Reach out and close
That heavenly almanac.
Our wonder still lingers
Over the covers
As within the pages
All the stars glitter.
A wind blows through the clock
And across the garden
Frothily flows the ghost.
THE MOON DISPOSES21
Perranporth Beach
The mountainous sand-dunes with their gulls
Are all the same wind’s moveables,
The wind’s legs climb, recline,
Sit up gigantic, we wade
Such slithering pockets our legs are half the size,
There is an entrance pinched, a plain laid out,
An overshadowing of pleated forts.
We cannot see the sea, the sea-wind stings with sand,
We cannot see the moon that swims the wind,
The setting wave that started on the wind, pulls back.
Another slithering rim, we tumble whirling
A flying step to bed, better than harmless,
Here is someone’s hoofprint on her hills
A broken ring with sheltering sides
She printed in the sand. A broken ring. We peer from play.
Hours late we walk among the strewn dead
Of this tide’s sacrifice. There are strangled mussels:
The moon pulls back the lid, the wind unhinges them,
They choke on fans, they are bunched blue, black band.
The dead are beautiful, and give us life.
The setting wave recoils
In flocculence of blood-in-crystal,
It is medusa parched to hoofprints, broken bands,
Which are beautiful, and give us life.
The moon has stranded and the moon’s air strangled
And the beauty of her dead dunes sent us up there
Which gave us life. Out at sea
Waves flee up the face of a far sea-rock, it is a pure white door
Flashing in the cliff-face opposite,
Great door, opening, closing, rumbling open, moonlike
Flying open on its close.
INTIMATE SUPPER
He switched on the electric light and laughed,
He let light shine in the firmament of his ceiling,
He saw the great light shine around and it was good,
The great light that rilled through its crystalline pendentives,
And marvelled at its round collection in a cheval glass,
And twirled the scattered crystal rays in his champagne glass.
He spun the great winds through his new hoover
And let light be in the kitchen and that was good too
For he raised up the lid of the stock-pot
And dip
ped a deep spoon in the savours that were rich
And swarming, and felt the flavours live in his mouth
Astream with waters. He danced to the fire and raked it and created red heat
And skipped to the bathroom and spun the shining taps
Dividing air from the deep, and the water, good creature,
Gave clouds to his firmament for he had raked the bowels
Of the seamy coal that came from the deep earth.
And he created him Leviathan and wallowed there,
Rose, and made his own image in the steamy mirrors
Having brooded over them, wiping them free
Again from steamy chaos and the mist that rose from the deep,
But the good sight faded
For there was no help, no help meet for him at all,
And he set his table with two stars pointed on wax
And with many stars in the cutlery and clear crystal
And he set thereon fruits of the earth, and thin clean bowls
For the clear waters of the creatures of earth that love to be cooked,
And until the time came that he had appointed
Walked in his garden in the cool of the evening, waited.
YOUNG WOMEN WITH THE HAIR OF WITCHES AND NO MODESTY22
‘I loved Ophelia!’
I have always loved water, and praised it.
I have often wished water would hold still.
Changes and glints bemuse a man terribly:
There is champagne and glimmer of mists;
Torrents, the distaffs of themselves, exalted, confused;
And snow splintering silently, skilfully, indifferently.
I have often wished water would hold still.
Now it does so, or ripples so, skilfully
In cross and doublecross, surcross and countercross.
A person lives in the darkness of it, watching gravely;
I used to see her straight and cool, considering the pond,
And as I approached she would turn gracefully
In her hair, its waves betraying her origin.
I told her that her thoughts issued in hair like consideration of water,
And if she laughed, that they would rain like spasms of weeping,
Or if she wept, then solemnly they held still,
And in the rain, the perfumes of it, and the blowing of it,
Confused, like hosts of people all shouting.
In such a world the bride walks through dressed as a waterfall,
And ripe grapes fall and splash smooth snow with jagged purple,
Young girls grow brown as acorns in their rainy climb towards oakhood,
And brown moths settle low down among ivories wet with love.
But she loosened her hair in a sudden tangle of contradictions,
In cross and doublecross, surcross and countercross,
And I was a shadow in the twilight of her late displeasure
I asked water to stand still, now nothing else holds.
A SMALL DEATH
My friend was gone. The sob wouldn’t come.
They blow as they please. I owed her a sob.
It sank back into ashes. I tried again
It sank parching in vain. My friend was gone.
She wouldn’t end. I couldn’t begin.
I sealed my eyes shut. There photos awoke
Where she nodded and talked along a green walk,
Eloquent bee-hives, my rose pinned to her dress,
A shadowy face under a wide straw hat,
A sundial of sandstone warm with its time-telling.
The sob began, I fostered, obeyed it,
It reamed in my throat as she nodded and talked
Then turned under me gasping.
Seed brawled in my groin as she turned to me gasping;
My groin stung alight; the filament faded.
I woke from this stillness into a stillness,
Aching godseed of stars, a vase of black flowers, an empty armchair,
A night-laden window. I was emptied, quite emptied
Of a small distress. I looked down: one tear
Hung on a lash. It stretched to my cheek,
Snapped, sparkled and sank.
The sob wouldn’t come. I owed her a sob.
My friend was gone. But she wouldn’t end
I couldn’t begin
THE YOUTHFUL SCIENTIST REMEMBERS23
After a day’s clay my shoes drag like a snail’s skirt
And hurt as much on gravel. You have mud on your jersey,
This pleases me, I cannot say why. Summer-yolk
Hangs heavy in the sky, ready to rupture in slow swirls,
Immense custard: like the curious wobbly heart
Struggling inside my pink shirt. Spring is pink, predominately,
And frothy, thriving, the glorious forgotten sound of healing,
And cheering, all shouting and cheering. With what inwardness
The shadows of autumn open, brown and mobile as cognac,
And the whole of my beer comes reeling up to me in one great amber rafter
Like a beam of the purest sun, well-aged; as it travels the grass
The dead smile an immense toothy underground, kindly.
I cannot explain why. You pointed out that the lily
Was somebody’s red tail inside their white nightie
So much so
That I am still sober and amazed at the starlight glittering in the mud,
I am amazed at the stars, and the greatest wonder of them all
Is that their black is as full as their white, the black
Impends with the white, packing between the white,
And under the hives of silence there are swarms of light,
And padded between black comb, struggling white.
I cannot explain this, with the black as full as the bright,
The mud as full as the sunlight. I had envisaged
Some library of chemistry and music
With lean lithe scores padding the long pine shelves,
Plumage of crystal vials clothing strong deal tables;
Had thought that the stars would only tug at me slightly,
Or sprinkle thin clear visions about me for study –
Instead you point at that flower, your dress fits like a clove.
THE IDEA OF ENTROPY AT MAENPORTH BEACH24
‘C’est elle! Noire et pourtant lumineuse.’
To John Layard
A boggy wood as full of springs as trees.
Slowly she slipped into the muck.
It was a white dress, she said, and that was not right.
Leathery polished mud, that stank as it split.
It is a smooth white body, she said, and that is not right,
Not quite right; I’ll have a smoother,
Slicker body, and my golden hair
Will sprinkle rich goodness everywhere.
So slowly she backed into the mud.
If it were a white dress, she said, with some little black,
Dressed with a little flaw, a smut, some swart
Twinge of ancestry, or if it were all black
Since I am white, but – it’s my mistake.
So slowly she slunk, all pleated, into the muck.
The mud spatters with rich seed and ranging pollens.
Black darts up the pleats, black pleats
Lance along the white ones, and she stops
Swaying, cut in half. Is it right, she sobs
As the fat, juicy, incredibly tart muck rises
Round her throat and dims the diamond there?
It is right, so she stretches her white neck back
And takes a deep breath once and a one step back.
Some golden strands afloat pull after her.
The mud recoils, lies heavy, queasy, swart.
But then this soft blubber stirs, and quickly she comes up
Dressed like a mound of lickerish earth,
Swiftly ascending in a
streaming pat
That grows tall, smooths brimming hips, and steps out
On flowing pillars, darkly draped.
And then the blackness breaks open with blue eyes
Of this black Venus rising helmeted in night
Who as she glides grins brilliantly, and drops
Swatches superb as molasses on her path.
Who is that negress running on the beach
Laughing excitedly with teeth as white
As the white waves kneeling, dazzled, to the sands?
Clapping excitedly the black rooks rise,
Running delightedly in slapping rags
She sprinkles substance, and the small life flies!
She laughs aloud, and bares her teeth again, and cries:
Now that I am all black, and running in my richness
And knowing it a little, I have learnt
It is quite wrong to be all white always;
And knowing it a little, I shall take great care
To keep a little black about me somewhere.
A snotty nostril, a mourning nail will do.
Mud is a good dress, but not the best.
Ah, watch, she runs into the sea. She walks
In streaky white on dazzling sands that stretch
Like the whole world’s pursy mud quite purged.
The black rooks coo like doves, new suns beam
From every droplet of the shattering waves,
From every crystal of the shattered rock.
Drenched in the mud, pure white rejoiced,
From this collision were new colours born,
And in their slithering passage to the sea
The shrugged-up riches of deep darkness sang.
THE HOUSE OF TAPS25
To P. D.S.
In the house of the Reverend Earth and Dr Waters
Moonlight strikes from the taps.
In the daytime, it is sunlight, full clear beams of it!
When they give water, these faucets, it is holy water,
Or river water, with green shadows of great ship-hulls gliding in it.
There are some also that bundle out exceptional ripe golden cornsheaves
And blackberries also, and pineapples and nightshade and innumerable other kinds of berries.
There is a large curved one like morning glory full of strong birdsong
And the smell of woodsmoke mixed with wet nettles.
Others I would not turn on again, not if you paid me, there are some
That throw out glittering lead, or rushes of fire,
And these are all made of wood, so that they smoke and scorch as they run,
Collected Poems Page 11