Collected Poems

by Peter Redgrove

  That won’t join in, hedgehog of light.

  This is the terrible Jesus. There is another,

  And none will give him a name. He takes care.

  He lives all around. I breathe him. He breathes.

  Like the air we breathe, he is free to us.

  THE SKIN

  for Mike Smith

  A floating green palace: the public park;

  Bolts of silk by day: by night bolts of lightning;

  And the river easing its way.

  The lament of the river-bed, the valances of the candle.

  Shadows live in the sunshine, not at night!

  The stars are enough for me, and the spring,

  There was always a spring in the night cavern,

  The clothes come off with a rustle of static,

  She is in bed, and asleep

  I stroke her wet

  The perfume winds out of her

  The sun rises and all the animals greet it

  With their perfume

  In the sunlit fields

  A horse gently rests

  His great nose on my shoulder

  Contented by my silk suit.

  SOMEBODY

  Somebody rolls a great window open

  There is a spatter of rain

  A beetle parades the shiny stone

  A jagged leaf scrapes a sigh

  The swimming-pool brims with leaves

  It should have a net

  But the leaf falls and the ice darts

  The drowned puppy appears to me

  In a dream of sopping leaves

  He brings in his mouth a green branch

  The stars roll overhead

  They draw an immense woman-figure

  Her hands splayed out to steady the globe

  She watches and glitters. Her breath is icy

  I see her in all the waters, which veil themselves.

  TREE OF SWORDS

  A shower of swords from the sword tree

  in autumn

  Touch it and it divests itself

  like a falling army

  You are cut to pieces

  chrysanthemums of the severed flesh

  Or across the lake you see the flashing falls

  the copse of sword-trees

  The swinging doors of a fencing-academy

  echoing from cliffs

  Where they practise in breathing silence

  but for their sword-notes –

  The unwary friend cut to pieces in blood

  the scream, the chiming clatter.

  Never in restful graveyards

  but on old fields of battle

  Never in quiet mortuary enclosures

  but hard by motorways

  Feeding on the splash of collisions

  on the old blood, on the old arrows

  The swords rising through the soil

  cleaning themselves

  The blood’s iron running in the sap

  and the blades clean as peeled roots

  Flashing high on the tree

  playing with air and light

  Mincing the rash forester

  in a glittering rush

  Back to the rusty soil.

  The rain drips bloody from these leaves

  And all the leaves make one note

  in the calm breeze:

  Rough serpent-chime

  irrefragable hiss.

  IN THE VERMILION CATHEDRAL

  Your moon ties a dark

  funnel of tides,

  roads into the sea,

  the fishponds heave

  the sea bobs in, bobs out;

  your doing.

  I wish you would step out of the sea;

  some signs about you, not too terrifying;

  a kelp girdle, a spiracle in your chest;

  walk arm in arm with me through the flooded highstreet.

  Instead there are vibrations merely,

  guest appearances,

  a spiral corridor in the soapy water,

  the great moon walking far out at sea.

  I sit in church, it is abbreviated discourse.

  Thou, He, Jesus Christ and the Choirboys,

  The true presence, and a little cake like a moon,

  The curtseying priest in his frock keeping you out.

  Be the miracle that you are!

  When I say ‘grapes’ the wineglasses fill

  Goodblood and I drink to remember you

  The sabbath apples choir as I walk by,

  I sleep it off in the battling rams’ field,

  The grass is long, the rams tranquil.

  If you know all my names and my lusts,

  My monthly ransackings and my private games,

  I assume you reject me, or you are in the wine:

  Visit me in the wine, and visit everyone who drinks,

  We lift our glasses and you come to us,

  Millions of us and millions of you.

  I want you to speak to me alone, please step out of the sea.

  Crush the red bottle in your grip,

  Touch me at the nape, at the brow,

  Open the sea-door with a courteous gesture,

  Use my hair for the tides.

  Without a bottle, without a glass

  I shall wait in this room small enough not to miss you.

  MOONBEAST IN SUNSHINE

  (Sudden slowworm at Totleigh)

  Talonheaded with obsidian glances

  He threw his tangles through the long grass

  Showed me a way this side that

  Stabbed his white snout into his misdirections

  Switched through a yellow flower into secrecy

  Dived through a flowerstem and was gone

  The slowworm confused me and was gone

  He looked this way and then that way

  A yellow flower outstared me the grass empty

  Moonlight streaking along choppy waters

  The foil creases as the astronaut beckons;

  This wizard pointed the wrong way and it beat me.

  Cross between electricity and melting snow

  Hybrid of a moonbeam and a waterfall

  Son of a lizard and a white explosion

  Glittering dewcloud pierced by rifle-fire

  Child of a speedboat and its splitknot wake

  I look this way that – I fall between your pauses, unravelling

  Stairs I may not descend, not yet –

  Who is the slow worm?

  Maze-tracer ripping up your clews in one swift gesture

  One swift backward strike so I no longer understand

  No longer see the way, like a wound closing,

  Like a sudden change of waveband

  Quartz-sand pouring into mercury

  Self-made torrent of metal milk.

  DANCE THE PUTREFACT33

  Scenario for a Masque

  for Pete Farr

  ‘As he lay on his back, stretched out on the ground, with arms extended, he marked himself out with stones – the shape of his body, head, legs, arms, and everything. There you can see those rocks today.’

  Old Man Creates – The Hero with a Thousand Faces,

  Joseph Campbell

  I

  ‘The Avenue of the Giants,’ he said calmly. Meaning the trees, introducing me to the Village. I have come here because I have a dance. All here have come for similar reasons. Here nobody pries or condemns. Your dance is not mocked, since mockery distorts the dance. Everybody here has been dance-blind, and here some have recovered their sight.

  II

  We were walking in the woods near the Falling Leaf Tavern, with its cellars full of liquor made in autumn. We had explored the avenue of great trees tossing their heads, with the church at the far end whose font was full of the surprising water. The dance of dust over the surface of the holy water in the font made visible the constant movement in the consecrated water. We had seen above the village the flat dancing-ground that had never been touched by a shod foot. I removed my shoes and s
ocks and walked with my companion on to the hard flat ground dustless and warm. From this platform we surveyed the village. Tall columns of bonfire-smoke climbed into the still air, spiralling and twining from the villagers’ gardens. We had descended and walked along the tidal inlet towards the beaches. The tide was low and we strolled by flat sheets of black mud, watery earth, earthy water. Secretly in my mind I hear the first steps of my dance. Warm fires glow from the windows as we return in the twilight. We pass a smouldering bonfire deep within which, as in a cage, mice of fire still race.

  III

  Smelling of new-baked bread and sawdust in the early sun, glossy as chocolate, soft as drifted flowers, the floor of my dance is prepared by the salt tide. I hear the great mud-drum. Its first beat ripples to the farthest shore. It is a liquid mattress, a slack trampoline, cradle and grave.

  IV

  I am very strict, in order that I may be very grotesque. I am very strict, because I am very grotesque. My white shirt is without spot, its collar-lappets ironed smoothly back, a red scarf tucked in the opening. My trousers of an equivalent whiteness, demarcated by a broad dark belt. Like a cricketer I am white, like a morris dancer I carry a withy, a willow wand. I am a person of sheer whiteness save for a slice at the waist, standing at the brink of capacious black. With my feet bare I advance towards the soft black mirror.

  V

  With the strokes of my withy and my bare footprints I dance my reflection on the mud. The mud is firm but quaking, soft as a strewing of dark flowers over a firm beachsand. This is the way I dance my figure. Leaning out over the mud, with my long withy-wand I draw stretching out as far as I can two crescents, their bulge towards me. They are the eyebrows. With a cry I leap over them and land up to my ankles. These prints are the socketed eyes. With a sliding step I slive out the nose and stand working the trench of the long mouth a pace away. With my wand I enclose these features in a head. I pass on to the throat and stroll out a left arm, a right arm – the hands come later – with a second bound I am ankle deep in two nipples, whose breasts I now scribe from my vantage points. A third hop, legs clapped together, gives me the navel, from which, swivelling, I mark out chest-lines and transverse rib-marks. Down the midriff I dance the long cunt, I furrow, I delve, I dance its extent many times, it splashes me, I am dark to my belt. I dance along the waist and make a left leg, returning to the cunt. I dance a right leg, returning to the cunt. I finish off the arms with hands that grasp and spread the cunt. I take a fourth leap, and am standing in the feet of my creature. I face the sun over the sea, she streams behind me like my shadow, the small clear wavelets advance towards me over the tidal mud. I turn, I pluck my feet out and stamp them down facing my creature, my left foot in her right, her left foot accepting my right. The sun behind me from the east casts my shadow into her outlines and she configures with this part of me. It is time to give myself up to the dance.

  VI

  I am down, and within her! I have vaulted into her boundaries and I am as black as she is. I am buried deep in her flesh. I pull her flesh off her in handfuls and cover my skin in hers. I prance, cool and nightladen with exterior cunt. The black bed before me is rucked. The black woman-outline has risen from it and I dance within her skin. I am the black woman. I am petal-soft, and my surfaces are rounded and shining. The bosom of my shirt is heavy with mud. It hangs and flounces like large breasts full of black milk. The black lady minces sadly loverless over the mud, she smells of tar and sunlight. Where is this white lover? She dances sadly on her own. Soon her lover will return, but her disappearance is the condition of his return. She will enjoy the sunlight while she can. Soon her ladyhood will pour like black blood through the drains of his bathroom, she will fade like a shadow in a shower of clear water.

  VII

  Why do I return again and again to this same action? Because it is my dance. No one here gives reasons or asks questions. We are here in this village in order to dance. His dance is all a person has. It is his datum. But I, I cannot read my dance, and until I can do so I am condemned to enact it, and am imprisoned within it. I am dance-blind. There are so many other dances I could join! But now the season approaches in which all the dances are joined into one, the time when all the people’s dances are performed together. For the first time in my life I shall perform my dance among all the others, with others watching. None will blame and none will condemn, for each person has his dance. This season approaches.

  VIII

  That season arrived this morning with the blowing of trumpets! Six men in Sunday black clothes wind the silver trumpets. Six women in village white bow the small dark violins. The music awoke me in my great tavern bed. I gather up my dancing-clothes, which have been cleaned and ironed for me without comment. I dress quickly and carrying my wand I clatter down the wooden stairs. Outside I join the procession of people dancing to the music up the hill to the smooth stamped platform. The Flora Dance plays from the six loudspeakers on poles that line the route. The sun shines. I hear the Flora Dance play through the innumerable beaks of all the birds.

  IX

  I am afraid. How can I dance my desire on this hard earth? I have watched the others dance the dance of their own lives, the dance they wished to read. The music falls silent and they dance to the sound of their own flesh. There is a lady presenter with a forked twig who touches the heads of those who are to dance. I have watched the man who dances the tearing and devouring of human flesh; companions are selected by the lady to dance the dismemberment he wishes. They jerk and thrash on the dancing-ground like farmyard carcasses; he stuffs his mouth with the pink flesh greedily; the soaking of blood into the ground is danced with wriggling fingers. What if I were selected to dance this part by the lady? Would I do the dance justice, imprisoned in my own? I have watched three men dance the fuelling of ovens with their fellow-dancers. I have watched the old woman who dances the sewing of clothes over and over. Certain partners dance their assemblage into great costly garments as she stitches their bodies together; at last she rends them and the bodies scatter. She dances only with her rags. I watch a great company of men and women who dance a Parliament, and I watch the enacting of just and unjust laws, I see the Parliament dance its sinking into the ground, not a stone left on stone, and a new assembly arises. I watch a household dance the knocking together of a ship of great size from the bodies of other dancers, from which they exclude a certain company. However, certain dancers dance animals, who are admitted, and the remainder dance drowning, crying silently and clinging to the ark’s human timbers as it sails without them. The lady presenter touches with her twig the heads of those who are to dance drowning. She does not touch my head with her invitation, even for that.

  X

  The lady passes among the dancers and signifies the beginning or the end of their dances; she turns them out of their courses with the touch of her twig. She is dressed in spotless white, more plainly than a bride, in a manner suitable for dancing. Her feet are bare, her skirt is pleated, she is fair-haired. She must be the chief dancer, since the others obey her, and obey the language of her wand. Now as chief dancer she begins to dance the flowers turning to the sun and the tides turning to the moon, the chief dance that lies within the others. She dances alone, the men watch her from an inner ring that surrounds the dancing-ground, she is watchful among them for a partner. She touches certain of the men with impatient strokes of her twig, and they join her in the centre. The men line up in a row, crouching, with their backs to her. The lady wanders behind them, inspecting, pausing as if to choose, rejecting, passing on, lingering on some detail of their dancing clothes, touching lightly the brim of a hat, a frayed cuff, the sailor-collar of a shirt, the bare nape of a neck, a chain around the neck, seeking, passing along the line, turning on her heel, returning.

  XI

  She has chosen her dancer and they dance joy! There is a sigh from all the company. She has stopped behind one man. She has thrown her wand away from her high over the heads of the spectators. She steps cl
ose in to him from behind and crouching like him rests her elbows on his shoulders, her wrists turned to the front. Her thumb-joints lie with gentle pressure on his temples and her fingers stretch out to suppose horns on his head, eight-tined horns. He is chosen as stag, and the lady will ride him, and tempt him, and he will ride the lady. There is a dance of riding and intercourse led by the lady and the man. They dance on their heels to signify the possession of hooves. There is charging and division, there is stamping and calling, there is rolling, there is slow beating with the feet until the ground and the hills rumble and the hills to me sitting in the shade, no member of the dance, the hills begin to slide. There is conjunction and division, there is breathing and sweat, there is the thumping of bare feet, there is the occasional cry as the dancers turn but no further song. There is a serpentine dance that coils figures of eight between the lady and her stag who stand making two centres slowly turning to watch each other over the heads of the winding people. I who have not been chosen cower for fear lest I intercept the glance of one or the other.

  XII

  Now the procession reforms and to the sound of the trumpets and violins which replace the body sounds that were the only dancing-music, the villagers descend to their houses. None of them looks at me. I fall in at the tail of the winding procession when I have seen that they wish to pass me by. The procession dances a slow step in triple time to the music. My feet drag along the grassy path. I expect the procession to disperse in the village square. I turn into my doorway but my arms are gripped. With serious faces the two hinder dancers force me to continue with them, for the column of dancing figures has not dispersed after all. As we approach the tidal mud-flats, the musicians fall silent again, and the only sound is the chafing of skin across earth.