New and Selected Poems (34 page)
Bad-tempered bullying bunch, the horned cows
176
Began under the groan of the oldest forest
107
Better disguised than the leaf-insect
51
Between plunging valleys, on a bareback of hill
157
Beyond a twilight of limes and willows
140
Bird-bones is on the roof. Seventy-eight
182
Blackness
168
Black village of gravestones
78
Black was the without eye
89
Bloody Mary’s venomous flames can curl
19
Bones is a crazy pony
214
Born at the bottom of the heap. And as he grew upwards
271
Bred wild leopards – among the pale depth fungus
166
Bringing their frozen swords, their salt-bleached eyes
75
Burning
113
Calves harshly parted from their mamas
154
Cars collide and erupt luggage and babies
102
Collision with the earth has finally come
149
Comes home dull with coal-dust deliberately
56
Creation quaked voices
93
Crowd the horizons, poised, wings
204
Dawn – a smouldering fume of dry frost
193
Dawn. The river thins
249
Daylong this tomcat lies stretched flat
27
Dead, she became space-earth
198
Death is also trying to be life
196
Did music help him? Indeed it helped him
313
Dripped a chill virulence
161
Fallen from heaven, lies across
243
Farmers in the fields, housewives behind steamed windows
15
Fifteenth of May. Cherry blossom. The swifts
134
Fills up
122
First – the sun coming closer, growing by the minute
116
For half an hour, through a magnifying glass
228
Frightening the blood in its tunnel
42
From what dog’s dish or crocodile’s rotten
20
Has conquered. He has surrendered everything
123
Has not yet been cut
207
Hearing shingle explode, seeing it skip
99
He did not know she had risen out of the cinders
309
He hears lithe trees and last leaves swatting the glass
208
He loved her and she loved him
114
Here before me, snake-head
258
Here is the fern’s frond, unfurling a gesture
61
He sang
104
He’s lying in poor water, a yard or so depth of poor safety
262
He smiles in a mirror, shrinking the whole
13
He stands, filling the doorway
128
Honeysuckle hanging her fangs
262
How it hung
211
I am the hunted king
103
I climbed through woods in the hour-before-dawn dark
7
I felt a strange fear when the war-talk
273
I flash-glimpsed in the headlights – the high moment
188
I found this jawbone at the sea’s edge
29
I had exploded, a bombcloud, lob-headed, my huge fingers
53
I know well
153
I imagine this midnight moment’s forest
3
In Hardcastle Crags, that echoey museum
158
In the beginning was Scream
90
In the dawn-dirty light, in the biggest snow of the year
181
In the huge, wide-open, sleeping eye of the mountain
64
I park the car half in the ditch and switch off and sit
45
I remember going out there
298
I see the oak’s bride in the oak’s grasp
150
I sit in the top of the wood, my eyes closed
29
Is melting an old frost moon
107
I stood on a dark summit, among dark summits
167
Is without world
84
I was just walking about
267
I whispered to the holly
50
I woke to a shout: ‘I am Alpha and Omega’
70
Join water, wade in underbeing
255
Jumbled iceberg hills, away to the North
250
Just before the curtain falls in the river
260
‘Mad laughter’, your sister – her grey perm
289
Man’s and woman’s bodies lay without souls
91
Mid-May – after May frosts that killed the Camellias
223
My father sat in his chair recovering
72
My mother in her feathers of flame
291
My neighbour moves less and less, attempts less
63
My post-war father was so silent
269
new to the blood
206
No, the serpent did not
70
Not that she had no equal, not that she was
9
Not your eyes, but what they disguise
197
Now is the globe shrunk tight
40
Now the river is rich, but her voice is low
132
Now you have stabbed her good
71
October is marigold, and yet
14
Of the main-road canal bridge
169
O lady, when the tipped cup of the moon blessed you
4
O littleblood, hiding from the mountains in the mountains
119
On a flaked ridge of the desert
59
Once I said lightly
149
Once upon a time
105
Once was every woman the witch
39
On moors where people get lost and die of air
48
On the sheep-cropped summit, under hot sun
33
Opus 131 in C Sharp Minor
310
Our sad coats assemble at the counter
203
Outcrop stone is miserly
55
Pain was pulled down over his eyes like a fool’s hat
208
Pike, three inches long, perfect
41
Prometheus on His Crag
218
Rain. Floods. Frost. And after frost, rain
175
Right from the start he is dressed in his best — his blacks and his whites
131
Rouses in its cave
205
Russia and America circle each other
25
She gives him his eyes, she found them
127
She had too much so with a smile you took some
305
She is struggling through grass-mesh – not flying
147
She knows, like Ophelia
206
Skinful of bowls he bowls them
60
Sleeping and waking in the Song of Songs
306
Sometimes it comes, a gloomy flap of lightning
154
Snaps its twig-tether – mounts
315
Snow falling. Snowflakes clung and melted
308
So finally there was nothing
104
Soldiers are marching singing down the lane
65
So on the seventh day
112
Spain frightened you. Spain
294
Spluttering near out, before it touches the moors
52
Stare at the monster: remark
5
Suddenly he awoke and was running – raw
16
Suddenly his poor body
61
Suddenly hooligan baby starlings
225
Take telegraph wires, a lonely moor
270
Terrifying are the attent sleek thrushes on the lawn
39
That Elf
238
That is not your mother but her body
304
That plastic Buddha jars out a Karate screech
215
That star
204
The apes yawn and adore their fleas in the sun
4
The breaker humps its green glass
226
The bright mirror I braved: the devil in it
43
The celluloid of a photograph holds them well
17
The chestnut splits its padded cell
144
The deaf children were monkey-nimble, fish-tremulous and sudden
195
The farms are oozing craters in
25
The father capers across the yard cobbles
290
The flame-red moon, the harvest moon
142
The freedom of Saturday afternoons
162
The grass-blade is not without
152
The Hen
236
The Honey Bee
227
The hot shallows and seas we bring our blood from
27
The lark begins to go up
78
The longships got this far. Then
164
The month of the drowned dog. After long rain the land
36
The morass is bulging and aborting
48
The old man’s blood had spoken the word: ‘Enough’
52
The pig lay on a barrow dead
34
The rat is in the trap, it is in the trap
76
There was a man
111
There was a person
110
There was the sun on the wall – my childhood’s
121
There was this man and he was the strongest
99
There was this terrific battle
95
The salmon were just down there
256
The sea cries with its meaningless voice
83
These grasses of light
158
The sheep has stopped crying
136
The strange part is his head. Her head. The strangely ripened
259
The swallow – rebuilding
152
The tide-swell grinds crystal, under cliffs
223
The tiger kills hungry. The machine-guns
201
The tractor stands frozen – an agony
179
The violinist’s shadow vanishes
57
The wind on Crow Hill was her darling
173
The wolf with its belly stitched full of big pebbles
24
They lift
163
This evening
246
This evening, motherly summer moves in the pond
23
This house has been far out at sea all night
14
This is the maneater’s skull
150
This morning blue vast clarity of March sky
187
‘This water droplet, charity of the air’
12
Those stars are the fleshed forebears
30
Till they seemed to trip and trap
126
Tonight
247