High Windows Read Free

play
     
    On tiny decks past fraying cliffs of water
    Or late at night
    Sweet under the differently-swung stars,
    When the chance sight
     
    Of a girl doing her laundry in the steerage
    Ramifies endlessly.
    This is being young,
    Assumption of the startled century
     
    Like new store clothes,
    The huge decisions printed out by feet
    Inventing where they tread,
    The random windows conjuring a street.
     

Sad Steps
     
     
    G roping back to bed after a piss
    I part thick curtains, and am startled by
    The rapid clouds, the moon’s cleanliness.
     
    Four o’clock: wedge-shadowed gardens lie
    Under a cavernous, a wind-picked sky.
    There’s something laughable about this,
     
    The way the moon dashes through clouds that blow
    Loosely as cannon-smoke to stand apart
    (Stone-coloured light sharpening the roofs below)
     
    High and preposterous and separate—
    Lozenge of love! Medallion of art!
    O wolves of memory! Immensements! No,
     
    One shivers slightly, looking up there.
    The hardness and the brightness and the plain
    Far-reaching singleness of that wide stare
     
    Is a reminder of the strength and pain
    Of being young; that it can’t come again,
    But is for others undiminished somewhere.
     

Solar
     
     
    S uspended lion face
    Spilling at the centre
    Of an unfurnished sky
    How still you stand,
    And how unaided
    Single stalkless flower
    You pour unrecompensed.
     
    The eye sees you
    Simplified by distance
    Into an origin,
    Your petalled head of flames
    Continuously exploding.
    Heat is the echo of your
    Gold.
     
    Coined there among
    Lonely horizontals
    You exist openly.
    Our needs hourly
    Climb and return like angels.
    Unclosing like a hand,
    You give for ever.
     

Annus Mirabilis
     
     
    S exual intercourse began
    In nineteen sixty-three
    (Which was rather late for me)—
    Between the end of the Chatterley ban
    And the Beatles’ first LP.
     
    Up till then there’d only been
    A sort of bargaining,
    A wrangle for a ring,
    A shame that started at sixteen
    And spread to everything.
     
    Then all at once the quarrel sank:
    Everyone felt the same,
    And every life became
    A brilliant breaking of the bank,
    A quite unlosable game.
     
    So life was never better than
    In nineteen sixty-three
    (Though just too late for me)—
    Between the end of the Chatterley ban
    And the Beatles’ first LP.
     

Vers de Société
     
     
    M y wife and I have asked a crowd of craps
    To come and waste their time and ours: perhaps
    You’ d care to join us ?Ina pig’s arse, friend.
    Day comes to an end.
    The gas fire breathes, the trees are darkly swayed.
    And so Dear Warlock-Williams: I’m afraid —
     
    Funny how hard it is to be alone.
    I could spend half my evenings, if I wanted,
    Holding a glass of washing sherry, canted
    Over to catch the drivel of some bitch
    Who’s read nothing but Which ;
    Just think of all the spare time that has flown
     
    Straight into nothingness by being filled
    With forks and faces, rather than repaid
    Under a lamp, hearing the noise of wind,
    And looking out to see the moon thinned
    To an air-sharpened blade.
    A life, and yet how sternly it’s instilled
     
    All solitude is selfish. No one now
    Believes the hermit with his gown and dish
    Talking to God (who’s gone too); the big wish
    Is to have people nice to you, which means
    Doing it back somehow.
    Virtue is social. Are, then, these routines
     
    Playing at goodness, like going to church?
    Something that bores us, something we don’t do well
    (Asking that ass about his fool research)

    But try to feel, because, however crudely,
    It shows us what should be?
    Too subtle, that. Too decent, too. Oh hell,
     
    Only the young can be alone freely.
    The time is shorter now for company,
    And sitting by a lamp more often brings
    Not peace, but other things.
    Beyond the light stand failure and remorse
    Whispering Dear Warlock-Williams: Why, of course–
     

Show Saturday
     
     
    G rey day for the Show, but cars jam the narrow lanes.
    Inside, on the field,