Poems 1960-2000 Read Free Page A

pass
    through the soil to the protest meeting below.
    This whole conspiracy of inverted birth
    leaves only us; and how shall we
    endure as we deserve to be,
    foolish and lost on the naked skin of the earth?

I Ride on My High Bicycle
    I ride on my high bicycle
    into a sooty Victorian city
    of colonnaded bank buildings,
    horse-troughs, and green marble fountains.
    I glide along, contemplating
    the curly lettering on the shop-fronts.
    An ebony elephant, ten feet tall,
    is wheeled past, advertising something.
    When I reach the dark archway
    I chain my bicycle to a railing,
    nod to a policeman, climb the steps,
    and emerge into unexpected sunshine.
    There below lies Caroline Bay,
    its red roofs and its dazzling water.
    Now I am running along the path;
    it is four o’clock, there is still just time.
    I halt and sit on the sandy grass
    to remove my shoes and thick stockings;
    but something has caught me; around my shoulders
    I feel barbed wire; I am entangled.
    It pulls my hair, dragging me downwards;
    I am suddenly older than seventeen,
    tired, powerless, pessimistic.
    I struggle weakly; and wake, of course.
    Well, all right. It doesn’t matter.
    Perhaps I didn’t get to the beach:
    but I have been there – to all the beaches
    (waking or dreaming) and all the cities.
    Now it is very early morning
    and from my window I see a leopard
    tall as a horse, majestic and kindly,
    padding over the fallen snow. 

Parting Is Such Sweet Sorrow
    The room is full of clichés – ‘Throw me a crumb’
    and ‘Now I see the writing on the wall’
    and ‘Don’t take umbrage, dear’. I wish I could.
    Instead I stand bedazzled by them all,
    longing for shade. Belshazzar’s fiery script
    glows there, between the prints of tropical birds,
    in neon lighting, and the air is full
    of crumbs that flash and click about me. Words
    glitter in colours like those gaudy prints:
    the speech of a computer, metal-based
    but feathered like a cloud of darts. All right.
    Your signal-system need not go to waste.
    Mint me another batch of tokens: say
    ‘I am in your hands; I throw myself upon
    your mercy, casting caution to the winds.’
    Thank you; there is no need to go on.
    Thus authorised by your mechanical
    issue, I lift you like a bale of hay,
    open the window wide, and toss you out;
    and gales of laughter whirl you far away.

Hauntings
    Three times I have slept in your house
    and this is definitely the last.
    I cannot endure the transformations:
    nothing stays the same for an hour.
    Last time there was a spiral staircase
    winding across the high room.
    People tramped up and down it all night,
    carrying brief-cases, pails of milk, bombs,
    pretending not to notice me
    as I lay in a bed lousy with dreams.
    Couldn’t you have kept them away?
    After all, they were trespassing.
    The time before it was all bathrooms,
    full of naked, quarrelling girls –
    and you claim to like solitude:
    I do not understand your arrangements.
    Now the glass doors to the garden
    open on rows of stone columns;
    beside them stands a golden jeep.
    Where are we this time? On what planet?
    Every night lasts for a week.
    I toss and turn and wander about,
    whirring from room to room like a moth,
    ignored by those indifferent faces.
    At last I think I have woken up.
    I lift my head from the pillow, rejoicing.
    The alarm-clock is playing Schubert:
    I am still asleep. This is too much.
    Well, I shall try again in a minute.
    I shall wake into this real room
    with its shadowy plants and patterned screens
    (yes, I remember how it looks).
    It will be cool, but I shan’t wait
    to light the gas-fire. I shall dress
    (I know where my clothes are) and slip out.
    You needn’t think I am here to stay.

Advice to a Discarded Lover
    Think, now: if you have found a dead bird,
    not only dead, not only fallen,
    but full of maggots: what do you feel –
    more pity or more revulsion?
    Pity is for the moment of death,
    and the moments after. It changes
    when decay comes, with the creeping stench
    and