Peter Redgrove

In memoriam H.S.

It is sweet and decorous To light the fire in the hearth and dream Of the death of poets. The boulders Follow him, scoring huge trenches To where he sits on a hill, letting the wind Play his lyre; it was Aeolus who played it And Orpheus fitted words to the improvised music, As I do now, to the jumping figures in the fire That rends and heals, my spliff Balsamic among the books...

It is the Pope, the veritable white Polish Pope, The Pope who has been a poet, the published Pope, He who kisses the soil, and accordingly

Worships a Black Virgin, now like a Christ-child He has re-arrived, in a cradle, a deep wicker, And it has a glow of dayspring gold, an aura,

As though he were frying delighted in pure oil: He was vibrating gold and this was his atmosphere, And I? I was...

I

A double fugue for wings

The phallaina, the moth The Winged Wurm, And the harbour lights Snaking in their busy sleep In the nesting water.

And in the dark of morning The spirit-candles passing over the water, The night-chandlers on their way to work, Fitting and outfitting, the wharfingers.

I touch that Self in her skin.

The water-rictus of the dawn ice That just touches the shores.

My face...

Hobbyists by the river Under the cold hairy willows, In peaked caps and faded railway overalls And astride saddle-sized model trains, Chug under bare willow wickerwork gilded by winter sun Puffing more white steam than their crib-sized engines. Even the dog-shit is happy among these frosty hobbyists, Lying down as is its wont Like shed pelt of a ginger kind Tightly wound like secretive...

The strange unpasteurised heights, And that excellent suntanned all-copper Waterworks sticker mechanism

With plastic ballcocks sucking at them And snowflake zinc tanks sunk high Into the arteries of a cloud-mountain Of circulating ocean.

We empty the system and venture With flaming torches into the mains, Into the conduits maned with weed That falls about our heads uncombed, which lead

Along...