Christopher Shepheard

Though marked and measured, mountainous the path
That patience preaches — ligature and lath
To hold up heaviness in harness — moulds who moon-
Rake, trudge, with sun-scorched shoulders, dune upon dune.
...

I did not fear my birth
Into this fluttering breath
Where decimal places of measured time
Resolve their way to death.
...

You were like looking in from the rain
On a Christmas Eve, when the hearth is ablaze,
When the warmth oozes out through the window pane
And the sodden byways glisten and glaze
...

An enterprise for zealots to pursue
Who felt within their skills a worship quickening
To build a spire of stone and thereby light
The heavens up, for all men to acquire.
...

You wear your years like jewels
That time cannot waste or weather —
A face that lips might laze upon
And angels’ glances gaze upon
...

I felt your hand upon my arm
And was awakened by your urgency;
There heard you murmuring in expectant voice
Things that only should be yours and mine —
...

You taught me all the things I had not guessed,
Nor looked for, saying that they were sweet
And life was not given for less.
...

These little cottage doorways
Even I must nod the head to,
Where the tinker stooped to enter
And the squire doffed his hat too.
...

Turning like the fairground organ
Barrel jangles, moves to the hand
That holds it corpselike, muscles trapped
In circular motion, grinding endless
...

A frank affection seldom stirs
The gossips to inject their spurs;
Their appetites will quickly pall
Since all their news in know to all.
...

You sat, the victrix of my escapade,
The spoils upon your lap; a programmed scrolled
From fiddling, an empty box. I had,
I thought, enough of fight to have emerged
...

The spaces that you left have not been filled —
No hands emerge to make the darkness warm,
Nor breathing with a rhythm now reminds
The early-morning hours of life. And there
...

Now is the middle game; the opening
Has set the style of play. No use to wish
I had been more aggressive, bolder, wise,
Or treated my opponent with respect,
...

The blot revealed you, and the way
You dotted your Js — trite
Little comments, written in turquoise —
Immortal, a moment of you —
...

I, too, have a clock
Without hands, without images,
Faceless of Arabic figures,
I listen
...

Put out the iris of the inner eye —
Children’s games download by gigabyte;
The mouse and joystick substitute the wands
Magicians wove in kingdoms of delight.
...

To sensibilities, mean-tuned,
Ambition is all about gratification —
Horizontal gratification —
Pushing your card in the money slot,
...

I
Sang the old refrain —
The verses I forget —
The various
...

For now the hoodlum years have kicked the heads
From off the flowers that growing up invests
To ornament the future, come what may
Of blossoms, blooms and oriflammes decay.
...

You nothing said,
Though your eyes swam like lapis lazuli
Deep set in summer seas,
Hanging a question on your reticence.
...