Cat's Dream
How neatly a cat sleeps,
sleeps with its paws and its posture,
sleeps with its wicked claws,
and with its unfeeling blood,
sleeps with all the rings-
a series of burnt circles-
which have formed the odd geology
of its sand-colored tail.
I should like to sleep like a cat,
Without You
Without you every morning would feel like going back to work after a holiday,
Without you I couldn't stand the smell of the East Lancs Road,
Without you ghost ferries would cross the Mersey manned by skeleton crews,
Without you I'd probably feel happy and have more money and time and nothing to do with it,
Without you I'd have to leave my stillborn poems on other people's doorsteps, wrapped in brown paper,
Without you there'd never be sauce to put on sausage butties,
Without you plastic flowers in shop windows would just be plastic flowers in shop windows,
A Place Of Solitude
Look out across the windswept hills,
With rainbow hues, with misty blues,
Across the valleys, lakes and rills,
Where landscapes fuse, where eyes peruse,
And rest upon that quaint cottage small,
Tall chimney stack, with smoke of black.
A place of solitude from any squall.
That winding track, that calls you back,
To rest from ills,
To sit and muse.
Bric-A-Brac
Little things that no one needs --
Little things to joke about --
Little landscapes, done in beads.
Little morals, woven out,
Little wreaths of gilded grass,
Little brigs of whittled oak
Bottled painfully in glass;
These are made by lonely folk.
Lonely folk have lines of days
Tortures
Nothing has changed.
The body is susceptible to pain,
it must eat and breathe air and sleep,
it has thin skin and blood right underneath,
an adequate stock of teeth and nails,
its bones are breakable, its joints are stretchable.
In tortures all this is taken into account.
Nothing has changed.
The body shudders as it shuddered
The Innocence Of Any Flesh Sleeping
Sleeping beside you I dreamt
I woke beside you;
Waking beside you
I thought I was dreaming.
Have you ever slept beside an ocean?
Well yes,
It is like this.
The whole motion of landscapes, of oceans
A Descriptive Poem On The Silvery Tay
Beautiful silvery Tay,
With your landscapes, so lovely and gay,
Along each side of your waters, to Perth all the way;
No other river in the world has got scenery more fine,
Only I am told the beautiful Rhine,
Near to Wormit Bay, it seems very fine,
Where the Railway Bridge is towering above its waters sublime,
And the beautiful ship Mars,
With her Juvenile Tare,
Both lively and gay,
An Ode To Nature
In serene guise a celestial beauty
You profess principle of equality.
Embodiment of benevolence,
At times you are cruelty's essence.
Oh greatest master craftsman,
Is human for you mere pawn?
Oh darling master of the universe
Your incarnations are quite diverse.
Enchanting are your landscapes
Six Significant Landscapes
I
An old man sits
In the shadow of a pine tree
In China.
He sees larkspur,
Blue and white,
At the edge of the shadow,
Move in the wind.
His beard moves in the wind.
The pine tree moves in the wind.
The Mores
Far spread the moorey ground a level scene
Bespread with rush and one eternal green
That never felt the rage of blundering plough
Though centurys wreathed spring's blossoms on its brow
Still meeting plains that stretched them far away
In uncheckt shadows of green brown, and grey
Unbounded freedom ruled the wandering scene
Nor fence of ownership crept in between
To hide the prospect of the following eye
Its only bondage was the circling sky
I'm Your Blue Ocean
Giving or not giving voice to the heretical words...
Understanding that true love is scarification.....
For being or not being.
True love inundating the conundrum
Like that sacred river of longing,
Sometimes flowing swiftly through landscapes
Astounding the lurid heart.....
A Whisper Of Sunshine
We drink the evening in a frosted glass.
Nothing about the music is profane.
Your eyes hold all emotion very quiet.
Fey Shadows stretch landscapes beyond belief.
A whisper of sunshine behind the hill
Keeps back a little winter for the soul.
Smoke from the old house writes our names in space.
Just by a breath our time is blown away.
Players
On this blessed land
Foundations of giant structures
Are laid over virgin landscapes
Blotting the antiquity
And burying the ancient panorama
Under the crust.
Pandemics spread
With a pollinating effect
And no cure at all
Childhood
These recollections with the scent of ferns
Are the idyll of early years
(Gregorio Gutierrez González)
Accompanying the hazy memories
Time so generously glorifies,
Returning to a welcoming heart
And flocking like white butterflies,
Come fantasies of happy childhood days.
Bittersweet
The mood was bittersweet and lyrical.
The birds sang evening almost every day.
My dress was yellow as the paling sun.
Wind whispered of us to the Queen Anne's lace.
You held my hand lest I should slip away
Into the hollows of lost memory.
The fireflies danced our song through country fields.
I still recall how summer lit your face.
There Is A God
There is a God of red leaves and of dying.
He traced dark landscapes on my window pane.
Spare and beautiful the sound of crying
Libations of black coffee, drops of rain.
Old trees clasp limbs, sing poetry together.
I wrap myself in shadows to keep warm.
Clinging to fantastic shapes of weather,
Comforted, still, by lullabies of form.
On Prayer
You ask me how to pray to someone who is not.
All I know is that prayer constructs a velvet bridge
And walking it we are aloft, as on a springboard,
Above landscapes the color of ripe gold
Transformed by a magic stopping of the sun.
That bridge leads to the shore of Reversal
Where everything is just the opposite and the word 'is'
Unveils a meaning we hardly envisioned.
Notice: I say we; there, every one, separately,
Feels compassion for others entangled in the flesh
Sown Into Earth Adoration Love
there is no wilderness
when hearts return
home to primeval welcome
of landscapes echoing
with creation echoes
accept sun's rising
dawn accept sun's morning
light dew drops sparkling
France
She triumphs, in the vivid green
Where sun and quivering foliage meet;
And in each soldier’s heart serene;
When death stood near them they have seen
The radiant forests where her feet
Move on a breeze of silver sheen.
And they are fortunate, who fight
For gleaming landscapes swept and shafted
And crowned by cloud pavilions white;
To S. M. A Young African Painter, On Seeing His Works
TO show the lab'ring bosom's deep intent,
And thought in living characters to paint,
When first thy pencil did those beauties give,
And breathing figures learnt from thee to live,
How did those prospects give my soul delight,
A new creation rushing on my sight?
Still, wond'rous youth! each noble path pursue,
On deathless glories fix thine ardent view:
Still may the painter's and the poet's fire
To aid thy pencil, and thy verse conspire!