William Sydney Graham Poems

I ran down Gray's Inn Road and ran
Till I was under a black bridge.
This was me at nineteen
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Night's fall unlocks the dirge of the sea
To pour up from the shore and befriending
Gestures of water waving, to find me
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That firewood pale with salt and burning green
Outfloats its men who waved with a sound of drowning
Their saltcut hands over mazes of this rough bay.
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O gentle queen of the afternoon
Wave the last orient of tears.
No daylight comet ever breaks
On so sweet an archipelago
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Lying asleep walking
Last night I met my father
Who seemed pleased to see me.
He wanted to speak. I saw
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Each other we meet but live grief rises early
By far the ghost and surest of all the sea
Making doorway to within me. My bowed-down holy
Man of the watchman minute begs that reply,
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1

Flame and the garden we are together
In it using our secret time up.
We are together in this picture.
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For Nessie Dunsmuir

I leave this at your ear for when you wake,
A creature in its abstract cage asleep.
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1

What does it matter if the words
I choose, in the order I choose them in,
Go out into a silence I know
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This morning I am ready if you are,
To hear you speaking in your new language.
I think I am beginning to have nearly
A way of writing down what it is I think
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