Tony Walton Poems

Lost, these words, at what a cost: cast
like boats afloat on seas that seize
the moment of their brave conception.
No man can tell what wave will carry,
...

And finally I realised that all roads led to France:
The sunlit farm, the bloodstained combe, the whisper of the aspens' dance,
All pointed clearly down the road I did not take by chance.
...

Cry out in your weakness and your fear flows forth.
Follow the pain of it. You will gain of it.
You will gain in freedom from your loneliness.
...

The wood in the night was castle-black, and it kept
Its moonlit secrets well:
It housed the predator who crept
Through long-limbed ramparts while the world still slept;
...

These are my scars
Where I did myself harm.
I cover them up
But they're here on each arm.
...

The sitting gambler sweeps the board. Be still;
And, by happy mimicry of this life,
We shall truly find ourselves within it;
For there is nothing in it means us ill.
...

They had the temerity to dance at a wedding.
They had the joy and love of dancing and of course
the natural desire to celebrate the wedding
of friends. It was temerity only in the
...

The rattlesnake cry of the keys drives you
without mercy from the kingdom of dreams.
It doesn't matter that you have chosen
better company, where you walk with her
...

He was like a fist, she said - and held
her fist beside her face to show us
what a fist was like: it was like her son.
Always so clenched with me, she said,
...

Neda, you played a part
greater than the one you intended.
You wanted what was broken to be mended
by the peaceful protest you almost attended;
...