DOUZAINS

I: Yeti
Shake out your dragon streamers; autumn the snows
with balefire, link, or demon thurible;
strike-up the horrors of the horn and gong;
shiver my citadels with incantation;
and do all this in fear of me: with cause.

You have not seen me: pugs or slides, perhaps;
entrails and skins of the mouse-hare my food;
and you have heard me - or the blizzard? - crying
along the cols: but have not seen me.  How
should I, your darkness made external, guilt
made flesh, old panic in my unman's mask,
submit myself a mirror to your hatred?


II: Adam (i)
As connoisseur of the impossible, 
myself to choose and name the trees forbidden,
I would have nothing in this garden altered.
A dead leaf to be pruned (or the whole suffers),
a live to bend away (and the fruit ripens);
a cherishing (eidolon of possession);
even a plaque (as: Malus Caritatis):
these I permit.  But o dilecta mea,
the spoiling foxes bite at apples also;
I cannot guard against their hungering.
How to be sure (no mirrors in the leaves)
the mask that I present you is not vulpine?


III: Adam (ii)
Bird in my stony garden, single flower,
dove I shall die of, rose be ruined by,
do I avenge already my unmaking?

Touches and words that spelt-out love: to you
are these a braille that ends in pain or pity,
a vexing as from fever-bird or mynah?

Knowing you native to the march of sadness,
I could forgive myself in your forgiving,
were this vast hand of shadow not my own
that clutches me.
		Sweet plumage I shall never
silken again, wine-petals not breathe-in,
commend my ashes to your patroness.


IV: Parentheses
I am not ready for the autumn (weather,
be faithless to this fallacy; St. Luke,
you shall see burned a yard of maiden wax).
But calendar and falling leaf and glass
wear the one image - happy enough did all
affections fade in the same season: how
if weathered stubble yearns for daffodils?

Turn, then, this planet penguin-over-walrus:
australe speculum.  Or (since who has magic?)
cross-fold the star-map to a fair projection,
sowing the photograph and not the field,
peruking soon-bald almanacs with poems.


V: Autumn
Fifteen, I needed no recipient
for amorous poems, nor a real object:
at most the briefly-and-far-seen beauty of strangers,
or some green Lilith only a new-learnt body.
The empty canvas and the unfleshed air
I limned and featured by the power and wish.

Fifty, the wish and power dislocated,
my portrait-gallery closed unlit, and poems
torn out of me like mandrakes: oh, the aurora
suckled in vain, is very thin and cold;
I need the cottage of the flesh, its lamplight,
its warmth of little walls, and supper waiting.


VI: October
Do not, among the foxed autumnal trees,
wish for the lamb and hare, the parrot-green:
plays are as proud in tarnished theatres
as in the fancy's gilt and jewel-fires.
Too manifold the dancing bells of March;
I beat the steady music of the sparse
ungardens of October.  Love him-real,
in his chrysanthemum and rowan years,
that winter must inherit, and the ice.

Oh let him understand his shortening light
is yet sufficient for the ends of peace;
his cold-roofed evening, cradle to your sleep.


VII: Last Supper 
Male spiders must not be too early slain. (W. Empson)

Your elder sister, with a swallow's flight
already in her fury, the willow-slayer,
suppered her king-deceiver upon flesh:
his last meal, human; psalm her, nightingale.

The paschal coven, breaking lamb for Lamb,
drinking the scattered lintel-blood, consuming
(as He consumed) the Man soon to be Fish,
could never eat again their present symbol.

I have spun poems out of time and flesh,
webs I would have you lie on; if I come
offering these, they also are my seed:
allow my love, then: sup not yet, Arachne.


VIII: The Muse
The true terrors of Muses - flesh that kills
by single contact; purpose unreadable
before the final revelation; mouth
by nature fastened upon all - not these
I think to learn from you.  But even if these,
I gladly abandon guard: how else be sure
I see you in the full-moon's danger?
				        Yes,
that I have learned already; but not from you.
But not from you.  Yet.  Then I ask you this:
eating me, eat me gently; dismissing me,
dismiss me kindly; for I do not need
pain to confirm in me the nature of darkness.


IX: Writing on Glass
I grave in diamond upon looking-glasses
(across my own, my name; on yours, my poems).
The white script overlays our living features,
reads in their absence, holds till the mirror breaks.

Windows I dare not ruin with graffiti
- not my own, even; and your panes look outwards
wider and oftener.  By this frosty weather,
from the cold still I write on them in crystals;
how rarely from within, and then on breath.

Keep, love, the weather cold - giving me honour
that through the unvapoured looping path your vision
may yet be clearer than through shrouded glass.


X: The Cheque-book
Opening my account, I took their pamphlet
of twenty-four cheques all presentable
if I could earn or were I given; all
not limiting, yet, the powers of my credit.

On eight my writing was illegible;
one I forgot to sign, and one misdated;
one spoiled and threw away; too many squandered;
with four, perhaps, drew currency enough
to keep from starving; only two, I think,
were stolen and repudiated.  One
was not presented.
		        Down to my last I come;
but, being overdrawn, how can I pay you?


XI: Four Rooms
First was a window: Xanadu and Y Brasil
beyond it, rainbow-real continents;
custom and old hope statured like the ant.

Second, a gift of boughs: being in secret
quieter than a doll's-house, happy as grass,
dark as the calling odours of the moth.

And third, a city gate thrown wide: the gentle
invader needing no destruction, trust
of the hearth and flesh disarming as the sunlight.

Fourth was an altar to the sound of bells:
an only two, untouched; but on that altar 
custom and old hope staring, still alive.


XII: Lazarus (i)
(Luke, 16:19ff.)

Lazarus, fainting at the rich man's doorstep,
saw the delights that epicure commanded
(as: phoenix-breast, the tongues of paradise-birds,
kebab of Colchis flamed on dragons' quills,
the flesh of unicorns) - and saw great panniers 
pouting with broken meats: what Dives cannot,
servant or beggar shall not, swallow-up.
But anger, no; and hatred, no; nor envy:
the pauper understood the prodigal - 
that some wealth may be squandered but may not
be shared; the very crumbs acquiring voice
in protest against glory delegated.


XIII: Lazarus (ii)
I cannot wish the Dives from whose banquet
myself am jalousied, the parabolic
envy, despair, and flame: why should he feel them?
- or I attempt the Heights of Abraham?
He shall have all the water that he will, 
after his human sacrament.  For I,
crouched in the portico of the waste-panniers,
taking my comfort from the tongues of dogs,
reserve two prides he is not rich enough
to purchase: I can live in lack of all
he is fed with; and it is I who celebrate
(vicarious poet) his mere happiness.


XIV: Errors
Should have been window, have instead been prism:
love is a white beam; I have scattered it.

Should have unjewelled; but kept on my opals:
love is the clear skin; I wore necklaces.

Should have breathed air, but was amazed with perfume:
love is to live-by; I have made it strange.

You have breathed into me, and that air is pure:
my poems add the groin and offered incense.

I have had your sigil on my heart all night:
the gift has entered me as tender gold.

Oh my impossible and lovely glass,
I should be drunken, or give you pure water.