The Forest Library

Unread, the forest library,
rooted in dark earth of words,
grows yearly, incrementally,
round heartwood’s deep primordial hoards
where each tree’s leaves are folios
of vast collections
with yellowed cuttings fallen across
round stumps of lecterns

and all through its voluminous tracts,
marked only by the indices
weevils scrawl on bark-bound book backs
in shady aisles and galleries,
the breeze passing beneath its eaves,
its quiet cloisters,
releases from its mighty beams
the sound of voices.

A Nightsong of Eichendorff

I wandered late by rock and tree,

the moon crept out so secretly

behind its cloak of cloud;

and here and there in the dark vale

the fleeting moonbeams bleached ghost-pale

a nightingale sang loud.

Far off, the torrent’s silver song

ran over stone unseen, nightlong,

transmuting the moonlight.

My thoughts, mercurial, argentine,

seemed more the woods and hills’ than mine

in the phantasmal night.

Syrinx

Pure gleaners linger, haunted by

the amber flutes of afternoon

and golden locks of sun-gods, strewn

regardless over fields of rye.

Deep in the thickets’ covert shade

a woodwind ambush is preparing

outside the range of human hearing;

bassoons lean over every glade.

Aeonian and beyond death,

the goat-foot piper idly slides

his caprine lip across the reeds

thrilling at the divine breath.

The Wind and the Candle

The wind has prowled around this house all night,
trying the doors and windows one by one,
seeking a point of entry left unbarred,
testing each latch with fumbling gloves of cold;
an ill guest, blustering and petulant,
unwelcome yet insistent, pressing claims
importunately, dunning all night long.
The branches shuffle like accomplices,
huddled in cloaks of shadow, covertly,
to cover its advances, whispering
conspiracies by lampposts’ orange shade.
Inside, we light one night light under glass;
Diana says ‘hello candle’, waving hi,
greeting the spirit in the little flame,
born when the wick is lit in its low glow
to be the iris of the watchful night
behind the starry glass in the still air.

Diana the Night Explorer

How funny that our little girl

does such gymnastics in her sleep:

turned topsy-turvy in the bed

or halfway out, her head alone

still pillowed on the mattress edge,

as though, being a child, she has

to roam much further in her dreams.

Epithalamion

The moon, an honoured wedding guest,
came down to the end of the village street,
huge, warm and yellow, roosting among
the storks’ abandoned chimneytop nests
on the low-pitched roofs of plastered cots,
the gallopers on the starry path
showering sparks from their silver hooves.

In the morning, we trooped down to the field,
a black cat, startled, crossing our path,
led by Zoltan the shaman with staff and drum:
broke bread, drank wine, in a circle of friends
as horses grazing on the mead
casually wandered across to look,
amiably nuzzling – and broke the ring.

Back in the capital that night,
in a water castle in a lake,
the Gypsy fiddlers struck up the dance
under the arches of ringing stone,
as I did the rounds of the bridal feast,
cold, culture-shocked and paranoid,
wondering what it was going to cost.

At the midnight cusp of the equinox,
we stood candle in hand by the cloister well,
celebrating the union
of man and woman, like night and day,
dark and light, in harmony:
Diana already curled in your womb,
a little New Year’s gift to the world.

Diana and the Beans

Diana warbles in delight,
watching the green beans pop from their pods
on her high chair’s clean white plastic tray;
each inconceivably verdant bead
of the salty Japanese treat
bouncing flush with a vernal spring;
only now can her little throat
and her infant mouth form sounds so sweet

– she twists and jumps in her baby chair,
sends them flying with a slap of her palms.

Psalter

The round year ends as it began,
in cold and darkness. Hovels crowned
silver and ermine hug the ground
consigned to succour fallen Man.

Clarion calls from ramparts stir
pale equerries. Beasts of the chase
flee vainly across park and chase,
pursuers plying whip and spur.

White leper beggars pick their lice
in apostolic misery.
The pure knight sports bright livery,
bar sinister his gross device

– honour abated. Evening bells
fade in the shade of forest eaves;
worn friezes of Adam and Eve
adorn the kerbs of healing wells.

Court minstrels recount epic gests
by amber-spitting pine brands’ blaze.
Crutched scribes painstakingly erase
the classic past for palimpsests.

In bone-white choirs, the moon alone
traces hoar rood and reredos;
the wayfarer sleeps in the close,
head pillowed on the bethel stone.

Vials bottle the saint’s golden pains
in philatories round the walls,
Christ’s weapons blazoned on the stalls.
The priest’s starched alb bears clotted stains.

Heiligenschein round ice saints’ busts
lights mountain paths. As croppers thresh,
God’s burning scourge flays spotless flesh
for the shocked witness of the Just,

appalled to find such awful things
a proper attribute of Him:
even the ardent seraphim
hid their faces in their wings.

Elegy I.M. Mick Imlah

You were a world away; I had lost touch
some years ago, and we were never close;
I really had no special call to mourn.
But it struck me hard as an unseen low beam
– dull, sickening, a suddenly solid void –
on reading the obits, the notices:
news of a good man’s undeserved bad death,
denied all dignity and stigmatized
presenting signs; your diaphragm, so strong
when driving rhythms, forgot how to breathe,
and you passed like water into sand.
As Scotland keened, another voice fell still,
gathered to the shades before your time
regardless, folded in night’s quiet wing:
English, that took you for its avatar,
now that more narrow-minded and inane.
Poetry spoke you, as it does us all,
into being: now the song is done,
drowned out by mute clamour of dumb tongues
of headstones speaking silences, not words,
and grave earth stifles muffled epilogues.
So whether it’s my place or not to eulogize
in elegaics, I let your work speak
and leave your own words as your hero stone,
on your tongue, the dull obol, Charon’s fare,
alchemically transmuted into gold.

Early Rising

Morningtide floods through shoals of rippled cloud,
dawn sunshine daubed across the bedroom wall;
my daughter playing with a crystal ball,
the rainbow angels dancing round her head.

Nightlights still burning strong outlast the night,
curtains thrown wide, no sanctuary for
the shadow animal on the second floor;
the whole house, open, breathes in morning light.