Weary and sleep inclined
I watched the pools of rain
Upon a roof below a corridor
White, quiet and quite empty.

A calmness of concentration came
As I aimed and made the kill, again.
There, a bleeding body
While, somewhere, trees buds were bursting
With the Spring.

The choice was never hard
Since Thought can never act
And in Action without Thought
Lies a perfect bliss.

But the Dragon stayed
While only I moved on:
They - the politicians - could still cry
For they forget our memories,
The things that we did in their name.

Yet our eyes betray our loss
For we few who survived are forever
And always
Alone.
 

There is a moment of blinded silence
Below that deep blue sky
Of Summer
Before the blast-wave blew me over
Bringing again that joy of life:
But whose the severed limb, shoe-wearing,
That landed here among the bloodied rubbled dust?

There was a building, there, among a crowded chosen street,
A superbly-crafted device detonated
To bring some people's dream one memorable moment
Closer:
How many deaths, this time,
To balance the deeds
Of their past?

There is no grief, within me, and even the brief smile of satisfaction
Is gone to leave that knowing which knows
Each war - real, made, implied - for the ecstasy it is
As we who live for triumph
Gather up our selves to stalk
Those shadowed spaces where few dare
To dream:
I, we, a becoming...
 

Women, bringing with their bodies, a desire
To break each new resolution:
There is an ineffable magick
When eyes meet
And my aura senses
The air .....
 

I remember
How she walked along the crowded street
In Summer, her clothes keeping decency
The way their texture revealed her shape.
I remember her eyes, her face
Revealing a hope
Within

It does not seem to matter that she is older
Or younger than me
As it does not matter that I
Or she or we are bound by other memories
Born before that meeting when the moment became
The present imbued with the majesty of dreams
Perfumed by some god:
I am lost, in that moment, caught
By the spell of those eyes.
 

It is no simple lust, born of my flesh:
No simple desire, to enjoy.
There is instead a love:
A need answering the need of our eyes.
No reason explains, but all barriers seem broken
By the passion of bodies nakedly meeting
In bliss.
 

There is only my touch, my kiss, our voice.
I am no fool, mistaking my image for theirs -
They are real, different, and alive;
They teach me, have taught me,
That silent wisdom that often alas
Becomes hidden by lies:

There is much that is beautiful
But nothing that surpasses the beauty some women
Reveal
Through their eyes

Swallows gather, high above
Where, this morning, mist rose
Steadily, masking my view of the valley.

It was soon gone, this mist
Dispersed by burning sun and a breeze
Carrying honeysuckle scent to where
A bleached window lights
My tenant room.
 

I had sat quite still
While her words destroyed
My soul.

For hours, the White Tiger's cave
Explored: and when the shared sweat
Dried and sleep with Her tender
Grace filled her limbs
I lay, savouring the sweetness
Of her joy.

For two weeks, a world
Explored.
 

Was it all a dream?

It is silent and still, my room
Where foods rests uneaten and undesired.
There is no foolish laughter
No sweat to dry as sun dries.
There is only
The broken picture of my past
Since all my letters are unanswered
And undesired.

The cool breeze stirs -
Something.
She does not or will not hear.
Her husband claimed her
As the jealous god claims souls:
Dry, without any magick
Or mirth.

Was I her freedom or her guilt?

But by then, I will be distant footsteps
In the snow
 

Dark, that night, as our clothes
As we two crept, predator-taut and bomb-ready, to our target:
Glass breaking before the searing lights, fire
Of our explosion.
A scream, a human scream, as she, trapped inside
Sears in heat, to death,
Soon gone:

No time to think now, to feel:
I must run, fast, faster, along some street
To safely hide
Away.

And there is pride, next day, as news breaks
As we two, bound in deep trusting silence, part
To lead our lives
Again.
It is good that no one knows:
There is defiance, deeds done to glorify our Cause
To bring that day of Triumph
Near.
No remorse:
Each deed an Act of War.
 

Sitting quietly in high Summer
While the river flows
Is peaceful, for an hour;
But any longer, and we who wish
Cannot wait to abstain:
We must be gone or find a goal
To satisfy such haste.
 

There was a man, dying from his age
As his flesh and organs failed:
He did not seem to mind this
        I've had a good innings
Except, sometimes, the pain.
He would lay, slowing breathing
And sometimes smiling in his bed
While we who waited on the living
And the dying
Cared
As our time, tiredness and allocations
Allowed.

Every two hours, on the Ward, still living bodies
Would be turned
To remove just one more soiled sheet
While the heat of Summer through half-open
Windows
Mingled with the smells
And the oozing from freshly sutured
Flesh:

But each dark moment was almost always
(If you watched)
Relieved
By the sadness or the smile
In another person's eyes.
 

Where, among these books that breed like flies
Are bred from a carcass in the bush,
Are the meanings which once girded our lives
And led us like supplicants
To the slaughter?
There was a special meaning, there
While bullets  parted our desire
From our death
And the torrid sun lay breathing
Between the hills of mist.

It is forgotten, like the natives soon
Forgot why we the forgotten fought
Amid the mud with the flies of heat sucking
Our blood of life.
Memory, like money, fades:
Each beauty becomes dulled
Without the fulfilment
That our projected image promises
But never brings:
And our women will forever weep.
 

Once, words spoke but now
They speak no more
Since what was treasured is profaned
Through the profanity of use
Just as in action without thought
The wordless meaning fulfilled
And we who remained were glad
When each morning brought the news
From our body to our brains:
We are alive, still, thanks
To our gods...

But
Every warrior desire breeds
Another death
While every quiet and dreary peace fulfils
From its beginnings
The sulking coward who lies in wait
Within.

In her every room: shadows
Cast in those moments I have never shared;
Whose the laughter, whose the hand
That gestures to leave impressions
Upon her favourite velvet dress?
 

Chilling - this cold of evening
Which, as my memories, makes me not wish
To stay
But cycle away, fearing what I might do.
In the dark, I sit
While a river, swollen, passes
Not gently
By.
It is my soul, this river -
Swirling, of tempest and full:
Perhaps more exertion will lay a part
Of my love to rest.
 

I had gone, unannounced, unexpected,
To see them kiss as they stood
Near her window.

Each false Spring is a lesson
Which Nature slowly learns
As harsh Winter in returned
When stark frost, chilling,
Creeps to crack some bursting buds:
Poems cannot change this
Just as Summer is not Summer
Without Spring -
 

        I am Winter,
        Until woken by Spring

---

The world, like our shadows,
Skulks

What is this Her fragrance, dark,
Death to domesticity
By which the Widowmaker marks
Her prey?
 

What is this Her missive miasmic
That, remembered, wakes men from their sleep
And takes them to stand sighing
While the war-white moon rises
To those old songs of blood
Often heard upon a world never innocent
Even within its womb of creation?
 

What is this Her body music
That spreads forth from an almost dark Abyss -
Life's breath to a cosmos almost dying
Because of peace?
 

What is this, alive, like the whore's gentle words
Who once, perhaps many times, forgetting her self spoke
With her naked body and perfumed hair
A nine-fold story of bliss eternal beneath a starry sky
Within a room always tawdry?
 
 

Now, one hears only the sadness
Arising from a premature old age
Unlike those leaves one duelling Autumn
That once I alive beyond myself
Left soaked by another's blood
To fructify the womb with creation
Bringing thus a Spring

Now, one is tuned almost from birth
To hear only the sighs
From the deeds of a past -
Or not to hear at all -
Whereas I remember
Her ecstatic effusions orgiastic
Which brought us Her gifts:
For I am echo of some others and myself
And arrive to return a favour,
Drenched in blood
 

Still Her star-beams speak
Within the forest glade
Of how my dark-self sleeps, back to Earth,
And waiting in a cave
 
 

Atop the Moor: a wind, howling
Below frost-making stars.
There seems an understanding here
Where Sky meets goddess Earth
While I walk remembering the salacious warmth
Of you:

So soft, your touch
I was helpless and lost
Within my desire for you.

I waited for your heart and mind
To engage:
I was missed by bullets, then
When they came too close
(See, the scar)
And ever since I have lived the Abyss
Ready to laugh
And carrying my home on my back.

An African sun taught me patience.
There we were, bush weary and dry
Like a broken well
Threading our way at night
Toward a foreign shore,
Our comrades dead.
True, it was a slow journey, and terrible:
What are words, after that?
 

Still, Her star-beams speak
Within my forest glade
Of how my dark-self sleeps, back to Earth,
Cave-waiting for some war.

A man's fate is a man's fate
And life is but an illusion
 

How is your husband? -
The face in the street smiled.
He died, last week

While a small hospital
Of no repute was bombed
 

A tyrant's whim was only a whim
Since he at least must die
But an idea's fate is an idea's fate:
They seldom die
Lying like pain in wait
 

The old woman cries
While she lies in her bed awake:
For sixty years her care carried her;
There was always the house,
The children, the neat garden trimmed by a hedge.
Each Sunday would be real
And they would sit, enjoying the warmth
Of their world
       He died, last week
       Before the leeches sucked their house
"In a Home" the face like her youth said
"It is warm, and in Winter we will come."
Oh my daughter what have you done...

Every person has their Cause
When deeds drip like blood
Just as every City is a snare
 

Can you remember you who skirted
That path and walked like Leonidas
Once,
Can you remember the warmth
That drew Cities from Stone?
Is there no forgiving for the dreams
Of our past? No remembering of skulls
Cracked to help those cracking
To remember a question, just one question
About Life?

 
There is a sadness about some wisdom
That can seldom be shared:
 

It is the peace beyond exertion when the forgotten
Dark goddess become holy
Again.

There are no homeward paths, turning;
No cities or towns:
Only hills, moors, mountains
Lake, forest and stream.
 

This morning in April is cold
And I listen, hearing
The Chorus of Spring
As I wait in a quiet lane shunted between
Two traffic-filled roads.
Above, the tree-bound leaves creep
To slowly spread in a time-dance of space
I cannot normally see:

We easily forget, in distractions,
Who gave us our birth
And the suffering and blood
Which allows us this peace
To stumble forward from our childhood
To our youth.
 

I wait, sitting
On damp grass
With my feet almost crushing
A flower.
There will be warmth, soon,
After this East wind has gone -
Leaves from this Oak making shade
From Summer sun:
And in its warmth I shall forget
The stark extremities
Of the deaths I alone caused
That night.

The glass of wine is dry
The music done:
There is the evening, the dark
Some pursuit to fill the hour.

Yesterday, many years ago, my goal
Glowed before me, unending yet precise:
I would walk the streets
Swaggering from school to home
And home to school knowing each day
For the impostor it was;
I alone like a god possessed a goal
Worthy of my death.
But it would taunt me, this goal,
And I in gladness would scorn the Cross
That held other people's pain
The way the poet holds each poem
Inside their head

I would wander from battle to peace
Wondering when my god would give me
A good war, again

My glass of wine is dry
The music done
This cottage airs despair;
I alone who saught the warrior god
Am done, tired from too much silence
Too little violence.
Each day holds an equation
I cannot solve since I do not wish
To solve myself with Peace.

I in triumph might try to gather words -
High Priest, perhaps the Mage -
While he who is always me
Would laugh, gather up his gun
And kill.

I am dry, my music done.
Only thoughts keep death away
Yet it is my thought, its damned
Insistence, which rains away
The shallow soil of goals:
Book or poem, nirvana-God,
All are dry, mumbling words
As a madman at full moon.

O God give us a good war

Shimmering
The pool still reflects the sun
As wind unsettles mud
Where wood and water meet.
Spring waits while clouds
Scutter sun:
Above, two ospreys dive, almost dancing
As they call.
I am alone

And sit an hour, listening,
As streams flows into lake.
 

By the water, a single flower
Turning to sun.
You are gone and I in lonely nights
No longer cry:
There is the memory of our Summer.
My love fell like leaves, broken
By the season of your doubt,
Yet every year vitality is renewed
Born upwards to meet sun
And I grow, promising myself
Next Spring.

All loves creates, and rejection
Is only the false promise of Spring
When all life, burgeoning,
Is deceived by brief sun
As deep snow comes to cover
The flowers and the green.
 

Red skirt below black blouse she passes
With her smile

Contact Hospital Urgent
Daughter Seriously Ill

Regret Inform You
Daughter Died Today.

File as Form P158
As drains my office day
Toward death

"Five Duty lapsed"

What has one left
Save the urgent ululations
Of dreams that once
On a hot summer's day
In a country far distant
Sent a youth rushing into arms
Where innocence was taken
Like this woman - whose black blouse
Hides beautiful breasts -
Takes these forms that are only forms
Bereft of life.

What has one but the ways
That once were learned
When I learnt how bullets
Turned a body and how some women
Bore within their clothes burning
Hearts

"Calculator, please"

What have I left
Save the silent spinnings of Destiny
Gold beneath gods
That once others followed
In a country far distant
As Degueldre bled tears before Jeanpierre
While a world scorned all rumours of doom.
 

But, returning, my lover smiles
And sighs, softly:
"Where shall we go tonight?"
While red below black, beads bounce
Upon her breasts
And her shapely shadow touches mine
Recalling dreams from our damp
Dependable night.

What is this now within my hand?

Regret to inform you, I resign

Like memories, snow falls
With no sound
While I stand as Winter frosts
My feet
And a cold hand holds itself ready
Near a pen:

The birds, though starving, still sing
Here where trees and snow seat themselves
On hill
And the slight breeze beings to break
My piece of silence
Down.

Her love seemed only real
With its loss
 

Above the trees, crows cawing
As they swirl
Within the cold

It is difficult, this understanding
Of my love:
I have to rise every morning
With the intention of our future
Moulded as some sculptors mould
Their souls around a form
That Will soon powers to a shape
In Time.

It is difficult, this sharing
Of each dream that makes her to journey
To the joining of our selves
And spills desire the way some music
Spills some notes to form the suggestion
Of some god:

There is no journey bribed by dread
No sea that sets the horizon
As the yearning of the dead sets
The seal to future Time;
There is no calling and no called:
No passing and no one passed
Since there is no you or I to understand
The laked reflexion of each moon.

But I forget, and need to remember
At each new beginning of each new
Dream which is the beginning of our
Love.

There are no words needed
As there are no excuses
For the failures of some Art:
It is difficult, this speaking
Of my love.
 
 

There is an answer which is nothing grandiose:
It is only the sharing of moments
When the inner and the outer coincide,
For there is a simplicity in moments
Which seldom divides:
 

There was a sunset one Summer's day
When I sat, near exhaustion, on warm grass
By a winding lane having achieved a small goal
For my life; it was good, the weather,
While I cycled two hundred miles under sun:
She was there, waiting with water,
And it did not seem to matter that around us
The world continued with its roles:
There was nothing more, in that moment,
No words, ideals, visions or vicarious desires.

But I am no Artist, my hands cannot lie:
I have only these words to praise
The subtle energy that brings a beauty
When our feelings and our memories
Make our moments coincide.

I have destroyed her.
Through my own immature selfishness,
My hypocrisy,
I leeched away her love, her kindness,
To leave only the sadness and the debts:

It is so simple, she said,
A year ago in warning:

The most important thing is love

There is no excuse, I know
Too late to change what is, what was
As she sleeps, now confined, ill
With no love - real, clinging, caring - to break
The clinical bleakness where she dwells.
And I - cast out before then by agreement -
Wait here, over eighty miles distant, alone with no family, no home:
Tears, wine, the music of memories a fair if unaccepted exchange
For her presence, the touch, her laughter, that smile.
 

She desired such a simple, selfless love
I in childish tantrums of unimportance
Seldom gave, blind, blinded
By years-long dreams, of Destiny.

I have no excuse, and must carry the knowledge
Of such terrible suffering caused;
Hoping in hope of forestalling some person's future pain
By words such these words forming as cloud form
Earth-slowly.

But the world, the wine, in a suicide of sickness
Conspire to make me forget:
Yet I must, must, strive to remember
For to forget is to demean, to descend down in darkest cave-darkness
To who, and what, I was
Before.

But now: now, all I wish and need
Is to die
As if my dying might end my knowing, my pain
And bring my wife back
To happiness and to health

There is an ineffable sadness
For your eyes betray that warmth, that beauty,
That brings me down
To where even my street-hardened Will cannot go:
So I am sad, almost crying
 

Outside, there is no sun to warm
As yesterday when I touched the warmth of your breasts
And the wordless joy of ecstatic youth
Lived to suffuse if only briefly with world-defying life
This tired battle-bruised body
 

But now:  clouds, rain-bleakness
To darken such dreams as break me.
For there are many places I cannot go.

These poems first collected under this title on JD 2452464.37075
Copyright DW Myatt