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Martin Robertson

Now and Then

Concordance

This concordance provides an index to every word in the poems, excluding a list of common "stopwords".  It may be useful in finding a half-remembered poem, and perhaps in looking at the usage of words in the poems as a whole.  It will be readable only on a large screen.

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W Y Z

R

verse, and A.G. on a wall / / in chalk
R .H.  On the Roman vault / / Adam is made man in one image, Eve / / i
Fossils
H.A.
R .P.  / How could this traitor live a lie? / / watching his step, watc
H.A.R.P.
ut despair.”  / / He ran like those who
race for the cloth-of-green / / through the fields outside Verona, /
Two Glimpses from Dante’s Hell
, strait / / and firth where the tides
race , / / Leif Ericsson, / / Magellan, one / / seeking a golden fle
The Sea
hday:  / / Horatius breasting the Tiber
race , / / Mamilius and Herminius dead—Black Auster / / gazing into h
Poetry
tough to outlast / / their time, their
race —perhaps mankind, / / featureless in a swarming desolation / / a
Fossils
ries / / of sex or age-group, class or
race — / / the single greatest human good, / / sign of our brother-an
Love…  No
/ I managed to beat dear Philinus in a
race .”— / / These are the springs of my love.  Mark them, lady Moon.  /
Spells and Love
exotic places / / —Katmandu, Campdown
Races , / / the Sphinx, the Blarney Stone.  / / Or the places alone /
Tourist
For
Rachel / Above the sea and the wide sand gulls fly calling / / or wal
For Rachel
here.  The wintered senses wake / / to
rack the celibate and bless the pair.  / / Now evening trysts in orcha
May Day
Renewal /
Racked bones of the acacia stand / / leafless, lifeless, deep into sp
Renewal
/ sensitive certainty.  / / Honour this
radar , this / / contrived effective wing.  / /
Bat
and her.  / / If I could plummet down a
radial line…  / / But between me and mine / / the surface curves away
Antipodes
us unforehopedly blest / / in the late
radiance of / / this encompassing untroubled love, / / I don’t see h
[Yes, you’re right]
ber spin, / / suns.  One bursts in huge
radiance .  The wreck / / falls back on itself, contracting back, / /
Holes in Space
rrh for our mortality, / / but in this
radiant hour we sense / / all things we’re meant to do and be.  / / T
Hymn
stream turned the dunes, his state was
radically / / better than when he’d reached the river-mouth.  / / A n
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
ses / / are irrecoverable.  / / On the
radio / / Schubert’s Shepherd on the Rocks.  / / For me, you.  For you
For Cecil
/ a formal row, filament-flowers, / /
radio telescopes with lifted faces / / listening / / to secrets of t
Two Cultures?
/ Once each month / / peeling a sodden
rag from her body she’d / / wipe it down the wall, marking the snail-
War-time Anecdote
bearing age.  / / Still in his cloud of
rage / / he came to Sicyon.  / / He heard the hum and buzz, / / the
Pelopia and Thyestes
etend— / / that life doesn’t come to a
ragged end / / but death knits up the ravelled sleeve.  / /
Dreams
rk / / was broken and lay level from a
ragged end / / resting on the strong spread of another willow.  / / Y
Five Poems for Roni
me new thing begun, / / round off some
ragged , trailing tail.  / / But always there’s another one / / —that
A Prayer
stream, / / the other side a strip of
ragged wood, / / glimpsed through it sheep grazing in a field.  / / G
Green World
.  We stuffed our skin / / —it hangs in
rags , and the bones within / / (we, the bones) fritter away.  / / Nev
Villon’s Epitaph
/ decencies and affections hanging / /
rags on his rotting age, / / yet he could still coax from the air, /
Beethoven
om) / Planted along the old line of the
railway / / a formal row, filament-flowers, / / radio telescopes wit
Two Cultures?
stream bears London’s refuse / / from
railway , gasworks, factory and drain / / past wordy Westminster to th
The Black-out
treams and drenched woods?  Where is the
rain ?  / /
Varangian in Mickelgard
nce the inconstant gods send dearth and
rain / / and playfully allot our joy and pain.  / / Life between eart
Cosmology
in / / in grey reversion of rain?  / /
Rain and sun, snow, wind, / / weather and season, wheeling / / throu
Exchange
ath / I woke in the night and heard the
rain falling / / softly.  It seemed like weeping.  / / The bright morn
News of a Death
As it rained all day / / all night the
rain is falling.  / / But suppose morning / / comes bright, washed th
Exchange
ccidie / Brunetto Latini under the Fire-
Rain / “Joy we denied,” / / they mutter in the mud, “out there / / i
Two Glimpses from Dante’s Hell
un-scorched poverty is better / / than
rain -logged poverty).  The sun burns / / on the quarry-face.  The other
Athens, Hill of the Muses; Evening
one.  / / No game, no streams, hardly a
rain -puddle; / / and worst a hard blank grey sky over all / / (no tr
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
ht lost again / / in grey reversion of
rain ?  / / Rain and sun, snow, wind, / / weather and season, wheeling
Exchange
un / / is our complaint, / / too much
rain .  / / River and tap will always run.  / / A little shift in earth
Drought
hite in a long fall.  Water / / —always
rain , rough in a storm, dripping / / gently, a cloud.  Water—always th
Varangian in Mickelgard
ed mercy, so go pray.  / / Laundered by
rain we are pegged here / / for the sun’s drying and blackening.  / /
Villon’s Epitaph
e / / the faintest brief arc of a real
rainbow .  / /
[Fall rainbows the forest-acred mountains]
oloured small transparency / / “Have a
Rainbow Day” / / One morning you couldn’t bear it any longer, / / ra
[Fall rainbows the forest-acred mountains]
the spined lumps, by it another / / of
rainbow -varied domes which, he saw now, / / her knife had shaved.  She
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
[Fall
rainbows the forest-acred mountains] / Fall rainbows the forest-acred
[Fall rainbows the forest-acred mountains]
bows the forest-acred mountains] / Fall
rainbows the forest-acred mountains, / / unbelievable ranges / / of
[Fall rainbows the forest-acred mountains]
hange / after a Japanese manner / As it
rained all day / / all night the rain is falling.  / / But suppose mo
Exchange
prince, a hundred years away.  / / The
rains of summer’s draggled end dragged on / / washing the autumn out
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
on the fence is bad.  / / Not yours to
raise a fiery cross and sweep / / the world before a cause, but none
The Black-out
years to lay him in the grave / / and
raise a prince to rouse the bride.  The knell / / ‘a hundred years’ tu
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
f our thought as of our blood, / / yet
raise each spring new flowers in the garden, / / draw green afresh ou
Prayer to Time
ng mouth.  He died.  Or did her love / /
raise him to life and set him at her side?  / / The story shifted like
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
sed acres, / / here you chose stone to
raise / / your lovely garden round.  / / Did you suffer much?  / / Wo
For Cecil
the sea! the sea in storm and calm / /
raised for him in a wren’s-nest mockery.  / / A nest?  He peered harder
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
smile on her smile—two / / in one.  She
raised her face to his face and / / kissed his mouth.  Then “This” fal
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
e rose from the wood.  / / Shriven, she
raised her face / / to the sweet air / / and a voice came out of the
The Shepherdess of Cahuzac
saw now, / / her knife had shaved.  She
raised her head and eyed / / him hard.  He shivered in the sun.  What o
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
” / / A wind shook through the tree; I
raised my head / / and saw a few faint stars across the loose / / ne
The Black-out
I admire / / the lovely Cyprus hills,
raised that sacrificial fire.  / /
Makherás
anship / / had brought them there, had
raised the Parthenon.  / / (Pheidias, his arbiter of art / / escaped
Athens, Hill of the Muses; Evening
lack a figure moved, strained face / /
raised to the curtained room, white in the moon— / / that youth she m
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
/ on the beach.  We on your beach / /
raised you a bonfire / / to warm us, be you, burn off / / the chill
For Cecil
/ / others are born to burn.  / / Fire-
raising autumn, black-boughed winter, / / spring’s green-and-white re
Cassandra’s Song
m, lady Moon.  / / He looked at me, the
rake , then lowered his eyes, / / sat down on the bed beside me, and b
Spells and Love
the tired nag / / stumbles, drags / /
rambling feet, / / won’t, can’t / / keep the pace you want.  / / Rei
Against Anorexia:  For Cathy
nd— / / soft sand which rose in a long
rampart , crowned / / with coarse grass—pricked him and drew blood.  He
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
again, / / he found himself out on the
ramparts .  Down, / / searched the first floor a second time in vain— /
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
/ / They had no notion where the river
ran , / / but thinking of the mountains and the coast, / / trusting t
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
ad swimming, while sweat and blood / /
ran down his face, he fought a mounting fear.  / / He knew in this las
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
ler / / or steady in a handstand / / —
ran like another though / / barefoot along the bare / / ripple-ridge
Climacteric by the Sea
learn / / all about despair.”  / / He
ran like those who race for the cloth-of-green / / through the fields
Two Glimpses from Dante’s Hell
rs stumbling at their task / / as time
ran short / / yet she completed of her nettlework / / all but the se
Fairy Story
as truly won.  / / Northwards the dunes
ran straight between the sea / / and broadening plain.  To south, hill
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
he child, / / jumped from his seat and
ran / / straight for the line.  / / I could step between, / / stoppe
Ten Seconds on a Tube Platform
He, lifting the half-worked stuff, / /
ran the needle deep in his thumb, and bled, / / red on the white.  And
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
from the seat.  / / Scolding the mother
ran / / up.  I smiled down / / to reassure, make contact with, the ch
Ten Seconds on a Tube Platform
led to the river straight.  The fairy’s
rancour / / was stilled for now, and in the other’s care / / they wa
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
ouds of ruinous dust / / wander in the
random winds.  / / We know the father’s sins / / visited always on th
May Day, 1986
ce.  The black twigs cased in glass / /
rang on each other in the bitter wind.  / / A magic of the outer world
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
escore and ten or so / / —a reasonable
range .  / / But only about ten to go / / does feel strange.  / /
[Threescore and ten or so]
e have ears / / tuned to another sound-
range , eyes which focus / / in a different light.  They whisper / / t
Two Cultures?
d on the right spread on / / west to a
range .  His hope perhaps lay there / / but not, that seemed quite clea
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
ght—only a faint blue rim, / / another
range .  Light, dark brown, reds, golds, patched / / and mingled, were
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
/ and grew at length into a cliff-faced
range — / / mountains!  The river-water was nearly gone / / and in the
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
de inwardly aware / / of the atrocious
range of human ill / / by my own jealousies and near-despair.  / /
Teach Us…
y— / / rock rising to a mountain, to a
range , / / sand stretched out from the flat green plain.  The change /
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
beach, / / against the rising, broken
range , through which / / (he smiled) his cousins were already travell
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
e blue, / / reached out from a remoter
range , which curled / / back to the first (this he less saw than reck
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
e woods of his day’s work, as when / /
ranged for delight alone.  Delight he could / / stumble on still (as d
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
/ past the faint nebula / / remotest
ranged / / within our sense / / behind the jewels of Andromeda.  / /
The Sea
/ / She’d meant it for the young wood-
ranger , if…  / / If nothing—she would give it to him still— / / how d
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
a tough old man, / / huntsman and wood-
ranger .  Not quite the same / / he found the woods of his day’s work,
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
ough and empty land.  / / Learning from
rangers , lost for lonely miles, / / he knew at last the tracked woods
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
Suppose he made the shore…  Those barren
ranges / / climbing from cape and cliff…  He felt the grim / / threat
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
rest-acred mountains, / / unbelievable
ranges / / of daily changing colours.  / / Someone had stuck to the h
[Fall rainbows the forest-acred mountains]
More dream than thought, inconsequently
ranging / / from lunch to love, from the future (which seems / / so
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
gh.  / / What of that clearer frontier,
ranging / / life against death? surely a true / / discontinuity, est
New Year
rt?  / / Knowing men starving while the
rank cigar / / perfumes the Ritz, my hands cease from their art / /
The Black-out
of triumph is not far.”  / / He to the
ranks ; and I too, half possessed, / / half turned; but not my guide. 
The Black-out
or the Pyrenees / / are fetched to the
ranks , and the frontier-posts are manned.  / / The men to the ranks an
On the Border
r-posts are manned.  / / The men to the
ranks and the women to the fields, / / grease wiped from rifles, a ne
On the Border
s—maestro ed autore— / / Eliot, Auden,
Ransom , Hopkins, the rest / / of Donne, a little Langland, a lot of C
Poetry
h it, / / blind Oedipus constrained to
rape and kill.  / / Nature is much to wreck, but man can do it / / an
Man in Nature
d from her.  / / (He turned them on the
raper in the dock / / of course, but only when she was not there.) /
Change Places…
n such a knife-twist in the heart.  / /
Rapt Mary sat and drank all he could give.  / / Martha was tired and c
The Two Ways
eless dream, / / trying your strength. 
Rapt stranger / / what is your sex, that we may give you a name?  / /
Becoming
hard land / / but other water is rare,
rare as trees.  / / The sun, the hard master, brooks no mist.  / / Whe
Varangian in Mickelgard
rilliance, am a part / / of this cold,
rare / / new day.  / / You and I are still apart, / / only the sulle
[The clouds that pressed the air]
/ / sun-touched or dark cloud.  / / A
rare night.  Beach deep / / in snow.  A ceaseless gale that / / strips
For Cecil
s were learning.  / / The other way the
rare -pathed hills spread on / / till nothing lay beyond them but the
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
d the hard land / / but other water is
rare , rare as trees.  / / The sun, the hard master, brooks no mist.  /
Varangian in Mickelgard
ome deep unknown knowledge of love, her
rare / / spirit made in the cradle one with it.  / / Out of her thoug
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
the unknown steep / / mountains, most
rarely dared by any from / / the forest, fearful of the cloven and cl
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
s thin / / under the sun / / and he’s
raring / / to gallop away.  / /
Against Anorexia:  For Cathy
er’ / / serves at least to express her
rarity .  / / Next morning hooves and grinding wheels awoke him.  / / H
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
is answerable for anything— / / at any
rate (he sighed) for more than this.  / / And then his feet.  The fores
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
n, or think we do, / / or think at any
rate we can, / / planning and changing as we go, / / like some cathe
Cedar
/ or fate is giving us, which is at any
rate / / (whomever we thank for it) ours.  / /
[Late October hedges]
said / / a pretty girl / / precisely,
rather a cleverly remade / / pretty doll.  / / Bright bleached hair c
Song
e a cool / / look in the face, or / /
rather at the fact, of death.  / / What do I see?  / / Chiefly the urg
[Now of threescore and ten]
/ Chiefly the urgency / / of looking,
rather , deep / / and long, with all the warmth / / I have—look? rath
[Now of threescore and ten]
, with all the warmth / / I have—look? 
rather , dip / / deep in the living breath / / of this warm, beautifu
[Now of threescore and ten]
sence of unrest) / / not so much fear… 
rather distress / / knowing so much is done / / badly or left undone
Balance Sheet
fall’s end.  / / I am (so far as I am)
rather floating.  / / Nothing for foot to press on or hand feel / / t
What am I?
non lifts again its lovely head / / or
rather (here is west) its lovely tail / / (the greeks gave temples fr
Athens, Hill of the Muses; Evening
/ / starve and poison him / / —unless
rather his first / / but still wildest, least biddable slave, fire /
Dr Faustus
ved; happy / / I—could not help being? 
rather , I deeply am.  / / Yet look just now: / / water in patterns un
Tristi Fummo
by having been has put / / the world,
rather , in debt.  / /
Joy
cult still / / if not impossible / / —
rather , meaningless.  / / All are (should be) born equal?  / / All are
Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité
share his joy and pain, who’d lead, or
rather / / more often be led through the threatening wild / / by him
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
/ There will be days, not enough— / /
rather , not many, but so good, / / so satisfying, enough’s irrelevant
[Golden, red, brown]
ch Athenians of that age / / with this
rather pretentious monument / / which time has tanned and broken to h
Athens, Hill of the Muses; Evening
grown / / but still grey.  Silver / /
rather than grey.  / / Silver and white, / / embodied light / / of t
Return
Treasure / / / Treasure in heaven? 
Rather , the fleeting kind— / / the exchanged smile, the small kindnes
Treasure
he end?  Because / / the human heart or
rather the human frame / / finds in its broken sleep / / despair so
[Why do I dream this pause]
on face, / / imagining—no, pretending
rather — / / this isn’t the edge of the school playing-field / / but
Summers
os.  Outside she came / / to silence—or
rather to cicada-shrill / / stillness, where thickly-bushed steep mou
Pelopia and Thyestes
to take.  / / Her higher spirit burned
rather to do / / than bear—his seemed at best a second-best.  / / She
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
for them?  A sleep without a dream?  / /
Rather , without a dreamer.  They do not sleep.  / / Body, borrowed from
Dulce et Decorum
/ / on rope and wood, in canvas, clap,
rattle .  / / His arm along the tiller, the live thing / / moving with
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
r’s guard the wine goes round / / with
rattle of dice and song, and some are thinking / / enviously / / of
Gunnar of Lithend
ghts fade.  Darkness blots all, / / the
ravage and the face.  Faintly wells / / a pale returning light whose k
In the Audience
ragged end / / but death knits up the
ravelled sleeve.  / /
Dreams
n the Towpath / He is tall, his hair is
raven ; / / hers is sunbright, she is slender.  / / His teeth flash sn
On the Towpath
ell.  / / Coaxed into feeding / / with
raw husk and stalk / / they lost some of their wildness, / / learned
The Green Children of Woolpit
g, / / my weight behind me grinding my
raw knuckles / / in the rough black London grime.  / / I’ve fallen be
The Fall
of the senses, heightening, glow, / /
ray from a red sunset, deepening / / the colours in the hangings of m
What Do They Feel?
in kingly-flashing coats under burning
rays .  / / By now the tide was running:  Keats, Housman, / / Milton (L
Poetry
ed / / into a thousand thousand steely
rays / / which whipped his body with their scalding flail.  / / The n
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
g you couldn’t bear it any longer, / /
razored it away, / / and looking out into the dawn sky / / saw in th
[Fall rainbows the forest-acred mountains]
shaping the inheritance / / formed and
re -formed before we were / / as still it will be when we’re gone.  /
Change
through a point of not- / / being, are
re -formed what? where? to be / / keel on what un-isled ocean, spark /
Holes in Space
d (or died) too that last horrible / /
reach , among naked, spiny, treacherous stone, / / no gull’s sad cry f
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
ea, / / claim nothing within the sea’s
reach .  / / Easy to live below the built wall, / / forget the exiled
The Wave
towards that absolute, beyond / / our
reach , Freedom, a star.  / / Equality.  / / That’s more difficult stil
Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité
e flowering briar / / has touched this
reach of life / / with a singular character.  / / The beauty of the f
Epoch
/ Embankment to the bridge, and saw the
reach / / of river, silver at the full of tide.  / / “East from the s
The Black-out
/ / still less been taken by him.  Why
reach out to her / / at the moment of truth?  / / Well, she was his w
“Tell Lady Byron…”
d; / / who here not even in dreams can
reach the fields / / of peace and hope, / / when up from foot and fi
The Embankment
ich dances / / off its tree for me may
reach the ground.  / / I have found / / a sounder spell.  Our love.  /
[Golden, red, brown]
ir.  / / Now evening trysts in orchards
reach their peak / / and penances in convents.  May is here.  / / The
May Day
Time’s
Reach / Who so firmly set in time and place / / as the Empress Eugéni
Time’s Reach
to Lundy or along the long sands which
reach / / with their spread of softer-sanded, spear-grassed dunes /
Bury My Heart
path tempted me on.  / / And suddenly I
reached a board:  / / “End of Reserve.  Private land beyond.  / / Do no
Los Altos Hills
en night and night, / / till the field
reached a hedge and the hours formed in days, / / days in years, and
Hymn
ade.  / / The sky-ring sharp, unbroken,
reached and reached / / behind the piling rocks.  At last appeared /
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
e sky-ring sharp, unbroken, reached and
reached / / behind the piling rocks.  At last appeared / / a great wa
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
a thinning in the trees.  A track?  / /
Reached by a ford?  The ford he found, but not / / the track—or if a t
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
w shut.  / / A man in the woven hanging
reached for a nest.  / / Each morning when she woke she could bear it
Eugénie de Guérin
twice essayed / / its final peak; but
reached his fourteenth year / / before one summer’s long day saw him
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
ays’ hard going from the coast, / / he
reached it.  Just before he made the top / / he turned, looked back, a
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
/ West, his mother’s tramontane kingdom
reached / / leagues north, she told him, to the sea again / / and al
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
ger cape, almost sunk in the blue, / /
reached out from a remoter range, which curled / / back to the first
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
Odysseus / He had
reached the ends of the earth, / / done all in order as the witch had
Odysseus
were).  / / Dark through the woods, he
reached the ford with dawn, / / and when night came, deep in the moun
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
ond.  / / Down sandbag-narrowed steps I
reached the glare, / / but swift a sanded figure from his work / / t
The Black-out
int.  / / Perhaps lemming-men / / have
reached the madness point, / / no return.  / / Down a steep place /
This Time
less dance, / / he struck out and soon
reached the other side.  / / He had the measure of the sands by now.  /
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
and his flasks were dry / / before he
reached the river.  Feverish / / with thirst and weariness, he felt th
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
as radically / / better than when he’d
reached the river-mouth.  / / A new trouble: the choice of right or le
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
wn and the moon behind the hill.  / / I
reached the tree and paused, straining my sight, / / standing within
The Black-out
had come from, / / except that when he
reached them he had crossed / / the southern mountains, steep and bar
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
er young nor old, / / the quiet middle
reaches .  / / But something cries on / / in me, timeless and harsh.  I
Revisited
years he’d sailed the bay and the bare
reaches / / clear of the heads, for sailing’s sake alone, / / his mi
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
de of the short grass on the hill, / /
reaches out into the thieving and loving, / / into the killing, / /
[The bare, beautiful borders]
t always / / a light-path on the water
reaches / / towards sun, moon, / / fisher’s lamp, recurring flashes
September Cruise
/ / under the nearing storm.  The sea,
reaching / / its firths round us, embracing rock and field.  / / Here
Varangian in Mickelgard
casts you / / … and yet… and yet / /
reaching you so, it surely should be / / laid there for you somehow t
September Cruise
May Day, 1986 /
Reactors burn.  / / Clouds of ruinous dust / / wander in the random w
May Day, 1986
d me to bed yet—I want to play, to / /
read , finish this…  Can’t I wait up?”  The question / / falls.  Plato, P
The Betrayal
osed my unfinished book; how does yours
read ?”  / / I laughed: “a hard time to be great or happy.  / / Greatne
The Black-out
flowered bush was beautiful / / but we
read omens according to our mood / / and mine was sad today.  / / I t
Omens
its crystal silence.  / / You, though,
reader , must watch outside the silence / / with me, since after-knowl
For Rachel
us.  Come your reckoning, / / God more
readily then, judging, / / shall pity you.  We stuffed our skin / / —
Villon’s Epitaph
ill must be my own soul’s steward.  / /
Reading the story of the unjust steward / / I find myself a world awa
The Betrayal
mature into a wiser man?  / / Feminist,
reading this, do not resent / / the unacceptable words ‘mankind’, ‘ma
Greenham Common
o see nothing, perhaps another / / who
reads this after / / I’m dead, but especially yours.  You / / must se
[Released from cloud the low sun at my back]
movements of the game, / / making all
ready for the King’s hunting.  / / He walked drowned in his dreams.  Th
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
h of good / / observed, absorbed, lies
ready .  Give it power.  / / “Consider those whose lives have kindled yo
The Black-out
and even when I’m drinking my spear is
ready .  / / My shield (not its fault) is making some tribesman’s day,
Two Songs of a Mercenary
the bright, / / putting quick words to
ready thought; / / the slow, the shy, the dull, the worse than dull,
The Party
e know and love, / / but nature is not
ready to go under.  / / How strong she is.  The decimations, distortion
Buttercups
s another girl in our house who’s quite
ready / / to marry, a pretty girl, just right for you.”  / / That was
Love Scene
whole / / and me; and turned to Emily,
ready to / / move like the river to my certain goal.  / / She smiled:
The Black-out
if the girl were faked / / too, wholly
real as form and face had been.  / / But here, just so, the river flow
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
/ but never hunger and cold / / —not
real cold, let alone / / real hunger—not want / / and the consequent
Climacteric by the Sea
old / / —not real cold, let alone / /
real hunger—not want / / and the consequent / / stress and distress,
Climacteric by the Sea
vision / / of actuality.  / / What is
real ?  / / Nature is blind / / —blank blackness / / the sun’s light
Music is Landscape
ng in pain’s teeth.  / / …  But only the
real presence brings us that peace.  / /
[My grandchildren are stamping the ice-puddles]
ith me / / the faintest brief arc of a
real rainbow.  / /
[Fall rainbows the forest-acred mountains]
aylight’s waste— / / not that he had a
real reason for haste / / but challenged himself always to press on. 
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
is now gone, / / her existence is more
real still, now and here, / / than this meaningless cessation I do no
Death
berty, / / the give-and-take / / more
real than Equality.  / / This indeed is another burning star / / brig
Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité
cks of armaments / / build up).  Is our
real wealth, / / the small-change of our love / / which passes hand
Choice
/ / Lifetimes later, / / visions half-
realised littering his wake, / / his sublimated loves corroding in hi
Pietà
e, space, matter are not / / their own
reality , are really / / a section through an other-dimension world, /
Credo
weak, / / we feel them take over / /
reality , / / shameful, frightening, / / telling us we / / aren’t wh
Against Anorexia:  For Cathy
which alone / / tridimensionality can
realize / / a world?  Mentally we can hypothetize / / existence in tw
Dimension
ully / / a tune, familiar…  Then I / /
realized :  Hyperactive.  / / I don’t believe in / / any afterlife, so
For Cecil
ter are not / / their own reality, are
really / / a section through an other-dimension world, / / all seemi
Credo
or trouble.  / / Yet / / neither of us
really believes that.  / / Less because of our partedness (together /
[I have (what seemingly you do not see)]
ry; but, I know, / / how they got home
really belongs to this.  / / The castle ruined, the great thorn-barrie
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
black frost / / on a spring face?  She
really can’t be said / / a pretty girl / / precisely, rather a cleve
Song
o leave childhood behind—if anyone / /
really does that; and if, for her, the doom / / wished on her in the
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
of wickedness.  / / After working some
really evil twist / / against the older boys / / would rush through
Vignette
e.”  / / Troubled in Middle Age—Did you
really hope / / to find an answer to that one on this page?  / / Sell
Problem
…  Yes, in the end love, / / when we’re
really put to it, / / brought to the final crunch, / / is the one th
Touch
e perceived / / the difficulty was not
really there.  / / Just what he sought he did not know, or where; / /
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
ways a terrorist.  / / Not so different
really .  Those we hate, / / we say, hate us (no doubt they do) so we /
Choice
(Up to a point I know / / —have I ever
really , though, / / quite grown up?  But that’s / / another question.
Climacteric by the Sea
n imagine war is still / / (if it ever
really was) a viable / / way of settling anything, we must be / / st
Consider
“Beautiful are the cornfields, white to
reaping .  / / I will not go.”  / / And stayed, and in a little while w
Gunnar of Lithend
to beauty more than is common / / but
reared in rigid abstinence, / / children’s light voices and cool hand
John Ruskin’s Wedding Night
tears / / and happiness, while upward
rears / / now the tower, round whose channelled stone / / speeds gat
Anniversaries
ayer to Truth / You who are manifest in
reason and faith, / / mathematical symbol, artist’s vision—Truth, /
Prayer to Truth
t.  But ‘It’s not possible to’ / / came
reason —and this time he bowed to her.  / / Work along for a gap.  Left
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
rk forbidden her, not for / / any good
reason but because, they said, / / the fingers of a princess were not
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
hing other / / which guides us against
reason .  / / But most, surely, to care.  / / Care for ourselves (how e
Caring
te of being that’s compatible / / with
reason , can imagine war is still / / (if it ever really was) a viable
Consider
ht’s waste— / / not that he had a real
reason for haste / / but challenged himself always to press on.  / /
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
ate them.  And that hatred’s not without
reason / / often, on either side.  / / But what good can hate do?  /
Choice
/ / is grave-robber.  / / Not without
reason .  / / Still, might perhaps the master potter-painter / / like
Label
he is today / / —that would be out of
reason .  / / The hour repeats in the repeating season / / and change
Epithalamium
deny nature; / / to divine and follow
reason / / yet to dare at a moment / / to follow something other /
Caring
so] / Threescore and ten or so / / —a
reasonable range.  / / But only about ten to go / / does feel strange
[Threescore and ten or so]
nd apart, / / if you have ever let the
reasoning brain / / come into contact with the feeling heart?  / / Kn
The Black-out
qual share / / of sound good sense and
reasoning .  / / We who are sped crave your praying / / of Mary’s Son,
Villon’s Epitaph
/ She sighed: “unhappiness has always
reasons ; / / fences about the truth, veils on her face.  / / The heav
The Black-out
/ God, if there is a god, may have his
reasons / / for what he did and will or will not do.  / / To me it se
Question
forked.  He paused, but checked / / his
reason’s helpless wondering, and strode / / down the right fork.  He f
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
k he went still by whim, / / rejecting
reason’s query ‘Which is right?’  / / Till, about noon he thought, the
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
/ / We only mean to say, perhaps:  / /
Reason’s steps / / are too stiff for life’s path, where fate / / tak
Uncertain
ther ran / / up.  I smiled down / / to
reassure , make contact with, the child.  / / Looked into Down’s / / S
Ten Seconds on a Tube Platform
now we take a new hero—or say / / him
rebegotten by the fairy’s word?  / / A prince—the same or not?  Well, t
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
or / / at hope out of complete despair
reborn .  / / The image of the christening rose once more / / before h
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
, the cuckoo’s / / voice breaks) hedge-
reborn , the rose.  / /
[Housman was old beyond his years]
is child’s beauty, ephemeral, fade / /
rebuke no promise, made / / and broken—there was none.  / / Beauty ow
Joy
/ / behind a locked door, hitting / /
recalcitrant marble, whittling / / the brute block back towards the p
Pietà
/ It fell in his fourth year.  He could
recall / / all his long age the scene—clear as a dream / / and, like
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
Winter
Recalled / for Dominick / Wrist locked over wrist, / / wrung hands be
Winter Recalled
iles know / / they will not, cannot be
recalled .  / / No overthrow / / of tyranny / / will clear the way /
[Some exiles know]
/ So, drowsing at the tiller, the boy
recalled / / the nurse’s story told him long ago.  / / But sharper th
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
/ bravely bridged—flagged battlements
recalling / / story and dream…  A sadness in your silence / / recalls
For Rachel
d dream…  A sadness in your silence / /
recalls me to mounded sand.  A windy morrow / / shakes the crystal bub
For Rachel
ched.  / / Life goes on, finished lives
recede / / and remain.  / / New lives we love do not know, / / do no
Anniversary
and dark behind the nebulous / / city
receded ; crossing slope and stream / / we lost all trace of habitatio
The Black-out
pit of the grave, / / while greenness
receded / / from his sister’s skin.  / / She grew up, and married /
The Green Children of Woolpit
/ for us to hand down pure / / as we
received it.  / / That’s a delusion.  / / While we dream we’re conserv
Change
the moonlight, / / and long Whitehall
received my echoing paces, / / the noiseless passage of my friend and
The Black-out
utted in the rock) and in them / / the
recent waste.  / / Climbing among pines / / the Parthenon lifts again
Athens, Hill of the Muses; Evening
r whispering by the bank, / / the dark
recesses of the sunstruck wood / / brought his forebodings back in fo
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
Recessional / Your freedom, which our fathers stole / / in careless,
Recessional
combination, one would suppose, / / a
recipe for trouble.  / / Yet / / neither of us really believes that. 
[I have (what seemingly you do not see)]
ght, / / extending being.  But in their
recklessness / / stretch to snapping communication-lines / / of ligh
Holes in Space
ack to the first (this he less saw than
reckoned ) / / bounding the plain, and the small kingdom too.  / / The
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
ark) / / one’s own garbled, prejudiced
reckoning .  / /
Balance Sheet
r what we were, / / pity us.  Come your
reckoning , / / God more readily then, judging, / / shall pity you.  W
Villon’s Epitaph
The
Reckoning / We are part of nature.  At least, we issue from / / nature
The Reckoning
n as we pass / / by those who dare not
recognise / / that all our houses are of glass.  / /
H.A.R.P.
/ / his steps, but that hence he might
recognise / / the field of his last fight.  But the dense floor / / k
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
detest aggression, pity pain, / / but
recognise vengeance for a cardinal sin; / / honour all bravery, but n
Prayer to Truth
, once his thirst was slaked, / / he’d
recognised quite different from that in / / the vision—wondered if th
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
/ outside our time-thought’s three-way
recognizing ?  / /
Dimension
he other scale-pan you must throw.  / /
Record , since you’re recording, all you know, / / and then admit that
Sur le Pont d’Avignon
u must throw.  / / Record, since you’re
recording , all you know, / / and then admit that to an honest view /
Sur le Pont d’Avignon
s not them.  / / One day perhaps for no
recording eye.  / / One day certainly / / not recurring, / / the pla
Credo
/ Green trees flourish unstricken.  Some
recover / / from anorexia, and shine.  / / Sink into / / the seedy r
Desert Island?
ndering swan?  / / Or did he gratefully
recover / / mankindness with its gifts and pains, / / even proud per
Fairy Story
arked word) / / suddenly significantly
recovered , / / twice that small dark bird / / breaks the surface of
Yeats and Water-Birds
ess noon, he followed it, / / lost and
recovered , up steep valleys and down, / / until, five days’ hard goin
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
omatically / / to make the most of the
recovered wind.  / / The boat moved rippling forward on the sea, / /
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
are from bony feet, / / fouled, burned—
recreate / / beauty, breed out of death, / / carpet again the heath
Two Poems in Memory of Anne Frank
points as Time disposes.  / / The lines
recur , the poem closes.  / /
Man’s Seasons
Man’s Seasons / The lines
recur , the poem closes.  / / Once more the still-miraculous spring /
Man’s Seasons
talgic autumn beckoning / / —the lines
recur , the poem closes.  / / Once more the still miraculous spring, /
Man’s Seasons
many darlings of a season, / / more of
recurrent moods, I’m forgetful of:  / / De la Mare very early, Christi
Poetry
towards sun, moon, / / fisher’s lamp,
recurring flashes / / of lighthouse beam.  The path is always / / the
September Cruise
g wonder.  / / For me this year not you
recurring , / / for these our children soon not me.  Then / / for thei
Credo
darkness falls,” he said, “the war / /
recurring like a nightmare or a fever.  / / Yet while our personal int
The Black-out
nalogy for loss.  / / Yet, this untamed
recurring / / of brave, ephemeral beauty / / does bring us something
Five Poems for Roni
/ necessary and unnecessary death; / /
recurring terror of the unfenced edge, / / meaningless life; and love
Wedding Night
ng eye.  / / One day certainly / / not
recurring , / / the planet dying, dead.  / / This planet, tiny speck /
Credo
and guide.  / / Flash on our groping a
recurring vision / / of possible pattern laid through the confusion. 
Prayer to Truth
Credo / Blossom and greening.  / /
Recurring wonder.  / / For me this year not you recurring, / / for th
Credo
er Songs / Afternoon / Morning / Summer
recurs .  / / Green fields of childhood greet us / / washed with yello
Two Summer Songs
[Golden,
red , brown] / Golden, red, brown— / / when they begin to loosen and c
[Golden, red, brown]
The cell-walls were streaked / / with
red -brown smears.  Jesus, what people!”  / / Unhappy women / / caught
War-time Anecdote
[Golden, red, brown] / Golden,
red , brown— / / when they begin to loosen and come down / / I hear m
[Golden, red, brown]
still holds its rust and the beech its
red / / but winds have washed the gold from the white birches.  / / A
Dance of the Seasons
Sea; rocks and sea; rock and pine, / /
red earth and olive, pine and bare rock, / / broken rock climbing to
Greece
d leaf / / are lovely as spring-green,
red fall.  / / Time’s spiral course through joy and grief / / exacts
Hymn
says / / “round his breast on a blood-
red field of Spain;” / / who saw his way among all possible ways / /
The Black-out
He walked drowned in his dreams.  Then a
red flame / / smote him—light on the leaves across a clear / / glade
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
d drew in closer.  Huge cliffs black and
red , / / footed in shifting foam, crowned with thin jade, / / broke
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
s), / / a few rose-bushes burning with
red hips, / / and suddenly among those / / a white rose, and another
[Late October hedges]
the three, / / wrapped up the last in
red leaves from the wood / / and took the track he could have followe
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
s, fountains, chestnuts flowering, / /
red mullet and tomato sauce, and sun; / / my love burned high then, b
The Black-out
/ Red smears down her white skirt, the
red of shame / / hot in her face, friends giggling, crowd’s rude crac
Pelopia and Thyestes
eedle deep in his thumb, and bled, / /
red on the white.  And she cried out, upset, / / and dropped the shell
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
yellow mimosa.  Other flowers, white and
red , / / pink, mauve, blue, but most yellow.  The plain / / is streak
Makherás
/ / farther, faster, in their frantic,
red -queen, / / heartblank hunger to out-hurry time.  / / The sea-edge
Full Circle
ress and hands dripping with gore.  / /
Red smears down her white skirt, the red of shame / / hot in her face
Pelopia and Thyestes
ses, heightening, glow, / / ray from a
red sunset, deepening / / the colours in the hangings of memory.  / /
What Do They Feel?
, / / Viollet-le-Duc, Dumas fils, / /
red velvet drapes, glittering chandeliers / / (and dark past draped g
Time’s Reach
inter Garden / Under the grey cold / /
redder than brown, white / / crimson and green-gold / / the bare-ste
Winter Garden
separate benches in war’s galley.  / /
Redeem us soon.  But while you may not so, / / lay on our fever patien
Prayer to Time
/ / another range.  Light, dark brown,
reds , golds, patched / / and mingled, were a revelation to him / / o
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
sm, Islam (those Ayatollahs, / / those
reds .  Once it was Nazism / / —those Germans).  Others are hated / / s
Choice
es on steps, by hunger and / / no hope
reduced to peace.  / / The prostitutes along the pavement stand / / a
Country and Town
Nadia / Flute with no
reed , violin / / left unstringed.  / / Instrument evolved, built / /
Nadia
ss of a sword / / He laid it among the
reeds again, went slowly back / / to tell the king he had tossed it i
Finis
te, / / and laying it carefully in the
reeds at last, go back / / and tell the king he had tossed it in the
Finis
past throws up against the sense / / a
reek of crowd and sacrifice / / with blood and smoke, movement and no
Delos in Spring
chimney’s cloud.  Squalor and pain / /
reek under the clear sky round your birth.  / / Anne Frank lost her br
Two Poems for G
at staggered under a gathered blow / /
reeling and cracking, and the tiller’s kick / / hurled him aside.  He
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
/ Told and retold the story, botched,
refined , / / was with him all his childhood.  He never knew / / a tim
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
/ The lamp in the translucent pane / /
reflected overlays the moon.  / / Sometimes when the self grows thin /
Shadow and Substance
ng the shade to life / / as suddenly a
reflecting pool, / / somewhere a tinkling fall / / show that the str
[High boughs arch over the half-dry creek]
I leaned out, looking down at the dark
reflection — / / bush in the smooth water, precise but darkened, / /
Omens
Reflection / There but for the grace of God go I.  / / I smiled compas
Reflection
shall go.  / / And so it went, gentle,
reflective , blue / / or swelling black boiling to white, through / /
Sur le Pont d’Avignon
Block 21 / The huge
reflector of the hanging light / / repeated the repeated, the unique
Block 21
n masters of our worlds; the river / /
reflects the moon between our eyes and brain, / / and bound within ou
The Black-out
God He allowed the question / / to be
reframed in terms of God and Caesar / / as equal powers.  So Christian
The Betrayal
he fled to them / / again—or else took
refuge in a new / / and subtler one.  You’ve guessed it: cannot true /
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
-tied struggler jealous guards / / his
refuge of unspoken words.  / / It takes long plotting or a lucky chanc
The Party
know this shining stream bears London’s
refuse / / from railway, gasworks, factory and drain / / past wordy
The Black-out
e faced the question how to cross, / /
regaining strength and learning how to wait.  / / He watched the river
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
ind’s touch, / / fast falling of waves
regathering slow / / —so much joy to be seen; / / but the idle spite
Tristi Fummo
ll feel relief / / as well as, I hope,
regret .  / /
[When the moment comes to forget]
ke happy, and though / / a backwash of
regret / / (a dream is a dream, no / / more) remains, yet / / the d
[Restoration of innocence in a dream]
look I knew; who never was / / weak to
regret , but followed his few days / / his light, until “he wrapped hi
The Black-out
it, honour it.  Yet / / do not fear to
regret / / what best and loveliest / / is disposed of with the waste
Progress
wakening, / / which to returning cold
rehardens now; / / but that thaw showed your earth is on the swing /
The Black-out
/ guide the cross spirit with a steady
rein / / now dogrose bushes star the hedges.  Again / / my year passi
Again
can’t / / keep the pace you want.  / /
Rein slack / / on sunk neck, / / let him amble home / / in his own
Against Anorexia:  For Cathy
/ / jumps off the page— / / the rider
reins his galloping horse towards here, blows / / his trumpet over he
Nadia
e, only departing should / / the heart
reject us, if it can and will.”  / / “Be with me both,” I answered, “l
The Black-out
But the figure on the other side, / /
rejected , black, said / / “These she shall have.  But they shall be no
“Gale is Dead”
late love should not be, cannot be / /
rejected or even made less perfect by / / acknowledgement of our guil
May Day, 1986
cross-track he went still by whim, / /
rejecting reason’s query ‘Which is right?’  / / Till, about noon he th
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
.  / / A better might dare now go free,
rejoice / / in a new land in a new love, a wife / / perhaps, childre
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
ttle.  / / Accept the omen, heart.  / /
Rejoice in beauty, rejoice in happiness, / / accept their transience
Omens
he omen, heart.  / / Rejoice in beauty,
rejoice in happiness, / / accept their transience / / and never mour
Omens
onfusion lost in light / / it is ours. 
Rejoice in it.  / / Hush.  Do you not see / / whiteness pocked, dissol
Exchange
te’s advance.  / / The road’s gone now. 
Rejoice with us then, who / / but dance, dance on the jutting stump,
Sur le Pont d’Avignon
d.  Beyond, below / / the soft sand, he
rejoined the mountain-stream, / / turned and began the climb towards
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
xplicably but undeniably / / a special
relation .  It can be destroyed, / / vilified, denied, treated as not b
“Tell Lady Byron…”
/ Can they be sloughed in the new / /
relation ? (live—dead).  / / In car, bus, train I / / want the journey
For Cecil
?” she said.  “You never offered me / /
relationship —only an inner-grown / / and self-existent you I cannot s
The Black-out
Relax / Clouds roll off.  Summer is truly summer, / / green sea foamin
Relax
n from the rock / / huge he lies, / /
relaxed and watchful, / / serene over the centuries.  / / Pirates and
September Cruise
through time and two discursive tongues
relayed .  / / Much of the rest was vague.  He knew the lad / / was tak
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
t, any artist / / wrests from the air,
relays / / for those who will tune in / / a pattern partially appreh
Two Cultures?
.  Death / / had happened, but was / /
release from work, and that was / / (you said) relief.  We made plans.
For Cecil
eir sound.  / / Faces express feelings,
release words.  / / She looks away from them, down, towards / / hands
Nadia
ed from cloud the low sun at my back] /
Released from cloud the low sun at my back / / brightens suddenly /
[Released from cloud the low sun at my back]
[
Released from cloud the low sun at my back] / Released from cloud the
[Released from cloud the low sun at my back]
in, / / secreted from a life-time, and
released / / if not by nothing, at least / / in its own moment by al
And Then
ootless cliff) / / I hope I shall feel
relief / / as well as, I hope, regret.  / /
[When the moment comes to forget]
lit, burned on.  So, did they find / /
relief ?  No.  His fastidiousness could not / / endure the image of her
Beyond Measure
from work, and that was / / (you said)
relief .  We made plans.  / / You felt I had failed you / / profoundly.
For Cecil
corroding in him, / / the world of his
religion riven by hate, / / everything sour and broken in his heart,
Pietà
ike the nephews of a poisoned Pope / /
relinquish every hope.  / / Oh plan no more the exact, unreal scheme,
Scheme
s, dries soon… but hot blood still / /
reliquifies the sun-dried blood.  / /
Naples
girl / / precisely, rather a cleverly
remade / / pretty doll.  / / Bright bleached hair curves in a cunning
Song
e untimely dead.  / / Weep more for who
remain .  / /
Whom the Gods Love
ange, barbarian heart.  / / Their bonds
remain , but you shall to the vow / / and the fulfilment come, / / th
Waiting
reescore and ten / / fewer than twelve
remain .  / / Granted, that limit’s set / / loosely—perhaps there wait
[Now of threescore and ten]
our personal intellects endure / / we
remain masters of our worlds; the river / / reflects the moon between
The Black-out
ance / / love will be changed but does
remain , / / may bear from wounds of spite and chance / / the scars b
Hymn
goes on, finished lives recede / / and
remain .  / / New lives we love do not know, / / do not need.  / / Is
Anniversary
iraculous gain, / / ours, theirs, does
remain / / —the heaven which Blake’s love / / builds in Hell’s despa
Die Weisse Rose
w what to, / / some words, some things
remain .  / / We believe in love and truth / / though not knowing what
Winter Recalled
ever wholly be a man, / / happily have
remained / / an air-and-water-wandering swan?  / / Or did he grateful
Fairy Story
oubtless of wood / / (no trace of that
remained ); / / two jointed dolls of clay; / / likewise of fired clay
Label
e whose emptiness takes all in / / and
remains empty.  / / Their net of feeling and thought / / compassed th
Where?
meaning like above, / / nor any place
remains for God but love.  / /
Cosmology
, / / what a small proportion of those
remains / / for me.  Never mind.  / / A full, a whole time, / / a tim
Swallows
/ / criss-cross the seas.  / / The sea
remains / / indifferent, inviolate.  / /
The Sea
ean / / takes everything to itself and
remains pure.  / / And if the sea has oil-slicks, the upper air / / m
Relax
/ / (a dream is a dream, no / / more)
remains , yet / / the dream pervades today.  / / In some way / / some
[Restoration of innocence in a dream]
tears blotted my gaze.  / / “You know,”
remarked my guide, “you make a cross / / too easily out of your natur
The Black-out
fire.  I must have looked awful.  I don’t
remember / / a thing about the procession or how I got home, / / and
Spells and Love
in convents.  May is here.  / / The old
remember and the happy store / / their memories up.  The empty-hearted
May Day
hat ugliness holds nothing dear.  / / I
remember / / beauty just so shining from air to eye / / across brimm
“Life is sweet, brother”
: “remember Roe Head and Law Hill, / /
remember Brussels.  Can you find it strange / / there should be times
The Black-out
Sibling / Do you
remember …?  Did you know…?  / / Tell me…  This’ll amuse you though…  / /
Sibling
han me.”  “A change,” / / she laughed:  “
remember Elbe’s pillared halls, / / the shimmering chandeliers of Thr
The Black-out
o to accept, extend.  / / That’s not to
remember him by.  / / Remember (remembering that death, / / that life
George Jackson
/ That’s not to remember him by.  / /
Remember (remembering that death, / / that life) how, out of the nigh
George Jackson
rs of Thrushcross Grange.”  / / But I:  “
remember Roe Head and Law Hill, / / remember Brussels.  Can you find i
The Black-out
nd / / that war is grand.  / / Make us
remember that if this war is won / / the good we claim to do waits to
Prayer to Truth
Poetry / Almost before I can
remember / / the Schooner Hesperus carried me, / / a pressed man, to
Poetry
of your soul?  / / Is it a prison?  / /
Remember then, you / / aren’t only prisoner / / —warder, Governor to
Body
understated beauty / / I seem to have
remembered / / but had, truly, forgotten, / / after initial numbness
Return
from her cold mouth dropped:  / / “All
remembered but I?  And all so quick / / to bless?  Amen!  She shall be b
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
that I’ve forgotten, / / you that I’ve
remembered but not named, lest / / the proud procession should wind o
Poetry
e it always went.  / / But once (he now
remembered clearly) when / / he asked her for a story—‘just one more’
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
en.  / / Like something not known to be
remembered (dream, / / unremarked word) / / suddenly significantly r
Yeats and Water-Birds
kindness (so small / / it couldn’t be
remembered ), joke in a queue / / (a shared short laugh)—anything will
Treasure
id, “how goes your pilgrimage?”  / / No
remembered , no memory-wakening voice / / of childhood, but herself se
The Black-out
r.  But he was quite alone.  / / Then he
remembered that his nurse was dead.  / / He picked himself up.  He was
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
till a fire / / whose high flame, even
remembered , warms and sings.  / / Man’s acts and sufferings seem / /
Question
g grass / / sun on my face, eyes shut,
remembering / / sixty years ago I suppose it was / / lying in long g
Summers
not to remember him by.  / / Remember (
remembering that death, / / that life) how, out of the night, / / wi
George Jackson
the fatal word, / / washing his hands
remembers Pilate.  / / Could anything be more absurd?  / / And yet, we
Responsibility
ut comes in bright bursts as if / / to
remind me that your voice from the far distance / / is calling me alw
Two Poems from a New Life
are berried—hawthorn, blackthorn / / (
remnants of blackberry-flower among the berries), / / a few rose-bush
[Late October hedges]
/ / Huge sound trembling / / through
remote air / / —pile the brooks with muck / / lest he find them clea
Scorched Earth
down past melting drifts of cloud / /
remote and faint lies mother earth.  / / Above the station of our birt
From the Air
ot back but far ahead, / / he glimpsed
remote between blue-distanced downs / / a faint flat blue, and knew i
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
whose silence sounds the roar / / of a
remote , fanatic fire.  / / To each a tower: fanatics have their dream
The Party
/ while Laurence, Giles and I on things
remote / / from this search talked at ease.  And presently / / they f
The Black-out
nk in the blue, / / reached out from a
remoter range, which curled / / back to the first (this he less saw t
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
xy, far / / past the faint nebula / /
remotest ranged / / within our sense / / behind the jewels of Androm
The Sea
/ Eiffel Tower, Pont due Gard…  / / … 
Remove the camera / / and the eyes behind / / are, you’ll find, / /
Tourist
ch are God’s, / / and what is Caesar’s
render unto Caesar,” / / But did He not thereby, Himself being God’s
The Betrayal
this steward / / tried on his master?… 
Render unto Caesar…  / / Perhaps there’s some thought links steward to
The Betrayal
to question / / when he gives orders. 
Render unto Caesar / / your armed and ordered self, and cry Hail Caes
The Betrayal
th us, / / no choice is left us but to
render war / / all glory and all power.  / / War is a pit of horror;
Prayer to Truth
than a night wood, / / took three and
rendered two; what I must yet      / / feel, brushed me then.  / / To
The Black-out
small voice.  / / Having insufficiently
rendered unto peace / / the power and glory she would have shared wit
Prayer to Truth
/ / I don’t see how we ever could / /
renege on such suffusing gratitude.  / /
[Yes, you’re right]
/ My year passing must change but can’t
renew .  / / I am out of sorts with self and others, when / / experien
Again
/ yet we must pledge our lifeblood to
renew / / the link, when choice can muster strength and chance.  / /
Sur le Pont d’Avignon
/ my year passing must change but can’t
renew ?  / / The tunnel spirals down?  Is that certain?  / / Or after al
Again
Renewal / Racked bones of the acacia stand / / leafless, lifeless, de
Renewal
would forget, / / feel in stale blood
renewed a prick of hate / / and press towards a hope.  The exile’s sca
May Day
/ —passing, perishing all / / from us,
renewed for others / / white in another Spring.  / /
[What words are there for Spring?]
ch is empty, / / and water, advancing,
renews it for tomorrow.  / /
For Rachel
as all / / before them.  Never mind the
rent and stain.  / / Enjoy life as it was before the fall: / / sleep
The Twenties
its white embrace.  / / The temple-veil
rent from his error / / revealed the body’s subtleties / / flushed f
John Ruskin’s Wedding Night
h off, flash on, / / the signal-lights
repassed , of tears / / and happiness, while upward rears / / now the
Anniversaries
be shown the way / / to vengeance—how
repay ?  / / The oracle replied:  / / “Vengeance condign may come / /
Pelopia and Thyestes
shape in our ways.  / / Certain rhythms
repeat in the weeks and the years, / / of the seasons, of work, even
Hymn
e there for Spring?  / / Rubbed, tongue-
repeated , all / / become conventional, / / dull.  Yet Spring is still
[What words are there for Spring?]
er’s end was lost in a gull’s cry, / /
repeated , dropped, picked up, interminably / / tormenting as he moved
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
sh and slap / / innumerably varied and
repeated , / / entranced his hearing, as the featureless scape— / / b
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
uge reflector of the hanging light / /
repeated the repeated, the unique scene, / / canopied the still troll
Block 21
of the hanging light / / repeated the
repeated , the unique scene, / / canopied the still trolley, trundled
Block 21
of reason.  / / The hour repeats in the
repeating season / / and change with time you will, he will.  / / But
Epithalamium
t would be out of reason.  / / The hour
repeats in the repeating season / / and change with time you will, he
Epithalamium
but toothless old?  / / Hard not to be
repelled .  / /
[Age’s bony knuckle]
re food.  The castle store / / was low,
replenishment impossible.  / / The boy went shivering, his belt drawn
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
to vengeance—how repay?  / / The oracle
replied :  / / “Vengeance condign may come / / indeed, but it must gro
Pelopia and Thyestes
other? odd.  / / The mirror made a rude
reply .  / / There go I.  / / There goes the grace of God.  / /
Reflection
Law
Report / This child was thrashed to death for thieving, lying / / and
Law Report
uld never fail / / to carry a built-in
reprieve , / / a passport to eternity.  / / No, let me live as now, an
A Prayer
/ / Condemned we snatch at every short
reprieve , / / disguising from ourselves how ruthlessly / / Age takes
Age
ther, waiting up, met him in wild— / /
reproach ?  Not so—excitement.  Messengers / / hot from the Court—the Qu
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
gehog.  Curiosity / / drove him against
repulsion .  At her side / / a heap of the spined lumps, by it another
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
at and the run of men?  / / The mangled
reputation lies / / stoned, to be spat on as we pass / / by those wh
H.A.R.P.
The Sea / for Lucy, by
request / The land stoops to the sea.  / / Cliff, rock, sand, pebble b
The Sea
d-man’s-buff with death.  / / Each year
requires another year / / to finish some new thing begun, / / round
A Prayer
ended knee, / / blessed God for a soul
rescued / / from Satan’s siege.  / / But the girl of flesh they burne
The Shepherdess of Cahuzac
an?  / / Feminist, reading this, do not
resent / / the unacceptable words ‘mankind’, ‘man’, ‘he’.  / / I use
Greenham Common
guilt] / Feelings of guilt, feelings of
resentment / / (resentment worse perhaps, but hard to say / / since
[Feelings of guilt]
of guilt, feelings of resentment / / (
resentment worse perhaps, but hard to say / / since each carries the
[Feelings of guilt]
iving force / / shifts into proportion
resentments , guilts.  / / And oh I pray it can do the same for yours. 
[White foam sweeps]
death, though it froze the guilts, the
resentments , / / is easier accepted than a living trouble.  / / I don
[White foam sweeps]
uddenly I reached a board:  / / “End of
Reserve .  Private land beyond.  / / Do not trespass”.  / / The unbroken
Los Altos Hills
ess / / are fretting, working on, / /
reshaping the inheritance / / formed and re-formed before we were /
Change
hing / / beyond its loveliness: / / a
resharpening , reshining / / of an ache into the pang / / which is so
Five Poems for Roni
nd its loveliness: / / a resharpening,
reshining / / of an ache into the pang / / which is so much more tha
Five Poems for Roni
ood and I am of the wind / / now, each
resolved to earth and our own good.  / / But search your heart—there y
The Black-out
frozen winter breaking, / / softening,
resolving round me, vanishing; / / but sometimes suddenly the cold, r
The Black-out
, lost, / / illiterate most likely, no
resources / / but a dull hope.  / / Once each month / / peeling a so
War-time Anecdote
/ / “He’s no self-control.”  / / This
respectable curse / / is laid on us: worse / / than women or drink /
Merrie England
d the third return / / our jaded souls
respond more slowly / / and in the general hurly-burly / / the solid
That Way Madness Lies
ension of muscle and bone, / / lightly
responding to his lean, or thrown / / his whole weight’s strength aga
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
Responsibility / The doctor, after the examination, / / before pronou
Responsibility
isoner / / —warder, Governor too, / /
responsible for what / / conditions prevail there.  / /
Body
w through the / / haze which hides the
rest .  / / A young man in the / / street was humming, whistling not /
For Cecil
nown princess.  / / Then darkness.  / /
Rest and faint warmth of the sun / / revived him to his pain.  He lay
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
e too, we two, / / are guilty with the
rest , and like the rest / / without power, / / can only love and hop
May Day, 1986
art that, I think, than any / / of the
rest .  Bury my heart at Sheepstead, then.  / /
Bury My Heart
/ / Forced by exhaustion to a moment’s
rest / / he saw the little tunnel he had made / / in the vast mass. 
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
try peace—she ought, / / they said, to
rest in woods and upland air, / / and so…  He went to bed under a spel
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
s “Love”, / / the wild fresh wind; the
rest / / is lifted, whirled up in the wind of love; / / I open my ar
Wind
l withheld, / / take by its side their
rest .  / / Monks, harnessing the hungers of the flesh / / to spiritua
The Embankment
/ / Eliot, Auden, Ransom, Hopkins, the
rest / / of Donne, a little Langland, a lot of Chaucer, / / other Mi
Poetry
r soul into the wind, / / dissolve and
rest .”  She smiled: “did I not say / / Anabel sent me?  Do not fear the
The Black-out
d offerings, / / statues, tripods, the
rest , to ringing strings / / and high pipe, pretty and innocently pro
Pelopia and Thyestes
and weariness, he felt the wish / / to
rest torture, having no wish to die.  / / Home howled for him behind. 
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
rsive tongues relayed.  / / Much of the
rest was vague.  He knew the lad / / was taken as a forester, and ever
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
are guilty with the rest, and like the
rest / / without power, / / can only love and hope—and pray?  / / We
May Day, 1986
choke him.  / / He struggled out.  Soon,
rested , cautiously / / tried his fresh-water-swimmer’s limbs again /
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
such a shine / / we first saw Florence
resting in the clear / / after-heat dusk of summer’s first decline.  /
The Black-out
en and lay level from a ragged end / /
resting on the strong spread of another willow.  / / Yet fallen and so
Five Poems for Roni
Ballad / At work she smiled. 
Resting she made / / a bracelet braided from her hair / / to give he
Ballad
e was, or would be soon, eighteen) / /
restlessness played on him in many shapes.  / / Today he eyed the coas
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
d himself always to press on.  / / This
restlessness robbed him of some delight.  / / Issuing to sunlight from
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
[Restoration of innocence in a dream] /
Restoration of innocence in a dream…  / / I woke happy, and though /
[Restoration of innocence in a dream]
[
Restoration of innocence in a dream] / Restoration of innocence in a d
[Restoration of innocence in a dream]
some way / / something does seem / /
restored in me…  Innocence through a dream?  / /
[Restoration of innocence in a dream]
ose kindness veils / / jut and furrow,
restoring innocence, / / restoring youth.  / / Innocence and youth, /
In the Audience
t and furrow, restoring innocence, / /
restoring youth.  / / Innocence and youth, / / which ours seemed pain
In the Audience
nd looted.  Clean and clad, / / his bow
restrung , his quiver once more full, / / he set out through the winte
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
; / / but sometimes suddenly the cold,
retaking / / our hills, wiped from the world my fancied spring.  / /
The Black-out
/ get him hard by the throat again.  He
retched / / again, and brought up more of the foul brine.  / / He gro
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
here, something at least again.  / / He
retched , and felt the salt and bitter gulf / / get him hard by the th
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
of the foul brine.  / / He groaned and
retched and vomited again, / / and knew himself alive and safely beac
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
t thoughts alone, adrift.  / / Told and
retold the story, botched, refined, / / was with him all his childhoo
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
low / / winter its weakening onsets in
retreat ; / / spring warmth is strengthening though you see not how.” 
The Black-out
thdrawn from all, to those thin streaks
retreating / / and to the star-pricks of the velvet dome.  / / Dazzle
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
arth / I scorched my heart’s earth / /
retreating miserably / / before the dark army / / pursuing me.  / /
Scorched Earth
/ / the hedge-rose and the solstice’s
return .  / /
Sixtieth Summer
finite variation of days, / / season’s
return , and in the season’s hour’s, / / the same and not the same con
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
d winter, / / spring’s green-and-white
return : / / another beauty flowers into / / the wilderness we mourn.
Cassandra’s Song
uttercup, dog-rose.  / / Flower-seasons
return / / but not the season’s flowers.  / / And why should we mourn
Seasons
have reached the madness point, / / no
return .  / / Down a steep place / / with the possessed herd / / to s
This Time
the absolute.  / / Neglect the planned
return / / from logical pursuit.  / / Let the moment burn.  / /
Glimpse
Return / On a curve of the river / / a white swan / / and then anoth
Return
s.  / / But at the second and the third
return / / our jaded souls respond more slowly / / and in the genera
That Way Madness Lies
/ / will clear the way / / for their
return .  Too old, / / their thoughts dwell in a vanished world.  / / B
[Some exiles know]
/ / or two or three, at least he would
return / / within the month.  He asked her, too, to speak / / a word
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
s to his home / / and found the worst. 
Returned on the same track, / / not hopeful or afraid or sick, but sa
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
owed from matter, to matter’s keep / /
returned we know; but of the deeper theme / / —spirit, whence formed
Dulce et Decorum
e chilled earth wakening, / / which to
returning cold rehardens now; / / but that thaw showed your earth is
The Black-out
and the face.  Faintly wells / / a pale
returning light whose kindness veils / / jut and furrow, restoring in
In the Audience
e part / / gondola sunk or walkers not
returning / / may turn a casual parting to a last, / / though the ni
The Black-out
wing / / with warmth and light and the
returning sun / / another being.  / / And love in loss, not understan
Winter Solstice
/ were listening together.  / / Always
returns the / / image of your face as mask, / / closed eyes swollen.
For Cecil
s a mint of luck in distant lands, / /
returns …  The youngest, not the only son.  / / He dare not hive off on
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
/ / Only the fixed brown eyes seem to
reveal / / someone within.  / / Self-made? self-murdered? blank as a
Song
he temple-veil rent from his error / /
revealed the body’s subtleties / / flushed from the warm blood’s quic
John Ruskin’s Wedding Night
the latter, but can I believe it?  / / (
revelation being something I neither have nor covet).  / / Without tha
Death
times I’m half blinded / / as by a new
revelation : / / how, having muddled through my life, / / for worse,
[I have you always in my mind]
brace existence or existence time?  / /
Revelation implies the latter, but can I believe it? / / (revelation
Death
golds, patched / / and mingled, were a
revelation to him / / of autumn.  But he shivered—terrible / / the th
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
ool / / of irresistible / / perpetual
revenge .  / / His daughter, sent away / / (the hospitable stranger /
Pelopia and Thyestes
er burns the palace-wall, / / robs the
revered graves.  We see / / the singer silent at the fall / / of the
Dark Age
in cloud (like Brueghel’s Babylon / /
reversed ) when first we’re launched.  But soon / / spiralling on one a
Anniversaries
himmering light lost again / / in grey
reversion of rain?  / / Rain and sun, snow, wind, / / weather and sea
Exchange
Revisited / The sun is soft, soft the blue horizon / / from which a d
Revisited
ways their own.  When we fold / / fond
revisiting loves, cheek will be cold, / / salt from sea-wind.  / /
Out from the Cliff
/ Rest and faint warmth of the sun / /
revived him to his pain.  He lay awhile, / / but something made him ro
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
ugh give thanks, be blessed / / in the
reviving mystery.  / /
Renewal
no room for me if she said so.  / / “Au
revoir .”  “Au revoir.”  I shut the door.  / / They went as might in fair
The Black-out
e if she said so.  / / “Au revoir.”  “Au
revoir .”  I shut the door.  / / They went as might in fairy-story go /
The Black-out
/ knowing they will defeat us / / (one
revolution’s low / / roll on without us up).  / / Knowing this will b
Two Summer Songs
/ / daisy and buttercup.  / / Love the
revolving years / / knowing they will defeat us / / (one revolution’
Two Summer Songs
the blue / / bright sky, keeping their
rhythm fairly true, / / snaking in line or circle, hand in hand / /
Pelopia and Thyestes
” From the darkness curled / / a faint
rhythm of music far up stream.  / / Giles turned intent, and soon acro
The Black-out
rn took shape in our ways.  / / Certain
rhythms repeat in the weeks and the years, / / of the seasons, of wor
Hymn
elling.  And saw one day / / beyond the
ribbon a faint shadow rise / / which broke too the horizon of the sea
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
m to the starboard lay / / a thin blue
ribbon , merging past unravelling / / detail of trees and harbour, cit
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
n trudged, a weary way, / / the narrow
ribbon of the flatland shore / / stretching on endlessly.  Until one d
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
hat a blessed change / / from the flat
ribbon stretching on and on.  / / The nurse’s tale?  Yes, but he felt a
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
luggish-seeming river.  / / Beyond, the
ribbon stretching out for ever / / hardly beckoned; and he’d been nea
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
/ tree of Herakles, wound with crimson
ribbon .”— / / These are the springs of my love.  Mark them, lady Moon.
Spells and Love
count / / into the bowl the grains of
rice .  / / Far away, far…  / / But look across / / the street, or two
Dinner
eling of the Roman age / / honoured by
rich Athenians of that age / / with this rather pretentious monument
Athens, Hill of the Muses; Evening
he poor / / march with the sordid, ill-
rich city, on / / towards Chancery Lane, but turned once more / / no
The Black-out
Full Circle / Uproot the
rich hedges that roads may be wider / / that more cars may carry more
Full Circle
/ / Yet fallen and soaring bough were
rich in leaf / / as the solid trunks flanking this along the river.  /
Five Poems for Roni
ted, / / strained through the sand and
rich soil of our lives, / / and all those lives of others / / the si
Becoming
/ High nineteenth-century / / Paris. 
Rich , squalid, whirling Paris:  / / Winterhalter, Gounod, Offenbach, G
Time’s Reach
I think of that beauty / / I think of
Richard Hughes.  / / I was not young, nor was he old, / / but he had
Homage
he constellations crowd and wander / /
richer , wilder it seems than I have seen.  / / No, the seasons offer /
Five Poems for Roni
scattering as she hurries her coloured
riches .  / / Day by day, as the leaves are loosed and shed / / and th
Dance of the Seasons
r small world’s rim / / held spreading
riches : peace and happiness / / and love—as love comes to a happy chi
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
ht for you.  / / Warm summer cycle / /
ride .  Home, in the garden found / / you dying.  Today, / / bitter bea
For Cecil
Bicycle
Ride / In front a black cloud masks the sky.  / / Behind me the sun’s
Bicycle Ride
Above the station of our birth / / we
ride the sunlight, swift and proud.  / / The wing-heeled boots, the cr
From the Air
one.  Good-bye / / you other stars that
ride with the quiet night.  / /
Spells and Love
ation / / jumps off the page— / / the
rider reins his galloping horse towards here, blows / / his trumpet o
Nadia
fevered, aware, / / he lay on the home-
ridge .  The leaves were blowing / / from the brown wood, but the bough
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
/ barefoot along the bare / / ripple-
ridged beach / / through the frothing water-edges / / that came and
Climacteric by the Sea
t, a grey, always a wide sky, / / your
riding country, where you played as a child / / growing the you I lov
Two Poems for G
Gunnar of Lithend /
Riding down to the ship of exile waiting / / in the firth below / /
Gunnar of Lithend
d clean in two.  / / A Turkish dog came
riding , / / his scimitar he drew, / / he swung it high to strike me
A Ballad
d West, brothers in blood; / / two men
riding out again.  / / With Meredith at eleven, I think, or twelve /
Poetry
a balance in things / / subtle as his,
riding those narrow wings.  / /
Ecology
er came Kipling’s ballads: / / two men
riding through a death-sown plain, / / pursued and pursuer—the talk a
Poetry
n to the fields, / / grease wiped from
rifles , a new edge ground on spears / / —a stack of polished shells o
On the Border
e fret, we grieve / / numbly under his
rifling hands, but he / / leaves us our fee to Death.  The will to liv
Age
The
Rift / for Matthew / The scar-lips of the wounded wood / / watch the
The Rift
/ mother and love.  This paradox / / (a
rift in the firm-seeming rocks) / / rives all we’ve done and all we c
The Rift
rode—at the bank-side / / a trim boat,
rigged , provisioned, lay at anchor.  / / They had no notion where the
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
hell.  / / Sigh or high song of wind in
rigging , air / / on rope and wood, in canvas, clap, rattle.  / / His
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
some / / the lowest sin.  And they are
right .  / /
Upward Turn
the city.  Far away—’ he threw / / his
right arm out.  That beach.  He’d been there first / / crossing huge mo
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
/ all to be dismissed / / when we’re
right awake.  / / Normally, that is.  / / Sick and weak, / / we feel
Against Anorexia:  For Cathy
d made us aware, / / and he was surely
right / / but wrong surely to say / / the traffic is one-way.  / / S
Fair Exchange
e afternoon, / / the rocks to left and
right climbed steep and bare / / to peak on peak, and on the right sp
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
ighbours a belly-laugh.  / / You’re all
right , darling.  You’re simple and straight / / —she takes her meat of
Love Scene
eady / / to marry, a pretty girl, just
right for you.”  / / That was what she said but I can talk too.  / / “
Love Scene
ess wondering, and strode / / down the
right fork.  He felt the fairy smile.  / / Over the miles, under the le
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
etter the lifting feet.  / / And on his
right hand hung the face of Diaghilev, / / and on his left hand hung
Nijinsky
climbing its own way.  / / One must be
right , he knew, the other wrong, / / but nothing told him which.  Belo
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
each takes its own home by an absolute
right .  / / Here I must leave you.  I have given you / / the keys of h
The Black-out
/ working up from the moon, off to the
right , / / I could find it.  I followed him, and made it out.  / / Six
A Hoard
[Yes, you’re right] / Yes, you’re
right .  Misunderstandings may / / sometimes (we’re human) drift our wa
[Yes, you’re right]
hough.  / / Change, knowingly made, all
right .  / / Not, that’s not so good.  / / Steve Davis knocked out / /
For Cecil
rom his work / / turned and forbade me
right of entrance there.  / / Back up the steps I groped into the murk
The Black-out
.  / / Before I even saw it / / I trod
right on the head, / / and then I heard the dead man / / how he groa
A Ballad
outh.  / / A new trouble: the choice of
right or left, / / of wrong or right.  The desert-beach was grim / /
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
ery.  / / This being so / / have I the
right , / / or power, to be a poet?  / / I don’t know, / / but I can’
Climacteric by the Sea
d bare / / to peak on peak, and on the
right spread on / / west to a range.  His hope perhaps lay there / /
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
o, down a bit.  Yes, there—a bit to your
right .”  / / “Thanks.  Did you lose a lamb the other day?  / / I found
On the Border
airy’s curse?—Ah, that.  / / Off to his
right the bank was flattened back, / / and the far left bank too; and
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
ith painful care he worked round to his
right .  / / The cliffs.  And under them a fire was lit.  / / He stagger
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
oice of right or left, / / of wrong or
right .  The desert-beach was grim / / but was the way, one way and no
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
the plane-trees stood / / part lit; to
right the shadowed parapet / / where leaned a man against the light a
The Black-out
d scrub were knotted to the briar.  / /
Right was a space, where a tall pine-tree stood— / / the only conifer
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
Epoch /
Right we should leave in June, / / the hedges lit with roses.  / / Th
Epoch
[Yes, you’re
right ] / Yes, you’re right.  Misunderstandings may / / sometimes (we’r
[Yes, you’re right]
/ / rejecting reason’s query ‘Which is
right ?’  / / Till, about noon he thought, there fronted him / / no ch
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
will.  At last it gave / / and set the
righted boat running before / / the wind, aslant towards the stretchi
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
e message had been given him.  / / ‘All
right ’ he thought.  ‘The next test is the river.’  / / That’s what he t
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
more than is common / / but reared in
rigid abstinence, / / children’s light voices and cool hands / / wer
John Ruskin’s Wedding Night
my own heart sufficed.  Three times the
rigour / / of exile had me dying, but the poor / / flesh won and bro
The Black-out
/ almost past sight—only a faint blue
rim , / / another range.  Light, dark brown, reds, golds, patched / /
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
hreatening shadow / / on the horizon’s
rim / / —burn every blade of grass / / that might be green for him. 
Scorched Earth
tars contouring a high black mountain’s
rim .  / / But often mind forgot the joy of eyes.  / / Valley, col, val
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
he circumscription of her small world’s
rim / / held spreading riches: peace and happiness / / and love—as l
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
ded southern sunset / / over the ocean
rim .  I looked at the moon, / / looked up searching stars.  And I thoug
A Hoard
hem to share.  / / He gazed to the blue
rim .  Then turned his back.  / / Sick with the knowledge of a hopeless
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
, / / lay on our fever patience’s cool
rime .  / / Let us learn wisdom at the oar, and grow / / kinder by you
Prayer to Time
ud, sweeping showers— / / or the whole
ring an unflawed clarity— / / he learnt the infinite variation of day
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
/ / Man’s seasons, though, link in no
ring / / but join two points as Time disposes.  / / The lines recur,
Man’s Seasons
New Year / “Ring out the old,
ring in the new” / / but you can never catch the changing / / years.
New Year
rings, dancing, a ring of women, / / a
ring of men dancing on the marble circle / / where they had laboured
Dream under a Carob-tree
-tree / They dance in rings, dancing, a
ring of women, / / a ring of men dancing on the marble circle / / wh
Dream under a Carob-tree
God.  / / Elders gather, the bells / /
ring out of time.  / / What ugly villain commits / / so lost a crime?
The Shepherdess of Cahuzac
New Year / “
Ring out the old, ring in the new” / / but you can never catch the ch
New Year
coped.  The point was made.  / / The sky-
ring sharp, unbroken, reached and reached / / behind the piling rocks
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
/ / Far among far-spread forests half-
ringed by hills, / / a distant, lovely, rough and empty land.  / / Le
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
gs, / / statues, tripods, the rest, to
ringing strings / / and high pipe, pretty and innocently proud.  / /
Pelopia and Thyestes
those wrinkles on your brow / / those
rings about your eyes?  / / Surely life is only love / / and love is
Dialogue
ream under a Carob-tree / They dance in
rings , dancing, a ring of women, / / a ring of men dancing on the mar
Dream under a Carob-tree
taken from a grave: / / a pair of ear-
rings , gold, simple design; / / a bronze mirror, its shine a roughene
Label
oon; as hanging over / / Croyde Bay or
Ringstead Bay.  Came sharply through / / me hate to be where streets a
The Black-out
/ in the far corner of Weymouth Bay, at
Ringstead , / / looks out to Portland or up to Whitenothe’s / / high
Bury My Heart
ay) / / must now be coming on / / her
ripe , her bearing age.  / / Still in his cloud of rage / / he came to
Pelopia and Thyestes
d being old / / so gather the roses of
ripe middle age.”  / /
[The municipal building stood square in my dream]
In my beginning is my end /
Ripe they hang on the bough, / / last-fruits of the primal tree / /
In my beginning is my end
hough / / barefoot along the bare / /
ripple -ridged beach / / through the frothing water-edges / / that ca
Climacteric by the Sea
me thoughts dive out of the light.  / /
Ripples are quickly still.  Again seen / / in the mirror’s tinted grey
Water in a Wood
fly calling / / or walk far out by the
ripples ’ edge, where children / / paddle and shout.  The waves rustle.
For Rachel
the recovered wind.  / / The boat moved
rippling forward on the sea, / / purposeful.  Suddenly from the cliff-
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
dly in him / / the force that made him
rise and struggle on.  / / Then his glazed eyes (he might have gone a
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
es, and dreaming ghosts of islands / /
rise half perceptibly.  / / World is numberless shades of blue, breaki
September Cruise
s along the river.  / / How can the sap
rise ?  / / How does the tree live?  / / The living spirit, as beautifu
Five Poems for Roni
radually, a peak behind hills / / that
rise or shrink as we move through miles and years, / / establishing u
Poetry
The bare trunks of the beech-trees / /
rise out of the bluebell-lake, / / and everywhere the clear green /
Seasons
/ / and if it were / / no hand would
rise to catch it.  / / This is a place without legend / / but not les
Water in a Wood
d / / is odd in a crowd / / and gives
rise to rumour.  / / Don’t talk in a train / / unless to complain.  /
Merrie England
lways south / / watching the mountains
rise , to where a valley- / / stream turned the dunes, his state was r
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
is the end.  / / The sap has ceased to
rise ” we think.  / / “Lay an axe to that brittle bole.”  / / Then, one
Renewal
y / / beyond the ribbon a faint shadow
rise / / which broke too the horizon of the sea / / and grew at leng
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
rbour, city and beach, / / against the
rising , broken range, through which / / (he smiled) his cousins were
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
y angled wings, / / its long neck out,
rising into slow flight.  / / The sight of a heron always lifts my hea
Omens
losed the harbour-city’s bay— / / rock
rising to a mountain, to a range, / / sand stretched out from the fla
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
while the rank cigar / / perfumes the
Ritz , my hands cease from their art / / to take arms, not in this but
The Black-out
/ / / One full half of the willow was
riven away, / / the other half hollowed back almost to the bark / /
Five Poems for Roni
till all is empty quarries, shells / /
riven by a Caesarian birth.  / / The fairy-story hero’s cake / / was
Mother’s Malison
in him, / / the world of his religion
riven by hate, / / everything sour and broken in his heart, / / the
Pietà
ught-blistered, cyclone-hit, / / quake-
riven earth, as though / / herself were in despair / / at man’s fail
Antipodes
Back Room, 1944 /
Riven temper runs along the table / / like a ladder down a stocking,
Back Room, 1944
exacts and justifies it all.  / / This
riven world in which we live / / one moment shows as whole and healed
Hymn
Return / On a curve of the
river / / a white swan / / and then another / / and six cygnets, fu
Return
a loved friend in the household by the
river / / and favourite uncle to the child who had / / first opened
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
one on this page?  / / Sell it down the
river , and make another start.  / /
Problem
our complaint, / / too much rain.  / /
River and tap will always run.  / / A little shift in earth and air’s
Drought
ow? / / misty country, / / soft-light
river ?  / / Are you the other?  / / Even the shadow / / cast by a cyp
Five Poems for Roni
/ the wide mouth of a sluggish-seeming
river .  / / Beyond, the ribbon stretching out for ever / / hardly bec
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
of the casual world, / / drawn to the
river but from it still withheld, / / take by its side their rest.  /
The Embankment
am.  / / Then the hills parted, and the
river came / / broader and fuller out across a plain / / many days m
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
s.  / / Misty willow / / dreams by the
river , / / drops a soft shadow.  / / You, in your other / / land, tr
Five Poems for Roni
han the immediate dry / / lust for the
river .  Far beyond it lay / / the fairy-promised girl.  That thought ca
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
sks were dry / / before he reached the
river .  Feverish / / with thirst and weariness, he felt the wish / /
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
e had been.  / / But here, just so, the
river flowed against / / the dark forest.  And now he knew the love /
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
.  / / Am I this shadow / / beside the
river ? / / —grey willow, other / / than olive.  Cypress / / are you?
Five Poems for Roni
hed sand, / / miles, days—crossed by a
river hard to cross, / / and closed by cliffs.  These cliffs, this pro
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
live, straight cypress, / / sea and no
river , / / harsh sea-light.  River / / weaves in this country / / so
Five Poems for Roni
nearly drowned / / lately, crossing a
river he knew well.  / / He turned along the bank, and certainly / /
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
he solid trunks flanking this along the
river .  / / How can the sap rise?  / / How does the tree live?  / / Th
Five Poems for Roni
/ is cypress.  Shadow / / of willow on
river / / is another country.  / / The waste, the loss we said.  / /
Five Poems for Roni
/ / better than when he’d reached the
river -mouth.  / / A new trouble: the choice of right or left, / / of
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
enched olive (willow- / / grey, but no
river , / / no mist)—another / / harsher country.  / / Here, in my co
Five Poems for Roni
ening suddenly showed his eyes / / the
river of his vision days before.  / / The other river, once his thirst
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
his vision days before.  / / The other
river , once his thirst was slaked, / / he’d recognised quite differen
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
chor.  / / They had no notion where the
river ran, / / but thinking of the mountains and the coast, / / trus
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
/ we remain masters of our worlds; the
river / / reflects the moon between our eyes and brain, / / and boun
The Black-out
arning how to wait.  / / He watched the
river running furiously / / outward, saw the forester’s ignorance /
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
o the bridge, and saw the reach / / of
river , silver at the full of tide.  / / “East from the sea and Greece,
The Black-out
o.  The track they tried / / led to the
river straight.  The fairy’s rancour / / was stilled for now, and in t
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
n Children of Woolpit / Over beyond the
river / / the children said / / was the shine of sunlight, / / on t
The Green Children of Woolpit
eeling, drank and drank / / (the fresh
river thrusting the ebb-tide) and / / crawled out again, heavy and di
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
d to Emily, ready to / / move like the
river to my certain goal.  / / She smiled: “this is no loss,” she said
The Black-out
The Embankment / The
river to the sea / / yields, slides up the stone the insidious tide. 
The Embankment
cliff-faced range— / / mountains!  The
river -water was nearly gone / / and in the mountains there would sure
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
sea and no river, / / harsh sea-light. 
River / / weaves in this country / / soft light for willow / / to s
Five Poems for Roni
/ / drained his life to themselves: a
river , wet, / / shining against a forest.  Then, clearer yet, / / her
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
ut in the country, down / / beside the
river where it starts to curl / / among the fields, after it leaves t
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
e memory up, he saw / / the beach, the
river , with those other eyes, / / the boy’s a hundred years perhaps a
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
ight’ he thought.  ‘The next test is the
river .’  / / That’s what he thought.  The tests came sooner, though— /
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
circles of desert spread: / / seas and
rivers , all water, sap, blood, / / all springs of earth and life drie
Stones
ar-grassed dunes / / miles away to the
rivers of Barnstaple.  / / Later one lodged at Perachora, from the san
Bury My Heart
and the sea.  / / He knew then the two
rivers were the same— / / the lesson of the two in one again.  / / So
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
ahead / / a single dogrose bush by the
river’s edge / / pushing its sprays out over the dark smooth water, /
Omens
(a rift in the firm-seeming rocks) / /
rives all we’ve done and all we could / / do, as the car-road rives t
The Rift
d all we could / / do, as the car-road
rives the wood.  / /
The Rift
w.  / / Down the steps from the sloping
road above us / / a form, my mother, came.  “From Cambridge how / / c
The Black-out
that he was walking back down the dark
road / / and could no more.  He dropped flat where he stood / / and s
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
along Ferdinand Street, / / the Malden
Road , and on until we trod, / / past and above the tramway terminus,
The Black-out
/ encrusted with the interest / / of
road and parliament and school, / / the priceless blessings of the We
Recessional
/ had left it more a guide-line than a
road .  / / And then, perhaps a quarter of a mile / / within the wood,
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
/ towards High Holborn, tired, a dreary
road .  / / But moonlit on the bridge the statues were / / like a wood
The Black-out
you want I cannot be.  / / Elsewhere my
road .  But that I take a road / / I owe to you—if I am partly free /
The Black-out
road] / Most of us, somewhere along the
road , / / find the way lost and the dark wood / / a fear.  / / I, al
[Most of us, somewhere along the road]
Anniversary / “Half-way along life’s
road …” / / half threescore and ten.  / / Half a lifetime ago / / a t
Anniversary
ar—but for the ancient cuttings / / (a
road here rutted in the rock) and in them / / the recent waste.  / /
Athens, Hill of the Muses; Evening
r wedding-day.  / / Down the white hill-
road , high above the sea / / the six white horses swept the golden ca
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
/ Elsewhere my road.  But that I take a
road / / I owe to you—if I am partly free / / from the slothful depr
The Black-out
The Grass
Road / I stepped out of my thoughts / / and saw the grass road straig
The Grass Road
ly not question, / / her narrow barren
road .  / / Loves children, could have been a loving wife.  / / Would h
Eugénie de Guérin
[Most of us, somewhere along the
road ] / Most of us, somewhere along the road, / / find the way lost a
[Most of us, somewhere along the road]
/ under Queen Anne, and North by a dark
road .  / / North, and then West again by the Old Bailey / / towards H
The Black-out
ne and all we could / / do, as the car-
road rives the wood.  / /
The Rift
t of my thoughts / / and saw the grass
road straight between dark hedges / / patchworked with green and grey
The Grass Road
Turning bewildered, the old well-known
road / / stretched where he’d come—but turning again, grew / / a mon
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
wood / / watch the sleek sweep of the
road .  / / The exposed trees absorb the fumes / / which seep into our
The Rift
[A long steep
road to climb] / for Anna / A long steep road to climB / / Nears the
[A long steep road to climb]
oad to climb] / for Anna / A long steep
road to climB / / Nears the top.  Turn.  TherE / / Now, look, under cl
[A long steep road to climb]
of sewing, cooking, correspondence, the
road to the mill / / with its flowers, birds in the garden—made her j
Eugénie de Guérin
Past Camden Town we took the Chalk Farm
Road , / / turned with the tramlines along Ferdinand Street, / / the
The Black-out
ther’s life.  / / That corner where the
road / / turns from the fields into the wood, / / we met there some
From the Air
d once more / / north up the Grays Inn
Road .  Where the moon shone / / across a tram-wire mesh, we met a mass
The Black-out
ng they would strew / / flowers in the
road .  Who gave fear a glance?  / / All this now in its turn forgotten,
Sur le Pont d’Avignon
owling.  / / Hecate’s come to the cross-
roads !  Clash the brass quick!  / / Draw him, bird-wheel, draw him (you
Spells and Love
ut the isolated brain grows tight.  / /
Roads closed, wires cut, / / he sees no more the known nor knows the
Nijinsky
/ —a stranger in these parts.  / / The
roads I took turned into lanes, / / lanes dwindled into paths, / / a
A Ballad
ll Circle / Uproot the rich hedges that
roads may be wider / / that more cars may carry more carcase-ladings
Full Circle
sy?  Wrack / / and doom along that same
roadway would blow.  / / Wheatfields fired, a pleasant city’s sack /
Sur le Pont d’Avignon
s are ways for hate’s advance.  / / The
road’s gone now.  Rejoice with us then, who / / but dance, dance on th
Sur le Pont d’Avignon
shall find ourselves made free / / to
roam the pastures side by side?  / /
[The grass in the next field]
the horizon.  He was come.  / / The even
roar , compact of swish and slap / / innumerably varied and repeated,
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
/ / blood cooler, quieted the pulse’s
roar , / / it drowses.  Now among the smoke and stone / / the deadly p
Country and Town
and others in whose silence sounds the
roar / / of a remote, fanatic fire.  / / To each a tower: fanatics ha
The Party
/ could not be seen.  Even the clap and
roar / / of water heaved and hurled on rock was lost / / in general
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
lled at a cold stream, / / a shot bird
roasted on a stick-fire.  On / / thin rough grass of a valley-alp he d
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
shot down a seagull for his breakfast,
roasted / / on old dry driftwood from the high-tide mark.  / / He ate
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
riest comes to the altar, / / finds it
robbed .  / / Gone the silver monstrance / / with the flesh of God.  /
The Shepherdess of Cahuzac
ays to press on.  / / This restlessness
robbed him of some delight.  / / Issuing to sunlight from an icy strea
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
nto grey, / / dreamed of a dragon or a
robber -knight / / against her, of his long and terrible fight / / fi
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
ar name for archaeologist / / is grave-
robber .  / / Not without reason.  / / Still, might perhaps the master
Label
ry shifted like the shifting mist.  / /
Robbers and dragons make an easy dream.  / / How can a hero find a way
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
ghter, is sobbing.  / / Who killed Cock
Robin ?  / / Cromwell, I think.  / / Victoria busily / / stamped the g
Merrie England
/ / Hunger burns the palace-wall, / /
robs the revered graves.  We see / / the singer silent at the fall /
Dark Age
hen they were other / / than the other
rock .  / /
Music is Landscape
ell swings its shock / / against rough
rock .  / /
September Cruise
shoulder there, a tower / / founded on
rock above her quivering pool.  / / It was a love-match (though most s
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
e sat where the sand ceased against the
rock , / / an old, bowed woman, busily engaged.  / / Black dress, blac
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
The West of Ireland / Gorse and
rock and bog lap the wall / / and wind hurls the sea in the home’s fa
The West of Ireland
root / / of a green tree grappling the
rock .  And dressed / / and clambered nimbly up the cliff and on.  / /
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
ing / / its firths round us, embracing
rock and field.  / / Here too sea clings round the hard land / / but
Varangian in Mickelgard
uttings / / (a road here rutted in the
rock ) and in them / / the recent waste.  / / Climbing among pines /
Athens, Hill of the Muses; Evening
Greece / Sea; rocks and sea;
rock and pine, / / red earth and olive, pine and bare rock, / / brok
Greece
ed at the sea.  / / He looked along the
rock , and presently / / glimpsed them, clumped low under the water-li
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
, / / watched light changing on broken
rock , as day / / climbed and declined.  And dreamed of the princess.  /
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
ver the sea.  / / East we fare, and the
rock -bound dreaming island / / shrinks and hazes, and dreaming ghosts
September Cruise
/ / edge to knife-edge with the naked
rock / / breaking down in a pine-torrent of green / / or rock straig
Greece
beyond it fades and fails / / between
rock -broken falls / / and rough growth of the steep / / difficult sl
[The track up the wild stream]
/ / red earth and olive, pine and bare
rock , / / broken rock climbing to a point of snow, / / to the blindi
Greece
olive, pine and bare rock, / / broken
rock climbing to a point of snow, / / to the blinding blue of sky; di
Greece
ll of the Muses; Evening / The quarried
rock drops to the slums, / / like looking from a train into backyards
Athens, Hill of the Muses; Evening
hall, sad, / / crowded cuttings in the
rock endure; / / where now, out of the slums, Athenian poor / / clim
Athens, Hill of the Muses; Evening
with lightened feet.  / / Hewn from the
rock / / huge he lies, / / relaxed and watchful, / / serene over th
September Cruise
Fossils / Here in this
rock lie stony semblances / / of shells—here was the sea; / / and in
Fossils
d surf-line closed / / in cliffs and a
rock -naked promontory.  / / That way he trudged, and suddenly—check an
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
ome / / and hand, firm / / on notched
rock .  / / Oh, the subtle / / steps of the couple / / on the high wi
Sea Cliff
passed above / / and shattered on the
rock .  One arrow gone.  / / Be careful.  He looked where the two flasks
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
un.  / / Crossing the thistle-bristling
rock / / one stumbles in the square-cut marks of man / / having flat
Athens, Hill of the Muses; Evening
ched, heard, the water churning round a
rock / / or falling whitely in a widening pool / / from the next cli
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
imbing land, flat on the coast / / the
rock -piled and the sandy promontory / / alike in his foreshortened vi
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
se by, / / the joined streams formed a
rock -pool, deep and spread.  / / He shivered, but he stripped, plunged
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
p enclosed the harbour-city’s bay— / /
rock rising to a mountain, to a range, / / sand stretched out from th
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
rt cried out in fear / / for some firm
rock , rose circling and alit / / on love—not the half-child’s romanti
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
The land stoops to the sea.  / / Cliff,
rock , sand, pebble beach, / / yielding or hard / / throw back the wi
The Sea
lose themselves, or break on sand, / /
rock , shingle—continent or island, / / coasts lost down bare horizons
Shipwreck
r fancies.  Me, / / I’ll sit under this
rock singing, my arms about you, watching / / our two flocks cropping
Shepherd’s Song
down in a pine-torrent of green / / or
rock straight to an olive-pearly plain, / / straight to a blinding or
Greece
between the wild wind and that wall of
rock ?…  / / Suppose he made the shore…  Those barren ranges / / climbi
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
/ / itself still rooted in the quarry
rock , / / the marble mountain.  He lies below the face / / they chise
September Cruise
the beach-curve ended at the steep / /
rock .  There dossed down, at first uneasily / / but later in a long un
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
romeda, who naked / / chained on a sea-
rock , waited / / out of the wave / / a monstrous love / / —but her
The Sea
roar / / of water heaved and hurled on
rock was lost / / in general clamour and din.  But he was sure / / th
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
Greece / Sea;
rocks and sea; rock and pine, / / red earth and olive, pine and bare
Greece
closer, must perforce / / drive on the
rocks at last, and that be all.  / / The boat staggered under a gather
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
ched and reached / / behind the piling
rocks .  At last appeared / / a great wall of south-facing cliff, which
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
/ we lose the illusory fire— / / grey
rocks ; bushes green, many-coloured, dark.  / / Once it blazed to heave
Makherás
w sandstone cliffs, / / long low black
rocks enclosing / / clear pools and foaming / / firths of tide, fenc
Bury My Heart
e radio / / Schubert’s Shepherd on the
Rocks .  / / For me, you.  For you, / / Stephen.  I wish I thought you /
For Cecil
th thin jade, / / broke down to island-
rocks .  One took the shape, / / he thought, of a girl sleeping on a be
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
aradox / / (a rift in the firm-seeming
rocks ) / / rives all we’ve done and all we could / / do, as the car-
The Rift
/ / and half my mind in Greece, among
rocks , still / / clambered Hymettus.  Suddenly stood plain / / great
The Black-out
he col, late in the afternoon, / / the
rocks to left and right climbed steep and bare / / to peak on peak, a
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
ctuary / / below the lighthouse on the
rocky promontory / / looks over blue gulf-water to the blue / / moun
Bury My Heart
er’s care / / they walked, indeed they
rode —at the bank-side / / a trim boat, rigged, provisioned, lay at an
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
ushcross Grange.”  / / But I: “remember
Roe Head and Law Hill, / / remember Brussels.  Can you find it strange
The Black-out
this city sits me ill?”  / / “Brussels,
Roe Head, Law Hill—exile and prison,” / / she said, “but sometimes on
The Black-out
atullus, Villon, Aeschylus, The Song of
Roland , / / Leopardi, Theocritus, Palamas, / / Heine, Hoffmann von H
Poetry
nd shine.  / / Sink into / / the seedy
role , laudator temporis acti?  / / No.  Bad trouble, but even our sick
Desert Island?
Relax / Clouds
roll off.  Summer is truly summer, / / green sea foaming in cow-parsle
Relax
feat us / / (one revolution’s low / /
roll on without us up).  / / Knowing this will be so / / love more th
Two Summer Songs
d, and suddenly in cloud and blaze / /
rolled back across my heart the gain and loss.  / / I swallowed, but t
The Black-out
pappos / / (a Syrian princeling of the
Roman age / / honoured by rich Athenians of that age / / with this r
Athens, Hill of the Muses; Evening
.G. on a wall / / in chalk R.H.  On the
Roman vault / / Adam is made man in one image, Eve / / in another wo
Fossils
ful— / / sad, an old tale, / / fable,
romance …  / / False?  But there’s something there, / / the beauty’s th
Heron and Gulls
alit / / on love—not the half-child’s
romantic dream: / / some deep unknown knowledge of love, her rare /
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
hens and Sparta, Paris and Berlin, / /
Rome and Carthage, London and Edinburgh.  / / The world goes round and
On the Border
r dead in the sea.  / / Lays of Ancient
Rome on my seventh birthday:  / / Horatius breasting the Tiber race, /
Poetry
of good / / drown in angry blood.  / /
Romeo and Juliet, / / Leila and Majnun, / / loving children / / che
What Hope?
h the dog-days of Macedon, / / through
Rome’s opulent autumn, all but vanished / / in the long white winter
Greece
Five Poems for
Roni / / / / / / One full half of the willow was riven away, / /
Five Poems for Roni
their own light.  / / Hearth in a dusky
room .  / /
Winter Garden
or.  / / He found the handle.  The small
room dazzled him / / with shafted sunlight falling on a bed.  / / She
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
voice said:  “Mama, no; / / there isn’t
room for him.”  And it was true; / / there was no room for me if she s
The Black-out
im.”  And it was true; / / there was no
room for me if she said so.  / / “Au revoir.”  “Au revoir.”  I shut the
The Black-out
a light.  No one.  / / Empty the single
room .  On a rough block / / were cheese and bread, a jug of water.  Dow
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
Back
Room , 1944 / Riven temper runs along the table / / like a ladder down
Back Room, 1944
ne at all.  / / No one.  The empty guard-
room seemed to wait— / / bench, table, brazier, weapons on the wall,
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
/ blackberry-flowers in the bramble’s
room , / / small-change for a cheapened purchase.  / / The seasons pas
Dance of the Seasons
e mystery / / puzzled him of the empty
room , stale food / / but other thoughts took over.  Combed and cleaned
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
ch other or / / themselves.  She to her
room to ply her thread / / in secret—work forbidden her, not for / /
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
ffort.  This still / / place affords me
room / / to think as well as feel, / / to study what I owe / / and
Villevieille
ears and fled.  / / He half-noticed the
room was filled with light, / / and hurrying down saw half-unconsciou
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
ained face / / raised to the curtained
room , white in the moon— / / that youth she met so often in the wood
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
e / / to guide in draughts and grease (
rooms over shops) / / rude Master Tom’s and prim Miss Betty’s hops.  /
La Fontaine et le Déluge
/ of night, all empty; and the opposite
rooms / / showed lightless windows, uninvolved as tombs.  / / The nig
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
into our smoky rooms.  / / Yet houses,
rooms , these woods too, are, / / no less than cigarette and car / /
The Rift
o begin.  / / Through all the courtyard
rooms , up the curled stair, / / through bedrooms, boudoirs, everywher
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
he fumes / / which seep into our smoky
rooms .  / / Yet houses, rooms, these woods too, are, / / no less than
The Rift
he last, dropped more lately, took deep
root / / at Sheepstead, quiet country of water and wood / / between
Bury My Heart
reamed of the princess, and watched the
root / / of a green tree grappling the rock.  And dressed / / and cla
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
beyond hope of mending / / lie at the
root of every decent life; / / those who sit still, and those who fal
The Black-out
d broken through in two places near the
root / / so that only three struts of worn wood / / held up the tree
Five Poems for Roni
behind, / / her blonde is mousy at the
root .  / / The laugh too, and the voice, are faked…  / / So what?—The
On the Towpath
out to sea, / / ships sliding by…  / /
Rooted and green / / these seem (though without roots, / / without s
A Wreck
gh unexpressed) / / to break its spell-
rooted defence, and pass / / in, but because the blind pain in his br
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
han of most loves) is the way / / it’s
rooted in a deep determination / / never to hurt / / the other—a thi
[Yes, you’re right]
is here in the block, / / itself still
rooted in the quarry rock, / / the marble mountain.  He lies below the
September Cruise
usy hands, flicker of steel / / at the
roots of life, a scarlet flood— / / and other hands, quiet, soothing
Block 21
d green / / these seem (though without
roots , / / without sap, / / their greenness not their own), / / see
A Wreck
gh song of wind in rigging, air / / on
rope and wood, in canvas, clap, rattle.  / / His arm along the tiller,
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
/ Feeling his neck jerk on the tautened
rope / / he turned again.  Descending, to dree out / / his weird at h
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
d hour, / / hanging herself in her own
rope .  / / We shall not see her like again?  / / Well, that’s too much
Great Britain
s and knees in dark, / / weight of the
roped truck / / cutting naked loins.  / / But that was long ago, / /
Causes
’s / / voice breaks) hedge-reborn, the
rose .  / /
[Housman was old beyond his years]
d.  / / We had turned North, for when I
rose again / / out of the pit, I saw the portico / / beside us of St
The Black-out
/ and suddenly among those / / a white
rose , and another white rose.  / / The wild rose was my flower.  Good t
[Late October hedges]
gain the heath / / where once, between
rose / / and larch, Hell was.  / / Life is sweet, / / as you did not
Two Poems in Memory of Anne Frank
scattering heralds again / / the hedge-
rose and the solstice’s return.  / /
Sixtieth Summer
s lit with roses.  / / The years of the
rose are done.  / / Each year the flowering briar / / has touched thi
Epoch
n black.  He snatched his knife / / and
rose at her with all his pain in hate.  / / And then he saw her eyes a
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
er down a forest-track.  / / The trunks
rose black out of the level brown; / / against the blue the patterned
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
/ whom he must somehow save.  The vision
rose / / blotting the world out with its otherness.  / / But while he
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
k, / / finally stops / / where a wild
rose -bush flowers / / at the edge of a copse.  / / Monstrance and Hos
The Shepherdess of Cahuzac
y-flower among the berries), / / a few
rose -bushes burning with red hips, / / and suddenly among those / /
[Late October hedges]
ed out in fear / / for some firm rock,
rose circling and alit / / on love—not the half-child’s romantic drea
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
imrose, / / bluebell to buttercup, dog-
rose .  / / Flower-seasons return / / but not the season’s flowers.  /
Seasons
first of the faggots they laid / / the
rose from the wood.  / / Shriven, she raised her face / / to the swee
The Shepherdess of Cahuzac
nst lost years / / gone with the white
rose / / horribly lopped, / / the manner of the loss / / and all th
Die Weisse Rose
t him to the sand— / / soft sand which
rose in a long rampart, crowned / / with coarse grass—pricked him and
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
/ I turned away / / and another omen
rose in front of me: / / a heron, lifting its wide grey angled wings,
Omens
easons come, the seasons pass.  / / Dog-
rose in the hedge is answered / / now by campion in the grass / / wh
Dance of the Seasons
Summer Vision / A wild
rose lifting / / from the hedge-top / / hooks its way upwards, / /
Summer Vision
tolerable month be June? / / —with the
rose light in the hedges to lift or droop / / over the fields of dais
Sixtieth Summer
irth below / / his horse threw him.  He
rose , looked round, and said / / “Beautiful are the cornfields, white
Gunnar of Lithend
Die Weisse
Rose / Munich, 1942–3 / Hans Scholl, Sophie Scholl, / / Alex Morell,
Die Weisse Rose
/ / heather, bracken, moss, / / wild
rose on the heath / / —bare from bony feet, / / fouled, burned—recre
Two Poems in Memory of Anne Frank
born.  / / The image of the christening
rose once more / / before him in its primal clarity— / / and could t
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
whose skin and breath alike sing of the
rose .  / / Petals we know must fall, / / and not all days are good, /
Gratitude
Summer / From every hedge lightly the
rose / / scentless, ephemeral and wild / / prodigal to all passing t
Summer
Divinity / Lightly blows / / the hedge-
rose , / / sways, clings, / / white, pink, / / and I think / / ligh
Divinity
se / / a white rose, and another white
rose .  / / The wild rose was my flower.  Good that these late flowers /
[Late October hedges]
interrupted song.  / / There is no last
rose .  / / This year the constellations crowd and wander / / richer,
Five Poems for Roni
, and another white rose.  / / The wild
rose was my flower.  Good that these late flowers / / are here for me,
[Late October hedges]
own your life / / for the constellated
roses .  / /
Epoch
s in.  / / Now from the hedges drop the
roses , / / and now before my donkey-nose is / / nostalgic autumn bec
Man’s Seasons
Another Summer /
Roses in the hedge / / scattered prodigally, / / eye and heart fille
Another Summer
e other things this year (may, daisies,
roses ) / / late coming but, now come, here in profusion.  / / We are
Buttercups
’s the end being old / / so gather the
roses of ripe middle age.”  / /
[The municipal building stood square in my dream]
leave in June, / / the hedges lit with
roses .  / / The years of the rose are done.  / / Each year the floweri
Epoch
oems in Memory of Anne Frank / Orders /
Röslein auf der Heiden / “Soldiers, advance against the enemy.  / / Sh
Two Poems in Memory of Anne Frank
r why.  No hint of fear / / clouded her
rosy thought of being loved— / / a new thought almost; though a smoot
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
nce.  / / “Why do you paint the past so
rosy ?  Wrack / / and doom along that same roadway would blow.  / / Whe
Sur le Pont d’Avignon
t summer four years gone—that’s gone to
rot / / in yielding featureless black mould below.  / / For the first
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
r, spin your choking web / / —you will
rot there with the flies.  / / Insult-tinselling flattery, / / cat-an
Royal Family
e cap, the sandals, and the sword) / /
rot unclaimed under the stone.  / /
Dark Age
The seasons in the years went round by
rote , / / each month for work or less work docketed, / / only in the
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
by either party.  “It wasn’t meant”’s a
rotten / / excuse, doesn’t excuse.  Spiritual blindness / / is fault
Treasure
imless ordered way, / / our planks are
rotten , our sails are gossamer…  / / But dark is unaware of the truths
Voyage
und in no purpose or unity, / / planks
rotten , seams uncaulked, thin sails torn, / / drifts shuddering in th
England, 1981
and affections hanging / / rags on his
rotting age, / / yet he could still coax from the air, / / note pain
Beethoven
the house grew old / / slowly, quietly
rotting , / / dustily, gently flaking, / / dropping to pieces round h
Mariana in Miniature
e gone / / since we burned the maid at
Rouen ) / / drenched the brush with petrol round the mountain hide-out
Makherás
dship, with the aging author / / of Le
Rouge et le Noir and La Chartreuse de Parme.  / /
Time’s Reach
inged by hills, / / a distant, lovely,
rough and empty land.  / / Learning from rangers, lost for lonely mile
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
was caught, / / trapped, pinned on the
rough bank; yet still she fought, / / biting him, scratching him, and
Pelopia and Thyestes
me grinding my raw knuckles / / in the
rough black London grime.  / / I’ve fallen before / / (my feet almost
The Fall
o one.  / / Empty the single room.  On a
rough block / / were cheese and bread, a jug of water.  Down / / in o
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
eir love.  / / Later, in a swift gorge,
rough cliffs above, / / shared toil and danger made part of their dre
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
od must start again.  / / Larch, gorse,
rough grass, / / heather, bracken, moss, / / wild rose on the heath
Two Poems in Memory of Anne Frank
d roasted on a stick-fire.  On / / thin
rough grass of a valley-alp he dropped / / his weariness, and slept w
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
/ / between rock-broken falls / / and
rough growth of the steep / / difficult slope.  / / People have scram
[The track up the wild stream]
wind her brilliant head / / by time’s
rough gusts soon to be tonsured.  / / Spring came, and hardly come had
Dance of the Seasons
him no better than a badger here— / /
rough -handed serf in perpetuity.  / / The seasons in the years went ro
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
/ I try to follow, but / / too steep,
rough , hard / / for this old / / body.  I yield, / / a little sad.  /
[The track up the wild stream]
ne dividing (dun green from black) / /
rough immemorial pasture from new plough, / / laid face on arm he wep
A Dream
n a long fall.  Water / / —always rain,
rough in a storm, dripping / / gently, a cloud.  Water—always the sea,
Varangian in Mickelgard
sea-swell swings its shock / / against
rough rock.  / /
September Cruise
/ and one no longer cares / / to put a
rough thought into kinder words / / or keep it silent.  And at all our
Back Room, 1944
rom Archilochus / / / The spear is my
rough wine, as it is my bread, / / and even when I’m drinking my spea
Two Songs of a Mercenary
t / / “One day I shall walk / / these
rough woods, / / those hills that climb and part, / / this clear sho
From a Train
sign; / / a bronze mirror, its shine a
roughened green / / but on the back still, delicately lined, / / a l
Label
/ / Watched, heard, the water churning
round a rock / / or falling whitely in a widening pool / / from the
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
The world goes round and the words come
round again.  / / Down in the plain Napoleon or Pericles / / draws to
On the Border
/ / now wind-blown clear, now eddying
round again, / / the founts unquenched, the fumes of brimstone spill
On the Border
nk?  Well satisfied, the five / / stand
round and look down at the gifted bud.  / / The little boy, wrapped to
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
/ his horse threw him.  He rose, looked
round , and said / / “Beautiful are the cornfields, white to reaping. 
Gunnar of Lithend
ndon and Edinburgh.  / / The world goes
round and the words come round again.  / / Down in the plain Napoleon
On the Border
melting now / / in changing unchanging
round , / / build the world where we must build.  / /
Exchange
ity.  / / The seasons in the years went
round by rote, / / each month for work or less work docketed, / / on
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
stone to raise / / your lovely garden
round .  / / Did you suffer much?  / / Would to know the answer help?  /
For Cecil
e traces and be free.  / / The world is
round , fortunes are made, deeds done.  / / The youngest son sets out w
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
owers.  A soft cloak spread, / / my arm
round her neck, I comforted / / her fear.  The fawn soon ceased to fle
Love Scene
gently flaking, / / dropping to pieces
round her.  / / She could not lift a finger / / with all the time in
Mariana in Miniature
den / / found itself as a jungle.  / /
Round her the house grew old / / slowly, quietly rotting, / / dustil
Mariana in Miniature
Magic / Late in a winter night, / / a
round high moon lighting the field path home.  / / Cold…colder…then, a
Magic
r of sets of teeth so even…?) / / Look
round .  His black is thin behind, / / her blonde is mousy at the root.
On the Towpath
/ / Felicia Dorothea Hemans says / / “
round his breast on a blood-red field of Spain;” / / who saw his way
The Black-out
/ but the white shore, the wide horizon
round it: / / action and dream were centred on the sea.  / / His nurs
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
ched hair curves in a cunning fall / /
round masked skin.  / / Only the fixed brown eyes seem to reveal / /
Song
midnight, / / I found the whole world
round me suddenly whiten.  / / In memory’s chest a drawer full of cert
A Hoard
ter breaking, / / softening, resolving
round me, vanishing; / / but sometimes suddenly the cold, retaking /
The Black-out
sea / / against the sun, but somewhere
round midday / / the wind shifted into the north, and he / / turned
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
ns settled him / / into their timeless
round of beauty and chore / / and the established tyranny of his drea
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
shining, Moon, / / fresh-oiled from a
round of bouts in the wrestling-school.  / / These are the springs of
Spells and Love
/ / Yet that sea shall endure / / its
round of calm and storm / / when all we see / / of land shall cease
The Sea
/ to finish some new thing begun, / /
round off some ragged, trailing tail.  / / But always there’s another
A Prayer
ssed him.  / / A third time frantically
round the bare / / ground-floor, a third time round the upper, and /
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
the stuff for spells.  Wind scarlet wool
round the bowl.  / / I’m going to bind my man to me, my hard love.  /
Spells and Love
ock and field.  / / Here too sea clings
round the hard land / / but other water is rare, rare as trees.  / /
Varangian in Mickelgard
/ / Long before dawn / / he’d foraged
round the kitchens, wine and food / / at least a week’s supply—writte
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
en) / / drenched the brush with petrol
round the mountain hide-out / / of Gregory Afxendióu / / —here, wher
Makherás
in one again.  / / So to the cliffs and
round the promontory.  / /
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
he bare / / ground-floor, a third time
round the upper, and / / in a dark corner of a corridor / / a small
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
sands.  / / With painful care he worked
round to his right.  / / The cliffs.  And under them a fire was lit.  /
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
torm.  The sea, reaching / / its firths
round us, embracing rock and field.  / / Here too sea clings round the
Varangian in Mickelgard
/ above, echo of blues that glow / /
round us (green, violet) in the sea.  / /
Delos in Spring
/ the late sun breaks through / / and
round us, me and you / / touching, the fairy world, flowers / / and
[Most of us, somewhere along the road]
where / / the body walks—loved places
round us then / / intensify the shuttered heart’s despair.  / / From
The Black-out
no ship.  / / When tide flows deep / /
round weedy timbers fish / / smooth-threading pass.  / / Tide out, on
A Wreck
while upward rears / / now the tower,
round whose channelled stone / / speeds gather as lives hurtle down. 
Anniversaries
Among the emperor’s guard the wine goes
round / / with rattle of dice and song, and some are thinking / / en
Gunnar of Lithend
and pain / / reek under the clear sky
round your birth.  / / Anne Frank lost her breath into that air / / j
Two Poems for G
e behind today.  / / To get it ordered,
rounded , kempt / / would be to die before I die.  / /
A Prayer
said; “not the scene / / which nicely
rounds so many wishful stories, / / where boy meets girl again, and w
The Black-out
lay awhile, / / but something made him
rouse .  Hardly in him / / the force that made him rise and struggle on
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
in the grave / / and raise a prince to
rouse the bride.  The knell / / ‘a hundred years’ turned to a voice.  S
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
leep not as you know it, from which you
rouse / / to your known world, but sleep so long, so deep, / / almos
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
ought?  / / A sudden violent blast / /
roused the prince brutally from his deep dream.  / / From the south-ea
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
gainst the good / / fairy, the bad was
rousing all her power.  / / His strength and purpose flowed and ebbed—
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
one, or some square in / / the bottom
row .  / / Another throw, / / but what you throw is all the same.  / /
The Game
the high wire / / I count twelve in a
row ? / / circling, twittering, sitting again there, / / gathering th
Swallows
e old line of the railway / / a formal
row , filament-flowers, / / radio telescopes with lifted faces / / li
Two Cultures?
s / / hot from the Court—the Queen and
royal child / / expected daily.  / / Always, other years, / / the Ki
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
Royal Family / Mary and Elizabeth / / each in her palace-cell alone /
Royal Family
know / / was born at court but not to
royalty .  / / Where?  When?  Oh, far away and long ago— / / farther tha
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
/ What words are there for Spring?  / /
Rubbed , tongue-repeated, all / / become conventional, / / dull.  Yet
[What words are there for Spring?]
awareness of tomorrow.  / / Brief wind
ruckles gulls’ feathers, wrinkles water, / / drops, still.  Break from
For Rachel
in her face, friends giggling, crowd’s
rude cracks / / barking about her, the poor child makes tracks / / o
Pelopia and Thyestes
ring, spying on her high griefs—coarse,
rude — / / crossly she turned her look and step aside.  / / But felt a
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
ghts and grease (rooms over shops) / /
rude Master Tom’s and prim Miss Betty’s hops.  / /
La Fontaine et le Déluge
e? another? odd.  / / The mirror made a
rude reply.  / / There go I.  / / There goes the grace of God.  / /
Reflection
r.  / / My thoughts posture, / / but a
rude thought / / sits in the corner / / and laughs them out.  / / On
Catharsis
/ and, part of what we ruin, we shall
rue it.  / /
Man in Nature
/ and, part of what we ruin, we shall
rue it.  / / He cracks the nucleus and cries “I knew it!  / / Nothing
Man in Nature
/ / and part of what we ruin, we shall
rue it.  / / Is the wind free and strong? we must subdue it / / “Blow
Man in Nature
/ and, part of what we ruin, we shall
rue it.  / / The world’s our wilderness.  Man fumbles through it, / /
Man in Nature
en, yes, and guide.  / / The birds, the
ruffled sea, changelessly changing, / / the changing changeless cliff
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
iller.  Dressed / / and wrapped up in a
rug he slept until / / the summer dawn brightening above the water /
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
of her.  / / We, though wrecked nature
ruin us in the fall / / we forced, have had our vision.  While we live
The Reckoning
man can do it / / and, part of what we
ruin , we shall rue it.  / /
Man in Nature
ll bond still / / and, part of what we
ruin , we shall rue it.  / / He cracks the nucleus and cries “I knew it
Man in Nature
ower and will— / / and part of what we
ruin , we shall rue it.  / / Is the wind free and strong? we must subdu
Man in Nature
ted overspill / / and, part of what we
ruin , we shall rue it.  / / The world’s our wilderness.  Man fumbles th
Man in Nature
saw half-unconsciously / / the castle
ruined .  But she was there in sight.  / / He caught her by the gate-hou
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
e bastards leave each other alone?  / /
Ruined if I go—there’s only my pregnant wife—” / / “I hope it’s a boy
On the Border
really belongs to this.  / / The castle
ruined , the great thorn-barrier / / was breached and withered too.  Th
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
/ wipe out nature with us (or else / /
ruining nature we may destroy ourselves).  / / But I am still / / tha
Gratitude
ow come, here in profusion.  / / We are
ruining the nature we know and love, / / but nature is not ready to g
Buttercups
y, 1986 / Reactors burn.  / / Clouds of
ruinous dust / / wander in the random winds.  / / We know the father’
May Day, 1986
m attributed to Theocritus / Pelops may
rule his country, Croesus count out his money, / / Achilles outrace t
Shepherd’s Song
s odd in a crowd / / and gives rise to
rumour .  / / Don’t talk in a train / / unless to complain.  / / Veil
Merrie England
kis, a golden boy / / ploughs with his
rump a furrow in the blue.  / / The Sea-god, ardour kindled by the vie
September Cruise
ch rain.  / / River and tap will always
run .  / / A little shift in earth and air’s / / metabolism.  Bareness,
Drought
/ I stand on the balcony.  / / Children
run and shout / / on the beach, splash and shout / / in the sea.  Gro
Climacteric by the Sea
uinevere’s bed] / Lancelot’s blood must
run in Guinevere’s bed / / because he could not have her maidenhead. 
[Lancelot’s blood must run in Guinevere’s bed]
[Lancelot’s blood must
run in Guinevere’s bed] / Lancelot’s blood must run in Guinevere’s bed
[Lancelot’s blood must run in Guinevere’s bed]
ls / / and their mothers, cropping it,
run mad on the mountains.  / / So to this house may I see Delphis bolt
Spells and Love
an otherness / / between that and the
run of men?  / / The mangled reputation lies / / stoned, to be spat o
H.A.R.P.
A child’s children play by the shifting
run / / of white water, where children played their mother / / playe
[White foam sweeps]
/ Humfry Payne thirty-four—two years to
run / / or four or six; is your tale like to be / / equal to ours?—o
The Black-out
ng she’ll turn to her own ends / / and
run the world’s course at her own pace / / long after we have thrown
Buttercups
er?  / / Dark power / / of formula and
rune , to trust / / you would be worse and sillier.  / / Trust, no.  Bu
Uncertain
ds outside Verona, / / and among those
runners he seemed / / not to be one of the losers, but the winner.  /
Two Glimpses from Dante’s Hell
and watched the waters to the sea / /
running , and swallowed down the tears of shame.  / / I pulled my hand
The Black-out
t it gave / / and set the righted boat
running before / / the wind, aslant towards the stretching cliff, /
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
His lady bent above, / / the hot tears
running down her face, and cried / / ‘My knight, my prince, my love’,
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
view.”  / / My eyes followed the water
running faster, / / fast to the sea—and sudden I saw new, / / as out
The Black-out
how to wait.  / / He watched the river
running furiously / / outward, saw the forester’s ignorance / / (inl
The Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
burning rays.  / / By now the tide was
running :  Keats, Housman, / / Milton (L’Allegro), Marvell, Donne / /
Poetry
Back Room, 1944 / Riven temper
runs along the table / / like a ladder down a stocking, like flame /
Back Room, 1944
cover / / contours of earth, and water
runs by walls.  / / I sought my guide’s look: “uncorrupted lover / /
The Black-out
s / / metabolism.  Bareness, / / water
runs thin / / thin as grass.  / / The desert shows through flaking gr
Drought
/ / against the older boys / / would
rush through the camp-site, flat / / out, crying out “Louise, Louise,
Vignette
John
Ruskin’s Wedding Night / Quick to beauty more than is common / / but
John Ruskin’s Wedding Night
e torches.  / / The oak still holds its
rust and the beech its red / / but winds have washed the gold from th
Dance of the Seasons
up your bright swords, for the dew will
rust them.”  / /
Against Deterrents
ildren / / paddle and shout.  The waves
rustle .  Yet silence / / encloses all in crystal.  This is an empty /
For Rachel
et not, deaf Time, before your doubtful
ruth / / in the last instance do we lay our plea: / / our judges of
Prayer to Time
eve, / / disguising from ourselves how
ruthlessly / / Age takes everything we hate to give.  / / Huddled in
Age
t what it seems / / after all, and its
ruts are less true than our dreams.  / / In the business of living, it
Hymn
the ancient cuttings / / (a road here
rutted in the rock) and in them / / the recent waste.  / / Climbing a
Athens, Hill of the Muses; Evening