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From disco to disappearance.
march 1981
having this,
no fantastic hate
can rob you;
not devils,
not warriors,
not demons;
nor even angels,
spying from their steep slopes,
nothing, truly nothing
can rob you –
nor even this town,
that has a history
of theft and mutilation:
the churches empty,
the homes neglected
the parks choaked with weeds.
you do not need to stay.
you do not need to pay.
april 1981
i’ve not words
enough to say -
i saw you walking
on the road today,
nor eyes
prepared to follow:
folly ,
prey.
may i 1981
eclipsing streets,
a steady shore,
an ordered crash
of waves;
through sunlight,
shafts,
marbled clouds
a far, far out horizon,
unreachable;
unbreachable.
may ii 1981
i am
in envy of love;
i am in envy
of these two figures
strong as the sun.
i am in envy.
june 1981
how far do seas stretch?
here, my love;
beach,
sand,
dunes,
and rocks,
rising,
cliffs, rising:
we sit, hidden
in stumpy
heat-drenched grass;
a high hollow,
spread with towels,
a picnic, cigarettes:
and two tight bodies
curled like babes
observing
visions.
july 1981
on this shore –
on every shore
the sea rolls,
spreads,
swobs
expands
explains
but we –
you and i –
we are fastened like limpets.
we cannot leave.
september i 1981
the waves
of last night’s storm
linger, loiter
insist
endure:
they stir still;
they stir now,
white, wild, whipping
the heavy sea is not becalmed;
it slaps on jetties,
smashes the sea walls,
breaks up the boats;
and we must shelter.
september ii,1981
i have come
to meet myself again –
to catch up.
find fault,
find favour.
it is the same homing, bleak sea,
the same empty horizon
blotted out by mist.
my heart gives into it;
beats
like a forbearing tide.
october 1981
behind me
a television tower
feeds the air,
feeds a hundred thousand
unseen homes;
feeds them all,
gannets
razorbills,
gulls greedy as Ahab
with a rattle of stodgy voices
i cannot hear,
mayday signals
for the dying day
for the yearning empty night.
november i, 1981
november.
the pebbles are smooth,
grey, oval, wet;
they slide,
roll,
rattle;
children gather driftwood;
build bonfires.
the inlet –
south beach -
lies under a muscle of white cloud;
wheeling waves
whiten,
spread
a pale disappearing line;
we breathe air
no city has maintained;
i sit on a washed up
tree trunk
greatest of all.
november ii 1981
just above the line
thrown
by the strongest wave;
just at that point
where the sand shelves,
where it is wet, softer, darker
just at that point –
that is where the people group
where the people watch,
where they walk
throw stones;
the pensioner too,
in his fawn coat,
we are just at that point –
each day,
same time, same place
beside the shifting sea.
december 1981
hallo there.
hey!
hallo!
i see my face
under the street light;
i see that when this passion
has gone
the shop’s glass window will remain
reflecting it all back;
everything bloody thing
but hazy, sticky
with salt,
it is my father confessor
my witness to others
who walk,
like i
catching their faces,
in this unkind abrupt way
long before they are ready
to own up;
catching their features too soon
in the vast unending night.
february 1982
lean mountains
rise seaward,
rock on rock;
thin fields stretch,
taut as canvass
the first light
gilds the couch grass
across Swyddffynnon,
fills the hollows
from Pontrhydfendigaid
to Ystrad Meurig
runs gold
over Cambria.
march i 1982
unspeaking,
we’ve watched the day
wake and slide
unfelt;
old room in an empty house.
our bodies lie still,
unspent;
under the huge grey sky
there is no trade.
march ii 1982
briefly
i remember lying in your lap,
my stock against the night
electrically charged,
incriminated;
my fingers familiar
each contour known
as my own,
the warmth and texture
of your feckless flesh.
april 1982
her eyes coil
around a world
i cannot see;
in her head
are the smiles of friends,
and elders,
smiling sadly,
as they will smile
when she is dead.
may i1982
living by the sea
we have missed the first
graffiti of spring,
the scrawl of buds on bush
the harsh soft hasty green
the pebble beach is our park,
cold and hard
untranslated, unpreserved,
seen in flashes
moment by moment
without memory.
childless,
parentless.
may ii 1982
but for this
there is no other world;
this is the magic of your face,
the fascination,
the hidden sea -
waves rearrange the light;
currents coil beneath
like massive ropes
encrusted with barnacles
wrenching the water
dragging it this way
and that
dragging it into
a warren of rolling whitecaps.
this is the only place for love;
this time my heart
will take its ancient path
unseen.
may iii 1982
somewhere,
somehow,
something
will end;
just not be there;
we’ll wonder why we ever looked;
adjoin,
ajar,
elude,
escape –
the door will never
close again.
will never.
may iv 1982
remember that old image of summer;
the blooming trees,
heavy with green;
the flower crowd and scent –
someone sitting
near the house;
someone playing
the music of old scores on the piano?
it never was.
get up and go;
the door is open.
may v 1982
i cannot see it in your eyes,
the lover, mistress, master -
it is only the ocean i see –
the eternal cross of light
dimming in the depths
late as the latest
night-known dreams
the trances and delusions –
the truth.
june i 1982
this cold magic has –
as possession –
every length of time,
has the fascination too,
and the light it steals:
oh, how it steals the light –
dragging it beneath the waves
with such dark grace
only a fool would not follow.
june ii 1982
stay in.
we are cannibals
together;
adequate, sufficient.
all we need
is all we are.
june iii 1982
she dreams with her eyes;
shapes of ships
and long dark seas;
a diviner,
a first time diver,
going places -
such places as you never saw
and being all he is,
he is all hers
and she dreams on.
june iv 1982
apart from casual pain
he will never walk disarmed,
as if always
into a steady
blade;
no street lights
light this night road
by the sea;
pavement sand
scratches
beneath his soles;
in the sky
the summer air swims,
swarms
dry and noiseless
it swallows his tread,
gulps it all down
in the dead
dead calm.
june v 1982
the early beach opens
summer warm;
summer light
blots out the blackness
of the night;
rebuilds
the mislaid world.
june vi 1982
that night
the widower
returned to church;
reached
into the fresh earth;
fetched back the ring.
Renunciation sat with him;
- the wake - the two of them;
pouring drinks,
discussing, discoursing.
seeing
what now came next.
june vii 1982
you do not know me
as i am -
though everything i do
returns to you.
the open door
is open still;
i cross it every day
and do not say
and cannot stay away.
september i 1982
time is
to draw apart
like knifes;
no air divides
but we have been divided
like the hardy dead.
september ii 1983
this interchange,
this weaving
is nothing but defeat.
your love –
so monumental,
floods, like desert rivers
fixes,
precise as tombs.
this story has moved on.
it is at quite a different stage
to the one it was
when this first started;
to the one it still thinks
it is at.
you do not seem to know this;
you are not where you kicked off.
you are twisting the blade
the wrong way round
there are only
strangers here now;
long ago, the old landmarks
passed by,
passed out of reach
passed out of sight
poised, hospitable
cocooning, gone-
as if they were never ever there.
september iii 1982
things
that were said and done
have dried;
your face has bleached,
is filed away –
still in place, of course -
but a reference point now,
a point of departure
for all the rest of time.
september iv 1982
and is it what you will –
the real world
left long behind
by this,
our horror not to talk;
guessing secrets
that flash like landing lights?
october i 1982
your busy guilt
guilds the moon,
illuminates your story
like a medieval book
a Decameron
written in ciphers
even you can’t unencrypt.
october ii 1982
of course, i go over
the long, long moon
with you;
i exceed in love;
marvellously mortgaged,
the forfeits pledged
without cost;
the loses paid
without redemption.
november 1982
tonight
the world goes out
to tackle love;
in all its forms
in bars and rooms
i’ve never seen;
in disco halls;
and in the shelters
along the dark promenade –
even beneath the girders of the old pier –
we make ourselves immortal,
as we can.
december i 1982
your fingers know each bone
on my skull;
remember –
they have played with my hair,
pushing it back from the forehead
in the way of people
who are allowed to touch
who are permitted
this too-close contact.
december ii 1982
there was a moment
when rather than
hold your hand
i walked side by side
beside you;
then ,
there was a moment
when i walked ahead of you
down the street
all down the street,
that one and the next
down the roads that have no end.
january i 1983
only you;
not dead after all;
so come now
and crease
into the flood;
come,
come –
just you –
just now
just as the sad tide sweeps
sea to sea,
just as it scopes up each separate share
surrenders it
to the wider wilder waves
out in the dark Atlantic.
january ii 1983
this staircase make words for thoughts;
they come
a cool spring night
of open doors,
of silver air
floating from Cors Caron,
from the abbey ruins at Strata Florida
well-travelled,
intimate
keen.
and see –
how ghosts the loss,
how it easily -
so easily
defies what woke us
unkindly
january iii 1983
he is waiting
for a
larger constituency
something i will not offer;
cannot.
he trapped by recognition
unable to defraud
deface
delight
now
he merely holds
the balance.
february i 1983
after answers,
this silence has been building
a long time;
i watched it
from all you left
unsaid,
distorted by love
a sudden fortress,
a strong fastidious wall
within and without
that the world
had already filled.
february ii 1983
your silence is as old as knives;
we have been cut together
nicked,
punctured,
sliced,
slashed,
and in the gaps
grows all the rest of time.
february iii i 1983
it is the same as when i left it –
Brynhavered;
though colder perhaps,
the empty rooms
damper,
the fires needing to be lit;
the lights turned on
against the mountain rain
beating down from Claerwen.
march i 1983
now they pass
almost unnoticed,
unimportant,
they demand no decision
no share or cut of land
no cause to anger for.
i join nothing,
committed to small things
and old destructions.
march ii 1983
snared as a child
the rest of time
is one long sorting out;
an assault,
annihilating the jungle
to find a single, particular, tree
whatever it is;
actually,
whatever it damn well is.
april 1983
as Atlantic armies
you and i
seeking the very end of love;
leaving history to others -
and to others too
the procedures and embarkations,
the constant boardings and arrivals
the life plans,
the town-to-town
ports of call
at ports with long
unrememberable names;
the manifests
that testify
all that was ever there –
or said it was.
may 1983
the ashen force of ancient kilns
assured your shape,
took it
wheel wet and vulnerable;
roman hands filled you,
used you,
lost you,
left you
to be resurrected
from an field of early wheat:
and still they stand,
the modelling hands
the fingerprints
baked into an unknown
potter’s pot
june i 1983
to the sea
her sight has gone;
her eyes
kindle on gold;
on the spinning waves;
on a boat,
shadowless,
a mile from the shore -
day of sun.
day of beech;
scratching sand,
watching boats;
bodies, bodies
in the waves –
heads
bobbing;
heads screaming
in the curling green
salty dim.
june ii 1983
you hold me
in your arms
like snow;
mould me,
make me,
a creature of heaven and hell;
and i wait;
and wait
i wait
for your fine disturbing entrance
into rooms;
for your
heartbeat eyes,
your favourite shirt
( a hideous thing, purple, lyrca);
your gait.
god, how i wait.
july i 1983
two people;
the space between
is not the barrier;
we will erect the pavilion
in fields that flow:
that spring and roll and drift
gilded, and golden, glittering
we will crop the gain.
we are kings;
no labyrinth limits us
july ii 1983
a tall sail
sentinel as sun
points rigid
on the roll
of tiny waves.
the day is stripped
like a winter tree,
reduced
to the simplest of forms
as if someone
had taken the riggings
on the corners of the world
and pulled hard,
pulling open the openness,
the endlessness,
the never ending
bumping-into-nothing
endlessness.
erupting –
a gift
from an unremembered god.