Surmise

“Boy killed on Bicycle”; smallest print, four lines
Islanded in a tossing sea of type,

Part of me for ever is the January morning
Coming into the Clyde in the frosty moonlight

A worn-out body laid in quiet earth,
Attendant trees, a wattle’s throb of gold,

In that keen morning it was good to wake.
The sun that roused the swans on the lagoon

This death of a man, this sudden stop of life,
Such total end, or such a faring forth
Into what regions?

When a man dies
We find that suddenly there’s time to praise him.

You chose a marvellous morning to be born,
The orange edge of dawn, the stars paling,

The bamboo cut to suit you from our garden
Has become your favourite stick – dried and varnished

Catching the distinctive T’ang of old China
She chooses for herself the character of Punctual Autumn

Like liquid silk in golden eddies
the honey laps into my tin.

Brother fare well, journeying to that Kingdom
Of faithful servants, and of work fulfilled

Little death of a little dog
In a death-wish world of news by body-count

They’re burning Old Sox’s shack
Just two weeks since he died.

A garden gracious, serene and spacious at Lambeth –
This is the dream, the vision that shall be its crown

..You they found fallen, holding a garden hose,
Where, year on year, you watered, weeded, nurtured things to grow.

Anna is one
What fun, what fun

Ninety years youthful, questing through generations,
historian of two hemispheres, quickener of other minds,

Raged, raged against the death of others’ light,
Toiled, fought, till sick and blind received their sight.

I praise a heroine of the Soviet Union,
pianist Yudina, through Moscow’s gloom
spelling a Mozart magical concerto.

..apartness conquered by the power of love.
Carry us with you as you journey on.

His question ranged the echoing galaxies
of empty cold unanswering space, returning
home to our earth.

Music and the Heart run hand in hand
Naked over the shining sand,

In the summit song of youth
A quiet quick catch of the breath.

My love and I in all agree
   As one, save this thing only:

Seraph my soul’s content
More longed than desert well

Before I loved or knew you were
   I spoke as I had eyes,

Alone to walk the dripping woods of spring
   While daisies spy you?

‘All things are flux: there’s nothing fast,’
Said Heraclitus, ages past,

The host of hills encamped around,
The sleepless army of the stars,

As homing bird the prisoning hand releases,
As tide, unyoked, brims up the beach anew,

…the thunder growling,
And winds mounting, and the sky falling,
And night, and you not here.

As water into sand
As cloud into clear air

Come death suddenly from the sea or cloud,
With the blast of thunder and the blinding shroud,

Part of me for ever is the January morning
Coming into the Clyde in the frosty moonlight

Above the great ship’s lifting bow
I watch the Pole Star nightly stand,

Sweet solitude, my supple slave,
Delicious concubine

Dark sea dark land lie close beneath
The muffling guilt of night,

My nine-hours son, so wrinkle-faced
Wry concentration of distaste
To find your Person so displaced,

The sun like a centaur leaping the ranges
Shoots to the heart my garden, shatters
The dew in a volley of wild carillons

You spoke, after long years, about the morning
That followed the night your first-born son was born:

Waylaid by Handel’s theme, I think of you
Now half a world away, and hear you say
‘His music always seems like coming home.’

You are late coming home
To the house we share
An audible silence
Chills the air

My love, I watch you thread your way, and turn
with a small timeless smile, and trail your trolley
unhurried through the gate of no return.

My dearest love, at seventy-nine
You’re not, and never have been, mine.

My dearest love, where’er you are,
just through that door, beyond that star,

Spring, at a bound. Once more the colourful chorus,
Daffodils first declare their lyric yellow,

Now for your birthday the single prunus bough,
by neighbour ’s kindness spared on a sentenced tree

… obliterating in instant mini-time
a universe of suns and planets
with or without their myriad forms of life,

Always a step ahead, you’re eighty-three,
My life-support, contending other me,

Down arches of the years I hear your voice
explaining serials of our late departures,

Six years since your last birthday in our midst
seems yesterday, in this same so-loved house,

For ever is the promise. I will trust
To share with you the same light and same dust.

‘Eternity and time becoming one’
you wrote for Daniel’s one day in our world.

Wrapped in my gown of self-regard sublime
I heard your voice arrive from outer space.

Knowing the time was short
Yours was the instant thought
‘Let’s go up to the Rocks!’

Ten years since that incalculable day
When from all worlds we know you slipped away