The Tactician

I am so old, oh very old, my children,
   Ye that are so young,

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.

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

Out of this questioning, eventual truth;
Out of this doubt, faith rooted in the rock;

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

Not vile, body, nor foe, flesh,
Your joys deluding, triumphs trash,
Fit to be foiled your every wish.

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

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

This is where the water hurries under the archway,
This is where we enter the long tunnel,

Gone away, away,
Suddenly at a word departed,

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

..The fifth day of November, Fifty North and Forty West,
Was edging to its departure, like an undecided guest,

The drowsy air, the throngs that gaze,
The ceremonial stir,
Mixed with the drone of Latin phrase..

Hauled headlong starward by the quadruple conviction
Of lion-lunged engines in their pride of power

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

Riding the wind, in planetary sweep,
The gull wheels on the radius of a wing.

Straggling off the highway in search of firewood
Past the tins and bottles, through the rusty wire,

Could we locate the enemy of mankind
(I mean the GHQ, the Centre itself,

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

Waking to a diapason in the downpipe
I peer through curtained panes to a curtained sky

When you were caught red-rooted in the drain
You wept of course, but did the same again

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

The tree-trunk rounds, a fallen Doric column,
are tumbled on the grass beside my gate.

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

No dolphin it was, but a six-month suckling whale
gashed and shark-mauled, tribeless, motherless,

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.

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.

Crossing the highway, furtive as a snake,
it slips through bush towards indeterminate hills.

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

Land of the singing light
Light that first I saw
Eighty years and more

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,

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!’

With joyless spade I dig the tiny grave
Asking, who made me lord of life or death?

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

Moths! Moths! Moths!
In trouser-leg, singlet and shirt..

“Up here the schooners used to come
  For timber, years ago,

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

Not vile, body, nor foe, flesh,
Your joys deluding, triumphs trash,
Fit to be foiled your every wish.

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

Out of the cloud my Lord the Sun,
Out of the earth my Lady Spring,

Twelve foot’s the rise and fall
Of barometric Man

This mountain means discovery, since the day
I climbed it first in boyhood and alone,

Hauled headlong starward by the quadruple conviction
Of lion-lunged engines in their pride of power

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

From this rock spine, not three feet wide,
Rivers of a continent divide

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

Riding the wind, in planetary sweep,
The gull wheels on the radius of a wing.

Straggling off the highway in search of firewood
Past the tins and bottles, through the rusty wire,

Stentorian mountain, resonant as your name,
I greet you with joy, I greet you, I give you thanks

The rousing sun’s sea-dance and dazzle
Burnishes grassy cape and cliff,

Waking to a diapason in the downpipe
I peer through curtained panes to a curtained sky

You hold the timeless in your brief green boughs
The cardboard angels, home-made crib, the straw,
The new-born baby older than Abraham

When you were caught red-rooted in the drain
You wept of course, but did the same again

Down the cliff path, in morning sun
Sliding, we stopped. The beach had gone,

These trees reached up for light
when Jesus walked on earth,

The young magpie, as large as either parent,
Piteously pleads the pathos of his need.

The tree-trunk rounds, a fallen Doric column,
are tumbled on the grass beside my gate.

No dolphin it was, but a six-month suckling whale
gashed and shark-mauled, tribeless, motherless,

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

At first it seemed a trek of migrant ants
climbing the skyline of this great red rock

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

..Three kangaroos, grey eminences, rose
staring, paws crossed, with worried faces fixed,

I heard a man of science tell:
The sun is ringing like a bell,

Come down from that Crest! It’s Australia Day, Emu –
We just want to say, mate, how much we esteem you.

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

With joyless spade I dig the tiny grave
Asking, who made me lord of life or death?

He lies unblinking, back and corpulent,
first lizard from his hibernation sleep