Willow Tree: Two Years After    

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,

Spring held her fire
So long, the long pursuit, the watchers wondered
Would there be ever an end

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.

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

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,

My little son, whose face I never saw,
Who could not wait to bless your father ’s eyes

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,

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

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,

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

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.

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