"The Life with a Hole in it" (1974)
#EnglishWriters #RhymedStanza Aubade
Those long uneven lines Standing as patiently As if they were stretched outside The Oval or Villa Park, The crowns of hats, the sun
Lambs that learn to walk in snow When their bleating clouds the air Meet a vast unwelcome, know Nothing but a sunless glare. Newly stumbling to and fro
Words as plain as hen—birds’ wings Do not lie, Do not over—broider things — Are too shy. Thoughts that shuffle round like p…
The widest prairies have electric… For though old cattle know they mu… Young steers are always scenting p… Not here but anywhere. Beyond the… Leads them to blunder up against t…
I have started to say “A quarter of a century” Or “thirty years back” About my own life. It makes me breathless
Marrying left yor maiden name disu… Its five light sounds no longer me… Your voice, and all your variants… For since you were so thankfully c… By law with someone else, you cann…
My mother, who hates thunder storm… Holds up each summer day and shake… It out suspiciously, lest swarms Of grape—dark clouds are lurking t… But when the August weather break…
When she came on, you couldn’t kee… Fighting your way up through the o… Tup—heavy bumpkin, you confused yo… Fell in the drum —how we went ha h… But once you gained her side and s…
How distant, the departure of youn… Down valleys, or watching The green shore past the salt—whit… Rising and falling. Cattlemen, or carpenters, or keen
About twenty years ago Two girls came in where I worked— A bosomy English rose And her friend in specs I could t… Faces in those days sparked
In this dream that dogs me I am p… Of a silent crowd walking under a… Leaving a football match, perhaps,… All moving the same way. After a… A second wall closes on our right,
New eyes each year Find old books here, And new books, too, Old eyes renew; So youth and age
When first we faced, and touching… How well we knew the early moves, Behind the moonlight and the frost… The excitement and the gratitude, There stood how much our meeting o…
I feared these present years, The middle twenties, When deftness disappears, And each event is Freighted with a source—encrusting…
That Whitsun, I was late getting… Not till about One—twenty on the sunlit Saturday Did my three—quarters—empty train… All windows down, all cushions hot…
