"The Life with a Hole in it" (1974)
#EnglishWriters #RhymedStanza Aubade
That note you hold, narrowing and… Like New Orleans reflected on the… And in all ears appropriate falseh… Building for some a legendary Qua… Of balconies, flower—baskets and q…
Light spreads darkly downwards fro… Clusters of lights over empty chai… That face each other, coloured dif… Through open doors, the dining—roo… A larger loneliness of knives and…
Waiting for breakfast, while she b… I looked down at the empty hotel y… Once meant for coaches. Cobblesto… But sent no light back to the load… Sunk as it was with mist down to t…
Closed like confessionals, they th… Loud noons of cities, giving back None of the glances they absorb. Light glossy grey, arms on a plaqu… They come to rest at any kerb:
Delay, well, travellers must expec… Delay. For how long? No one seems… With all the luggage weighed, the… It can’t be long... We amble too… Sit in steel chairs, buy cigarette…
Talking in bed ought to be easiest… Lying together there goes back so… An emblem of two people being hone… Yet more and more time passes sile… Outside the wind’s incomplete unre…
What are days for? Days are where we live. They come, they wake us Time and time over. They are to be happy in:
At last you yielded up the album,… Once open, sent me distracted. Al… Matt and glossy on the thick black… Too much confectionery, too rich: I choke on such nutritious images.
Love, we must part now: do not let… Calamitious and bitter. In the pa… There has been too much moonlight… Let us have done with it: for now… Never has sun more boldly paced th…
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,
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
My age fallen away like white swad… Floats in the middle distance, bec… An inhabited cloud. I bend closer… A lighted tenement scuttling with… O you tall game I tired myself wi…
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…
The mower stalled, twice; kneeling… A hedgehog jammed up against the b… Killed. It had been in the long g… I had seen it before, and even fed… Now I had mauled its unobtrusive…
The trees are coming into leaf Like something almost being said; The recent buds relax and spread, Their greenness is a kind of grief… Is it that they are born again