‘Poems from prison! About
what?’
‘Life and God.’ ‘God
in prison? Friend, you trifle
with me. His face, perhaps,

I have this that I must do
One day: overdraw on my balance
Of air, and breaking the surface
Of water go down into the green
Darkness to search for the door

When I was a child and the soft f
Quietly as snow on the bare bough
My father brought me trout from th
From whose chill lips the water so
Dull grew their eyes, the beautifu

It seems wrong that out of this bi
Black, bold, a suggestion of dark
Places about it, there yet should
Such rich music, as though the not
Ore were changed to a rare metal

The old man comes out on the hill
and looks down to recall earlier d
in the valley. He sees the stream
the church stand, hears the litter
children’s voices. A chill in the

And God held in his hand
A small globe. Look he said.
The son looked. Far off,
As through water, he saw
A scorched land of fierce

We were a people taut for war; the
Were no harder, the thin grass
Clothed them more warmly than the
Shirts our small bones.
We fought, and were always in retr

When he came in, she was there.
When she looked at him,
he smiled. There were lights
in time’s wave breaking
on an eternal shore.

It is a matter of a black cat
On a bare cliff top in March
Whose eyes anticipate
The gorse petals;
The formal equation of

Nineteen years now
Under the same roof
Eating our bread,
Using the same air:
Sighing, if one sighs,