It is this great absence
that is like a presence, that comp
me to address it without hope
of a reply. It is a room I enter
from which someone has just

Shelley dreamed it. Now the dream
The props crumble; the familiar wa
Are stale with tears trodden under
The heart’s flower withers at the
Bury it then, in history’s sterile

You go up the long track
That will take a car, but is best
On slow foot, noting the lichen
That writes history on the page
Of the grey rock. Trees are about

I am the farmer, stripped of love
And thought and grace by the land’
But what I am saying over the fie
Desolate acres, rough with dew,
Is, Listen, listen, I am a man li

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

Scarcely a street, too few houses
To merit the title; just a way bet
The one tavern and the one shop
That leads nowhere and fails at th
Of the short hill, eaten away

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

Being unwise enough to have marrie
I never knew when she was not acti
‘I love you’ she would say; I hea
Sigh. ‘I hate you’; I could never
They were still there. She was lo

“Listen, now, verse should be as n
As the small tuber that feeds on m
And grows slowly from obtuse soil
To the white flower of immortal be
“Natural, hell! What was it Chauc

All right, I was Welsh. Does it
I spoke a tongue that was passed o
To me in the place I happened to
A place huddled between grey walls
Of cloud for at least half the yea