The White Goddess

All saints revile her, and all sober men
Ruled by the God Apollo’s golden mean -
In scorn of which we sailed to find her
In distant regions likeliest to hold her
Whom we desired above all things to know,
Sister of the mirage and echo.
 
It was a virtue not to stay,
To go our headstrong and heroic way
Seeking her out [...]

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Sometimes Nothing

Sometimes.
Only sometimes mind you,
when the streets are quiet in
that hazy half-hour before supper.
And a late summer’s sun pulls a
curtain of reds across the far sky.
Only then when no-one can see
I slow my hurried stride, and nipping
my eyelids closer together peer into
a new world.
The light shower of but a few moments
ago burnishing the houses and paths.
High [...]

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The First Man On The Moon

This dead world never lived; barren of sound
Dust lay unstirring from the first of time.
 
Only the shattered light splinters the ground,
Only the grave-cold shadows creep and climb.
Here mountains bare their sharp white fangs and grin
Impotent greed against the abysmal train
Of stars like lances, needle-fine and thin,
Tipp’d with blue fire to slay my shrinking brain.
Silent the [...]

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To A Poet A Thousand Years Hence

I who am dead a thousand years
And wrote this crabbed post-classic screed
Transmit it to you – though with doubts
That you possess the skill to read,
 
Who, with your pink, mutated eyes,
Crouched in the radioactive swamp,
Beneath a leaking shelter, scan
These lines beside a flickering lamp;
 
Or in some plastic paradise
Of pointless gadgets, if you dwell,
And finding all your [...]

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To A Poet A Thousand Years Hence

I who am dead a thousand years,
And wrote this sweet archaic song,
Send you my words for messengers
The way I shall not pass along.
 
I care not if you bridge the seas,
Or ride secure the cruel sky,
Or build consummate palaces
Of metal or of masonry.
 
But have you wine and music still,
And statues and a bright-eyed love,
And foolish thoughts [...]

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Casta Diva

in memory of Maria Callas
 
Diva – traditional termagant, soprano tantrums,
Scourge of conductors, bane of managers;
Or drifting on a sea of crisped bank notes
With Plutus in his afluent yacht.
 
And then retirement – a spectacled, middle-aged lady
Lecturing sensibly on interpretation.
 
But in the shades the tragic heroines
Mourn for their lost vehicle – La Gioconda,
Tosca, Isolde, murdering Medea;
But most [...]

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Dracula’s Daughter

She climbs out of her coffin
every morning, puts on
an old fur coat and drives
to school to be a teacher.
 
During the day she seems
almost human, though a shade
too interested in
the history of tombstones.
 
Giveaways are long black hair,
fondness for red ink,
the silver bat she sometimes
pins to her lapel.
 
Pupils are wary of her smile,
having glimpsed
through staffroom curtains
her ritual [...]

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Not Waving But Drowning

Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.
 
Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he’s dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.
 
Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead man lay moaning)
I was [...]

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