from Blackwater Quartet, selection 104

Inventions in the Pastoral

The vales of Suffolk overhear the moon,
that watermark of light so neatly hung
this summer night, so close. What steely rune

compels us to attend the orbit strung
along that nothingness, its cinder seas,
the baggy shunt of ridges and the flung

air— fossil atmosphere a fossil breathes,
a perfect dust Apollo civilised
and then abandoned, thirty years since these

and now indifference? The ghost we prized
in touching, calculations set-foot upon
all past, all jetsam and unrecognised:

here tourists call the tune, praise paintings John
Constable began in moonlight on the lawn.

§

This precedent for life, a life for life,
duration marked in time, say truly how
uncomprehending wounds betray the knife.

The fuss, the circumstance so middlebrow
yet coveted, the seconds on account
unproved in retrospect: to make a vow

and kiss, a softer light now paramount,
a light upon a softer light, the spark
that rises. Where is time that minutes mount,

return to emptiness and less? Tidemark
confessions fade, less sweetly love, faint
in letters’ damp-cut sandy script, and mark

this elemental energy’s restraint
here within the physical, lost love’s complaint.

§

The air is filled with our belief, delight
in present voices and the subtle fall
of worlds. Dissolve into my eyes. We write

the name— ours, read this secret weather’s scrawl
of promises, the light of Suffolk crazed
with storms’ electric shadows, love’s windfall

now. We escape our lives to find them, raised.
I am your other life, love’s true embrace
or nothing. Atoms charge, expectant, dazed.

What month is this, what minute waits, what trace
eclipses all and leaves the sun in trance,
each day the dawn invented in your face?

We are each other’s lives, and love’s advance
here, its touch and lemon zest, each day the dance.

§

This injured time: my missing you is blood
on snow, the gnawing animal’s escape,
this snare of weeks without you. High clouds scud

and still no rain. The mile high vapours ape
condensing thunderheads but only dust
descends. I walk to meet you. This dreamscape

I make of air and oceans and trust
impossible with waiting; meet me there
in promised showers, faces upturned just

accepting wet, warm expectation. Where
this heaven’s stars descend, each named, each bank
of constellations lights the bright nowhere.

The empty distance fizzes with the spank
of falling stars. The stars that measured time, sank.

§

This elsewhere love, this shuddering heat, this
dallied seismic meltwater spring— absent,
the beauty I recover sallies. Promise

me. Memory predicts a subsequent
muse, burns through consequence and thus we change,
else cower here in brittle postures, rent

and beggarly. This core regard, the strange
unseated past life drifting faint, still faint
and then release to meet our lives’ exchange,

the stoking ringing rivet touch: acquaint
each heart, each torn heart bright with remedy
of love. Each incandescent moment’s feint

transcends the clockwork hours. That flinty scree
slides beneath us. Senses avalanche. You. We.

§

A long road, seasons pass. The dial of lands
discovered in each compass-spun degree
returns to lanes and sundial shadow hands.

The village testifies to change, ennui,
intent of generations to resolve
the past, con firm the future’s pedigree

of lightfall leaves, of planets that revolve
around this autumn’s steady sun, the moon
concussed with impact strays that so evolve

from dust to dust the pleasant afternoon
seems distant now. We shelter here and take
our chances with that future pulsing noon,

the journey now, to sink the landmark stake
deep, as love commends, this heady weather’s wake.

§

The telephone assembles space and need.
Your voice’s oxygen… it breathes me through
these vacuum days. The airports interbreed

and garish tail fins flag each rendezvous

as though departure’s needle pressed the soft
entitlement of earth and air and you.

A life we save to hard drive, Microsoft
configurations wedge this cipher sea’s
unruly flux, finds patterns fixed aloft.

Shall we forget what we predict, and please
each stranger as we please ourselves? No prayer
invites a lesser god when higher gods appease

the supplicant. The prayer wheel spins, and there,
eased into the virtual, thus, voyager.

§

You move, and as you move you sway to meet
the air’s magnetic rhythms, and observe
love’s nuance, sense its subtlety and heat.

Consider our parts, each, what we preserve
securing life to life, hypnotic, skin
soft-peeled exposing rarer tastes. The nerve

divines it in the mouth. You move within
my mind, become all time, a present tense
that will not shift or fade, and hovers then

above our bodies in a sweet suspense.
Imagine this on waking: window bright
with moonlight, footsteps on the moon. Convince

the sky. The stars slip through our fingers. Night.
Pisces tumbles through the room; this shared delight.

§

We stand in altered space. The sky is red,
your face is warm, this touch, your mouth so cool.
I kiss your fingertips, a voice, match head

deliverance that purifies the fool.
Beginnings disconnect their shadows, slip
the spell. The subterfuge of love’s misrule

invites a further consequence. Equip
us with delight in one-another’s lives,
and indicate the seamless bonds that trip

each swallowed volt of paradise. Thus thrives
each pale confession, comfortless, miscast
in perfect bronze. The moment missed survives,

bequeathed to public places, and the vast
sky’s itinerant routine of first and last.

§

…and waterwalk the skin of fathoms, or
drift down to step among the broken ships
and through this metaphysics’ open door

to you, the weather at the fingertips
a sultry driven weather, binds the deep
and bears this breath of molecules. Your lips

allow this dreamy stuff, this lovers’ leap
within. I breathe the sea and do not drown,
and anchor everywhere the waters keep

their rolling counsel. Love is hand-me-down.
our vows exclude this journey. Promise this,
accept this risen centigrade, this down

of atmosphere the loving pricks. The kiss
heats, connects each anvil cloud: the lives we miss.

§

The summer fields are baled and life seeks out
its true companions. Rain confirms
the whimsy of an English August. Rout

of rooks in stubble acres sets the terms
for weather frayed by oak horizons, suede
diffusing clouds, the light that reaffirms

a ragged century, its last decade.
We sense the retrospective absence, seek
some solace where those passing worlds persuade

the resurrection of that gawking geek
time. Still, we stare beyond this rage, deserve
stars, lighted love to overwhelm the freak.

The moon is buried here, the moon’s preserve
in Suffolk. Phases swell your planet’s met curve.

§

Recovering Arcadia— we swing
the best of heaven for ourselves, the chance,
the magic mean, the quill of angel’s wing,

consider each our true inheritance.
We bring the ocean with us, depth of air,
the gold-leaf rubbed relief of lost romance.

We choose this pain, and choosing pain we share
pain’s consequence. How else know paradise?
Love’s first rule states that lovers shall despair

of love, each body sunk in love’s device.
The pulse is tasted in the throat. We seize
that salty beat, that sucking marrow’s spice,

a blueprint of the physical to please,
startle, and invite this infinite reprise.

§

And you and I within a universe
of second thoughts without a second chance,
my life in you, our lives in each rehearse

a future, here, past, shaken from a trance,
returned to cold stone, brackish metallic
pool standing silver edged, a secret glance

and nothing: love dismantled brick by brick.
We walked together on the moon, in light
upon a softer light, presumed the trick

of breathing empty air, the raw snakebite
of air and still alive. Within us now
we fix the orbit of that satellite

to break with gravity, fall, rise, somehow
breathe, the common gain of steady breath; somehow.

§

Love’s revelation passes. Who were we
imagining some special grace would twist
our shadow circumstance into a plea

of tender enterprise, and so exist
in fiery spirit realms where love improves,
and presences within the room persist

long after lovers leave? What love removes
returns in certainty and overwhelms
each life, accepting time, its criss-cross grooves,

the stars’ machinery above the elms
indifferent. The Suffolk sky exchanged
our August for September. Steeple realms

are tangled, moody cloud skein we arranged.
Now, swear this love for life. Spare, save the life love changed.