STREAM
This young water
In my young day
Nosed like a hound
Through the meadow.
Changing, scarcely
Changed, it winds
Through Gloucestershire,
The Windrush stream.
Winds in a changeless
Image a
Recalling eye
Throws to the mind.
Mine is what’s gone,
Not what’s to come;
Then, I lived now,
Now, I live then.
MOON
O up there, zero
Shape illumining
These hills, and that lake—
Puller of water,
Puller of blood, blind
Eye not looking, but
There, opaque, a ball:
Have seen you over
A dead roofscape of
Human sleep; wondered
Why you beat so still.
Even the mobile
Windy surface of
Ocean seems, under
The quiet metal
Of that refracted
Lambency, gorgon
Struck.
Now have seen how,
Soft as a fruit,
Our blueveined mother
The warm, appalling
Earth rises, vapoury,
Over your shoulder.
VALLEY
Valley of rock and snow,
The coarse grass burned yellow.
Hide, rib-cage, a hollow
Ram’s horn. Here eagles flew.
The white ropes of water
Dangle from a black scar.
That road leads to the sea
Where ships in harbour lay.
The Roman tuba blew,
Glinted. An echo here.
RIVER
A certain place
A stretch of time
Or water. Here
In summer I
Float on its arm.
Mountain, air, cloud!
A bowl of stone
And light! Like a
Fish this river
Slips from under
Me and these. The
Stone brow ever
There may follow,
Even the sky.
For, burly with
Rain, sinewy
And grainy streams,
The flood eludes
Old bounds, and hawks
At a tree-root.
MOUNTAIN
An outjutment
Where a slow bald
Swell of moorland
Declines. Old bone,
Old stone bone, wind
Beater still, still
There, in cloud or
Under snow, a
Waterbitten
Old mountain, stone
Obstruct. Cohere
Old rock, black slate!
Water can break
Granite: softest
Beat hardest, but
Not this mountain.
The mountain is
Rooted in bog, and
Glittering water.
Here below, bogrush,
Ragged robin, streams
Quick with fish. Heavy
Winged herons flap off
And a thumping hare
Tacks through white grass. What
Antithetical
Short stir, softness.
Cold now, cloudshrouded
Helmet of wind, a
Congealed mud, oldest
Rock, almost deaf as
Starlight. The light turf,
Scabbed lichen, cracked stone,
Holding a sky up.
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