only then would he let me trace the frozen river which ran through his face
a sweating unexploded mine buried deep in his mind
only then did i come close
i love thee to the breadth and depth and height my soul can reach
the passion put to use in my old griefs
if god choose i shall but love thee better after death
marks of weakness marks of woe
the mind forged manacles i hear
every blackening church appalls
theres some corner of a foreign field that is forever england
a dust whom england bore shaped made aware
a pulse in the eternal mind no less
of cloudless climes and starry skies
one shade the more one ray the less
a heart whose love is innocent
nothing is flat or parallel
these eggs in a wire basket
hung out over the edge of a slanted universe
the summer lapsed away
as twilight long begun
our summer made her light escape into the beautiful
chain mail glinting to set me free
teenage crushes on worthless boys whose only talent was to kiss you senseless
we're content but fall short of the divine
it promises light
it will blind you with tears
its fierce kiss will stay on your lips possessive and faithful
its platinum loops shrink to a wedding ring if you like
she sits in the tawny vapour
he has fallen in the far south land
page full of his hoped return
and of new love that they would learn
warm thick slobber of frogspawn
the daddy frog was called a bullfrog
the great slime kings were gathered there for vengeance
in sleep rehearse perfect kills and eat
now i hold creation in my foot
i am going to keep things like this
and fill all fruit with ripeness to the core
or on a half reaped furrow sound asleep
where are the songs of spring
summer is fading the leaves fall in ones and twos
an estateful of washing
something is pushing them to the side of their own lives
bent double like old beggars under sacks
i saw him drowning
he plunges at me guttering choking drowning
the old lie dulce et decorum est pro patria mori
i met a traveller from an antique land
look on my works ye mighty and despair
nothing beside remains
lone and level sands stretch far away
the wasted young turning up under their plough blades
like a wound working a foreign body to the surface of the skin
a broken mosaic of bone linked arm in arm
slipped from their absent tongues
it was a time of rapture clear and loud
the pack loud bellowing the hunted hare
the orange sky of evening died away