Airing The Chapel
We made our high bed in the low chapel
(Methodist of some kind, I forget which).
White sheets reflected in the slick varnish.
I never did like chapels, as I told you.
You agreed of course. We like them now,
for making love in. And the flowers!
They were all white that out-of-season-
snowdrops, lilies of the valley, cow parsley-
and two paired white butterflies.
When the preacher and his ladies visited
we feared for their devoutness
but they were only studying the cabbage whites.
They'd seen a lot of beds in the chapel, they said.
Lovers kept it aired and stopped the dry rot.
The man chatted man-to man with you
about your job. I can't remember what it was.
In Manchester, I think? Anyway, that night
we made love gravely and with reverance
by candlelight and moths, and afterwards
admired our shadow-pattersn in the aired varnish,
and the warm transparence of our fingertips.
Body Language
He loved her so he wrote
a long, passionate poem, melting
his heart's wax on the page all night,
burning the wick of his words at all ends
to attract her.
She loved him and her little cries
opened and closed like the night anemones,
scenting the empty air
with the witching words of her mouth
to call him to her.
Neither came to the other.
All night long he held himself spell-
bound in the small circle of his own light
until he was burnt out,
and she, mesmerized by her own charms
entered the flower of herself
and drew in her arms.
Not-Loving
The spine doesn't give or arch to it.
It is brittle and stiff like dried sticks,
winter parchment.
Not-loving is a spiky fingers scratching.
It is cracks and angles, not
smiling out of the round of the mouth and eyes.
There are no vegetables or flowers,
no fat baskets of wheat.
The barns are always empty and the sky is colourless-
not like any colours of water in East Anglia
or anywhere at all where lovers meet
Not-loving is having nobody to miss
when you come out onto a station platform
for instance, heart beating,
nobody to run to suddenly, arms open,
as to the harvest or a festival of bright flowers.
Stocking Up
Winter shall not find me withered
like the grasshopper. I take care
to store the autumn riches
against the lean times.
The body wilts and the head blooms
inside, amongst crab-apples.
My shelves are lined with delicacies,
salted or preserved in vinegar.
I have spiced some bitter memories
with dark, piquant humour
and bottled my resentments
ready for a hard winter.
Instead of weeping over ash of roses
I have laid in intellectual things
to see us through the long, cold evenings.
You may acquire a taste for my
asperities and vinegar when we are old
together indoors behind drawn curtains,
warmed by little, fierce fires
kindled with dead everlastings,
enjoying the residual crackle and static
of our summer conflagrations.
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