by the same author
Thorn Gunn
FIGHTING TERMS THE SENSE OF MOVEMENT MY SAD CAPTAINS POSITIVES TOUCH MOLY
JACK STRAW'S CASTLE SELECTED POEMS 195O-I975 THE PASSAGES OF JOY THE MAN WITH NIGHT SWEATS
essays
THE OCCASIONS OF POETRY: ESSAYS IN CRITICISM AND AUTOBIOGRAPHY SHELF LIFE
IT
faber andfaber
LONDON BOSTON
_I
COLLECTED POEMS
Philemon and Baucis
love without shadows - W.C.W.
Two trunks like bodies, bodies like twined trunks Supported by their wooden hug. Leaves shine In tender habit at the extremities. Truly each other's, they have embraced so long Their barks have met and wedded in one flow Blanketing both. Time lights the handsome bulk.
The gods were grateful, and for comfort given Gave comfort multiplied a thousandfold. Therefore the couple leached into that soil The differences prolonged through their late vigour That kept their exchanges salty and abrasive, And found, with loves balancing equally, Full peace of mind. They put unease behind them A long time back, a long time back forgot How each woke separate through the pale grey night, A long time back forgot the days when each - Riding the other's nervous exuberance -Knew the slow thrill of learning how to love What, gradually revealed, becomes itself, Expands, unsheathes, as the keen rays explore: Invented in the continuous revelation.
They have drifted into a perpetual nap,
The peace of trees that all night whisper nothings.
Odysseus on Hermes
his afterthought
I was seduced by innocence
- beard scarcely visible on his chin — by the god within.
The incompletion of youth
like the new limb of the cactus growing
— soft-green - not fully formed the spines still soft and living, potent in potential,
in process and so still open to the god.
When complete and settled then closed to the god. So sensing it in him I was seduced by the god, becoming in my thick maturity suddenly unsettled
un-solid
still being formed -
in the vulnerability, edges flowing,
myself open to the god.
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