English Music

Hear the wolf’s sermon under the moon:
The waves in the blood.
How the conversation of angels
Takes such strange turns!
I was cut down, roots on end...
I was raised up as a rood…
I was all wet with blood…
Your eyes:
Spirals carved in sarsens,
And in cathedral stones.

Bind me a riddle, a charm,
To weave my word-web true.
I sign my name in rain,
Wind-walking over hills,
Cloud-clerk in a druid’s cape.

Heaven hear me,
Chanting with Tallis and Byrd
The whole world’s wyrd,
Neglecting no beauty,
Forsaking no dream.

Custom creates in the air,
Nesting under words’ eaves,
Cooing in the dreamer’s ear
The breath of other lives.

Wolfish passion for the mutable
Strolls about the landscape,
Sucking up the sodden earth,
Nourished at its breast.

Wistful swathes of mist and fog
Usher shades into the mind,
Opalescent messengers
Of atavistic omen.

Felicities, affinities
Find me out wherever,
Witching on a bat’s wings
In the evening glow.

Babooneries revel in the margins
Of illuminated hours;
My life: - a chalice, a tapestry,
Serpentine-ornate.

Harmony of idiosyncrasies,
Rising oratorio:
Riddle, puzzle,
Historiated initial.

This lacustrine stillness
Is Englishness,
Deep spirals reared to conjure
Rising-falling waves.

Jesting pirate, go now,
Steal the sun’s Golden Fleece;
Voyages and argosies
Await on the open sea.

English is to me Mayan glyphs
Or Linear B; limning its curves
I scratch out my being
On water, bark and stone.

Motley is my preference,
Setting life to dance like a bear
In reckless pandemonium,
Masque and anti-masque.