Collected Poems

by Peter Redgrove

  The cliffs it seemed had shaken out their ridges,

  The ridges had shuddered off their stones like houses

  And anything rubbed finer than house-size

  Hurled away quick by water or wind-torrent.

  So nothing grew, like a beach of pebbles

  And they nits on a mouseskin. Seventy miles

  Of this from the camp they reached a peak

  Where they could see a green tree-clad mountain

  Higher and more thunderous than the rest

  With jungle at its roots and temperate pine

  In broad bands up its flanks

  And scudding misty snowland at its crown,

  The peak missing in the sky.

  The jungle was cleft in gorges full of water

  Rushing along like busy traffic

  The trees seemed full of people in bright colours

  Chattering and laughing among the man-sized leaves,

  The boles marched away among the undergrowth of bushes

  Linked to the tree-tops with swinging vines

  And there seemed a flow of shapes just out of sight

  Where the beasts slunk or the sunlight scattered,

  They couldn’t tell. They had to build bridges

  And toiled easily being men of war

  With faces set at midnight, up, till it was cooler

  To the temperate terraces, and the tang of pine.

  There by a cliff and a new swinging bridge

  They set camp for a day and rested

  Having been a week up on these slopes

  And glad to have high level ground beneath them.

  And rested, and yet could not rest,

  Not for worry of their commander’s bride

  Untouched except by pleasant jests

  But for something just out of hearing

  A sort of pipe like bats or twitter in the ears

  A tinkling like hanging shapes of glass

  And to straining eyes a flutter through the trees,

  A waterfall perhaps on a gusty ledge,

  A broad, spasmodic waterfall, or a plantation

  Of flowering bushes, maybe, whose colours

  Turned over, appeared or disappeared in wind,

  In the soft wind through the warm pines,

  And, yes, just at the edge of scent too

  Perhaps, just, a new perfume?

  It tickled at their senses all that night

  As though they saw and heard and smelt

  Through a deep silver bowl of reflections

  And just at the rim something moved

  Glimpsed stretching, hinting and – teasing?

  But being the men they were all obeyed

  And got a good night’s sleep among the needles

  With the portable shrine set up among them

  And the veiled god watching over their prayers

  And watching through the night of – tickling?

  Night and their dreams and long soldierly celibacy

  Gave them the answer by guessing long before

  The wooden fretted houses and broad walks

  Of avenues trained in shade; the second guess too

  Of flowering bushes had been correct but

  In such profusion and piled high

  In banks and cloudworks of perfume

  And many flowers to their amazed

  And eye-rubbing senses had detached

  And glided in shapes between their bushes,

  Thronged avenues with their scent and with

  Their high flower-speech talked. They sang

  And laughed too; this took all their surprise

  From them as well for none showed through

  When the band of men went up to a dawdling group

  That had stopped to stare and explained their business.

  ‘Your wife has been here over a month,’

  The first words, and no surprise,

  ‘Just now resting in bed for the child

  Is strong and tires her with his jumping,

  But you can go and look at her.’

  He had lost his anger with surprise,

  His senses were so full perhaps

  And let himself be led across a courtyard

  And through a stone door and through wooden gates

  Through an enclosure open to the pine-patterned sky

  Where flowers in banks and flower-patterned couches

  Vied in profusion with all their colours.

  Their air was heavy with all their colours

  And the cries of rejoicing of the bees

  And among them all in that enclosure

  One white flower raised her head eating

  And smiled over creamy plums and gourds

  And signed for him to leave.

  The first woman said:

  ‘Some of us have been here ten years already,

  While your wife has only just arrived.

  This is where our master lives. He is a match

  Face to face for a hundred armed men even.

  We must go behind his back, where his shadow is.

  Slip away before he comes back but let us have

  Forty gallons of strong wine, several dozen

  Catties of hemp, and ten dogs

  For him to eat. That will hold him.

  Come at noon, no earlier, ten days from now.

  Now leave quickly.’

  Back to their camp on the lowest terrace

  To be over-rested and tormented,

  Tinklings and flashes through the trees,

  Thoughts at night how they might send down a party

  Of flowered silken night-visitors,

  And thunder growling from the summit

  And the nature of the god keeping them back.

  At last ten days had moved along the pine-needle floor

  In sunblades, and quiet-walking they returned

  With strong liquor, dogs and skeins of hemp.

  The woman said:

  ‘Our master is very wise and godlike

  And a great drinker and likes

  To try out stupidity by drinking.

  He loves to test his strength when he is silly

  And gets us, laughing at us, to tie him down

  To his couch with silks all twisted

  Then he frees himself with a leap.

  But once we bound him

  In silks twisted in threes together

  And it took him two leaps to get up.

  His body is like iron, but he protects his groin.

  We think hemp within the silk will keep him down.’

  She pointed to a gorge: ‘Hide there – it is the food-store.

  Be patient and quiet. Put the wine by the flowers

  And tether all ten dogs

  At the fringes of the forest-walk.’

  They crouched under cheeses, salted joints and bales,

  And did not like the salted joints, nor waiting

  Like food among food. Late that afternoon

  A something like a streamer of white silk

  That seemed painted across with black letters

  Fluttered from a distant peak

  Straight to a cave just there on the hillside.

  After a pause a fine old man

  Six foot with a long white beard

  Emerged all dressed in white robes

  With a peeled staff in his hand

  Walking firmly and with dignity

  And attended by the women.

  At the sight of the dogs he gave a great start

  Then leapt on one tearing it limb from limb

  Amid the squealing barks and bounding pack

  Tethers cracking like whips but holding

  Stuffing his mouth full of slippery flesh

  Spitting the fur out stuffing the pink

  Dog after dog until they’d gone

  Then rounded on the women grinning

  Patting a new paunch, laughing.

  The smiling women offered him wine from jade cups
r />   And sighing he lay back on the grass all caked with blood

  Beard black as a young man’s with it

  Clotted to the sleeves, and the women

  Gathered around and sat down with the wine-jugs

  Joking and laughing as they must have done

  At many feasts of this kind. When in the sun

  He’d drunk several pints of wine, they helped

  Him in, the women, deep into the cave

  And sounds of merriment and laughter

  Singing and the gong-sound

  Of the master’s voice wound out. He seemed

  To speak like a chorus of clear frosty deep voices,

  Like a chime of gongs. He laughed to split their ears,

  A boulder fell and bounded off down the mountain,

  The women chimed and tinkled, against his,

  It seemed, very far away and faint.

  The cave-mouth like a pool of ink.

  The cave-mouth like a pool of ink, and soon

  Shadows and lights gathered in it

  And round the corner torch-bearing women

  Their shadows bending like leathern shapes

  Appeared, beckoning them in.

  They drew swords and walked cautiously

  Through the rock, shadows flexing over its wall.

  Around the turn the tunnel fattened suddenly

  And was a blaze of light and warm air

  And here were flowers in banks too, cut flowers

  Withering a little in the heat, and on a flowered couch

  Tied by silk garments caught in stout knots

  Tied by the corded arms by cords as thick

  Cords of flowers that bulged and strained

  Glaring, an ape, a white-skinned ape.

  Or looked like an ape. In his prime

  At the height of his powers whatever it was

  Presented to their senses stiff with their limits

  A hale old man, and now, declining, an ape

  With white lips spread thin on its great jaws

  And sparkling teeth, and the beard that rolled to its chest

  Abundant fur, now entwined with flowers Crushed by his heavy straining.

  The soldiers fell on it with their blades driving

  Their brows set at blackest midnight

  But the blades rebounded as though they had

  Attacked boulders – one laid his own shoulder open

  With clanging and ringing. Alas

  They remembered as the ape strained like the mountainside

  Itself in its basketwork of torrents

  And he, the husband, sighted along his blade

  And plunged it to the roots in the only softness

  Through the groin, deep into the bone.

  The gentle blood spurted and fell with a patter

  On the flowered silk of the bed.

  The ape gave a long sigh and said to the husband

  ‘The will of heaven, the will of heaven –

  Otherwise I am immortal. Your wife, your wife

  Is pregnant, don’t kill the child, he is

  Mine, will be great,’ and died.

  That was that. The great body lay like a rock

  Ready to crumble to soil, and stiffened fast.

  They heaved it outside and down the hill

  It rolled faster and faster like a great peeled tree-trunk

  Bounded off a cliff into the river

  Was whirled away. His caves were full

  Of treasure and perfume, weapons and silks,

  His women all beauties who feted the men,

  And helped them carry the Ape’s goods down the mountain,

  A hundred women, all beauties, enough for a small army.

  The village was left to rot in the flowers,

  The flowers to fruit and reseed and fight the small pines,

  The white strong talons sliding from the husk,

  And the tinkling of women passed down the mountain,

  And left the houses silent and empty.

  He had had them all to himself. He wore white silk.

  He would not sleep but took his women

  Night after night over and over

  Bouncing and dashing between the beds. There was but one child,

  From the most recent.

  The only fruiting, by it he knew

  He was to die. He read from a scroll

  That went under a stone.

  On a clear day he would practice sword-play,

  Encircling himself like flashes of fire,

  Then a moon-halo. He loved the rich blood of dogs.

  He would fly up in the hot noon

  As far as the snow-crests, and circle there.

  When autumn showed in the flowers, the child leapt,

  He knew it was the end. Lightning struck the stone step

  And singed his fingers and burnt the scroll.

  He looked down at the bride and shed tears a while.

  The mountain was his and men had never been there,

  The beasts in the jungle had kept them away,

  The deep gorges and torrents,

  But the beasts were all scared and the men could build bridges,

  And this must be the will of heaven.

  HUSH! THE SUN

  A warm tawny street. Houses buried in trees,

  Broad hollow sunshafts, leaves plump as fruit,

  Bright russet walls. Hush burns from the heat,

  You can see it, it spreads,

  Great cars draw away, like threads in silk.

  Up through our window, hung on this hush,

  The silences rise, and we fall quiet.

  Green mowers spray a deep whitening hay-hush,

  Boys play in the street, skip and call out.

  One trips in a knee a knock down to the quick;

  It lets red silence fall like an idling flag.

  He is strung on his cry, tongue high in the mouth

  Stretched like a mast; his mouth at full gasp

  Brimmed with the hush. The air is too thick,

  The summer too broad, too easy, too sweet,

  It coils down his throat, he hangs crook’d in its honey,

  It glints at his lids, he is strung on its flow

  Too golden and sunny, too rolling and hazy

  For mere blood to shake, too heavy, too lazy.

  Great cars draw away, like threads in silk.

  QUASIMODO’S MANY BEDS19

  My teeth are very bad, but I am not to be blamed for that.

  I dreamed darkness until I raised my head

  And saw the river flowing away from my mouth.

  Dearest, your dress seems to be yellow in this sunshine.

  I take the ashes of our bonfire and scoop them

  Carefully into letters that say this. You run,

  And your skirt, swirling, disturbs the script.

  How bad are my teeth? Only as evil as an autumn forest.

  Should I have them pulled, and gain gums

  Pink as a baby’s, mouth appropriately searching?

  The rain rinses my ashes into the turf and

  We have a muddy grey paddock. The rain it is

  Consecrates a muddy grey bed, I want you to wear grey and ashes.

  You stand there still in astonishment

  And thus your dress is no longer yellow in the sunshine

  But translucent with the rain over the light of your body.

  Your great straw hat droops so! Fling it away,

  Let’s see you snaky, with the rain hissing.

  You are in grey, your hands, your head, are ashy.

  I caper in front of you over the sodden sheets

  With a banana in my mouth. I am a grey bird, with a yellow beak, whistling.

  I offer you my bill, which you decline with white teeth

  In an ashen face. You look crippled.

  So I pull my beak in imitation down to its creamy flesh.

  It is so easy to look crippled. Here is couched black mud

 
In rich satin cushions. It is washable disfigurement.

  We are all mire, and we are all clean, and this is a Quasimodo’s bed.

  Great things, like you, or water or sun, mire or ashes,

  Or any little thing, pull my heart out of shape

  Which is no deformity. I sit, enthroned in mud

  Like an opulent person watching. Lounge through your wardrobe.

  And come, never fear. I like you far better in black than red.

  VII

  DR FAUST’S SEA-SPIRAL SPIRIT

  (1972)

  CHRISTIANA20

  for Barbara

  That day in the Interpreter’s house, in one of his Significant Rooms,

  There was naught but an ugly spider hanging by her hands on the wall,

  And it was a spacious room, the best in all the house.

  ‘Is there but one spider in all this spacious room?’

  And then the water stood in my eyes

  And I thought how like an ugly creature I looked

  In what fine room soever I was,

  And my heart crept like a spider.

  And my heart crept like a spider into the centre of my web

  And I sat bell-tongued there and my sound

  Was the silvery look of my rounds and radii,

  And I bent and sucked some blood, but I did it

  With care and elegance like a crane unloading vessels;

  I set myself on damask linen and I was lost to sight there,

  And I hugged my legs astride it, wrapping the pearl-bunch round;

  I skated on the water with legs of glass, and with candystriped legs

  Ran through the dew like green racks of glass cannonball;

  And I saw myself hanging with trustful hands

  In any room in every house, hanging on by faith

  Like wolfhounds that were dwarfs, or stout shaggy oats,

  And I wept to have found so much of myself ugly

  In the trustful beasts that are jewel-eyed and full of clean machinery,

  And thought that many a spacious heart was ugly

  And empty without its tip-toe surprise of spiders

  Running like cracks in the universe of a smooth white ceiling,

  And how a seamless heart is like a stone.

  And the Interpreter saw

  The stillness of the water standing in her eyes,

  And said,

  Now you must work on Beelzebub’s black flies for Me.

  MINERALS OF CORNWALL, STONES OF CORNWALL

  A case of samples

  Splinters of information, stones of information,

  Drab stones in a drab box, specimens of a distant place,

  Granite, galena, talc, lava, kaolin, quartz,

  Landscape in a box, under the dull sky of Leeds –