60
In Steeple Field the snow.
All the village is here with scarves and sledges.
An elemental glow
catches a flame of people. Still it rages
as I look round. It is my turn. Dare I go?
Into a bonfire of all the ages
I sail, kneeling, arms folded. Up one of the ridges
I slow to a stop. It is fifty years ago.
*
An instant of journey, a breath of unknowing,
a lightning-stroke thrill. A blind going.
*
Through the great gates
I am running, and up the long path, to where the school waits.
Feet climbing and stumbling and sinking down the long level
avenue of indifferent scattered trees, of loose gravel,
out of Earth’s silence, into the shouting crowd.
– Not first or last. But first enough to be proud.
*
Teenage ends. I am cycling in a forest. It is still.
The sun gleams on the handlebars. In no time at all
an all-out attack.
Rain and wind savage the air. Branches crack,
the bike on a mad sprint
is an animal intent
on its own way. It breaks clear.
Still the rider can re-live the fear.
*
Once I was freed
from an inert mind-stasis, to a new speed.
College-idling,
dealing cards, drifting, back-pedalling,
lazily, without risk
crossing the tracks of my books, my desk . . .
then suddenly scorching two weeks blind,
still in the saddle. I felt the power of the mind.
For me no marked-out lanes of scholarship.
But once I let the mind rip.
*
What stays of college-days? To be in the know.
I am at my desk. It is forty years ago.
*
Later in love, much later
the day that opened to me was lovelier, lighter
and to its well-met, sky-illustrious inn
night drew me on.
Now a new cycling
taking its pace from a dark-and-light circling,
on a sure line, no if or why,
in with the turn of planets, weaving a way,
and drawn to the needs of another’s time,
working in team.
*
New times are born,
the sweetest day under the softest sun
of a new one.
His life will burn . . .
and then a new one.
His life will burn . . .
and now a new one of a new one.
Her life will burn, and turn
its wheeling way. Now till my wide turn’s done,
her way will bless the way of an old one.
*
Here
in the stars’ medley, ends a sixtieth year.
*
I am on a long run.
The job, the job, the job: the old dream is gone,
tortured lungs, and damage to the bone,
the job, the job: the bright strip of film is done,
the slog is on,
the job, the marathon.
*
The job, the job: sharp youngsters sprinting ahead
down unimaginable short-cuts; elbowing, shoving
in the next group; then some of the old half-dead,
nailed into the ground, feet scarcely moving:
no-one ends it: it ends them, one by one,
the job, the marathon.
*
The land itself is the job: a war is on
to find it a meal a day and a safe home;
to cram food into its beak: a blind handing-down
of a nation’s flutter and squawk. Where have we come
in the long run,
the job, the marathon?
*
It is half begun,
the search for the world to work. As we go on
and the miles unwind, and a distance is amassed,
and the body crawls, and enters its own mist,
it can cross our path, like a flash of sun,
the long career. Then dark. A thud of feet goes on,
the job, the marathon.
*
Thirty, twenty, ten, five years ago.
Once I walked the circle of the day in a great O,
up hills, past village on village, by changing fields,
and that my day was no more than a day of the world’s
I was content. And that my day is no more
than to venture in beauty, over the seasonal floor
of Earth, and under the arch of sky. I am content.
O I have loved
to walk, to walk, and wherever I went
to hear Time’s word, its deepest certainty proved.
*
In Steeple Field the snow.
All the village is here with scarves and sledges.
An elemental glow
catches a flame of people. Still it rages
as I look round. It is my turn. Dare I go?
Into a bonfire of all the ages
I sail, kneeling, arms folded. Up one of the ridges
I slow to a stop. It is fifty years ago.
