Ode to Keats

Ode to KeatsPoet of Earth and the unearthly skies,fire-gatherer for a restless scurrying tribebeneath the moon! None in the modern guiseof visionary word-magecould once upon the pagetake pen and in a few scant words describethe great Promethean journey that you...

Spring Sonata

Spring Sonatafor Susan KeserThere was a moment in my early teens,a meeting of two instruments, where Itook heed, and overheard a certain clamourof the wild springtime, that forever findsa space for Eden’s miracle of voiceswithin my own blind heart and deepest...

fish in shale

fish in shaleoh you beautywhere did you come fromout of what nightinto a dayof what deep driftand measureless beingthat has no endingthat we can saypoetry, seta word in ambernext to a drifteron the tidewith little enoughto say, it lodgesas chance may have itup...

passing thought

passing thoughtto P.You too a mystery has tangled. Whena squirrel lollops across a path, or whena cactus, still as time, has the air green,or when the midday whispers breath on breathand stone on stone of an uncharted journey,and eyes can tell a town of dream . . . so...

On Translating Beowulf

On Translating BeowulfThree battered exercise-books and an old texthave lain in a quiet corner of the roomthat is the jumbled glory-hole of my mindfor fifty years.In attics, garages,boxes and dusty shelves, in villages, towns,grim single rooms, chaotic family...

Hove Park 5

Hove Park 5 Down a small path the charge of life. It is simply the Saturday morning crowd. And a pattern nimbly forms out of Earth’s delight. It is Fortune sunning the trees; and the nectar air; and the gift of...