Numb and old fingers clutching the wheel of sickness,
Feeling the cold-killed racing days that smother
The quick pulses of sunbright gold.
They drip and fall from the otherworld trees,
Benumbed by the mist that drops its veil
In this time of cool velvet.
It lies in the long distance,
Seeping down the harsh roads,
Sieving in the broken hedges,
And elusive as the song that echoes
In the late Spring midnight;
Over the still, taut fields, faintly white
It catches in the mouths of farmers
Who fold their fingers back in their gloves for warmth,
Ploughing the hard dry earth
With a touch of white crispness
There in the shrouded land, half-seen.
Wish a long wish
And walk in the treelined valley,
Down the road and the long-loved glances,
Dance a broken twig dance,
Slip like crushed water down the narrow ravine
In the network of flashing branches
Of boulders’ sides, Rocky birds,
Blue smoky heights, living air;
And the sidling sun creeps round the Western dusk,
Fighting a million fencing duels
With soot-covered branches.
Something breaks inside the trees’ edge
Where the historic grass fumbles in cowtreads to the hedge,
To the woodside as it curves through
Memories of green shapes,
And something breaks inside . . .
Snapping a wishbone,
An agony of crying wonderful,
Shreds of flesh still biting,
Homesick to death of the love of something
That runs away,
Hiding at the very moment of knowing;
Only in memory really understood,
Even the sensation of gone . . .
The car rolls on
And the fingers flex
And the mind remembers.