The Jolly Company
Rupert Brooke
THE stars, a jolly company,
I envied, straying late and lonely;
And cried upon their revelry:
"O white companionship! You only
In love, in faith unbroken dwell,
Friends radiant and inseparable!"
Light-heart and glad they seemed to me
And merry comrades (even so
God out of heaven may laugh to see
The happy crowds; and never know
That in his lone obscure distress
Each walketh in a wilderness).
But I, remembering, pitied well
And loved them, who, with lonely light,
In empty infinite spaces dwell,
Disconsolate. For, all the night,
I heard the thin gnat-voices cry,
Star to faint star, across the sky.
I am the grit in the gears, the missing bolt, I am the poker of sticks into spokes. I like to know how things work, but sometimes when I take them apart and rebuild them, I have a few pieces left over. I am a man, so I tend to leave reading the instructions until after it goes wrong. And like all men I have a comprehensive mental map of the world and never need to ask directions. I never get lost, only sometimes I'm late, or end up in the wrong place entirely. It's what we do.
Tuesday, 4 December 2018
Wednesday, 18 April 2018
Finding You
Finding You
I love to find you in the night-time,
When your toes rest, child-like, upon my legs;
To be stirred by the warmth of your body -
Naked, smooth, slow-breathing, sleeping ...
The smell of your hair, your pillowed head
Sheltering under my arm.
So we cheat the waking, working hours.
The green-glow figures of time
Play gooseberry in the dark,
Unmasking each newborn minute
In the silence of bird-sleeping hours.
Time will not stand still for us
Nor life be more than earth;
Yet more ancient hearts than ours knew,
Like us, the intimate quiet of night.
Poet unknown.
From another time.
I love to find you in the night-time,
When your toes rest, child-like, upon my legs;
To be stirred by the warmth of your body -
Naked, smooth, slow-breathing, sleeping ...
The smell of your hair, your pillowed head
Sheltering under my arm.
So we cheat the waking, working hours.
The green-glow figures of time
Play gooseberry in the dark,
Unmasking each newborn minute
In the silence of bird-sleeping hours.
Time will not stand still for us
Nor life be more than earth;
Yet more ancient hearts than ours knew,
Like us, the intimate quiet of night.
Poet unknown.
From another time.