TWO ENGLISH POETS
COUNTRY
WEEK-END
And here at twilight the day dies easily; nothing
Comes between lover and lover: on them and us
The shadows fall
Who do not belong. And in the house, angry, wait
The defeated and disillusioned ghosts repeating: "This
We should never have imagined."
Anything is possible inside four walls; though here
There will be no explosion at three o'clock and only friendly
Visitors call,
The tourists pass on motor-bikes, the passionate
And urgently shy, goggled, disguised as fish,
Rest and look, go away.
And here where much too happily the days end
And the obvious is obvious and the truthful
Is perhaps true
And the village green with whippets is . as real as a dream; where
People like any others have embraced, thinking: "Erased
Is the puerile impossible past,"
Here there is nothing to be done, in this place
Much too genuine is the agricultural hand:
The ghosts now
Move gentlemanly as swans through the empty night.
They will not disturb. Nothing will disturb. Here everything
Is
pleasantly wrong.
Finchingfield, Essex
MUSICAL
BOX POEM
The automatic evening of my hand
Pushes night over the rising sky,
And night is a musical box, I am
Most caught by this delicious evening's why;
My musical night tinkles and plays
All my days' tune over my daylong days.
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