Two Poems
by
Harry Fainlight
YOU HAVE WASTED YOUR LIFE
And yet how, strangest, thi s very realisa tion releases
That miraculous stream that flows uphill ;
Up over the mountains of the evidence aga in st me
And down
to
water all tha t fertil e valley
On the other side,
Valley where now I walk
And with suddenly awakened wingbeats, birds
Spring up all around me; 0 rise to soa r
Into that clearest blue their singing fritters them
Away into ' til, lost th ere, sil ent
They drop back somewhere I h ave never seen.
THE BAYSWATER ROAD
Glum dawns standing round a tea-wagon
Were usuall y all tha t came of it;
Yet of those two lives, divided only
By the width of th e gutter, how was I to choose?
Ceaselessly that g littering traffi c of appetency
Dazzled by one side of me.
Yet all the sweeter for my delinquency
Stars deep within the locked park grew.
