Deep within 'Collected Works',
in dialogue with Wistan, dead,
rich panoplies of civil words
pegged down by ancient premises,
guy-roped-up neat in histories,
we sip our Lapsang Souchong,
watching, through blurred rain-curtains,
hen pheasants run
past wet-shone dry-stone walls
half tumbled down
into shelter of oaks;
and venture our weak jokes,
bat our speech bubbles over -
balloon buffoonery.
The rain blurts out
from canvas awning edge
splattering on the muddying field
beyond a gleaming cloth of gold.
More measured conversations, far,
by rhythm of our inner wheels,
drive us through the afternoon,
passing follies strewn by war.
We sing like emperor's nightingales -
as artifacts so polished glow -
forgetting our mortality -
perpetual motion of the mind -
and yet to civil weakness kind,
we pour more tea – please.
Early Gray for me.
..........
'Talking' with Auden, but in comes Yeats, among others ;)
