Collected Poems Read Online Free PDF

malevolence descended
    And cat thought car would pass in front,
    So spun and walked all fur and confidence
    Into the dreadful tyre-treads …
    A wheel caught hold of it and
    FEARSOME THUDS
    Sounded from the night-time of black axles in
    UNEQUAL FIGHT
    That stopped the heart to hear it.
    But cat shot out with limbs still solid,
    Bolted, spitting fire and gravel
    At unjust God who built such massive
    Catproof motorcars in his graven image,
    Its mind made up to lose and therefore learn,
    By winging towards
    The wisdom toothgaps of the canyon houses
    LEGS AND BRAIN INTACT .

FROG IN TANGIER
    A frog jumped
    Feebly along the pool edge
    Away from the trapnet of my feet.
    I picked it up.
    A pink wound shone
    Between belly and that phosphorous
    Faint zig-zag down its back,
    Pain the colour of pomegranate
    And orange agony,
    Umbilical string hanging
    A catchline towards water
    Yet dragging like an anchor
    That weighed the entire world
    When it tried to jump.
    Had it been pierced by a snake?
    Clipped by a wind-thrown tree
    Cut by scorpion, bird or pruning hook?
    Or was it a festering frog-cancer
    That gathered and burst after a life
    Of statue-cunning,
    Too much patience before
    Each silent nerve-leap
    Onto a dreamy insect?
    I hoped the magic water
    Would seal its wound
    Stitch back outflowing life.
    It swam deep under,
    Air bubbles snapping
    Like fleas abandoning a mouse,
    Messages from its stopped body
    Breaking at trees and sky.
    It was a leaf suspended
    Four legs and green spade-head,
    Flayed rushblades clear
    Above the indeterminate green
    Basin of the pool;
    Calmed between earth and air
    Dying in its native water
    From my allowing a leap
    Into the safety of its death
    When it wanted peace
    And a long quiet end
    Lasting a lifetime.
    It hung in the float-still water,
    Next day gone:
    Mud-guns exploded
    By assaulting minnow-snouts.
    From nightcaves underwater
    Daylight filters like a ghost
    To scare marauding goldfish
    Chewing mosquito eggs –
    And to illuminate
    A hundred minnows savaging my spit.

FRIEND DIED
    Tears stop, and suffering
    Goes the next level down,
    Deeper when tears won’t start.
    Pain outlives, the hollow soul burns
    Till cured by nothing less
    Than the same death for me.
    You are world-finished
    Blacked out, sea-driven
    Beyond soil and nowhere,
    Empty caves filled
    By your heavy death-weighing:
    The sea and moon fought
    And their vicious clamour killed
    The survivor who is empty
    And the winner who is dead.

GUIDE TO THE TIFLIS RAILWAY
    The witnessed scenery changes
    To sunbaked cliffs and spun dry trees:
    Parched and monotonous hill country.
    No one has the will to stop the train,
    Though all can now observe what’s to be seen:
    A priest embalming a dissected brain.
    Hardly visible from the railway
    A deep ravine throws out its endless bile.
    We cross the river, and notice to the left
    Various vertical caves in Gothic style
    Which afforded refuge to the Christians,
    Sparse and lean (a rouble to the guide)
    Against the Mongols and the Persians
    Who swam the Caspian like cats against no tide;
    Who one time sent three gifts from Samarkand
    Of frugal sunlight to an ancient feast:
    Now reaping a reward with scarlet swords
    From the full belly of the fecund East.
    Our train proceeds, unfolds an arrowmark of bones,
    The valley widens, easy to foretell
    That crossing the military road we soon
    Reach the city and look up the best hotel.

from Love in the Environs of Voronezh and Other Poems and Storm and Other Poems, 1968 and 1974

BABY
    A small man formed
    One hour after forging into light,
    Body-brain wrapped and blue eyes
    Open to noise of rook and cuckoo
    To stalk a rabbit in the meadow
    Read a book, nothing less than
    Blank before sudden turns
    To evergreen or glint of water.
    Hirsute and stern on bleak arrival
    He lay down after a toiler’s day
    Face to say: All right.
    You gave me life, but death also.
    Forehead creased on future worry
    When hacking obstacles,
    Indenting map-hair on moving palm
    To