Tiepolo: Study of a Child

 

Red chalk on faintly blue paper,

The child tilts its head

A little to the left and is looking

With confidence out, as if to say

Accept me.

 

The child looks as if only this morning

They'd netted it in the water.

Highlights have to do with this,

A shine on the tip of the nose,

Shedding aura, verve in the features.

 

Besides, it seems to be wrapped

In a towel or a bedsheet,

Shoulders bare, the head

And shoulders declaring

I am here, accept me now.

 

It is too young to be talking so

But the lips are fully shaped

And will never be otherwise

For a lifetime. They will be

Pleased by kisses, pleasing with speech.

 

But the child can never know

How it was to be this:

Not that the best is forgotten,

Only for us, in a matter of minutes,

The artist had shown what it is.

 

 

John Clare to His Muse

 

If you are extra-terrestrial

Do not stretch too painfully

The woollen sock in which I am the foot.

In the grip of God I ran to kneel

Beside the haystack, glad of the puncture

Of a thorn in my kneecap.

Without limit, what can endeavour mean,

Limit of which little is known before?

Our endurance, not foreseen, surprises us -

Fragile in its body, the soul is ignorant

Of being one with it. Without cheating then,

A charm in earth makes cabbage grow.

The uncertainty, he rode it, our Cooper, William,

Macedonian Alexander also. Quickest angels

Speak through a twilight, praise and obey you.

Play me, play me, deafening as the world is,

Hard music for my litanies; never let me

Pray to forget pain, even if they tell me

My memory is birdseed on a windowsill.

What was it they were saying of that Pindar?

A victory sped his memory into the foretime.

Do you come to earth, and soar away again,

In every particular benign?

Send me one day, yes or no, a sign.

 

 

The Lakeshore in Springtime

 

In long pants and a flimsy

white shift that slid

off her left shoulder she sat

all of fifteen, cross-legged

on a big white cube of limestone.

Side by side with others it made

beside the dawdling duck tribes

a pretty massive wall.

 

Talking up a storm in English

mobilized with Spanish emphasis,

cadence and intonation,

her voice young and thin

but bright and never plaintive,

she was telling a Filipino boy

of happy events, party-going,

dancing for St Valentine,

fiestas and family things.

 

A fine shock of jet-black

hair the boy had, and she in him

a good listener. She thought him

probably, cute, while he

was thinking of the limestone

and of its luck to be so close

to what her long pants hid,

and how he'd build a temple

from all the cubes of limestone

once another fifteen years had gone.

 

I did not think of Anna Livia

Plurabelle then. Stuffily

but brightening as I now believed

that the conventional similes

have dark roots in truths, all at once

her speech was the brook I thought.

 

Something for the ducks, after all,

I shut my eyes to see it leap

And trickle, gush and hesitate

Flowing wild, clear, and beautiful

from the spring at the mountain top.

 

I thought I'd never heard

our language pronounced

with such fervor and delicate

vehemence, such

voluptuous undulation.

Might this girl be the forerunner

for an Anglo-Latino revival,

a future tongue for the region?

 

But I was also wondering if her Romeo

had his plan for a temple ready,

plan to install her there

as a caryatid

unable to open her mouth

for the weight of the architrave

she carried on her head.

Of Imminence

 

Of Macchu Picchu how should this wren

    trill five times on two notes

        unless he'll be coming, how an idle tongue

 

define the phrases,

     slabs be laid down,

        houses anchored to them

 

unless right soon

     round the corner he'll have come, and

         again the heart of Cabestan,

 

how will it be cooked for Seremonda, or

     George Herbert have imagined

         'All things are busie,' unless

 

whistling his large

      quiet reassuring tune, round the corner

          the balloon man will be coming.