Fortune's Lodging


The shadow of his hand crossed the paper

When he moved the lamp for better light.

'God's image is in everything,'

He murmured, closing the book

When he could write no more.

Contraries crossed his mind.

 
He spat out the bite of fruit,

Leaving a sour taste on his tongue.

For Lent he abstained from wine.

He took air in the garden.

Leaves of mint refreshed him,

But would not still the questions.


The night was not silent.

All the city passed his window.

His thinking was accustomed to sound.

The hammering of desks in schoolrooms:

There it began; and ended

Here in his belvedere.


Nothing happened by chance.

He had observed in nature

The phases of the Moon,

And the turning of tides

In celestial patterns

The eye can barely see.


He had travelled in search of worlds,

Only to return to the beginning

With a fortune spent on travelling

And another gained in knowledge.

There was a purpose in living:

It was simply to seek itself.

 

Speaking Volumes

On the Adoption of a Noble Style

By which I may begin adapting

Commonplace means with dignity,

And surely to be aware

Style is not substance

Though fine words become us.


The script in my hand is falling

As I in my dreaming

Of many things

Have chosen

To hold no watchword.

 
Yes, on reading

This you may consider

What here is beginning:

And if it should go no further

Then the reader in you would suffer

The pain of never knowing more.

 

A Mind to Change Things

 
I think more of Montaigne.

His wisdom considered even

In Adam's eye:

 
All thought is history.

He fashions a diversion

Of the world turning

Within a thinker's dream,

A paradise tasted on the tongue

Of passion and choosing,

Always in exile.

The word Adam leaves unwritten.

 
Again I think of Montaigne;

Once bitten

Twice the man

He might have been.

 

The Madness of Ajax


Possession was a dream

They made of everything:

A woman's honour; her shame,

Or Troy itself besieged.

 
All the men were fools

Among their own,

Turning valour

To the slightest cause.


Then pity one in knowing

He was a hero

For whom all rage was silence

When he fell blindly.

 
And beneath his feet

A secret river ran.