The Spider
In the beginning did God create
The spider, hurriedly, and late?
What vagaries of afterthought?
What playfulness? What madness brought
To life this thing, obnoxious, hairy,
Many-legged and creepy, scary?
Yet the Maker must have been
Agog with wonder to have seen
The silky skein the spider spun,
Out of nothingness begun.
A silver thread as thin and fine
As gossamer; and such design
A measured web. How could there be
Such beauty; such deft artistry
Within this tiny creature found?
Where the wheels on which it wound
This seeming endless rich supply?
What purpose had this thing and why
Were marvels fashioned just to snare
A carefree wing, all unaware
Of horror hid in fancy dress,
And death so cruel in loveliness.
In the beginning did God make
One beautiful divine mistake
Night Woods
The trees, giant shapes, whisper to each other.
Brother to huge and shadowy mystic brother.
Deep from the darkness an owl calls,
Shattering silence; a dead leaf falls,
Seeming in the ghostly quiet an awful sound.
I step in dread as though on hallowed ground.
Why? When home is by, do I, deliberately
Roam the woods, and whisper to a tree
That does not heed, belonging to another place
Another time, and has no brain, no face.
Lost
I remember as though it t’were yesterday as a child,
Being lost in a crowded street and crying with fear.
That was bad enough; but God, to be lost out here,
Alone, with the ominous silence of the wild
Filled with imagined rustlings,
And night, night with its dreamed horrors. Night alive
With presence unseen, soiled and creeping things.
I remember seeing a bee from a cliff hive,
Drunk with nectar and sweet morning air,
God, what was that? Am I going mad with fright?
I’ve heard of men going mad when lost.
Something moved among the trees, and the whole, night
Seems one great stealthy padding phantom ghost.
Rocking Horse (Lines to a Granddaughter)
Alone, atop the wardrobe now he stands.
Forlorn, awaiting your small eager hands.
So rarely now you say, “please reach him down”.
Have you forgotten that bright wondrous town?
That you, beyond the stars, together knew.
And how he pawed the moon-sweet air, and flew-
On spurred by dreams. And still he waits your whim.
It only seems a little while ago
You learned to say, “gee up”, and made him go.
You built a dream that now without regret
You leave to die. But how can he forget.
The Return
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All secretly, could God, somehow,
Send Jesus on a mission now
To judge our progress, would he find
Our complicated state of mind
Beyond his comprehension quite:
Or would he, with a deep insight,
Gleaned of worlds beyond the stars,
See telephones and motor cars
As change, not progress, and the schemes
We cherish are but hollow dreams.
And think, these folk are much the same
As people were when first I came.
I can expect no more from them
Than folk I knew in Bethlehem.
They would mock, reviling me
As did the mob on Calvary.
They would laugh to hear me preach,
And scorn the lessons that I teach.
‘Blessed are the poor’ I used to say,
‘They will inherit all someday’.
Surely now they would insist,
‘Jesus is a communist’.
Lines to a Blackbird (Blackie)
Lift him gently, smooth and fold
His frozen wings about his breast.
One more victim of the cold
Gone to his eternal rest.
Did he pipe one note before
The golden voice at last was dead?
And did he plead at kitchen door
And beg in vain a crust of bread?
Upon an April evening
His singing brought sheer joy to live.
So much he gave to us in spring
To Blackie was there none to give.
Lift him gently, lay him down
Where giant trees their watches keep;
Midst moss and fern and bracken brown;
Alone in his eternal sleep.
October, Shipton Gorge, Dorset
Out of autumn mist the cockerels crow,
And anxious swallows gather row on row
Along the wires, then wheel into the sky,
Fast fading specks, and the world weeps,’Goodbye’.
Worried starlings darken every tree,
Chattering groups, so sad, it seems to see
The gay excitement of departing friends.
The leaves drift down; the golden season ends.
Swallows call to starlings.
‘Farewell, good friends of many a summer’s day,
When babes of both could cheep and call and play
Midst rooves and eaves and chimneys of their choice,
When flower filled meadows heard the songlark’s voice.
Farewell! Good friends. Weep not, we shall return
When Afric suns the barren deserts burn,
And the pale green of England shows again
In homely village curtained in soft rain.
But now the cockerel crows, the dead leaf falls,
And in our dreams the honeyed south wind calls,
Laden with spice and lavender’s sweet air.
The days grow short and the far lands are fair.’
Starlings call to swallows
‘Oh swallows, summer swallows. Do you know
Your summer friends are grieving far below,
Mourning your wondrous flight, and do you care
That we are left to breathe the chilled air.
Do you care that winter, grim and stark
Withers all earth and silent sleeps the lark?
You will not hear the piercing winds howl
Through naked boughs where lurks the fearsome owl.
Farewell! Farewell! O that we could follow
Over the heaving seas, oh summer swallow.
But law ordains we stay and that you go
When out of autumn mist the cockerels crow’.
Both Starlings and Swallows
Harsh our laws of blood and earth and sky,
To disobey the bird law means, we die.
We must heed our blood as we both know,
When out of autumn mist the cockerels crow.
The Snare
Children I bid you beware
Of things not understood,
Or you will be caught in the snare
Of meadow and hill and wood.
Beware when the lone bird calls,
Beware of the twisted tree
When the dim green golden halls
Are wrapped in mystery.
Keep to table and chair,
Let mystery call in vain,
Or you will be caught in the snare,
And no not peace again.
As a child I roamed at will,
Seeking a hidden key,
And meadow and wood and hill,
Wreathed their spells on me.
I saw the things unseen,
And heard the things unheard,
The piping in the woodland green
That was not call of bird.
So children, I pray you beware,
Let mystery call in vain,
Or you will be caught in the snare,
And know not peace again.
The Cottage in the Hills
We used to hurry by, crossing our fingers
When we were children, should we have to pass
The cottage in the hills; and still there lingers
In tumbled ruins, nettles and rank grass
An atmosphere that I cannot explain.
As though in some strange way they are still there,
The old man. skinny, vacant, void of brain.
The old woman who would stand and stare
Out of another world; t’was said that she
Threw her dead cats in the garden well
And they crawled out again, alive, but we
Believed the well went right down to hell,
And the old woman into a devil grown,
Born with the magic of the moon, would fly
Into the darkness, evil and alone,
To join her fiendish, hornéd friends below.
As a child I knew the twisted bough,
The magic of the thicket, berry-bright.
Sixty years are gone, but even now,
I would not walk that way alone at night.