the taste of fruit, the taste of water,
that face returned to us in dream,
the first jasmine flowers of november,
the infinite yearning of the compass,
a book we thought forever lost,
the pulsing of a hexameter,
the little key that opens a house,
the smell of sandalwood or library,
the ancient name of a street,
the colourations of a map,
an unforeseen etymology,
the smoothness of a filed fingernail,
the date that we were searching for,
counting the twelve dark bell-strokes,
a sudden physical pain 'on whatever sphere of being
the mind of a man may be intent
at the time of death' - that is the one action
and do not think of the fruit of action
and the time of death is every moment
which shall fructify in the lives of others
although we were not
and those who saw them off have left the platform
their faces relax from grief into relief,
to the sleepy rhythm of a hundred hours
now they are paolo, francesca,
not two friends who are sharing
the savour of a fable the future is before us watching the furrow that widens behind you,
you shall not think
not escaping from the past
into different lives, or into any future
the past is finished
or
you are not the same people who left that station
or who will arrive at any terminus,
while the narrowing rails slide together behind you
every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning,
every poem an epitaph
where every word is at home,
taking its place to support the others,
the word neither diffident nor ostentatious,
an easy commerce of the old and the new,
the common word exact without vulgarity,
the formal word precise but not pedantic,
the complete consort dancing together
costing not less than everything
and all shall be well and
all manner of thing shall be well
when the tongues of flames are in-folded
into the crowned knot of fire
and the fire and the rose are one
a condition of complete simplicity
on a halcyon day it is merely a monument,
in navigable weather it is always a seamark
to lay a course by, but in the sombre season
or the sudden fury, is what it always was
then only a problem confronting the builder of bridges
useful, untrustworthy, as a conveyor of commerce
i do not know much about gods
but i think that the river
is a strong brown god - sullen, untamed and intractable,
patient to some degree, at first recognised as a frontier
now there are red houses side by side
and the delicate bronze of the leaves
and chaste winter and pious wood
they know me well who surround me here,
know well my afflictions and weakness
and the rest
is prayer, observance, discipline, thought and action
when christ has judged me
who knows what they'll see
yet the words sufficed
to compel the recognition they preceded
and he a face still forming
but i cannot say where
whether, or not, due to misunderstanding,
having hoped for the wrong things or dreaded the wrong things,
is not in question
are likewise permanent
with such permanence as time has
the patient is no longer here
the shame
of things ill done and done to others' harm
which once you took for exercise of virtue
but which
that i've walked
already one last time, indifferently
and without knowing it, submitting
to one who sets up omnipotent laws
and a secret and a rigid measure
for the shadows, the dreams, and forms
that work the warp and weft of this life
the dry salvages - presumably les trois sauvages - is a small
group of rocks, with a beacon, off the n
you'll never see the bright moon again,
you've now achieved the unalterable
sum of moments granted you by fate
no occupation either, but something given
and taken, in a lifetime's death in love,
ardour and selflessness and self-surrender