The Presumers

Peter Trower
From:

The Gap in the Gedge

R.S. Thomas
From:

That man, Prytherch, with the torn cap,
I saw him often, framed in the gap
Between two hazels with his sharp eyes,
Bright as thorns, watching the sunrise
Filling the valley with its pale yellow
Light, where the sheep and the lambs went haloed
With grey mist lifting from the dew.
Or was it a likeness that the twigs drew
With bold pencilling upon that bare
Piece of sky? For he’s still there
At early morning, when the light is right
And I look up suddenly at a bird’s flight.

Machinery in the Mountains

BY PETER TROWER

Once a madman told me
there was machinery in the mountains
a hidden complex of cogs and wheels
turning eternally under the world.
“Mark my words,” he babbled
“the hills will open one day
like the backs of watches
in a judgment of wonder
baring the teeth and the truth of it.
You will see.”

There was a cockeyed logic
to his lunacy
in guileless boyhood
I almost believed him
till the years eroded my innocence
and his crazed talk drummed into memory.

But every so often, the fancy returns
that myth of the millennial clockwork
clicking forever behind the façade.
Sometimes I stand on mountains
and I swear I can hear those ghostly wheels
turning faint as a whisper
grinding away like the engines of God
in the secret guts of the peaks.

The Early Bird

 TED KOOSER
From:

We, too, had known golden hours

W. H. Auden

We, too, had known golden hours
When body and soul were in tune,
Had danced with our true loves
By the light of a full moon,
And sat with the wise and good
As tongues grew witty and gay
Over some noble dish
Out of Escoffier;
Had felt the intrusive glory
Which tears reserve apart,
And would in the old grand manner
Have sung from a resonant heart.
But, pawed-at and gossiped-over
By the promiscuous crowd,
Concocted by editors
Into spells to befuddle the crowd,
All words like Peace and Love,
All sane affirmative speech,
Had been soiled, profaned, debased
To a horrid mechanical screech.
No civil style survived
That pandaemonioum
But the wry, the sotto-voce,
Ironic and monochrome:
And where should we find shelter
For joy or mere content
When little was left standing

But the suburb of dissent?

As Long As the Wheel Turns Us

BY PETER TROWER

Meticulous bees stitch honeytrails
through the raspberries;
car dreams camouflaged
in the Scotch broom’s yellow shadow;
carpenters woodpecker walls
two tapping houses away.

Summer grey as a fogged glas
full of gull complaints;
distant heartbeat of boast
setting the metre of mornings;
clouds have clapped their hands
over the mouth of the sun.

Last summer’s ghost
hides around the house corner
holding a piebald cat
I gave to the garden earth.
Friends I drank to the days with,
girls who have slipped their moorings.

We’re all another year
closer to our comeuppances –
the carpenters   the cat   the gulls
the bees   the ghosts   and me –
riding with time through the carousel seasons
as long as the wheel turns us.

Wild Geese

by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Watch the Lights Fade

Robinson Jeffers
From:

When we are weak

R. S. Thomas

When we are weak, we are
strong. When our eyes close
on the world, then somewhere
within us the bush
burns. When we are poor
and aware of the inadequacy
of our table, it is to that
uninvited the guest comes.

The Last Stand of Magic

Peter Trower

From: