Love and Other Thoughts

Reading:

Control


Cooking, we control the changes we impose
On the structure and colour as well as the taste
Of grains and leaves and roots. We vary nature,
Under deep control.

Medicated, we control the atoms in our blood
By changing chemicals that none of us can see.
Add what is missing, eradicate what grows
That harms us.

Voices pass through wires high up in the air
And under the ground, under careful control.
Messages fly without wires from one to another.
Their transfers are controlled.

But love defies control, grows where it will,
Lifts and depresses everywhere it strikes.
Rules are irrelevant, and must always be,
For love is free.



On a wall in a Saxon church


Who were you? No, not you who is portrayed
But he who drew your face, pinned up the paper,
Pricked it through on plaster wet still
from the apprentice’ trowel,
Joined up the piercings, painted your beloved face.

Or she. Was it a she who wielded pin and brush out of respect
As well as out of love, here in a holy place,
For the remembrance of her devotion and her charity?
Was she alive or dead?

What did her family say? What did they ask, or know?
Was your love secret, masked, hid from their fire?
Or was it shared with them? The face you left, sublime,
Suggests she had sufficient love for everyone.

As the sun sets and shadows grow
Her portrait glows, your colours fresh as when
You brought the pigment-rocks and ground them down
Here by the wall on which your gift was left.

So I must go, but you and she remain,
Always together, always witnessing
What each was to the other.
Always love.



Action this day


You were my first and only love, back then.
When, at the conference, I had had enough
Of being on my own, and now must test
Whether glasses and red hair convicted
Me to single status for the whole of life
I asked you out, and you, between two friends,
Tall, graceful, beautiful, a natural blonde
To my surprise and wonder, you said yes!

How grown-up I was then at just sixteen!
But everything to learn, and much to fail.
Perhaps, since all I knew was Shakespeare’s wit,
Rather than grasped from rude experience,
I was too grown-up, formulaic, stiff,
Bought you those chocolates for the cinema,
Took you to tea one proper afternoon
In the lounge of the best local hotel
I could afford, with sandwiches and cakes,
And pressed too hard to see you every day,
So, with your lovely smile, you had to say,
“But I must wash my hair tonight,” of course.

Did I frustrate and disappoint you? Was that why,
After nine months of kisses, guidance of
My hand occasionally to your breast
And rampant, unproductive, country lust
Which I dared bring to nothing, was that why
You dumped me? “There is someone else”, you smiled,
And I, who should have fought, protested, said
Nothing. I let you go, shocked, shaken, stunned,
And took my medicine bravely, like a man.

I wonder, off and on, remembering you
So very clearly, as the years go by,
How very different life might well have been
If then I had been as mature as you.



Incomparata


When you said it was over, I resigned
Myself. No word would come to mind
To remonstrate, to ask why this must be,
To make you say what I could no-wise see.
I wanted, painfully, to speak my love.
You did not realise I had kept the glove
That you had always worn against the cold
Of winter walks, when I had been so bold
To take your hand, to steal a kiss or two.
Kisses have since been rare, far, far too few,
And none like yours. Hands I have held have felt
No more than paws. My heart will never melt
Again, as it did then, to see your face
Close to my own, raised to its proper place.



Stolen, one New Year


We met by chance. Adjacent seats. Both riled
With indignation at the speech before.
“Coffee?” I said without hope, but you smiled,
Agreed. I did not, could not, hope for more.
In common loneliness, talk came with ease
Until your hair swung as you turned your head
And showed the locket hanging in the crease
Of your blouse. “Sorry! What was that you said?”
Had it once hung there for a special man?
Was it still there for him? I never knew,
But, if so, for you, it held no ban
On pleasure, given, taken. Our time flew
That New Year’s Eve. We danced. I stole a kiss.
Do you remember, too, as I do? Bliss!



Love across the counter


Eyes black, hair black, cascading down your back.
“How can I help?” you asked, your voice a purr
Of invitation, opening up a crack
Deep in my soul, anointing it with myrrh.
I was defeated from that moment on.
Brain-dead. Your captive. Anything you asked
Was freely yours. Any phenomenon!
A task of Hercules? But I had masked
This need, though I would lie down at the toes
Of your so elegant, so tiny shoes.
Immediately, memory lost its way,
Could not recall why I was there that day.
What brought me here? I stared into your eyes,
Unspoken lover under shopper’s guise.



A student’s lament


Where will I walk you, pretty maid, through courts
And cloisters, quadrangles and sunny rooms,
By river meadows, through the urban parks
Where racquets swing, balls fly, and girls in shorts
Sunbathe between the Council’s beds of blooms?

You will not walk me further, sir. Your marks,
Much too inadequate, reduce your charm.
For I am moved by dreams beyond your reach,
And have no time for parties, punts and larks.
To reach the pinnacle I seek, I must be calm.

Be off, sir! This experience might teach
You something of a modern woman’s place.
The world is different. Now, we do not screech
For power. We take it, with our brains and grace.



Wedding


White for purity, spirit, grace,
Innocence clear in hand and face,
Silk and satin, bows and lace.

Pink for a girl, here happy, warm,
Supportive, smiling, fragranced, calm,
Will this bouquet fall to her palm?

Blue for the ladies’ hats, bags, shoes,
(Not for gloves, which no one will use,
Or ask any frump here present to produce.)

Green for the bubbly’s bottles. Corks
Will fly free across knives and forks.
Mark the end of the boring talks.

Gold cravats for father and groom,
For ushers and cousins, although soon
Laid aside in the heated room.

“Ready to go?” Cans on the car.
No need this evening to drive very far.
Hotel, gymnasium and ice-white spa.



Socially withdrawn


You were a hole-in-corner person, never one to stand
Beyond th’ immediate context you had reached
And shaped with satisfaction to your comfort.
Was it a lasting fear of something in your past,
That some Bad Fairy might one day appear
To resurrect, and prick you with the pin
Of shame?
I tried to tell you nothing was that bad,
But, since you wouldn’t ever speak your fear,
I had no means of reasoning you beyond it,
Knowing that I too must take the blame.

Was this the origin of what passed for our wedding?
Your excuse was that your father, near to death
(He lasted months after that dreadful day),
And mother (caring for him) could not come.
So no-one else? Bare side chapel, only four
Besides the priest, including you and I
And my almost-estranged parents, witnesses,
My mother, as always, playing the part
Of public figure in her hat and gloves.

Reception? Just we four for lunch that day
In a small hotel, steps across the town,
And then back “home”, to where your parents waited.
In the sick-room, quiet in stress and fear.

No Best Man? Bridesmaids? Plural? What a joke.
I understood your bridal trim blue suit.
You had done this before, and failed,
As perhaps you saw it. And indeed
There had been enough fuss getting leave
To be married in church. I did not believe then
so didn’t care either way; but it was crucial
For your Faith, and all your courage went
Into that interview with the Bishop.
I came too, but only to the hall outside his study,
Denied the giving of support you needed
And, then, I was most willing to provide.

No-one else, though, at the wedding,
At this most momentous moment? No.
Neither had anybody else we knew to ask,
Apparently, and so it went on, through our married life
Until your funeral. Then the church was packed
Some coming tens of miles, and hundreds some,
And staying for a wake, noisy with conversation,
A great success, socially, which we should have done
Long, long before.