Collected Poems

At Corinth At Corinth one has forgiven The recording travellers in the same past Who first entered this land of doors, Hunting a precise emotion by clues, Haunting a river, or a place in a book. Here the continuous evocations are washed Harder than tears and brighter, But less penetrating than the touch of flesh, (Our fingers pressed upon eyelids of stone), Yet more patient, surely, watching To dissolve the statues and retire Night after night with a dissolving moon.

The valley mist ennobles Lovers disarmed by negligence or weather, And before night the calm Discovers them, breathing upon the nerves, The scent of exhausted lamps. Here stars come soft to pasture, And all doors lead to sleep. What lies beneath the turf forbids A footstep on the augustan stair, The intrusion of a style less pure, Seen through the camera's lens, Or the quotations of visitors.

My skill is in words only: To tell you, writing this letter home, That we, whose blood was sweetened once By Byron or his elders in the magic, Entered the circle safely, found No messenger for us except the smiles. Owls sip the wind here. Well, This place also was somebody's home, Whipped by the gulf to thorns, A house for proverbs by a broken well. Winter was never native here; nor is. Men, women, and the nightingales Are forms of Spring.

Carol on Corfu I, per se I, I sing on. Let flesh falter, or let bone break Break, yet the salt of a poem holds on, Even in empty weather When beak and feather have done.

I am such fiddle-glib strokes, As play on the nerves, glance the bare bone With the madman's verve I quicken, Leaven and liven body's prime carbon, I, per se I, alone.

This is my medicine: trees speak and doves Talk, woods walk: in the pith of the planet Is undertone, overtone, status of music: God Opens each fent, scent, memory, aftermath In the sky and the sod.

O per se O, I sing on. Never tongue falters or love lessens, Lessens. The salt of the poem lives on Like this carol of empty weather Now feather and beak have gone.