Poems by William Saunders
Published at Smashwords
Copyright William Saunders 2010
Smashwords
License Statement
This ebook is licensed for your
personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away
to other people. If you would like to share this book with another
person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader. If you’re
reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased
for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase
your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Poems:
The Convent School in December
Other Books by William Saunders
A hawk I saw and marvelled how lovely things can be.
Alighted on a branch he lit the tree
with his fierce stripes, tawny and black shivering.
His shouldering wings - cherubim-like -covering
his quick head: sleek, contemptuous of me.
And who to judge him with the eye of man,
whose violent and larcenous hand,
leaves nothing undisturbed?
And I, for wonder at this bird,
let go of judgment and breathed
cold air until he rose
beyond where thought goes,
my eye like his - undeceived
THE CONVENT SCHOOL IN DECEMBER
Bare trees, bare windows, and bare rooms,
silent stairs and silent halls,
lonely as a pilgrim's tomb,
the Convent peers over its virginal wall.
Empty of life and set apart
from a world which renews and decays,
dull and confused as a bereaved heart,
your stillness out-chills the December day.
What memories stir in your corridors now?
The thunder of feet, the emotional squalls?
Hot dreams, wild friendships, and fierce rows,
in the shadow of life and its siren call?
Your girls leave only the ghost of their noise:
the vulgar, the pretty, the clever,
held for a time on the edge of promise
while you remain in the shadow forever.
Not even the wind sighs through you now,
vacant, naked and resigned,
to wait helpless in hope of your vow,
a hope which must be baked blind.
Now in this sacred season,
in the day of the shortest days,
when the light is sharp, the grass is frozen,
bleached by the rime to a cold blaze,
when men and dogs roam with their noise,
and devour the space of the Heath,
and the riots of night and the shouts of boys,
spill into the day as the whole World feasts,
when lovers emerge in the bitter air,
wrapped in a single-hearted desire,
you remain unshaken, beyond care,
your thoughts lost in black fire.
There are days to be left to the crows,
those ungainly birds of all weathers,
tossed by the wind like rags,
a muddle of noise and feathers
When the wind leans its invisible weight
against the yew until it sighs,
snatches bin lids and bangs gates,
hunts clouds across piebald skies;
when even the rain struggles to fall,
tossed into drifts and gusts like snow:
After early mass I have said to myself:
There are days to be left to the crows"
Yet there were days when these dark angels
were the only companions of my soul:
the idle days lost in unaccountable time;
the shapeless days swallowed whole.
Days when hour lapped empty hour,
like a lone athlete on a track,
until the street lamps come into flower
one by one as the sky turns dark blue to black.
Days when dusk falls and the room remains unlit,
and the shadows blossom into gloom,
the unread page becomes invisible and still I sit,
relieved the indecisive day is gone.
Those are that days I hear the crows
as their tuneless calls scratch the sky,
overhead, perched on chimney tops
they lift my eyes with their stuttered cry.
I have seen them rise against a wall of wind,
driven motionless to greater and greater height,
careless of weather, thoughtless of better things
the crows always take flight.
So who could begrudge them this May morning,
in the woods at first light,
as they strut ignorant of how the dawning
sun paints their backs white?
The railway reveals life at its most basic,
the fronts of houses serve for pretence,
behind damp smalls gather wind and sunlight
on green patches behind the chain-link fence.
These gardens show careless living -
children’s toys abandoned to the rain,
unkempt lawns, sheds with hinges rusting,
exposed to careless eyes upon the train.
The dead are careless too, so we lay them
out beside the track where passing trains
rumbling past all day cannot disturb them,
and if they could, we know they can’t complain.
So often have I seen these silent towns
bleached but unmoved by wind and neglect,
flash by an instant before they’re gone
leaving weeds and stone to their regret.
The stone remembers for us it endures
unchangeable it sets us free
to go on living hiding sorrows
buried where only strangers see.
If the dead would speak,
what news could they tell?
What sighs for lost flesh
from the vapid caves of hell?
Here in the fields of the living,
what else could we hope to share
from beneath the skin of the earth,
where there is no air?
Some claim to have the ear –
Bogus hindus and weird sisters –
to carry for a fee the word of the dead
and their spectral whispers.
What news do they bring
from the forbidden sphere?
Advice on marriages and lost rings,
things which are hardly the dead’s affair.
Go to the dead and be wise, it is said,
become a haunter of tombs,
squander your youth on worn inscriptions,
when life vanishes all too soon.
What could the dead say
now they’re forever changed?
Now they no longer share our heartbeat?
Now they’re forever strange?
Where there is no becoming,
they can only be whole.
To them our doings are shadows,
we are barely souls.
Love as they well may,
to them we are reach-less
We think we talk to the deaf,
it is we who are speechless.
At the hinge of the year comes an hour
before anybody has stirred,
the street lamps burn pale in the sunshine
the day as yet belongs to the birds.
When the last of the mist has yet to clear,