| YOU like my bird-sung gardens: wings and flowers; | |
| Calm landscapes for emotion; star-lit lawns; | |
| And Youth against the sun-rise ... ‘Not profound; | |
| ‘But such a haunting music in the sound: | |
| ‘Do it once more; it helps us to forget’. | 5 |
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| Last night I dreamt an old recurring scene— | |
| Some complex out of childhood; (sex, of course!) | |
| I can’t remember how the trouble starts; | |
| And then I’m running blindly in the sun | |
| Down the old orchard, and there’s something cruel | 10 |
| Chasing me; someone roused to a grim pursuit | |
| Of clumsy anger ... Crash! I’m through the fence | |
| And thrusting wildly down the wood that’s dense | |
| With woven green of safety; paths that wind | |
| Moss-grown from glade to glade; and far behind, | 15 |
| One thwarted yell; then silence. I’ve escaped. | |
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| That’s where it used to stop. Last night I went | |
| Onward until the trees were dark and huge, | |
| And I was lost, cut off from all return | |
| By swamps and birdless jungles. I’d no chance | 20 |
| Of getting home for tea. I woke with shivers, | |
| And thought of crocodiles in crawling rivers. | |
| |
| Some day I’ll build (more ruggedly than Doughty) | |
| A dark tremendous song you’ll never hear. | |
| My beard will be a snow-storm, drifting whiter | 25 |
| On bowed, prophetic shoulders, year by year. | |
| And some will say, ‘His work has grown so dreary.’ | |
| Others, ‘He used to be a charming writer’. | |
| And you, my friend, will query— | |
| ‘Why can’t you cut it short, you pompous blighter?’ | 30 |