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OTHER POEMS

OF VARIOUS DATES AND TIMES

BY G. R. LEDGER

This is part of the web site of Shakespeare's sonnets

	The Duchess of Beaufort by Thomas Gainsborough   Hermitage, St. Petersburg. See below for enlargement.

	Since immortality may not be had for the taking, (and what use is it to the living or the dead?), the poet must make what shift he can to obtain reward in his own lifetime.  It is easy to deceive oneself that words are beautiful, but they are unruly things.  Whatever combinations we may haply light upon might have been used before, or might be banal or indifferent.  Sometimes a strangeness beyond all comprehension overwhelms us, sometimes we are elated for unknown reasons.  What I present here did at some time delight me and I recall it for the pleasure of others, if they be so minded.  If you, the reader, do not like them, then forgive the intrusion, and I pray only that you return to your old favourites with renewed fervour and ask yourself what it might have cost the poet to write them.  For words are not cheap or obtained easily, despite evidence to the contrary, and we, the emissaries, are a threatened species.  In the world's history we have a small place. And truly the items here add but little to the world's commodities and might therefore claim the right to be tolerated, or to inhabit a better palace.   G. R.  Ledger.  February 2009.

	I
	This poem is like the passage of a boat Along the stream, with gently plashing oars And swan like feet, and afterwards a silence And still reverberation.  Nothing disturbs The quietness.  In such a place I could grow old And die without complaint, watching the leaves move, The gliding glassy waters, the sun on green, The russet shape of clouds where no one treads No human voice to break the spell, or even Footsteps upon the gravel to herd the hours So seldom does the day remain so motionless So deep the chasm which the sky has entered.

	II
	Wakeful I listened to the first morning bird Defining rooftops and the intractable fields, Breaking the liquid summits of achievement Over unbounded plateaus and hills untainted. That moment then it seemed stood still forever Silent as glass, soft as the empty spaces Between a cloud and cloud in the first dawning Chill as the waters lying in foreign lands And moving then far off away from cities And sleepers, and away from sounds as if That fragmentary miracle pieced its images Into perfection out of sight remote from harbouring minds.

	III
	Some one of you some you some other one Or else some other you that lives within Or you yourself the one I never knew But loved in images of times having always been That you I saw depart and you unnoticing Guiltless sat by untroubled and I could not catch  That swift elusive spirit as it flew Passing so easily from touch and following And let it go so much of you being mine Though you were still the same and still unchanging Beyond the scope of measuring, that strange world So huge and uninhabitable I could have never hoped to hold.

	IV
	This is the first day of the days that bring Warmth and abundance from the sun, knowing that genuine Caress, the elaborate workings of the trees The smell of ferns toiling in green wildernesses From damp and dewy pathways.  I could believe Such lines as these would be to after ages A diary of the skies that May produces Still moist with music still anchoring spacious volumes Of air with birdsong and disorganised themes Of joy love laughter yet still reticent Where bees should build their shrines and pillage thrones Rich with the regal scent of yellow flowers smouldering.

	V
	How fast my days are fleeting Like water on the sand The raindrops on the window pane Leaves falling to the ground.   Tomorrow is like yesterday, I look into your face To see the shades of autumn there The lines his pencils trace.  It is my own reflection Which dances in the glass, A beetle crosses the water's edge A dragonfly hums past.   My loves are like the autumn days Mysterious, rich, unknown, They colour the apples on the tree And scatter the thistle down.   And why I lived and why I loved I ponder frequently. The grasshopper resonates his song Scornful of mystery.   Earth brings to its completion All that is ever sown, Indifferent to the artefacts That we think of as our own.   And therefore are we severed From land and sky and sea Like scattered limbs upon a field Or birds on a frozen tree. Our thoughts are for ever flying Through spaces where worlds are thrown; The mountains laugh, the dawn ascends, As if we had never been born.

	VI
	Against the paper of the sky The poplar leaves are bending; With velvet wings a butterfly Tells of the summer’s ending.  This amphitheatre of woods Bounded by sky and stream Is where the councils of the gods In ancient times were seen.  And still their presence may be felt In every flower that breathes, Wherever with a hand of stealth The breeze moves in the trees.  And yet this world must have an end And you and I must close The chapter which enlivened us And now is comatose.  For silent are the hills and streams And those who might understand No longer live, are long since gone, Flown far to a distant land.  They cannot now prognosticate What gives the brief flower its day, Or tell what strange skies might indicate, Or where the blind winds shall stray.  And we are left surrounded By things that are all unknown, Wandering, drifting and  confounded, In a world that is not our own.  Though from the painting of the sky Sometimes a thought takes wing And wrapping itself in mystery Makes the lone nightingale sing, Yet that is brief, and the richness Which once we thought we knew Turns into fused confusion,  And makes what is untrue true.  So, friends, farewell to this artfulness, And the duplicity of song; In another world we will know ourselves And at last to ourselves belong.

	VII
	The last leaves of the autumn Turn russet and gold and brown; Sunlight as pale as water Freckles the patchwork ground.  Now skeletons, frames and scaffold  Cut traceries in the sky Where birds find space to linger Reluctant, unused to fly.  And nature shall be our mentor  To show how the earth grows cold As entropy kills off everything That is not already old.    I will no longer consider  Wherever my place shall be, On the slippery streets of cities, By a loved one, or solitary, Where thoughts can thrive, like flowers, That rise with the morning sun, To fade with the hot heat of noontide Thinking their task is done.   And your glance which was like the sunlight Through the glass of a dusty room Lit up the piles and the lumber And shed its warmth in the tomb.  But I will not be deluded That these stores are a secret world Like folded flags in an attic Waiting at last to be unfurled.  For once more the Autumn splendours Which look down from the hills and laugh, Are gorgeous and abundantly fictive Like the words of an epitaph.  They will go their way without meaning, Without sense without song without sound, Leaving us here but as empty shadows Stalking the dank foreign ground.

	VIII
	As I walked today along the woodland ride A red camelia wore a shawl of snow And the dark fir trees had silver eyebrows And all the ground was blanketed with white.    So I asked myself why are the heavens not red, Or the snow a different colour, like gold, Why is green the shade of nature, But everything is grey in me as I grow old?    Let the blood in my heart warm the ground, Let my thoughts beat like the wings of many birds Fluttering upwards, and let love respond Within me with rainbows of glorious words.    How little we know of the world, for all our wisdom.  The Spring comes, and is halted in despite, And the heavens care not for our poor  rules of thumb  Covering all Spring’s blossoms with blinding white.    So I shall walk again looking for other colours Knowing how little they mean in the scheme of things, As if in other worlds, in the minds of others, Purple and gold and green tune their hearts’ strings.

	IX
	Like the singing of an unstrung lute, like the sound Of clouds that pass, or the sun that lights them, Or winds that gather in the horizon’s end, Or everything that ever in the earth has meaning, I catch the last breath of a word unspoken A scorpion of the sand, a plant still hidden, Melodies and silence, the life unbidden, And all that ever was born, was broken Like waves continuous, or empty sand On which the wave breaks, a falling strand, A memory half-hidden, a time yet to be The eternal difference between you and me,    My voice speaks it by utterance and broken tongue    A language stretched out, a thought forever wrong.

	X
	Do you slip away forever, not to be seen, Like an eclipsed moon, or a shadow that runs Along a rainy street, or a forgotten tune At times half heard in the sound of another; Do you disappear forever, my heart, my dream, The one who was always me, yet did not discover Your loss till you were gone, when I had not held Your aching hand to mine, did not uncover Your sorrow’s depth nor what it was to know? The music begins again, it is silent now, Not such as you created or made to sing, It is the hollow reverberation of a broken string. All that I had of love was buried in you. I make these words only but to make sorrow new.

	XI
	IN A BOOK OF CATULLUS’ POEMS I am Catullus Who wove the string of a song In the hot reeking days Beside the heavy walls of Rome Or thought of love and music Under pine trees by the shores Of sultry Adriatic seas My memory dry as bone.  Who will understand me When I am gone When famished time my body has eaten And swallowed the language I loved in?

	XII
	THE SEA The swelling sea that heaves its chest And brags and boasts and spits out mist, An old man that the world forgets A worn face that the sun has kissed.  The waves roll in with spendthrift force Seething with froth and silver edge, A line of prose, a line of verse, Line upon line and ledge on ledge.  A thousand years, a myriad ways,  Long  regiments of infantry   That march and fall upon their face  Brief fragments of eternity.  Or if upon the populous waves A dolphin rides, or if a ship Hangs on its fathomed rugged face The long brine heaves and sneers its lip.  Could we but compass with an ear The everlasting sounds that rain, Dying and rising, cheer on cheer, A cry of joy, the dead man’s pain,   All that the mighty world contains Would be therein, and from that voice Our lives for pettiness would cease And the white waves would then rejoice. Freedom that holds immensity, A line of light where the sun sets, The changing and unchanging sea, An old man that the world forgets.

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