I Waste My Days
In the half-twilight of my empty year
Where I crouch, hemmed in
By an avalanche of days,
I hear the trees murmur
In some long, sad fatigue,
While birds land, hover…
And break their journeys.
My life has bunched its folds,
They gather at my feet,
As clouds, grey, scud across each enterprise;
Behind my eyes are glimpses of
Lost days, more sure and wise,
While love lies, mocking me,
And each year cries…
The clock ticks relentlessly,
The dead leaves fall,
My lost friends walk at my horizon,
The things I found familiar
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poem by David Lewis Paget
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Do What You Will.
‘The best, you left with me! ’
That part I loved in you
Is with me still,
And dream-sleeps in my memory –
Do what you will.
Nor will your storms and tempests
In their shallow pique
Drive it away.
Your moods and clamours melt
At my disarray.
To mutter at the distances
Long laid between us;
With sword, spite and quill,
You cut me at the quick,
I score your spill.
‘Til you do leave, have gone,
To leave me with this,
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poem by David Lewis Paget
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By Miners Hands
What miner’s art
Did meld and make,
Did stone on stone
Fling you on high,
Or lie beneath
The stars, awake
To think your shape
As nights sped by?
What weary hand
Did knead and tread
Your mud in some
Dead winter’s storm,
While autumn’s bride
Long kept her bed
To wait his will
Who gave you form.
And though they lie
Unknown at last,
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poem by David Lewis Paget
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Stone Cottages
You built your stone cottages
Without any windows,
No light for your memories
No doors for your soul;
You’ve long kept your pillages
Deep-dug in foundations
Your meadows and villages
Too far from your home.
The shadows of verities
Loom large on verandahs
To strut at the terraces,
Assault your grim walls;
But all of your sureties
Are locked in your cottages
And all your serenity
In dark, airless halls.
Your lines cross your messages
In treks round old workings,
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poem by David Lewis Paget
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Love-Lost
When the first sweet burst of love and lust
Has eddied and ebbed to dreams and dust,
Has eddied and ebbed in the tide of my head
To the essence of dreams and dust;
And once the passionate nights are spent
In sipping the wine the gods repent,
In sipping the wine that's tipping my mind
To find that my mind is spent;
And when the smile that you have for me
Has slipped and dipped for eternity,
Has slipped and dipped in the wayward shift
Of the love that you have for me;
I think I'll sit and I'll sigh at night
To drift and dream to the dawning light,
To drift and dream in the dreams and dust
That I hold of you in the candlelight.
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poem by David Lewis Paget
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Horoscope - for Blaise Romany
These winter days have been long and cold
For the one who waits on the birth in me,
For though she carries the seed I hold
I carry the watchword, ‘Destiny! '
The cosmic clock in my loins has set
The future freeze on the planet’s race
And what was set by my lovers clasp
Will shine in the new-born spirit’s face.
The planets whirl and the planets wheel
To weave their way in the master’s web,
I cannot buy, I can only steal
One short life-long at my life-tide’s ebb.
The star that falls in the field of wheat,
The lightning flash in the summer storm,
The sigh of shadows, the thunder’s beat
Will all be present when you are born!
10 October 1976
poem by David Lewis Paget
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Poverty Grass
Wild horses we
Pricked at the wind,
Never to know, alas;
That all the lord of our fortunes bought
For us
Was poverty grass.
Poverty grass
The paupered seed
So sickly poor, alas;
The souls of the great untamed grow weak
Despair
On poverty grass.
And you, my friend,
Grew sick awhile,
And cried and cried, alas;
While I grew fat on a flowering weed
Called pride
And poverty grass.
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poem by David Lewis Paget
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Sweetness and Light
Anything’s possible, Sweetness and Light,
Maybe you’ll leave me lonely,
Maybe you’ll stir like a shade in the night
To turn to your one and only,
On a fine morning you’ll probably say
‘I’ve looked at you once too often…’
And I’ll look in vain for the signs and the tides
Of your looks and your voice to soften.
Anything’s possible, Sweetness and Light
Maybe you’ll leave me never,
Maybe I’ll grow in your mind and your sight
‘Til I fill your horizons forever.
On a fine evening you’ll possibly say:
‘You know that I’ve followed your star.’
And I in my turn will take Sweetness and Light
To the Sweetness and Light that you are.
26 March 1974
poem by David Lewis Paget
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Nostradamus
This is the year that the gods will play in
That man, with his pride, will most dismay in,
While storms will clash, and wolves will bay in.
This is the year when the violent waters
Bury the land, as the ancients taught us,
And surge at the throats of our sons and daughters.
This is the year of the comet’s vapour
When the earth burns red in its trail of paper
While men pray long at the midnight taper.
This is the year that our lord will spurn us,
Cast adrift, as the devil turns us
Slow on the spit of his earth-bound purpose.
This is the year that we lose our way in,
The planet reels, and the people pray in;
This is the year that the gods will play in.
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poem by David Lewis Paget
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On The Death Of My Father
My brain has turned to ash, and yes,
My mouth is dust,
And love is grief, and death is
But the loss of trust;
While life is paupered, futures turn,
Feed on the past,
And dwell on words you might have…
If I’d only asked!
No point to dwell again, but yet
I must, I will;
Was there some hint, a glimpse perhaps
You’d long distilled,
Was I so blind, insensible
And dead to grief
That death could snatch you carelessly,
Some petty thief.
Perspectives shift, horizons narrow,
Drift my sand,
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poem by David Lewis Paget
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