Sanctuary
If I had time to think
I think
That you and you
Would loom immensely
At this dream;
This wrecked and wracked wrong-headed,
Foot-sliding, step-staggering brink;
This theme.
If I had time, and time
Took time for me,
I'd turn back twenty years
Of pain and doubt,
Undoubtedly;
And make my major moves
Before the long regret
In deep and tardy shifts
Left love, each one, one by one
In limbo - stranded yet.
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poem by David Lewis Paget
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The Attic
'There's nobody in
But the light is on
And a chair just creaked,
Did you hear it, son?
There's been no chairs
For ever so long,
So who's abroad
In the attic, son? '
'That grim old lady
Who haunts the stairs
In a faded dress
With a world of cares,
Whenever I look
She disappears,
But lives in a world
That's drowned in tears.'
'They say she mutters
Beneath the moon
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poem by David Lewis Paget
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Passenger From Childhood
There was a bright-eyed boy
That no-one knows,
Who stowed away in steerage once,
I hid him in my clothes,
He always travelled second-class
And braved each raging sea,
We travelled while the tide was high;
He came ashore with me.
And every train I ever caught
I saw him there,
Back in some third-class carriage
Or just open to the air,
I started leaving him behind
Or caught another train,
Got off at stations where, I knew,
I’d lose him in the rain.
But one day then, I noticed
He was lost to me,
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poem by David Lewis Paget
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The Basic Tenets
The basic tenets of my faith
Remain, though time has blunted all
The finer points I once embraced
By casting doubts beyond my trawl.
For now a sober Saturn sets
Its nets at my small sanity,
While I remain obsessed with things
That ravage this mortality.
Time teases man a little way
Then casts him out, adrift in space
As if his grace were nothing blessed
And all his dignity but waste.
And it is this that most appals
The cultured mind, the man within
Who weaves long patterns through short dreams
That he conceives, but may not spin.
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poem by David Lewis Paget
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In The Old Man's House
The mad churl at the headstone,
The vane’s point, south,
The bright burn, the sad sin
At the carlin’s mouth.
The young field on the old day
By the age-old tarn,
The bloodstone by the highway
Where the wind breasts down;
Athame, set on a black cloth
By the five point star,
The cup brims, the dye sets
By the sharp hoar briar.
The thatch-rot at the damp wall
Of the dark stone hut,
The lampwick at the breastbone
Where the old man sat,
The sharp prick of the hoar briar
The thumb’s blood-spray,
The last flickering lamplight
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poem by David Lewis Paget
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Jane O'Grady
Grey old lady, sat by the sea
With her nimble fingers, weaving,
Jane O’Grady, seventy three
In the world that she was leaving.
Hummed sweet honey from virgin lips
In the way of the wind, sad-sighing,
Carried the song from her fingertips
To the day that she lay dying.
Shuttle sang in the early breeze
To the tune of life’s sweet sorrow:
“God, I’m weary of weaving love,
But I’ll not be here tomorrow.”
Grey old lady, worked with a will
On the shawl of life’s sweet pattern,
Fingers stilled in the dawning chill
As the world turned once too often.
Nevermore will she weave the love
That we borrowed, all unknowing,
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poem by David Lewis Paget
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Dark Forces
There’s something a-move in your mind, girl,
Some deepest dark danger to you,
There’s something apace in the cloud and your grace
So intent on bewildering you.
There’s something in moon-shadowed buildings and barns
And your eyes in the eventime dusk,
And the shiver of nothingness sweeping the hedgerows
Of moon-glaring pillars of rust.
There’s something in forces and tides of the night
That is sweeping the eyes of your mind,
And pools of translucent, emotional movement
Envelope the well of your kind.
There’s something that dwells in the well of your kind
That retreats in a whisper from light,
But always tick-ticks at the moment the sun sinks
To drown in the sea of the night.
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poem by David Lewis Paget
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I Work Machines
Some ride high pacers
Then buckle, then groom,
I toil the mornings
And weary by noon,
Some lie on beaches
While others sip wine,
I work my magic
From noon until nine.
Some pass each hour in
A long, speechless haze,
Some watch from windows
Some others, for days,
Some look for something
They cannot define,
I work machines
That decipher each line.
Some will learn nothing
Who sit by and wait
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poem by David Lewis Paget
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Waters Into Wine
There is no love like the sea brings!
Of tides and storms, or your wanderings.
For you, too, swirl your eddies at the moon,
And flow and ebb at my every afternoon.
The mornings see you cold in discontent
Towing frostily at the night spent;
And gathering your gown around each rivulet
You scatter late stars in your bathroom pirouette.
But evenings - ah - and there the change begins,
When your warmer currents give my feelings wings,
And you lap at shores and forests ill-defined
'Til your breakers beat your waters into wine.
And when love casts long runnels at my feet
To swirl and charm, and make my life complete,
I glimpse beyond some hidden pool that lies
And fancy tides that move behind your eyes.
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poem by David Lewis Paget
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When Our Days Are Minutes...
At life’s butt end, I offer this, my sweet,
A long, slow burn to, at last, defeat;
A dreamtime reverie of old, gone ways
And sleepy wakings at the nub of days.
A light touch, drowsy, on your fading skin
To feed slow warmth at your cold come-in,
A languid stroking at your liquid stirrings
Before sleep deepens and reclaims two virgins.
More long silences than words between us
(Thoughts drip silver where a word breeds fever) ,
Painful pauses at a mind’s long ache
When a thought brings anger, or a word’s too late.
All this, woman, can I see before us,
Life’s long panic that will cut and draw us,
But still I’ll hold you at the long-loved hand
When our days are minutes, and our minutes sand.
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poem by David Lewis Paget
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