MS Collections

Out into the night I go
Into the black friary
Where the monks are chanting low
In candle-dim solemnity

I, the mystic habit, wear,
And upon my shoulders
Night's dream-mantle.

November striking without mercy.
Sleet squalls
Fired from a lampless sky
A cat calls
Mournfully to no listening lover
And I
Homeless beneath a bush take cover
From Death's sky.

We await
We have always awaited
The coming
Of a Christ.

The Baptist
Is not Freud
Or Einstein
Or Henry Ford.

Ask no question, fools have queried
Intellect in child-curiosity - 
Queried vaguely, impertinent:
     What is Time
     And Life?

On this white page
The Holy Spirit may
Descend in flaming wind
So poet pray
Not heeding Mind
Or the loveliness of April's sensuous way.

I've kept a room apart
Within my secret heart
That when she comes I may
Invite true love to stay.

I turn from you, who are
Lyrical and wise
As a child in a confessional
Saying: - I will unbar
   The golden door of the adulteries.

Enter in triumph
You who have not begged favours,
You who have not raised prayer-storms,
You whose knees
Have not touched the ascetic gravel.

I'll not beg
Of any man again
Though bare as the Devil's cupboard my own should be.

I will make you a pillow of leaves - 
Leaves yellow and red
Fallen from trees that are dreams
Imprisonéd.