O lovely demon, half-divine!
Hemlock and hydromel and gall,
Honey and aconite and wine
Mingle to make thatmouth of thine-
Thy mouth I love: but most of all
It is thy tears that I desire-
Thy tears, like fountain-drops that fall
In garden red,Satanical;
Or like the tears of mist and fire,
Wept by the moon, that wizards use
to secret runes when they require
Some silver philtre,sweet and dire.
By Clark Ashton Smith
I met a witch with amber eyes
Who slowly sang a scarlet rune,
Shifting to an icy laughter
Like the laughter of the moon.
Red as a wanton’s was her mouth.
And fair the breast she bade me take
With a word that clove and clung
Burning like a furnace-flake.
But from her bright and lifted bosom,
When I touched it with my hand,
Came the many-needled coldness
Of a glacier-taken land.
And, lo! The witch with eyes of amber
Vanished like a blown-out flame,
Leaving but the lichen-eaten
Stone that bore a blotted name.
by Clark Ashton Smith
Lived long; much fear, less
courage. Bottom in love’s school
of his class; time’s reasons
too far back to be known.
Good on his knees, yeilding,
vertical, to petty temptations.
A mouth thoughts escaped
from unfledged. Where two
were company, he the unwanted
third. A Narcissus tortured
by the whisperers behind
the mirror. Visionary only
in his perception of an horizon
beyond the horizon. Doubtful
of God, too pusillanimous
to deny him. Saving his face
in verse from the humiliations prose
inflicted on him. One of life’s
conscientious objectors, conceding
nothing to the propaganda of death
but a compulsion to volunteer.
by R. S. Thomas
from Experimenting with an Amen (1986)
She dips her bill in the rim of the sea.
Her beak is the ellipse
of a world much smaller
than that far section of the sea’s
circumference. A curve enough to calculate
the field’s circle and its heart
of eggs in the cold grass.
All day while I scythed my territory
out of nettles, laid claim to my cantref,
she has cut her share of sky. Her song bubbles
long as a plane trail from her savage mouth.
I clean the blade with newspaper. Dusk blurs
circle within circle till there’s nothing left
but the egg pulsing in the dark against her ribs.
For each of us the possessed space contracts
to the nest’s heat, the blood’s small cicuit.
by Gillian Clarke
from The Sundial (Gwasg Gomer, 1978)
Fun fact: A cantref was a medieval Welsh land division, particularly important in the administration of Welsh law.
Each night the sea
tires of its slopping and slapping
and ascends the limestone staircase
of cactus-sharp stone.
It lies down
where sky has been,
waving away the blue
and only hooded clouds
show its occasional restlessness.
Bright fish with mouths
that globe, look down on me
and the breezy whish-whish
of sea-weed is the needled
branches of every pine.
I see the lights
of planes as they are out
trawling for dreams.
The moon spills milk
which I drink in,
before I too lie down
to sleep among shoals of stars.
by Mike Jenkins
from Invisible Times
Rambling At The Bridge Head 
You must be logged in to post a comment.