III


1

Hawk moth fetched a rumour of the sensuous external world: the path of Diana climbed from Tiphareth into the abyss.

2

In December we kept each other company through the hermetic wilderness, kissed while the moon stood at the pillar of mercy.

3

Myself a half-apparent man, I found her pronouncements clouded: it had become habitual for her to gaze through a net.

4

I forgot those who knew me best, spent too much thought upon a ghost I had embraced among blossoms of salt and sulphur.

5

The blackberry stain inside my hat, its brim twisted into a figure of eight for the sake of contrast to her curious star-pointed halo.

6

Morgan le Fay gathered strength through the Bronze Age: no longer bound to the sky, her genius settled deep within spring and pool.

7

Under the cloud barrier, we passed black sheds of the giants, the paddock in which fairground equipment stood dismantled.

8

My conceit outlasted art, trade and mystery: the damaged launch in drydock upon a wooded peninsula, bridge knotted into the fist of some freshwater god.

9

How foolish of me to hold that I stood back from one who might well not have been taken, more keen to enact an old refusal than to become subject to happiness.

10

The demands and menaces of poets had ceased to impress me long ago: I wished only to sit down and put my back to a tree.

11

I made nothing of the secret breathed to me in syllables, still Marxist, still Marxist under the rose.

12

Do not forget that many gods are buried within this island: our dead go elsewhere, in a boat steered by the thought of Mercury.