Todd Swift
The Teetotaller’s Song
The woman in Waitrose
Considering lamb, or,
On Marylebone, hurrying
In the cold first hours of February –
Each enticing met face
Reminds, not of pleasure
But of pleasure’s final consequence –
An exhaustion, fine and judicious
As strong boys wrestling,
Shirts off, on August grass,
Neither yielding their bit of lawn,
Their held shadows poised,
As if deciding whether to break
Or forever remain intact, enclosed.
So I love the appreciation
Of an arm, a throat, a gloved
Hand, drinking the unreasoned source
Of this adulterous notice,
Alert to what is expected of the world,
England, unbound from January,
The ones on the street I do not stop,
Entice, embrace, and kiss –
Writing this in loving’s stead,
Giddy as after being christened,
Lifted up, to the watered day,
My sober, spun, anguished forehead.
In Memory of F.T. Prince
‘Because to loveis terrible we prefer/The freedom of our crimes’ – from anearly published version of ‘Soldiers Bathing’, F.T. Prince, Captain, M.E.F.(British) Desire ages, ages hardly at all, Edges, like those of a book, Curled at the beach, where waves, Sent by the summer, brush The salt away, finely-combed, And it is homosexual love That holds us in its palm, That cuts and dries the hair We both wore, like uniforms, That day that was a decade, Though neither of us found a bed That could be so cleanly made; For now, married, on continents Split as if in some biblical debate, We have shelved those dreamy Acts of early indiscipline, Where, cock from trousers, Cock in hand, we edged, together To a cliff, a Christian form Of final decision, in the Italian sand, But stepped away from intercourse, Or love, decided that, as men, Our hearts belonged to those Who could tend it otherwise, and so, Packed up our bathing suits, And wore trim expressions Home, at dawn, dressed, like wounds More deeply in blood-lies. Words have a purpose if no meaning Beyond shorelines where they crash, Which is to deface emotion With communication, in a style That drowns the jungle wholesale, And no ark or personality can swim Free of its deciding glamour And deceptive fluidity: so smile, And say, it was not love, that drove Our Damascene caresses to a cross, Upon which loss lay openly, but Desire suffered in its private language – No, it was decorum, or fear of Impropriety – simply petty feeling, Feeling inadequate to emotionality – But those who nailed the arm of God Into the wood were strong enough To withstand hardier cruelty, And played at the weeping feet, Just as the artists, unknown mostly Except for the names of school Or master, too, commanded passion To an ordering, pictorial and strange, Of such derangements of the body As we could never have drawn From our quivers to disarrow, true – So saying, even being, overcome Is not the terrible action it appears – No, it is the naïve aversion to it, Slowly accruing to regret, by year, That marks the one, who, like Cain, Enters a town each time as someone Immediately despised, narrow, pained, Leaving the districts with stones For signs the boys follow out with On the path; love’s release is betraying, Even as it holds back confession To end as a marble, certain epitaph. Love has the power to undo nothing, but like a refrain, returns to that absence so often it becomes a thing, a lake of fire in which husband and wife bathe when going to bed and when rising in the morning to the rooms of the lit dark house. Because you had not died Ormight not soon, Though some time Ibought flowers Yellow, white, and yellow again No other friend Becamemy life As you did And do Childhood never ends When two love as one Loveborn in spring Or reborn Eloquence is not natural Or must be if it runs Through the passions Despairto miss you When you were here Are here I write this in two times Two places, one What I most hope for Your living The other what I most fear These two worlds Bring sorrow and sorrow’s end Together as a bouquet, Stemming and flowering Tears we all know Require of us born-breaths That first demand of air Airin which we suffer And endure encompassing love Boyson their field lit like an aquarium sadto not be alight, like them, with goals thata foot or hand can win; poetry’s rules noless old than theirs, but poets arenot only players on green grass, night andday, also the old-eyed others edgedin the park, who nod at each leap in air, eachattained yelp and elbowed throw, themuscular panoply of bodied action foldedinto hours with an end; slow to leave,friendless, they once stood on the line, orblew as referee, their bones now cold andall trophies pawned. So poems both play andhold, gravely, as if a mourner stood, oneself under the hood of the ground, the other, above,head bowed, to pray. We stand and lie, thisway, to make the words hit home. Soball and word fly untrue until a hand undoes theflight by taking it down from abstract toreal motion, feeling out the meaning of its gut, impactedwith the lob’s sorrow-start, theneeding thrower’s heart, which is to gain theart’s accolades, not be cheered in dismal paradesthat sow ribbons on winners, andnever lift the anguished fade that flows acrossthe dark, onto playing grounds.
Our children
On the Eve of Surgery
Paddington Recreation Grounds