Refuge Read Online Free Page B

headlights probe as we stand
    a pace apart in the year’s longest night,
    and there’s your hand
    limp and moon-white
    like a question posed: welcome or withstand
    this tender outbreak of long-restrained delight?
     
    We’re watchers
    at the year’s grave, benighted
    under lamp-tinged brooms of ash that sweep beyond us,
    your face uplifted,
    traffic-lit, curious,
    then snatched back, refusing to be sifted,
    your breath charged and held, unutterably serious.

THE KISS
    Recalling Vienna’s Upper Belvedere
    I recap from Michelin and smile
    at how you’d prepared me for Klimt’s
Kiss,
    dashing back up the hotel’s four floors
    for a postcard just to show me
    how tenderly the man’s hands rested.
    Yet when we’d thawed out
    from the Prince of Savoy’s walks,
    and stood before the original,
    my eye ran down each pattern of a coverlet
    that draped her, till I saw feet pointed
    limply at her lover as if to match
    her look of comfort and assent.
    ‘Yes: we neglect our feet,’ you said
    in a voice that told me this was
    your moment, and I wondered who
    would rub yours to ease away their chill.
    But the way those fingers touched without
    taking, and the restraint of his bearded lips
    made me turn aside with something about
    reflexology and Chinese concubines.

LIVING SON
    O zu ihr zuerst. Wie waren sie da
    aussprechlich in Heilung
...(Rilke: Das Marienleben)
    No mirage shuddering in sunlit dust:
    it was her son pale as unearthed root,
    slow, strong pace so like his measured words,
    wide gaze that stirred love and hate.
    Fine-sculpted man broken and nailed
    till he lost himself in a wild cry
    and she left him embalmed and deftly bound.
    The old rebuke came back:
His Father’s business
    and didn’t she realise?
Yet light in foot and heart
    she took his outstretched hand while his other eased
    her shoulders of their tight-held grief. No words
    for what had passed. So they begin again,
    two trees that stir and sway to windless currents,
    his work and hers now for ever one.
     
     
     
    NOTE
    Epigraph:
    ‘ O to her he first (came). Then and there how inexpressibly they were healed...’

PSALM
    Forgive me, Lord, for not rejoicing
    in her regard,
    for waking to curse a wakefulness
    that wracks me with distrust.
    I have not asked for grace
    to fulfil your promise,
    I have not asked you to bless
    the moments and makings
    of our regard.
    I have not freed my heart
    to soar at your summons.
    I have stopped my ears against
    the songs she makes me sing.
     
    *
     
    You have made me a place of rest to draw
    on her regard.
    And I have not delighted
    in your loving kindness.
    You have come brightening from the south
    over a drenched land as we walked
    in our regard.
    And I have not taken
    your sign to heart.
    You have planted a seed and I have turned away
    and left its tender shoots to wither
    without regard.

A LIGHTER TOUCH
    1. ASCENT
    We tread higher into forest,
    the path roughly terraced
    by root and rock. Me first.
    I turn and see you lit-up
    in a glimmering gap,
    your delight at each slow step
    as if there’s no other place
    where earth’s entire grace
    could so enliven your face.

2
. EMBROIDERY
    I look out at midsummer borders
    while tenderly a Purcell Almand’s plucked
    from harpsichord’s fine-tuned wires,
    elusive, fluid syncopations
    that tint all you’ve nurtured and planted.
    It’s the rhythm of your fingers coaxing
    into colour from green-winged fragments
    wayward petunias, stocks, marigolds,
    dahlias with pert looks and tuberous toes.
    Is it you, Purcell, or the player
    who brushes in layer by layer
    this quavering melange,
    pink-white, puce-yellow, mauve-orange?

3.
ILLUMINATION
    Does grubbing up weeds in August mist
    purge me or do I fight some dogged force
    that has to be admired and cursed?
    What matter when your greeting
    pitches gently into the damp air
    and your smile, part question part blessing
    strokes my face like a shaft of warm light?
    It’s the Feast of the Virgin’s Assumption
    and I face Mass to