Basil Bunting Poems

Boasts time mocks cumber Rome. Wren
set up his own monument.
Others watch fells dwindle, think
the sun's fires sink.
...

There are the Alps. What is there to say about them?
They don't make sense. Fatal glaciers, crags cranks climb,
jumbled boulder and weed, pasture and boulder, scree,
et l'on entend, maybe, le refrain joyeux et leger.
...

Poetry? It's a hobby.
I run model trains.
Mr Shaw there breeds pigeons.
...

Nothing
substance utters or time
stills and restrains
joins design and
...

The ploughland has gone to bent
and the pasture to heather;
gin the goodwife stint,
she'll keep the house together.
...

I
Brag, sweet tenor bull,
descant on Rawthey’s madrigal,
each pebble its part
...

A strong song tows
us, long earsick.
Blind, we follow
rain slant, spray flick
...

Lavender and contorted
Only and lavender
Outrageous and very
...

Swirl sleeping in the waterfall!
On motionless pools scum a...
...

I

He whom we anatomized
‘whose words we gathered as pleasant flowers
and thought on his wit and how neatly he described things’
...