Dick Davis

Lifting her arms to soap her hair
Her pretty breasts respond – and there
The movement of that buoyant pair
Is like a spell to make me swear
...

The first night that I slept with you
And slept, I dreamt (these lines are true):
Now newly married we had moved
Into an unkempt house we loved –
...

For Joshua Mehigan

These are the dawn thoughts of an atheist
Vaguely embarrassed by what looks like grace:
...

Each summer, working there, I’d set off for
The fabled cities – Esfahan, Kashan,
Or Ecbatana, where Hephaestion died,
The poets’ towns – Shiraz and Nayshapour,
...

Who thickens from the shadows as you die?
Who silences your comprehending cry?

Emblem of all you lost and now inherit,
...

The sun comes up, and soon
The night’s thin fall of snow
Fades from the grass as if
It could not wait to go.
...

Life lies to hand in hoe, spade, pruning-knife,
Plain wooden furniture and wattle walls,
In those unspoken words ‘my husband’, ‘wife’,
In one another’s flesh which still recalls
...

The ruins, which are not very remarkable, are situated on an island which
is almost impossible to reach ...
Hachette Guide to the Middle East, p.1003.
...

The house is one bare room
And only tea is served.
The old man, mild, reserved,
Shuffles into a gloom
...

an epithalamium

Through high defiles of warehouses that dwarf
With undetermined age the passer-by,
...

for Sarah Davis

The portrait of the princess lies
In scattered fragments on the floor;
...

Near the beginning of his first journey
The great traveller (who was to suffer
Shipwreck, the loss of all his wealth, his slaves
- On whom he doted - and his son; who was
...

A few things that recall you to me, Edgar:

A stately 80's Buick; hearing a car
Referred to by a coaxing soubriquet -
...

Once, when I was a child of seven or eight,
I turned a corner on a wooded path
And saw a fox a few feet from my face.
We stood stock still and took each other in:
...

How old were we? Eight, ten or so?
I seem the fearful one - you glow,
All bounce and boyisch confidence,
Which looking back now makes no sense.
...

Age instinct with wisdom, love, bends towards
The sensual man, the penitent, and clasps
Him lightly by the shoulder-blades. In rags
...

You see your own face with another mind
And then your own mind with another face;
You and not you, too raw, then too refined,
A shameful sameness and a stranger's grace.
...

I lay down in the darkness of my soul
And knew that I was neither sick nor whole,
That lack defined me, and my absent-presence
Was not contingent to me, but my essence.
...

"The heart has its abandoned mines . . ."
Old workings masked by scrub and scree.
Sometimes, far, far beneath the surface
An empty chamber will collapse;
...

In time the temporary withdrawal
Became a way of life. How long
Before they could admit there'd be
No going back , before they ceased
...