Thom Gunn

One by one they appear in
the darkness: a few friends, and
a few with historical
names. How late they start to shine!
...

The blue jay scuffling in the bushes follows
Some hidden purpose, and the gush of birds
That spurts across the field, the wheeling swallows,
Have nested in the trees and undergrowth.
...

I am too young to grow a beard
But yes man it was me you heard
In dirty denim and dark glasses.
I look through everyone who passes
...

It was your birthday, we had drunk and dined
Half of the night with our old friend
Who'd showed us in the end
To a bed I reached in one drunk stride.
...

I wake up cold, I who
Prospered through dreams of heat
Wake to their residue,
Sweat, and a clinging sheet.
...

It mounts at sea, a concave wall
Down-ribbed with shine,
And pushes forward, building tall
Its steep incline.
...

The snail pushes through a green
night, for the grass is heavy
with water and meets over
the bright path he makes, where rain
...

Cats met us at
the landing-place
reclining in the sun
to check us in
...

I shall not soon forget
The greyish-yellow skin
To which the face had set:
Lids tights: nothing of his,
...

In the silence that prolongs the span
Rawly of music when the record ends,
The red-haired boy who drove a van
In weekday overalls but, like his friends,
...

Mr Pierce the butcher
Got news his son was missing
About a month before
The closing of the war.
...

He died, and I admired
the crisp vehemence
of a lifetime reduced to
half a foot of shelf space.
...

I stand upon a hill and see
A luminous country under me,
Through which at two the drunk sailor must weave;
The transient's pause, the sailor's leave.
...

Though night is always close, complete negation
Ready to drop on wisdom and emotion,
Night from the air or the carnivorous breath,
Still it is right to know the force of death,
...

Two dumpy women with buns were drinking coffee
In a narrow kitchen—at least I think a kitchen
And I think it was whitewashed, in spite of all the shade.
They were flat brown, they were as brown as coffee.
...

Your dying was a difficult enterprise.
First, petty things took up your energies,
The small but clustering duties of the sick,
Irritant as the cough's dry rhetoric.
...

I have reached a time when words no longer
help:
Instead of guiding me across the moors
Strong landmarks in the uncertain out-of-doors,
...

You go from me
In June for months on end
To study equanimity
Among high trees alone;
...

Nightmare of beasthood, snorting, how to wake.
I woke. What beasthood skin she made me take?

Leathery toad that ruts for days on end,
...

I thought I was so tough,
But gentled at your hands,
Cannot be quick enough
To fly for you and show
...