W. S. Graham by W.S. Graham

Author:W.S. Graham
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: New York Review Books
Published: 2018-10-04T12:27:20+00:00

4

Or I am always only

Thinking is this the time

To look elsewhere to turn

Towards what was it

I put myself out

Away from home to meet?

Was it this only? Surely

It is more than these words

See on my side

I went halfway to meet.

And there are other times.

But the times are always

Other and now what I meant

To say or hear or be

Lies hidden where exile

Too easily beckons.

What if the terrible times

Moving away find

Me in the end only

Staying where I am always

Unheard by a fault.

So to begin to return

At last neither early

Nor late and go my way

Somehow home across

This gesture become

Inhabited out of hand.

I stop and listen over

My shoulder and listen back

On language for that step

That seems to fall after

My own step in the dark.

Always must be the lost

Or where we turn, and all

For a sight of the dark again.

The farthest away, the least

To answer back come nearest.

And this place is taking

Its time from us though these

Two people or voices

Are not us nor has

The time they seem to move in

To do with what we think

Our own times are. Even

Where they are is only

This one inhuman place.

Yet somewhere a stone

Speaks and maybe a leaf

In the dark turns over.

And whoever I meant

To think I had met

Turns away further

Before me blinded by

This word and this word.

See how presently

The bull and the girl turn

From what they seemed to say,

And turn there above me

With that star-plotted head

Snorting on silence.

The legend turns. And on

Her starry face descried

Faintly astonishment.

The formal meadow fades

Over the ever-widening

Firth and in their time

That not unnatural pair

Turn slowly home.

This is no other place

Than where I am, between

This word and the next.

Maybe I should expect

To find myself only

Saying that again

Here now at the end.

Yet over the great

Gantries and cantilevers

Of love, a sky, real and

Particular is slowly

Startled into light.

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