Geoffrey Hill

From '€œodi Barbare’€

XXIV
What is far hence led to the den of making:
Moves unlike wildfire | not so simple-happy
Ploughman hammers ploughshare his durum dentem
            Digging the Georgics
 
Vision loads landscape | lauds Idoto Mater
Bearing up sacrally so graced with bodies
Voids the challenge how far from Igboland great–
            Stallioned Argos
 
Vehemencies minus the ripe arraignment
Clapper this art taken to heart the fiction
What are those harsh cryings astrew the marshes
            Weep not to hear them
 
Accolades Muses’€™ dithyrambics far-fraught
Borrowed labour ashen with sullen harrow
Cruel past that | Sidney and vesperal Tom
            Campion courted
 
Put to claim not otherwise vowed the era
What else here goes | I am no Igbo wit well
Versed in Virgil Pindar Euripides child–
            Hallowed Idoto
 
Revelation blessed in its unforthcoming
Closed with tempus aedificandi tempus
Destruendi bringing discharge of measure
            Blasting the home-straight
 
                              XXV
Lovelace there come difficult times between us
Though in your place I cannot well imagine
Why I should not follow her chequered steps in–
            Out of the sunlight
 
Candlelight here given the invocation
Starlit even | whatever else is silence
Gratiana somewhere still | she is dancing
            Dancing⌒and ⌒singing
 
Singing not her heart out beyond the fable
Grand carotid arteries self-fulfilling
How the blood’€™s tempered in its modulation
            Balanced impulsive
 
So are our storms trackered from solemn orbit
Turbulence granted our sequestered sphere now
Buffetted now spun on an awl now baffled
            Wreathed in cloud-garlands
 
Masques do so challenge and compose to labour
Hers the masque-like venture the scenes mechanic
Stars have held being since creation’€™s fourth day
            Turned to their music
 
Noble her frame troubling the fame we yield her
All rites well done short of a consummation
Treading down nothingness to ever-dealing
            Maker unmonstrant
 
                              XXVI
Łodz I’€™ve been there done that the vanished children
Klezmer makes glad music at Lazarus gate
If as straggling voices the dead return now
            They have our number
 
Breathing hard we wrestled asbestos brake-pads
Luminously radioactive watches
Fizzled green plaque riding elastic wrist-bands
            Glue smelt of peardrops
 
Someone those taut days was predicting biros
Not my blubbered Jewish pal bright a bully
That we knew klezmer I much doubt the Wedding
            Dance for the Old Men
 
Time released me from him as I could not have
Many then had foresight but I was not one
Vital spinners counting there’€™s no subtraction
            Ever can oust them
 
Odds are for pittance where redemption strands us
Debts of those long-dead sparks of phantom brain cells:
Who’€™s to dance broyges tants the dance of anger’€™s
            Conciliation?
 
There is no known voice but a clarinet sounds
Almost human touting a melt to die for
Hurl of things fastbound the last-known survivors’€™
            Wailed diminution
 
                              XXVII
Breathe on my nesh eyes as upon a glass | this
Something so exquisite I scarce can bear it
I do not think I ever could have borne it
            If not for real
 
Make estrangement all our desires that age so
Perfect empowerment the imperfection
How indemnify a degraded legend
            Lost to computing
 
Contumacious that I am and that now like
Poggio I | too much enjoy invective’€”
This for our good’€”so what you saw me turned on
            Mind if I stress this
 
Breathe on my nesh eyes I am tired of sleeping
Largo ma non troppo affettuoso
Well becomes fierce Didone trionfante
            Lyric oblation
 
As fantastic here as in those odd films we
Watched albeit singly The Tales of Hoffmann
What we must be not to be worked with mirrors
            Hives of perspective
 
Could I have found you in a film by Ophüls
Silent resonances of glass configured
Had I but struck us off The Masque of Blackness
            As it was playing
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