It is a matter of a black cat On a bare cliff top in March Whose eyes anticipate The gorse petals; The formal equation of

Scarcely a street, too few houses To merit the title; just a way bet… The one tavern and the one shop That leads nowhere and fails at th… Of the short hill, eaten away

With her fingers she turns paint into flowers, with her body flowers into a remembrance of herself. She is at work always, mending the garment

Beasts rearing from green slime— an illiterate country, unable to r… its own name. Stones moved into po… on the hills’ sides; snakes laid t… in their cold shadow. The earth su…

I am, as you know, Walter Llywarc… Born in Wales of approved parents… Well goitred, round in the bum, Sure prey of the slow virus Bred in quarries of grey rain.

There are nights that are so still that I can hear the small owl call… far off and a fox barking miles away. It is then that I lie in the lean hours awake listening

Coming home was to that: The white house in the cool grass Membraned with shadow, the bright… Of stream that was its looking—gla… And smoke growing above the roof

It is this great absence that is like a presence, that comp… me to address it without hope of a reply. It is a room I enter from which someone has just

Moments of great calm, Kneeling before an altar Of wood in a stone church In summer, waiting for the God To speak; the air a staircase

It is calm. It is as though we lived in a garden that had not yet arrived at the knowledge of

Laid now on his smooth bed For the last time, watching dully Through heavy eyelids the day’s co… Widow the sky, what can he say Worthy of record, the books all op…

The idiot goes round and around With his brother in a bumping car At the fair. The famous idiot Smile hangs over the car’s edge, Illuminating nothing. This is man…