In Love With D.H.Lawrence (Poetry)
11th May 2010
She has trekked six hundred pages —
felt his paced-out anguish underfoot
avoiding those torn edges where
firm knowledge drops away
and crumbles — undecided
while cliff and air and sea
hang grey-green-blue — tones merging
into vague despondency.
She has run the risk of trespass
and followed him along the quaking path
into his private land
where earth is raw with longing
and wounded to its never-healing core
bleeding dark ideals that shift
perspective — finding ways to view
forbidden caves love-haunted — seeped in chill.
Her suffering’s a pilgrimage —
his is the shrine she’s long been seeking
in a wilderness of so world-weary words.
She has tracked the clues his nature left —
a legacy of humming-birds — a snake’s star rôle
uncoiling like a metaphor suggests
his own internal odyssey —
that urgent sloughing of an outgrown skin.
He who pulled the fences down — unpicked walls
of old pretentiousness — laid the landscape bare
his curious eyes missed nothing — hilltop runes
still beckon as she dogs him — faithful hound
to his romantic nomad. Living off
her fantasies of trotting at his heel
his companion on that journey no one takes
unless in thrall — she casts around for scraps
and stalks him as a true fanatic would —
reverent and breathless — flushed with joy
imagining she’ll find some truth the critics missed
during their dissections of his soul —
dreaming she is close — her instinct arrows straight
as a compass down the moonlit road they travel on —
a constant gap between them while his giant shadow strides ahead
the book outlines his mystic goal — an ink stain of a map —
blank margins with their whiteness saying more.
[Winner of the Decanto Poetry Competition 2009]
felt his paced-out anguish underfoot
avoiding those torn edges where
firm knowledge drops away
and crumbles — undecided
while cliff and air and sea
hang grey-green-blue — tones merging
into vague despondency.
She has run the risk of trespass
and followed him along the quaking path
into his private land
where earth is raw with longing
and wounded to its never-healing core
bleeding dark ideals that shift
perspective — finding ways to view
forbidden caves love-haunted — seeped in chill.
Her suffering’s a pilgrimage —
his is the shrine she’s long been seeking
in a wilderness of so world-weary words.
She has tracked the clues his nature left —
a legacy of humming-birds — a snake’s star rôle
uncoiling like a metaphor suggests
his own internal odyssey —
that urgent sloughing of an outgrown skin.
He who pulled the fences down — unpicked walls
of old pretentiousness — laid the landscape bare
his curious eyes missed nothing — hilltop runes
still beckon as she dogs him — faithful hound
to his romantic nomad. Living off
her fantasies of trotting at his heel
his companion on that journey no one takes
unless in thrall — she casts around for scraps
and stalks him as a true fanatic would —
reverent and breathless — flushed with joy
imagining she’ll find some truth the critics missed
during their dissections of his soul —
dreaming she is close — her instinct arrows straight
as a compass down the moonlit road they travel on —
a constant gap between them while his giant shadow strides ahead
the book outlines his mystic goal — an ink stain of a map —
blank margins with their whiteness saying more.
[Winner of the Decanto Poetry Competition 2009]