Poems, 1957–1967

DOVER: BELIEVING IN KINGS

Ill DOVER: BELIEVING IN KINGS As we drovedown the ramp from the boat The sun flashed once Or throughhand-shieldedly twice; In a silence out of a sound We watched for channel swimmers dim with grease, Come, here, to the ale of the shallows. Within a wind, a wind sprang slowly up. Birds hovered where they were. As they were there, the airstream of the cliffs Overcame, came over them In the sackcloth and breast-beating gray The king wears newly, at evening. In a movement you cannot imagine Of air, the gulls fall, shaken. No stronger than the teeth in my head Or a word laid bare On chillingglass, the breathed stone over us rode. From its top, the eye may sail, Outgrowing the graven nerves Of the brow's long-thought-out lines, To France,on its own color. From a child's tall book, I knew this place The child must believe, with the king: Where, doubtless, now, lay lovers Restrained by a cloud, and the moon Into force coming justly, above. In a movement you cannot imagine Of love, the gulls fall, mating. We stopped; the birds hung up their arms Inside the wind So that they heeled; above, around us, Their harp-strung feathersmade Drowning With Others 87 The sound, quickly mortal, of sighing. We watched them in pure obsession. Where they did move, we moved Along the cliffs, the promenade, The walls, the pebble beach, And felt the inmost island turn, In their cross-cut, wing-walking cries, To a thing, as weeping, felt, And haunted by the balancement of light The king wears newly, in singing. We wandered off from the car In the light, half-sun, Half-moon, in a worn-down shine out of stone, And the taste of an iron ladle on the wind. In the moon's grimed, thumbprint silver The anchor spoke through the bell, Far out, the hour that hung in the sea. I threw a slow-flying stone; it dropped Inside the brilliant echo of a light. In a great, clustered, overdrawn sigh The gulls went up, on a raiment of wings The king wears newly, in panic. In a movement you cannot imagine Of error, the gulls rise, wholly. We climbed a wall they had flown. Each light below On water, shook like a thing in a lathe. In the heron crest of a lamp, Among lights, in their treading motion, The head of my reflection seemed to sing A dark, quickened side of the truth. I touched my wife. I saw my son, unborn, Left living after me, and my Self, There, freed of myself, In a stricken shade dancing together, As a wave rolled under the water, 88 Lifted and rose in our images The king wears newly, redoubling. Where we went in, all power failed the house. I spooned out light Upon a candle thread. My wife lay down. Through theflaming,white-bread nerve I peered from the eye of the mind. No child from the windowed dark came forth To the hand, in its pure-blooded fire, But the basket glow of the crown. The glass fetched white to a breath; I understood How thecrown must come from within : Of water made, and a wheel, And of the thing in flame that seems to pant. In a movement you cannot imagine Of mirrors, the gulls fall, hidden. I lay in bed. One hand in its sleeve Lay open, on my breath. My shadow, struck down beneath me, Rose, through my form. I heard the bell, In mist, step backwardly onto the waves. The wind fell off,as candle shade Unraveled our walls like knitting, and I, Undone, outstretched through the trampled shining Of thousands of miles of the moon, And the fallen king Breathed like a nosebleed, there, Two men wear newly, in hiding. In a movement you cannot imagine Of bloodshed, the gulls fall, inward. I listened for the coming of a barge. In a cat's-cradling motion Of oars, my father rocked, in the mist. He died; He was dying. His whisper fell, As I, beneath the grave. Below the drowned Drowning With Others 89 I panted, in the pig-iron taste of my beard. I yelled, as out of a bucket, Through my fettered mask, before the dawn When my arms, my big-footed legs would hang From pothooks, strange and untimely. The stone beat...