Collected Poems

AT THOMAS HARDY'S BIRTHPLACE, 1953

Beany went home, and I got sick and ran, You old son of a bitch. You better hurry down to Minnegan; He's drunk or dying now, I don't know which, Rolled in the roots and garbage like a fish, The poor old man. AT THOMAS HARDY'S BIRTHPLACE, 1953 i The nurse carried him up the stair Into his mother's sleeping room. The beeches lashed the roof and dragged the air Because of storm. Wind could have overturned the dead. Moth and beetle and housefly crept Under the door to find the lamp, and cowered: But still he slept. The ache and sorrow of darkened earth Left pathways soft and meadows sodden; The small Frome overflowed the firth, And he lay hidden In the arms of the tall woman gone To soothe his mother during the dark; Nestled against the awkward flesh and bone When the rain broke. 2 Last night at Stinsford where his heart Is buried now, the rain came down. Cold to the hidden joy, the secret hurt, His heart is stone. But over the dead leaves in the wet The mouse goes snooping, and the bird. 54 Something the voiceless earth does not forget They come to guard, Maybe, the heart who would not tell Whatever secret he learned from the ground, Who turned aside and heard the human -wail, That other sound. More likely, though, the laboring feet Of fieldmouse, hedgehog, moth and hawk Seek in the storm what comfort they can get Under the rock Where surely the heart will not wake again To endure the unending beat of the air, Having been nursed beyond the sopping rain, Back down the stair. EVENING I called him to come in, The wide lawn darkened so. Laughing, he held his chin And hid beside a bush. The light gave him a push, Shadowy grass moved slow. He crept on agile toes Under a sheltering rose. His mother, still beyond The bare porch and the door, Called faintly out of sound, And vanished with her voice. I caught his curious eyes Measuring me, and more — The light dancing behind My shoulder in the wind. SAINT JUDAS 55 ...