Without you every morning would feel like going back to work after a holiday,
Without you I couldn't stand the smell of the East Lancs Road,
Without you ghost ferries would cross the Mersey manned by skeleton crews,
Without you I'd probably feel happy and have more money and time and nothing to do with it,
Without you I'd have to leave my stillborn poems on other people's doorsteps, wrapped in brown paper,
Without you there'd never be sauce to put on sausage butties,
Without you plastic flowers in shop windows would just be plastic flowers in shop windows,
Without you I'd spend my summers picking morosley over the remains of train crashes,
Without you white birds would wrench themselves free from my paintings and fly off dripping blood into the night,
Without you green apples wouldn't taste greener,
......
ON the beach at night alone,
As the old mother sways her to and fro, singing her husky song,
As I watch the bright stars shining--I think a thought of the clef of
the universes, and of the future.
A VAST SIMILITUDE interlocks all,
All spheres, grown, ungrown, small, large, suns, moons, planets,
comets, asteroids,
All the substances of the same, and all that is spiritual upon the
same,
......
To go home and wear shorts forever
in the enormous paddocks, in that warm climate,
adding a sweater when winter soaks the grass,
to camp out along the river bends
for good, wearing shorts, with a pocketknife,
a fishing line and matches,
or there where the hills are all down, below the plain,
to sit around in shorts at evening
......
"ONCE in so often," King Solomon said,
Watching his quarrymen drill the stone,
"We will curb our garlic and wine and bread
And banquet together beneath my Throne,
And all Brethren shall come to that mess
As Fellow-Craftsmen-no more and no less."
"Send a swift shallop to Hiram of Tyre,
Felling and floating our beautiful trees,
Say that the Brethren and I desire
......
Adieu to Belashanny! where I was bred and born;
Go where I may, I'll think of you, as sure as night and morn.
The kindly spot, the friendly town, where every one is known,
And not a face in all the place but partly seems my own;
There's not a house or window, there's not a field or hill,
But, east or west, in foreign lands, I recollect them still.
I leave my warm heart with you, tho' my back I'm forced to turn
Adieu to Belashanny, and the winding banks of Erne!
No more on pleasant evenings we'll saunter down the Mall,
......
You and I will go to the seaside
You and I will flee the frigid winter
To live on beautiful and clean beaches
In the short waves on the shore.
You and I will dream together every night
You and I will live under the stars in the dark
You and I will sleep with our pillows
On the sparkling and crystal sand of the summer heat.
......
Toi et moi irons au bord de la mer
Toi et moi fuirons le froid de l’hiver
Pour habiter sur les belles plages
Ou dans les vagues des rivages.
Toi et moi rêverons ensemble chaque soir
Toi et moi vivrons sous les nuages dans le noir
Toi et moi coucherons avec nos oreillers
Sur le sable blanc dans la chaleur de l’été.
......
When I drove out to the coast I found
The ocean at my door.
An open window
Above my pillow
Played white noise from there on the shore.
I walked across the rocks and sand
To the seafoam frosted border,
And reveled within
The salty seas wind
......
On the jetty - in the mist - dry under ponchos
Surf pounding at concrete - biting at the shore
Glowing gaslamp beckoning gnats - freezing on the tank
Poles in hands - lines in water - standing in entwined silence
Coho spawning - swallowing offered bait
Father and Son sharing heartbeats and serenity
Steel-grey Van Gogh-esque sky
Smells of fish and seaweed hang heavy
Charcoal and driftwood speckle blue-green shale
Autumn winds awake
Sand and spray pelt my face
Remnants of the day break through
Peaked whitecaps painted in subdued hughes
Black-tipped gulls dip and soar
Wistful cries fill the air
......