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The Spike [or Victoria University College Review 1954]

Seas and Black Houses

page 67

Seas and Black Houses

My heart sang as the waters when I saw her
And marked all innocences fraught in her face,
Light in a fisher's seine. All day the cruel,
Casual heart made mimicry of her grace.

And she was my love then, moving through a dream
Whose green hands touch her once, and never again
Quiet as a star to slip into the waiting
Empty room of the heart; but the waters' songs remain

Always, as simple as a crucifix upon the white
Pure plaster of some most ordinary wall,
A song of her three bones meeting, my ninth hour love,
A wine for the throat of midnight, a madrigal.

For my voice only. It was afterwards other voices
Echoed upon those hills, dream-calling her, and the wet grass,
And the rotted leaves and the dewed webs made the silence
One with her, conspiring in my senses of loss.

So I woke there, still in the night, my heart singing
For what I knew not. The hurt seas and black houses
Met in the darkness. She is lost. O touch her gently,
Wind in the trees, wherever she is. My body rouses.