The Spike [or Victoria University College Review 1954]
Seas and Black Houses
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.